Is this a novel? Or a biography? Graeme Cohen is so close to his true life subject, that imagined events and conversations seem exactly real. Martin Gardiner, colonial Australia’s most published mathematician, was better at attracting supporters and women than at caring for them, or protecting himself. Cohen’s warts and all story is true to ......
From childhood dreams of joining the British Royal Navy to a dotage spent riding on a seesaw to improve his health, the true story of Napoleon Bonaparte is every bit as bizarre and fascinating as it is controversial. Napoleon rose up out of the chaos and horror of the French Revolution to offer a shattered nation dreams of future glory, honor ......
Napoleon was virtually the master of Europe, but following his defeat at Waterloo he surrendered to the British and was exiled to the volcanic island of St Helena in the South Atlantic. This fascinating story of Napoleon's final years, contains much of interest, including Napoleon's battles with the petty and paranoid Governor, Sir Hudson Lowe.
During the middle of the 19th-Century, Britain and China would twice go to war over trade, and in particular the trade in opium. The Chinese people had progressively become addicted to the narcotic, a habit that British merchants were more than happy to feed from their opium-poppy fields in India.
On July 21, 1861, near a Virginia railroad junction twenty-five miles from Washington, DC, the Union and Confederate armies clashed in the first major battle of the Civil War. This revised edition of Hennessy's classic is the premier tactical account of First Manassas/Bull Run.
The Story of Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie's Treatment of the Convicts
This is the story of two Scots, Lachlan Macquarie, governor of the British colony of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821, and of his wife, Elizabeth Macquarie, both of whom pioneered a policy of rehabilitation and renewal as part of their treatment of the convicts.
Best-selling author Leonard Shlain explores the life, art, and mind of Leonardo da Vinci, seeking to explain his singularity by looking at his achievements in art, science, psychology, and military strategy and then employing state of the art left-right brain scientific research to explain his universal genius. Shlain shows that no other person in ......
An Illustrated History of Hong Kong's Top District
The Peak is Hong Kong's top residential district, where property prices are as high as the altitude. How did it become an exclusive enclave in the bustling business centre of 19th-century Asia? The British wanted relief from summer heat and the Peak was the obvious place to escape it. When the Governor adopted Mountain Lodge as a summer getaway, ......
"Custer had been usually effective as an Indian fighter for several years... He was adept in bringing off surprise attacks that crushed and paralyzed resistance. Both his reputation and his experience as an Indian campaigner were second to none; and the Seventh Cavalry...was held one of the best regiments in the service. It was but natural, then, ......
A Classic, the Story of Joshua Chamberlain and His Volunteer Regiment
The fascinating story of Joshua Chamberlain and his volunteer regiment, the Twentieth Maine, is reprinted with a new foreword by Civil War historian and UCLA professor Joan Waugh.
Elizabeth Jennings, Chester A. Arthur, and the Early Fight for Civil Rig
In 1854, traveling was full of danger. Omnibus accidents were commonplace. Pedestrians were regularly attacked by the Five Points' gangs. Rival police forces watched and argued over who should help. Pickpockets, drunks and kidnappers were all part of the daily street scene in old New York. Yet somehow, they endured and transformed a trading post ......
Now in a fully revised and updated edition, this comprehensive text surveys Korean history from Neolithic times to the present. All readers looking for a balanced, knowledgeable history will be richly rewarded with this clear and concise book.
The fifteen years in Germany between the end of World War I and the National Socialists' rise to power in 1933 stand out as one of the twentieth century's most tumultuous periods. These years of political and economic upheaval famously spawned significant and lasting changes in the arts. However, one noteworthy product of Weimar Germany's ......
To the extent that we worry about the future, we tend to do so with the apprehension that something may go terribly wrong. Nietzsche and Tocqueville on the Democratization of Humanity is animated more by the apprehension, what if everything should go terribly right? That foreboding indelibly colored the outlook of Friedrich Nietzsche and Alexis ......
"In Liberty and Insanity in the Age of the American Revolution, Sarah L. Swedberg illustrates how concerns about insanity raised difficult questions about the nature of governance in the tumultuous era of the American Revolution"--
Georgiana's story is surely one of the most compelling and dramatic in late Georgian society and is the subject of numerous books and the highly successful film 'The Duchess'. Love affairs, tragedy, high society, gambling and a host of illegitimate children are shared between herself, her best friend, her lover and her husband.
Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America
Illuminates how the preservation of slavery was a motivating factor for the Revolutionary War The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, ......
In Hungary at War, Cecil Eby has compiled a historical chronicle of Hungary’s wartime experiences based on interviews with nearly one hundred people who lived through those years. Here are officers and common soldiers, Jewish survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, pilots of the Royal Hungarian Air Force, ......
The post-Enlightenment movement known as Romanticism is a messy period; so messy, in fact, that many scholars eschew any attempt to define it. In reaction to the overreliance placed on reason by Enlightenment thinkers, Romantics emphasized individual freedom, emotional intensity, introspection, sincerity, and heightened imagination. They sought ......
Joshua Chamberlain has become a pop culture icon and his regiment is now the most famous small military unit in American history. A major focus of The Killer Angels, the largest selling Civil War novel of all time, save Uncle Tom's Cabin, and two major motion pictures, "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals," the story of the 20th Maine has become ......
A vivid look at the wartime experiences of a Jewish woman in the Confederate South Emma Mordecai lived an unusual life. She was Jewish when Jews comprised less than 1 percent of the population of the Old South, and unmarried in a culture that offered women few options other than marriage. She was American born when most American Jews were ......
Abraham Lincoln drew upon history in his political career and particularly when crafting the rhetorical masterpieces that still resonate in the present day. Jesse Derber explores how Lincoln's views of the limits of human understanding drove a belief in--and untiring pursuit of--historical truth. Lincoln embraced the traditional ideas that good ......
Abraham Lincoln drew upon history in his political career and particularly when crafting the rhetorical masterpieces that still resonate in the present day. Jesse Derber explores how Lincoln's views of the limits of human understanding drove a belief in--and untiring pursuit of--historical truth. Lincoln embraced the traditional ideas that good ......
"[Historian Allen] recreates in this meticulous and fast-moving posthumous account the events of the pivotal year 1789 in America. It's a superb distillation of a complex moment in U.S. history."-- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review 1789: George Washington and the Founders Create Americadraws on hundreds of sources to paint a vivid portrait of the ......
At turns eloquent and earthy, Abraham Lincoln's rhetoric played a vital role in his success as a politician and statesman. D. Leigh Henson examines Lincoln's pre-presidential development as a rhetorician, the purposes and methods behind his speeches and writings, and how the works contributed to his political rise. Lincoln's close study of the ......
At turns eloquent and earthy, Abraham Lincoln's rhetoric played a vital role in his success as a politician and statesman. D. Leigh Henson examines Lincoln's pre-presidential development as a rhetorician, the purposes and methods behind his speeches and writings, and how the works contributed to his political rise. Lincoln's close study of the ......
Mental Health, Gender, and the Rise of Sport explores the historical role of sport in the prescription for mental and physical health through the epidemic of neurasthenia, a debilitating neurological disorder that afflicted American society throughout the latter nineteenth century. Gerald R. Gems argues that the practice of sport and sport ......
Homosexuality, the American Revolution, and the Trials of Robert Newburg
The fascinating story of a British army chaplain's buggery trial in 1774 reveals surprising truths about early America. On the eve of the American Revolution, the British army considered the case of a chaplain, Robert Newburgh, who had been accused of having sex with a man. Newburgh's enemies cited his flamboyant appearance, defiance of military ......
How did the evil nature of slavery become enshrined in law in Great Britain? What drove the change in public perception? What were the key victories on the journey to abolition and who were the key players? What is to prevent a similar evil gaining acceptance again today? Just as Britain's industrial development in the eighteenth and early ......
Perhaps one of the most dramatic events of the late Victorian period was the death of General Charles 'Chinese' Gordon at the hands of the Mahdi's fanatical warriors as they finally broke their way into the Sudanese city of Khartoum. The story is well known, recounted in numerous books and celebrated in the film 'Khartoum' starring Charlton ......
Entangled Memories and Emotional Loss in Early America
Untangling the private feelings, ambitions, and fears of early Americans through their personal writings from the Revolution to the Civil War. Modern readers of history and biography unite around a seemingly straightforward question: What did it feel like to live in the past? In Longing for Connection, historian Andrew Burstein attempts to answer ......
Respectability and Assimilation in San Francisco, Seattle, Columbus, and
The Welsh comprised a distinct and highly visible community in many areas of the United States during the late decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. Through a consideration of settlement patterns, economic activity, language use, and cultural and religious institutions, The Welsh in Metro America: Respectability ......
William A. A. Carsey and the Shaping of American Reform Politics
Confidence man and canny operative, charlatan and manipulator--William A. A. Carsey emerged from the shadow of Tammany Hall to build a career undermining working-class political organizations on behalf of the Democratic Party. Mark A. Lause's biography of Carsey takes readers inside the bare-knuckle era of Gilded Age politics. An astroturfing ......
William A. A. Carsey and the Shaping of American Reform Politics
Confidence man and canny operative, charlatan and manipulator--William A. A. Carsey emerged from the shadow of Tammany Hall to build a career undermining working-class political organizations on behalf of the Democratic Party. Mark A. Lause's biography of Carsey takes readers inside the bare-knuckle era of Gilded Age politics. An astroturfing ......
