Category: History

By Paul Feeney

With chapters on domestic and college existence, video games and leisure pursuits, track and model, along a variety of captivating illustrations, this compendium permits you to take a nostalgic examine what it was once prefer to develop up through the sixties and recaptures a number of the facets of lifestyles again then.

By Thomas Leslie

By Wayne Grady

Ever given that French explorer Samuel de Champlain’s first style of what he known as “la mer douce” — the freshwater sea — the good Lakes were well known, exploited, and renewed. This sizeable area is a learn in contrasts: a hub of that’s the resting spot for billions of migrating birds. forty million citizens, substantial untamed forests. ninety five percentage of North America’s clean water and a dumping flooring for toxic wastes. the nice Lakes is an authoritative, available examine an atmosphere in everlasting flux. Written by means of one in every of North America’s such a lot acclaimed technology and nature writers, the booklet explores the area’s geological formation and its position in human historical past; its diversified plant, chicken, and animal species; and its major actual, climatic, and environmental gains. This beautiful tribute to the nice Lakes quarter can be a vital consultant to the problem of protecting the flora and fauna.

By Andreas Schroeder

In view that 1998, Andreas Schroeder has been a standard contributor to CBC-Radio’s “Basic Black,” exciting listeners with outrageous – and consistently very humorous – stories of bold scams and rip-offs. In Scams, Scandals, and Skulduggery he has accumulated seventeen of the tales that bought the best listener reaction once they have been broadcast – what he calls a type of “Best of uncomplicated Black Scams, quantity 1.”

Stories Include:

Running Away with Mona: How a canny forger and his associate pre-sold six copies of the Mona Lisa to prosperous and secretive creditors – after which prepared the robbery of the unique to hide their tracks.

For Export Only: How an enterprising farm animals breeder “exported” ten cows from Southern to Northern eire one thousand times.

The Flea That Roared: How the Grand Principality of Outer Baldonia (off the coast of Nova Scotia) declared conflict at the U.S.S.R.

The nice Purolator Paper Caper: How a “gang that couldn’t shoot directly” however controlled to drag off the biggest unmarried heist of money in American history.

These stories, and so on, instructed in Andreas Schroeder’s mischievously deadpan and subversively gleeful kind, are certain to pride his many lovers and make lovers of latest readers.

By David Carpenter

The two-and-a-half centuries after 1066 have been momentous ones within the historical past of england. In 1066, England was once conquered for the final time. The Anglo-Saxon ruling type used to be destroyed and and the English turned a topic race, ruled via a Norman-French dynasty and aristocracy. This e-book exhibits how the English domination of the dominion used to be certainly not a foregone conclusion.

The fight for mastery within the book's identify is actually the fight for various masteries inside nice Britain. The booklet weaves jointly the histories of britain, Scotland and Wales in a brand new means and argues that every one 3, of their assorted models, have been competing for domination

By R. Howard Bloch

The Bayeux Tapestry is the world’s most renowned textile–an beautiful 230-foot-long embroidered landscape depicting the occasions surrounding the Norman Conquest of 1066. it's also one in all history’s so much mysterious and compelling artistic endeavors. This haunting stitched account of the conflict that redrew the map of medieval Europe has encouraged goals of robbery, waves of nationalism, visions of unlimited strength, and esthetic rapture. In his attention-grabbing new e-book, Yale professor R. Howard Bloch unearths the historical past, the hidden which means, the deep good looks, and the long-lasting attract of this striking piece of cloth.

Bloch opens with a gripping account of the development that encouraged the Tapestry: the fast, bloody conflict of Hastings, during which the Norman bastard William defeated the Anglo-Saxon king, Harold, and laid declare to England less than his new name, William the Conqueror. yet to really comprehend the relationship among conflict and embroidery, one needs to retrace the net of overseas intrigue and scandal that climaxed at Hastings. Bloch demonstrates how, with incredible intimacy and immediacy, the artisans who shaped this paintings of fabric artwork dropped at existence a second that modified the process British tradition and historical past.

Every age has adored the Tapestry for various purposes and skim new which means into its enigmatic phrases and photographs. French nationalists within the mid-nineteenth century, fired by way of Tapestry’s evocation of army glory, unearthed the misplaced French epic “The track of Roland,” which Norman troops sang as they marched to victory in 1066. because the Nazis tightened their grip on Europe, Hitler
sent a staff to France to review the Tapestry, decode its Nordic parts, and, on the finish of the conflict, with Paris below siege, deliver the valuable textile to Berlin. The richest horde of buried Anglo-Saxon treasure, the matchless great thing about Byzantine silk, Aesop’s unusual myth “The Swallow and the Linseed,” the colony that Anglo-Saxon nobles based within the heart East following their defeat at Hastings–all are brilliantly woven into Bloch’s riveting narrative.

Seamlessly integrating Norman, Anglo-Saxon, Viking, and Byzantine components, the Bayeux Tapestry ranks with Chartres and the Tower of London as a crowning fulfillment of medieval Europe. And but, greater than a piece of artwork, the Tapestry served because the suture that sure up the injuries of 1066.

Enhanced through a beautiful full-color insert that incorporates reproductions of the entire Tapestry, A Needle within the correct Hand of God will stand with The Professor and the Madman and How the Irish stored Civilization as a triumph of well known background.

By Plutarch

Nine biographies that light up the careers, personalities and army campaigns of a few of Rome's maximum statesmen

The lives of the statesmen featured during this assortment span the earliest days of the Republic to the institution of the Empire. chosen from Plutarch's Roman Lives, they comprise in demand figures who accomplished popularity for his or her pivotal roles in Roman background, equivalent to soldierly Marcellus, eloquent Cato and wary Fabius. right here too are bright pics of bold, hot-tempered Coriolanus; target, principled Brutus and open-hearted Mark Anthony, who might later be delivered to existence by means of Shakespeare. In recounting the lives of those nice leaders, Plutarch additionally explores the issues of statecraft and tool and illustrates the Roman people's genius for political compromise, which ended in their mastery of the traditional world.

For greater than seventy years, Penguin has been the major writer of vintage literature within the English-speaking international. With greater than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents an international bookshelf of the simplest works all through background and throughout genres and disciplines. Readers belief the series to supply authoritative texts stronger through introductions and notes through distinctive students and modern authors, in addition to up-to-date translations by means of award-winning translators.

By Norton Reamer, Jesse Downing

Investing―the dedication of assets to accomplish a return―affects members, households, businesses, and international locations, and has performed so all through heritage. but till the 16th century, making an investment was once a privilege of merely the elite periods. the tale in the back of the democratization of making an investment is certain up with a few of history's so much epic occasions. it's also a story wealthy with classes for pro and daily traders who wish to make wiser choices.

This exciting background doubles as a cosmopolitan account of the possibilities and demanding situations dealing with the fashionable investor. It follows the increase of funded retirement; the evolution of funding cars and methods; funding misdeeds and regulatory reform; govt monetary coverage; the improvement of funding conception; and the emergence of recent funding buildings. Norton Reamer and Jesse Downing map those tendencies and profile the conflict among not pricey index and exchange-traded cash, at the one hand, and the higher-fee hedge cash and personal fairness, at the different. by way of aiding us comprehend this heritage and its legacy of danger, Reamer and Downing wish to higher train readers in regards to the person and societal effect of making an investment and finally point the enjoying field.

By Evguenia Davidova

Drawing upon formerly unpublished advertisement ledgers and correspondence, this learn deals a collective social biography of 3 generations of Balkan retailers. own debts humanize multiethnic networks that navigated a number of social structures helping and opposing quite a few features of nationalist ideologies.

By Buddy Levy

From the acclaimed writer of Conquistador comes this exciting account of 1 of history’s maximum adventures of discovery. With cinematic immediacy and meticulous realization to ancient element, this is the genuine tale of a mythical sixteenth-century explorer and his death-defying navigation of the Amazon—river of darkness, pathway to gold.

In 1541, the brutal conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro and his well-born lieutenant Francisco Orellana trigger from Quito looking for los angeles Canela, South America’s rumored Land of Cinnamon, and the fabled El Dorado, “the golden man.” using an important retinue of mercenaries, enslaved natives, horses, searching canine, and different animals around the Andes, they watched their proud day trip start to collapse even ahead of they descended into the nightmarish jungle, following the process a strong river. quickly hopelessly misplaced within the swampy labyrinth, their numbers diminishing day-by-day via disorder, hunger, and Indian assaults, Pizarro and Orellana made a fateful choice to split. whereas Pizarro ultimately back domestic barefoot and in rags, Orellana and fifty-seven males, in a couple of fragile craft, persevered downriver into the unknown reaches of the powerful Amazon, serenaded by way of local conflict drums and the eerie cries of unique predators. Theirs may be the larger glory.
 
Interweaving eyewitness money owed of the hunt with newly exposed information, blood brother Levy reconstructs the seminal trip that has electrified adventurers ever because, as Orellana turned the 1st ecu to navigate and discover the full size of the world’s biggest river. Levy offers a long-overdue account of the local populations—some peaceable and inviting, providing sustenance and life-saving tips, others ferociously adversarial, subjecting the invaders to gauntlets of unremitting assault and intimations of terrifying rituals. And here's the Amazon itself, a robust presence whose each twist and switch held the promise of latest wonders either usual and man-made, in addition to the ever present hazard of death—a river that might carry Orellana in its impossible to resist include to the top of his lifestyles.

Overflowing with violence and wonder, the Aristocracy and tragedy, River of Darkness is either riveting historical past and a wide ranging event that may sweep readers alongside on an epic voyage not like the other.