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Meet George Washington - An eStory
By Charles Margerison. 2011
George Washington grew up in the English colony of Virginia. He was tall and strong and respected by his friends…
and colleagues as a good leader. As he grew older, George saw how England took advantage of the American colonies and he didn't like it. When the colonies declared their independence, George was chosen to lead their army as its general. When the colonies finally won their freedom, George was elected to lead the new nation as its first president.Each story comes to life through BioViews®. These are short biographical narratives, similar to interviews. They provide an easy way of learning about amazing people who made major contributions and changed our world.Meet Benjamin Franklin - An eStory
By Charles Margerison. 2011
Meet Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the most famous of all the Founding Fathers. His story comes to life as you travel…
with him from his early years, as part of a large family, to his time at the printing company with his brother James. This ultimately resulted in his journey to England and France, a turn of events that would define the rest of his life. His remarkable story unfurls through BioViews®. Each story comes to life through BioViews®. These are short biographical narratives, similar to interviews. They provide an easy way of learning about amazing people who made major contributions and changed our world.Rudolph W. Giuliani: America's Mayor
By Eleanor Fremont. 2002
ONCE A MAYOR -- NOW A HERO. On September 11, 2001, our nation watched in horror as the United States…
came under siege. In the aftermath, New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani rose to the forefront as a strong and compassionate leader -- offering candid information, comforting those in pain, and proving himself a man of tremendous dedication to those in his charge. This revealing biography illustrates how his life's work prepared him for this incredible challenge. From his childhood in Brooklyn to his controversial work with the Department of Justice to his eight years as the mayor of one of the most complex cities in the world, Rudolph W. Giuliani -- Time magazine's Person of the Year -- has become one of the most fascinating and exceptional leaders of our time.In the Midst of Alarms
By Robert Barr, Douglas Lochhead. 1973
The Prince
By Niccolò Machiavelli, Christopher Celenza. 2018
Packaged in handsome, affordable trade editions, Clydesdale Classics is a new series of essential works. From the musings of intellectuals…
such as Thomas Paine in Common Sense to the striking personal narrative of Harriet Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, this new series is a comprehensive collection of our intellectual history through the words of the exceptional few.Widely acknowledged as Machiavelli’s defining work, The Prince is an innovative and rich treatise marked by his political theories and the principles of leadership. Based upon his own experiences witnessing “the actions of great men” and the often immoral aspects that come with power, Machiavelli encouraged ambition amongst leaders—which was a break from the philosophy of other contemporary thinkers. The Prince identifies the aims of powerful leaders, which can help to justify the use of largely immoral means in their methods.With a new foreword by scholar Christopher Celenza, this essential work on politics contemplates leadership in a manner still relevant today. This lesson in autocratic rule will provide the reader with the author’s rational approach to control and the contextualization for the term “Machiavellian.”The King's Fool
By Mahi Binebine. 2017
Sidi is dying.In the last days of this all-powerful tyrant, his faithful court fool takes stock of the decades he…
has spent in the king's service. For the many years have left certain indelible wounds.During his service, the fool has been the king's closest counsel, his most trusted companion and adviser, privy to the king's deepest secrets and most intimate thoughts. It is an honoured position for which many other courtiers would pay a hefty price. Something the fool understands only too well, for this closeness has indeed come at a terrible cost.What price the confidence of a great king? Is it stories, jokes, witty repartee? Or does the debt fall closer to home? Perhaps it must be paid far from the magnificent palaces, feasting and festivities of the royal court. Perhaps it must be paid in the death jails of a formidable prison fortress far out in the desert; a place so feared that few dare to speak its name . . .The King's Fool
By Mahi Binebine. 2017
Sidi is dying.In the last days of this all-powerful tyrant, his faithful court fool takes stock of the decades he…
has spent in the king's service. For the many years have left certain indelible wounds.During his service, the fool has been the king's closest counsel, his most trusted companion and adviser, privy to the king's deepest secrets and most intimate thoughts. It is an honoured position for which many other courtiers would pay a hefty price. Something the fool understands only too well, for this closeness has indeed come at a terrible cost.What price the confidence of a great king? Is it stories, jokes, witty repartee? Or does the debt fall closer to home? Perhaps it must be paid far from the magnificent palaces, feasting and festivities of the royal court. Perhaps it must be paid in the death jails of a formidable prison fortress far out in the desert; a place so feared that few dare to speak its name . . .Widows: A Novel
By Ariel Dorfman, Stephen Kessler. 1983
Set in a Greek village in 1942, and purportedly written from his imagination by a Danish man before he was…
picked up by the Gestapo and not seen again, here is Ariel Dorfman's haunting and universal parable of individual courage in the face of political oppression. Widows forms a testament to the disappeared--those living under totalitarian regimes the world over, who are taken away for "questioning" and never return.One by one, the bodies of men wash up on the shore of the river, where they are claimed by the women of the local town as husbands and fathers, even though the faces of the dead men are unrecognizable. A tug-of-war ensues between the local police, who insist that the women couldn't possibly recognize their loved ones, and the women demanding the right to bury their beloveds. As it evolves, the stand-off reveals itself to be a power struggle between love, dignity and honor, and the lesser god of brute force. A lesson in how power really works, and how it can be made to work differently.Haymarket: A Novel
By Martin Duberman. 2003
On the night of May 4, 1886, during a peaceful demonstration of labor activists in Haymarket Square in Chicago, a…
dynamite bomb was thrown into the ranks of police trying to disperse the crowd. The officers immediately opened fire, killing a number of protestors and wounding some two hundred others. Albert Parsons was the best-known of those hanged; Haymarket is his story. Parsons, humanist and autodidact, was an ex-Confederate soldier who grew up in Texas in the 1870s, and fell in love with Lucy Gonzalez, a vibrant, outspoken black woman who preferred to describe herself as of Spanish and Creole descent. The novel tells the story of their lives together, of their growing political involvement, of the formation of a colorful circle of "co-conspirators"--immigrants, radical intellectuals, journalists, advocates of the working class-and of the events culminating in bloodshed. More than just a moving story of love and human struggle, more than a faithful account of a watershed event in United States history, Haymarket presents a layered and dynamic revelation of late nineteenth-century Chicago, and of the lives of a handful of remarkable individuals who were willing to risk their lives for the promise of social change.Olga: A Novel
By Prof Bernhard Schlink. 2018
A #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER'Bernhard Schlink speaks straight to the heart' New York Times'Brilliant... A tale of love and loss in…
20th century Germany' Evening Standard'A cleverly-constructed tale of cross-class romance' Mail on Sunday'A poignant portrait of a woman out of step with her time' Observer Olga is an orphan raised by her grandmother in a Prussian village around the turn of the 20th century. Smart and precocious, she fights against the prejudices of the time to find her place in a world that sees her as second-best.When she falls in love with Herbert, a local aristocrat obsessed with the era's dreams of power, glory and greatness, her life is irremediably changed.Theirs is a love against all odds, entwined with the twisting paths of German history, leading us from the late 19th to the early 21st century, from Germany to Africa and the Arctic, from the Baltic Sea to the German south-west.This is the story of that love, of Olga's devotion to a restless man - told in thought, letters and in a fateful moment of great rebellion.The King's Fool
By Mahi Binebine. 2017
Sidi is dying.In the last days of this all-powerful tyrant, his faithful court fool takes stock of the decades he…
has spent in the king's service. For the many years have left certain indelible wounds.During his service, the fool has been the king's closest counsel, his most trusted companion and adviser, privy to the king's deepest secrets and most intimate thoughts. It is an honoured position for which many other courtiers would pay a hefty price. Something the fool understands only too well, for this closeness has indeed come at a terrible cost.What price the confidence of a great king? Is it stories, jokes, witty repartee? Or does the debt fall closer to home? Perhaps it must be paid far from the magnificent palaces, feasting and festivities of the royal court. Perhaps it must be paid in the death jails of a formidable prison fortress far out in the desert; a place so feared that few dare to speak its name . . .Winds of the Night (MacLehose Press Editions #8)
By Joan Sales. 2017
"Perhaps the worst thing about war is the peace that follows . . ."Winds of the Night is the follow-up,…
published almost thirty years later, to Joan Sales' acclaimed masterwork of the Spanish Civil War, Uncertain Glory.It describes the shell-shocked wasteland that was post-war Catalonia through the eyes of Cruells, a Republican chaplain who survives the war, and completes his theological studies only to lose his faith in a world where it seems all hope has been extinguished.As he struggles to function as a rural priest, his steps are dogged by a ghostly figures from his past, such as Lamoneda, a fascist agent provocateur who now hobnobs with Himmler and misses few opportunities to turn the febrile post-war atmosphere to his financial advantage. Against his wishes, Creulls is drawn into obsessive dialogues about the war in which only lunacy prevails, for Lamoneda seems to hold the key to the whereabouts of an old friend - the mercurial Juli Soleràs, whose charisma, for all his betrayals, still holds Cruells in thrall.An essential coda to the modern classic that is Uncertain Glory, Winds of the Night is a Beckettian vision of the traumas of combatants and country hidden beneath the rhetoric of the victors.Translated from the Catalan by Peter BushPrivilege
By Guinevere Glasfurd. 2022
'Tightly plotted and hugely readable' Jane Rogers, author of PROMISED LANDS'Marvellous . . . fans of immersive historical fiction, the…
18th century, all things French and a dash of peril, this one's for you' Emily Brand, author of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF BYRON'Glasfurd deftly, elegantly captures this volatile world of impoverished attic rooms and gilded literary salons' DAILY MAIL'I thought of the books we carried and the hands that would one day hold them. The pages read, turned and discussed. And how the book would become thought and the thought then become the person gone out into the world. Let Gilbert try and put a stop to that.'After her father is disgraced, Delphine Vimond is cast out of her home in Rouen and flees to Paris. Into her life tumbles Chancery Smith, apprentice printer sent from London to discover the mysterious author of potentially incendiary papers marked only D. In a battle of wits with the French censor, Henri Gilbert, Delphine and Chancery set off in a frantic search for D's author. But who is D and does D even exist?Privilege is a story of adventure and mishap set against the turmoil of mid-18th century France at odds with the absolute power of the King who is determined to suppress opposition on pain of death. At a time when books required royal privilege before they could be published - a system enforced by the Chief Censor and a network of spies - many were censored or banned, and their authors harshly punished. Books that fell foul of the system were published outside France and smuggled back in at great risk.Costa-shortlisted author Guinevere Glasfurd has conjured a vibrant world of entitlement and danger, where the right to live and think freely could come at the highest cost.No Return: A novel of the Canadian election that vanished in Muskoka's backwoods
By Gordon Aiken. 2010
Canadians took politics seriously in the years following Confederation and Gordon Aiken’s novel about pioneer Muskoka and the fledgling nation’s…
capital shows why. Unique events in the Dominion’s second election, in 1872, inspired Aiken to write about Muskoka’s returning officer, Richard Bell, who refused to declare Liberal candidate A.P. Cockburn elected, even though he got the most votes. Consequent ground-breaking events included Bell’s summons to give an accounting of himself to the House of Commons, the first and only time an MP would be elected to parliament by members of the Commons itself, and reforms in Canadian election law including introduction of the secret ballot. Privately published as Returning Officer in 1982, and long since out of print, this Blue Butterfly edition is re-titled No Return. Completely reset and redesigned, with added maps and period photographs, this new edition also features J. Patrick Boyer’s afterword, "Gordon Aiken’s Quest and the Genesis of No Return." The political intrigues woven into Gordon Aiken’s rich tale of local and national affairs from 140 years ago will resonate with readers today, if its essential plots and human ambitions were simply updated by new technology and a fresh cast of characters to re-enact timeless dramas of mismatched lovers, a local judge fighting the newspaper editor, lumber barons playing both sides to keep their timber licences, and contractors changing political sides to win road jobs (or what today are termed "infrastructure projects"). Aiken, Member of Parliament for the same district a century later, wrote with deep understanding about Muskoka and its people and acute knowledge of parliamentary politics. No Return tells of one man’s struggle to support his chosen party, maintain his independence, confound his enemies, and hold his family together under duress.Meet Abraham Lincoln - An eStory
By Charles Margerison. 2011
Meet Abraham Lincoln, arguably one of the most influential of all the American Presidents who played the crucial role in…
the abolition of slavery. Lincoln's life has been explored in many ways. However, you can gain a unique and very personal insight through BioViews®. It's as if he has come back and given an interview about his life. Each story comes to life through BioViews®. These are short biographical narratives, similar to interviews. They provide an easy way of learning about amazing people who made major contributions and changed our world....If You Grew Up with Abraham Lincoln
By Ann Mcgovern. 2006
Privilege
By Guinevere Glasfurd. 2022
18th century France - a world of fountains and gilded porcelain, literary salons and spies... where the right to live…
and think freely could cost you your life....I thought of the books we carried and the hands that would one day hold them. The pages read, turned and discussed. The book returned to the shelf, taken down to be read again. The book become thought and the thought become the person and the person gone out into the world. Let Gilbert try and put a stop to that...Privilege is set in the 18th century France of an Enlightenment at odds with the absolute power of the King determined to suppress opposition on pain of death.Delphine Vimond flees to Paris after being cast out from her home in Rouen when her father is disgraced. Into her life tumbles Chancery Smith, apprentice printer from London, sent to discover the mysterious author of potentially seditious papers marked only D.In a battle of wits with the French censor, Henri Gilbert, Delphine and Chancery set off in a frantic search for D's author. But who is he - and does he even exist?A novel in defence of reason, humanism and hope.(P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton LimitedA Cold War Odyssey
By Donald E. Nuechterlein. 1997
The Cold War—that long ideological conflict between the world's two superpowers—had a profound effect not only on nations but on…
individuals, especially all those involved in setting and implementing the policies that shaped the struggle. Donald NuechterlChina Coup: The Great Leap to Freedom
By Roger Garside. 2021
An expert’s take on how a coup in China could launch a transition to democracy. This short book predicts—contrary to…
the prevailing consensus—that China’s leader Xi Jinping will very soon be removed from office in a coup d’état mounted by rivals in the top leadership. The leaders of the coup will then end China’s one-party dictatorship and launch a transition to democracy and the rule of law. Long-time diplomat and development banker author Roger Garside draws on his deep knowledge of Chinese politics and economics first to develop a detailed scenario of how these events may unfold, and then—in the main body of the book—to explain why. His gripping, persuasive account of how Chinese leaders plot and plan away from the public eye is unique in published literature. Garside argues that under Xi’s overconfident leadership, China is on a collision course with an America that is newly awakened out of complacency. As Xi’s rivals look abroad, they are alarmed that he is blind to the reactions that China’s actions have provoked from the world’s strongest power and its allies. In domestic affairs, Xi’s rivals recognize that economic and social change without political reform have created problems that require not just new leaders but a new system of government. Security abroad and stability at home demand a revolution to which Xi is implacably opposed. To save China—and themselves—from catastrophe, they must remove him and end the dictatorship he is determined to defend. But their will and capacity to do so depend crucially on how liberal democracies act. Garside’s scenario shows America leading its allies in creating the conditions in which Xi’s rivals move against him.The General's Cook: A Novel
By Ganeshram Ramin. 2018
Philadelphia 1793. Hercules, President George Washington’s chef, is a fixture on the Philadelphia scene. He is famous for both his…
culinary prowess and for ruling his kitchen like a commanding general. He has his run of the city and earns twice the salary of an average American workingman. He wears beautiful clothes and attends the theater. But while valued by the Washingtons for his prowess in the kitchen and rewarded far over and above even white servants, Hercules is enslaved in a city where most black Americans are free. Even while he masterfully manages his kitchen and the lives of those in and around it, Hercules harbors secrets-- including the fact that he is learning to read and that he is involved in a dangerous affair with Thelma, a mixed-race woman, who, passing as white, works as a companion to the daughter of one of Philadelphia's most prestigious families. Eventually Hercules’ carefully crafted intrigues fall apart and he finds himself trapped by his circumstance and the will of George Washington. Based on actual historical events and people, The General's Cook, will thrill fans of The Hamilton Affair, as they follow Hercules' precarious and terrifying bid for freedom.