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A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance - Portrait of an Age
By William Manchester. 1992
A "lively and engaging" history of the Middle Ages (Dallas Morning News) from the acclaimed historian William Manchester, author of The…
Last Lion. From tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of trial by ordeal, no era has been a greater source of awe, horror, and wonder than the Middle Ages. In handsomely crafted prose, and with the grace and authority of his extraordinary gift for narrative history, William Manchester leads us from a civilization tottering on the brink of collapse to the grandeur of its rebirth: the dense explosion of energy that spawned some of history's greatest poets, philosophers, painters, adventurers, and reformers, as well as some of its most spectacular villains."Manchester provides easy access to a fascinating age when our modern mentality was just being born." --Chicago TribuneFocused on three Egyptian revolutions—in 1919, 1952, and 2011—this edited book argues that each of these revolutions is a milestone…
which represents a meaningful turning point in modern Egyptian history.Revolutions are typically characterized by a fundamental change in political and social infrastructures as well as in the establishment of new values and norms. However, it should be noted that this may not be entirely applicable when examining the context of the three Egyptian revolutions: the 1919 revolution failed to liberate Egypt from British colonial hegemony; the 1952 revolution failed to rework the country’s social and economic systems and unify the Arab world; and the "Arab Spring" revolution of 2011 culminated in a chaotic economic and social catastrophe, thus failing to solve the young generation’s crisis. Nevertheless, by revisiting and re-defining these revolutions through diverse theoretical frameworks, the book proposes that each of them played a significant role in shaping Egypt’s political, social, and cultural identity.This book is specifically of interest for students, historians, and social scientists with a keen interest in Egyptian history and the Middle East, offering fresh perspectives and insights into these transformative moments in Egypt’s history.The Development of the Hotel and Tourism Industry in the Twentieth Century: Comparative Perspectives from Western Europe, 1900–1970 (Palgrave Studies in Economic History)
By Carlos Larrinaga, Donatella Strangio. 2023
This edited collection explores the pivotal role of the hotel industry in building Western Europe’s tourism economy during the 20th…
century. The book brings together ten contributions focused on the same period, 1900-1970, to offer comparative perspectives from across the region including Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain and Britain. Drawing on historical case studies, chapters illuminate the different factors linking hotels and the broader tourism system including interventions of the public authorities and the State, the importance of private involvement, commercial strategies, the medium-term development of private hotels, hotel entrepreneurship, and the impact of economic crises and wars. By placing differing national approaches taken to the growth of the hotel industry in comparison, the book aims to fill a gap in the historiography of European hospitality and shed light on the wider impact of hotels and tourism on economic development at both a national and regional level. It will be of interest to a range of scholars, including in economic and business history, tourism studies, the history of tourism management, and social history.“Old maps lead you to strange and unexpected places, and none does so more ineluctably than the subject of this…
book: the giant, beguiling Waldseemüller world map of 1507.” So begins this remarkable story of the map that gave America its name.For millennia Europeans believed that the world consisted of three parts: Europe, Africa, and Asia. They drew the three continents in countless shapes and sizes on their maps, but occasionally they hinted at the existence of a "fourth part of the world," a mysterious, inaccessible place, separated from the rest by a vast expanse of ocean. It was a land of myth—until 1507, that is, when Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann, two obscure scholars working in the mountains of eastern France, made it real. Columbus had died the year before convinced that he had sailed to Asia, but Waldseemüller and Ringmann, after reading about the Atlantic discoveries of Columbus’s contemporary Amerigo Vespucci, came to a startling conclusion: Vespucci had reached the fourth part of the world. To celebrate his achievement, Waldseemüller and Ringmann printed a huge map, for the first time showing the New World surrounded by water and distinct from Asia, and in Vespucci’s honor they gave this New World a name: America. The Fourth Part of the World is the story behind that map, a thrilling saga of geographical and intellectual exploration, full of outsize thinkers and voyages. Taking a kaleidoscopic approach, Toby Lester traces the origins of our modern worldview. His narrative sweeps across continents and centuries, zeroing in on different portions of the map to reveal strands of ancient legend, Biblical prophecy, classical learning, medieval exploration, imperial ambitions, and more. In Lester’s telling the map comes alive: Marco Polo and the early Christian missionaries trek across Central Asia and China; Europe’s early humanists travel to monastic libraries to recover ancient texts; Portuguese merchants round up the first West African slaves; Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci make their epic voyages of discovery; and finally, vitally, Nicholas Copernicus makes an appearance, deducing from the new geography shown on the Waldseemüller map that the earth could not lie at the center of the cosmos. The map literally altered humanity’s worldview. One thousand copies of the map were printed, yet only one remains. Discovered accidentally in 1901 in the library of a German castle it was bought in 2003 for the unprecedented sum of $10 million by the Library of Congress, where it is now on permanent public display. Lavishly illustrated with rare maps and diagrams, The Fourth Part of the World is the story of that map: the dazzling story of the geographical and intellectual journeys that have helped us decipher our world.Bad Girls Throughout History: 100 Remarkable Women Who Changed the World
By Ann Shen. 2016
Bad Girls Throughout History: 100 Remarkable Women Who Changed the World delivers a empowering book for women and girls of…
all ages, featuring 100 women who made history and made their mark on the world, it's a best-selling book you can be proud to display in your home.The 100 revolutionary women highlighted in this gorgeously illustrated book were bad in the best sense of the word: they challenged the status quo and changed the rules for all who followed. Explored in this history book, include:• Aphra Behn, first female professional writer.• Sojourner Truth, women's rights activist and abolitionist.• Ada Lovelace, first computer programmer.• Marie Curie, first woman to win the Nobel Prize.• Joan Jett, godmother of punk.From pirates to artists, warriors, daredevils, women in science, activists, and spies, the accomplishments of these incredible women who dared to push boundaries vary as much as the eras and places in which they effected change. Featuring bold watercolor portraits and illuminating essays by Ann Shen, Bad Girls Throughout History is a distinctive, gift-worthy tribute to rebel girls everywhere.A lovely gift for teen girls, stories to share with a young girl at bedtime, or a book to display on a coffee table, everyone will enjoy learning about and celebrating the accomplishments of these phenomenal women.But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust
By Barbara Yelin, Gilad Seliktar, Miriam Libicki. 2022
An intimate co-creation of three graphic novelists and four Holocaust survivors, But I Live consists of three illustrated stories based…
on the experiences of each survivor during and after the Holocaust. David Schaffer and his family survived in Romania due to their refusal to obey Nazi collaborators. In the Netherlands, brothers Nico and Rolf Kamp were separated from their parents and hidden by the Dutch resistance in thirteen different places. Through the story of Emmie Arbel, a child survivor of the Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, we see the lifelong trauma inflicted by the Holocaust. To complement these hauntingly beautiful and unforgettable visual stories, But I Live includes historical essays, an illustrated postscript from the artists, and personal words from each of the survivors. As we urgently approach the post-witness era without living survivors of the Holocaust, these illustrated stories act as a physical embodiment of memory and help to create a new archive for future readers. By turning these testimonies into graphic novels, But I Live aims to teach new generations about racism, antisemitism, human rights, and social justice.Shake It Up, Baby!: The Rise of Beatlemania and the Mayhem of 1963
By Ken McNab. 2024
A vivid, captivating account of the Beatles&’s musical transformation throughout the pivotal year of 1963, as the world became caught…
up in the maelstrom of Beatlemania and its far-reaching cultural impact. The Beatles broke up more than half a century ago, yet millions around the globe are still drawn to the legacy of four lads from Liverpool. From the carefree innocence of "A Hard Day's Night" to the experimental psychedelia of "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,&” their message of love, peace, and hope still resonates. In Shake It Up, Baby! we go back to the start—to 1963, when they went from playing in small clubs in the remote Scottish Highlands to four number one singles, two number one albums, three national tours, and being besieged by thousands of fans at gigs all over Britain. Ken McNab tells the story through gripping, exclusive eye-witness accounts from those who were there: the Beatlemaniacs, the journalists, broadcasters, and television producers who were scrambling to make sense of it all—and the other bands who could only watch in awe as the Beatles went from bottom of the bill to headline act to the biggest band on the planet, forever transforming musical history.Fallen: George Mallory and the Tragic 1924 Everest Expedition
By Mick Conefrey. 2024
An authoritative, myth-piercing study of the world-famous explorer George Mallory, who disappeared on Mount Everest in 1924.In the years following…
his disappearance near the summit of Mount Everest in June 1924 at the age of thirty-seven, George Mallory was elevated into a legendary international hero. Dubbed "the Galahad of Everest,&” he was lionized by the media as the greatest mountaineer of his generation—a man who had died while taking the ultimate challenge. His body was only recovered in 1999 and there is still speculation about whether he made it to the summit. Handsome, charismatic, and daring, Mallory was a skilled public speaker, athlete, technically-gifted climber, a committed Socialist, and a supremely attractive figure to both men and women. His friends ranged from the gay artists and writers of the Bloomsbury group to the best mountaineers of his era. But that was only one side to him. Mallory was also a risk-taker who, according to his friend and first biographer David Pye, could never get behind the wheel of a car without trying to overtake the vehicle in front; a climber who pushed himself and those around him to the limits; a chaotic technophobe who was forever losing or mishandling equipment; a man who led his porters to their deaths in 1922, as well as his young climbing partner Andrew Irvine only two years later. So who was the real Mallory? What were the forces that made him and ultimately destroyed him? Why did the man who, in 1922, denounced oxygen sets as "damnable heresy&” himself perish on an oxygen-powered summit attempt two years later? And perhaps most importantly, what made him return to Everest for his third and final attempt? Using diaries, letters, memoirs, and thousands of contemporary documents, Fallen is a gripping forensic investigation of Mallory&’s last expedition that, at long last, separates the man from the myth.Top Secret/Majic: Operation Majestic-12 and the United States Government's UFO Cover-up
By Stanton T. Friedman. 2005
Exposing the U.S. government's biggest-kept secret: a fifty-eight-year UFO cover-up.Top Secret/Majic is the result of nuclear physicist and renowned UFO investigator…
Stanton T. Friedman's twenty-one year search for the truth about the mysterious Operation Majestic 12, President Truman's top-secret UFO investigation team. In this updated edition of his landmark book, he tells the incredible tale of the July 1947 recovery of a crashed flying saucer near Roswell, New Mexico, and the establishment by President Truman of a truly all-star cast to deal with the saucer and its non-human inhabitants. The first four Directors of Central Intelligence, the first Secretary of Defense, and several outstanding scientists and military leaders were part of the team. Through painstaking research and startling evidence—including documents that have never before been published.Vows: The Modern Genius of an Ancient Rite
By Cheryl Mendelson. 2015
From the bestselling author of Home Comforts comes the story of our wedding vows—what they mean and why they still…
matter.In the West, marrying is so thoroughly identified with ceremonial promises that &“taking vows&” is a synonym for getting married. So, it&’s a surprise to realize that this custom is actually a historical and anthropological oddity. Most of the world, for most of history, married without making promises. And there&’s a reason for that. Marriage by vow presupposes free choice, and free choice makes a love-match possible. It is a very modern arrangement. Vows is both a moving memoir of two marriages and a thoughtful meditation on marriage itself. Cheryl Mendelson tackles the sociology of commitment through our most traditional promises and shows why they endure. In considering the kind of marriage these vows entail, she helps answer some of life&’s most urgent and personal of questions: Could I, would I, or should I make these promises to someone? Using history and literature, the book describes the parameters of the behavior that traditional vows promise and, in doing so, answers a whole series of other questions: Why did wedding-by-vow arise only in the West? Why are they recited in weddings around the world today? Why have these vows lasted for nearly a thousand years? Why does the kind of marriage promised in the vows survive?What Do We Know About the Nazca Lines? (What Do We Know About?)
By Ben Hubbard, Who Hq. 2024
How did the mysterious images high in the Nazca Desert in Peru come to be? Find out the truth about these…
ancient figures in the soil that can only be fully seen from high above the Nazca plain.Presenting What Do We Know About?, an exciting extension of the #1 New York Times Best-Selling Who Was? series!The Nazca Lines in Peru have mystified people around the world for centuries. The famous figures, sometimes called geoglyphs, include a hummingbird, a spider, a fish, a monkey, a dog, a cat, human-like figures, geometric designs, and more. These amazing images were believed to have been created between 500 B.C.E. and 500 C.E., and no one is quite sure how or why they were created. Some historians believe that they are ancient irrigation systems, but other researchers believe in a more paranormal origin story. Were the Nazca Lines created by ancient cultures thousands of years ago, or could they have been alien landing sites? Find out the truth about the Nazca Lines in this book for young readers.The Cambridge World History of Sexualities: Volume 4, Modern Sexualities (The Cambridge World History of Sexualities)
By Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E., Mathew Kuefler. 2024
Volume IV examines the intersections of modernity and human sexuality through the forces, ideas, and events that have shaped the…
modern world. Through eighteen chapters, this volume examines connections between sexuality and the defining forces of modern global history including capitalism, colonialism, migration, consumerism, and war; sexuality in modern literature and print media; sexuality in dictatorships and democracies; and cultural changes such as sex education and the sexual revolution. The volume ends with discussions of the difficult issues we in the modern world continue to face, such as restrictions on reproductive rights, sex tourism, STDs and AIDS, sex trafficking, domestic violence, and illiberal attacks on sexuality.The Cambridge World History of Sexualities: Volume 2, Systems of Thought and Belief (The Cambridge World History of Sexualities)
By Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E., Mathew Kuefler. 2024
Volume II focuses on systems of thought and belief in the history of world sexualities, ranging from early humans to…
contemporary approaches. Comprising eighteen chapters, this volume opens with a chapter on the evolutionary legacy and then delves into the sexualities of ancient Egypt, the Near East, Greece, and Rome, continuing with pre-modern South Asia, China, and Japan, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. Chapters include an examination of sexuality in the religious traditions of Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and also look at more recent approaches, including scientific sex, sexuality in socialism and Marxism, and the intersections between sexuality, feminism, and post-colonialism.The Cambridge World History of Sexualities: Volume 3, Sites of Knowledge and Practice (The Cambridge World History of Sexualities)
By Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E., Mathew Kuefler. 2024
Volume III provides in-depth analyses of specific times and places in the history of world sexualities, to investigate more closely…
the lived experience of individuals and groups to reveal the diversity of human sexualities. Comprising twenty-five chapters, this volume covers ancient Athens, Rome, and Constantinople; eighth- and ninth-century Chang'an, ninth- and tenth-century Baghdad, and tenth- through twelfth-century Kyoto; fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Iceland and Florence; sixteenth-century Tenochtitlan, Istanbul, and Geneva; eighteenth-century Edo, Paris, and Philadelphia; nineteenth-century Cairo, London, and Manila; late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lagos, Bombay, Buenos Aires, and Berlin, and twentieth-century Sydney, Toronto, Shanghai, and Rio de Janeiro. Broad in range, this volume sheds light on continuities and changes in world sexualities across time and space.A thrilling narrative investigation into the National Socialist Underground (NSU)—a German terror organization that targeted immigrants—and how a government failed to…
stop it. Not long after the Berlin Wall fell, three teenagers became friends in the East German town of Jena. It was a time of excitement, but also of deep uncertainty: some four million East Germans found themselves out of work. The friends began attending far-right rallies with people who called themselves National Socialists: Nazis. And, like the Hitler-led Nazis before them, they blamed minorities for their ills. From 2000 to 2011, they embarked on the most horrific string of white nationalist killings since the Holocaust. Their target: immigrants. Look Away follows Beate Zschäpe and her two accomplices—and sometimes lovers—as they became radicalized within Germany&’s far-right scene, escaped into hiding, and carried out their terrorist spree. Unable to believe that the brutal killings and bombings were being carried out by white Germans, police blamed—and sometimes framed—the immigrants instead. Readers meet Gamze Kubaşık, whose family emigrated from Turkey to seek safety, only to find themselves in the terrorists&’ sights. It also tracks Katharina König, an Antifa punk who would help expose the NSU and their accomplices to the world. A masterwork of reporting and storytelling, Look Away reveals how a group of young Germans carried out a shocking spree of white supremacist violence, and how a nation and its government ignored them until it was too late.Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe
By Sathnam Sanghera. 2024
Bestselling author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera explores the global legacy of the British Empire, and the ways it continues to…
influence economics, politics, and culture around the world. 2.6 billion people are inhabitants of former British colonies. The empire's influence upon the quarter of the planet it occupied, and its gravitational influence upon the world outside it, has been profound: from the spread of Christianity by missionaries to the shaping international law. Even today, 1 in 3 people drive on the left hand side of the road, an artifact of the British empire. Yet Britain's idea of its imperial history and the world's experience of it are two very different things. Following in the footsteps of his bestselling book Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain, Empireworld explores the ways in which British Empire has come to shape the modern world Sanghera visits Barbados, where he uncovers how Caribbean nations are still struggling to emerge from the disadvantages sown by transatlantic slavery. He examines how large charities--like Save the Children and the World Bank--still see the world through the imperial eyes of their colonial founders, and how the political instability of nations, such as Nigeria, for instance, can be traced back to tensions seeded in their colonial foundations. And from the British Empire's role in the transportation of 12.5 million Africans during the Atlantic slave trade, to the 35 million Indians who died due to famine caused by British policy, the British Empire, as Sanghera reveals, was responsible for some of the largest demographic changes in human history. Economic, legal and political systems across the world continue to function along the lines originally drawn by the British Empire, and cultural, sexual, psychological, linguistic, demographic, and educational norms originally established by imperial Britons continue to shape our lives. British Empire may have peaked a century ago, and it may have been mostly dismantled by 1997, but in this major new work, Sathnam Sanghera ultimately shows how the largest empire in world history still exerts influence over planet Earth in all sorts of silent and unsilent ways.The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation
By Victor Davis Hanson. 2024
In this &“gripping account of catastrophic defeat&” (Barry Strauss), a New York Times–bestselling historian charts how and why some societies…
chose to utterly destroy their foes, and warns that similar wars of obliteration are possible in our time &“In The End of Everything, Hanson tells compelling and harrowing stories of how civilizations perished. He helps us consider contemporary affairs in light of that history, think about the unthinkable, and recognize the urgency of trying to prevent our own demise.&” — H. R. McMaster, author of Battlegrounds War can settle disputes, topple tyrants, and bend the trajectory of civilization—sometimes to the breaking point. From Troy to Hiroshima, moments when war has ended in utter annihilation have reverberated through the centuries, signaling the end of political systems, cultures, and epochs. Though much has changed over the millennia, human nature remains the same. Modern societies are not immune from the horror of a war of extinction. In The End of Everything, military historian Victor Davis Hanson narrates a series of sieges and sackings that span the age of antiquity to the conquest of the New World to show how societies descend into barbarism and obliteration. In the stories of Thebes, Carthage, Constantinople, and Tenochtitlan, he depicts war&’s drama, violence, and folly. Highlighting the naivete that plagued the vanquished and the wrath that justified mass slaughter, Hanson delivers a sobering call to contemporary readers to heed the lessons of obliteration lest we blunder into catastrophe once again.The Birds That Audubon Missed: Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness
By Kenn Kaufman. 2024
Renowned naturalist Kenn Kaufman examines the scientific discoveries of John James Audubon and his artistic and ornithologist peers to show…
how what they saw (and what they missed) reflects how we perceive and understand the natural world.Raging ambition. Towering egos. Competition under a veneer of courtesy. Heroic effort combined with plagiarism, theft, exaggeration, and fraud. This was the state of bird study in eastern North America during the early 1800s, as a handful of intrepid men raced to find the last few birds that were still unknown to science. The most famous name in the bird world was John James Audubon, who painted spectacular portraits of birds. But although his images were beautiful, creating great art was not his main goal. Instead, he aimed to illustrate (and write about) as many different species as possible, obsessed with trying to outdo his rival, Alexander Wilson. George Ord, a fan and protégé of Wilson, held a bitter grudge against Audubon for years, claiming he had faked much of his information and his scientific claims. A few of Audubon&’s birds were pure fiction, and some of his writing was invented or plagiarized. Other naturalists of the era, including Charles Bonaparte (nephew of Napoleon), John Townsend, and Thomas Nuttall, also became entangled in the scientific derby, as they stumbled toward an understanding of the natural world—an endeavor that continues to this day. Despite this intense competition, a few species—including some surprisingly common songbirds, hawks, sandpipers, and more—managed to evade discovery for years. Here, renowned bird expert and artist Kenn Kaufman explores this period in history from a new angle, by considering the birds these people discovered and, especially, the ones they missed. Kaufman has created portraits of the birds that Audubon never saw, attempting to paint them in that artist&’s own stunning style, as a way of examining the history of natural sciences and nature art. He shows how our understanding of birds continues to gain clarity, even as some mysteries persist from Audubon&’s time until ours.The Cambridge World History of Sexualities: Volume 1, General Overviews (The Cambridge World History of Sexualities)
By Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E., Mathew Kuefler. 2024
Volume I offers historiographical surveys and general overviews of central topics in the history of world sexualities. Split across twenty-two…
chapters, this volume places the history of sexuality in dialogue with anthropology, women's history, LGBTQ+ history, queer theory, and public history, as well as examining the impact Freud and Foucault have had on the history of sexuality. The volume continues by providing overviews on the sexual body, family and marriage, the intersections of sexuality with race and class, male and female homoerotic relations, trans and gender variant sexuality, the sale of sex, sexual violence, sexual science, sexuality and emotion, erotic art and literature, and the material culture of sexuality.A Look at My Life
By Eileen Agar. 2024
A beautiful new edition of the long out-of-print autobiography of the pioneering Surrealist artist Eileen Agar. Whether dancing on the…
rooftops in Paris, sharing ideas with Pablo Picasso, or gathering starfish on the beaches of Cornwall, Eileen Agar transformed the everyday into the extraordinary. Her legacy as a pioneering figure in the surrealist movement is firmly established, and her work continues to captivate audiences with its otherworldly beauty and imaginative power. Agar’s life was no less extraordinary than her art. In A Look at My Life, she traces her life from her birth in Argentina to the late 1980s. She gives an intimate account of very different worlds: grand house parties in Buenos Aires and Belgravia as a young girl give way to la vie bohème in London and Paris and a peripatetic existence with her lifelong partner, Hungarian writer Joseph Bard. She enjoyed enriching friendships with contemporaries Paul Nash, Ezra Pound, Evelyn Waugh, Gertrude Hermes, and Henry Moore, while a summer spent in the South of France with Picasso, Lee Miller, and Man Ray had a lasting impact. Agar introduces them and many others into the narrative of her artistic development; above all, it is Agar’s own unwavering resilience, infectious energy, and drive that permeates this compelling memoir. Bringing her work to life in all its vibrancy and variety, this updated autobiography is populated with Agar’s personal selection of photographs of family, friends, and lovers alongside over fifty color illustrations of collages, paintings, and assemblages spanning her life’s work.