The Wars of the Roses
by Alison Weir
from Ballantine Books
"Weir does a masterful job of leading the layman through the entwined family trees of England's powerful families and the many usurpers to the throne. . . . [She] has perfected the art of bringing history to life."
--Chicago Tribune
Lancaster and York. For much of the fifteenth century, these two families were locked in battle for control of the British throne. Kings were murdered and deposed. Armies marched on London. Old noble names were ruined while rising dynasties seized power and lands. The war between the royal Houses of Lancaster and York, the longest and most complex in British history, profoundly altered the course of the monarchy.
Alison Weir, one of the foremost authorities on the British royal family, brings brilliantly to life both the war itself and the historic figures who fought it on the great stage of England. The Wars of the Roses is history at its very best--swift and compelling, rich in character, pageantry, and drama, and vivid in its re-creation of an astonishing, dangerous, and often grim period of history.
"[A] spellbinding chronicle. . . Weir's dark, glorious pageant restores the personal dimension to an oft-told tale without losing sight of a war that shattered feudalism, paved the way for capitalism and weakened the monarchy."
--Publishers Weekly
"[Weir is] skilled at delineating the many memorable characters of the age. . . . It's a tribute to her skill that she leaves you wanting more."
--The Cleveland Plain Dealer
AN ALTERNATE SELECTION OF THE BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB
The Chicago World's Fair of 1893: A Photographic Record (Dover Architectural Series)
from Dover Publications
The Humanistic Tradition, Book 5: Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World
by Gloria K. Fiero
from McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
"The Humanistic Tradition is quite simply the finest book of its type. Fiero manages to integrate the political, cultural, and social history of the world into one coherent and fascinating whole. It is a masterpiece of scholarship . . . balanced, interesting, easy to read, and consummately beautiful. Our professors praise its accuracy and scope and our students unanimously say it is their favorite textbook." — Sonia Sorrell, Pepperdine University
The Humanistic Tradition features a flexible, topical approach that helps students understand humankind's creative legacy as a continuum rather than as a series of isolated events. This widely acclaimed interdisciplinary survey offers a global perspective, countless illustrations, and more than 150 literary sources. Available in multiple formats, The Humanistic Tradition explores the political, economic, and social contexts of human culture, providing a global and multicultural perspective which helps students better understand the relationship between the West and other world cultures.
Modernism: The Lure of Heresy
by Peter Gay
from W. W. Norton
Peter Gay's most ambitious endeavor since Freud explores the shocking modernist rebellion that, beginning in the 1840s, transformed art, literature, music, and film with its assault on traditional forms. Beginning his epic study with Baudelaire, whose lurid poetry scandalized French stalwarts, Gay traces the revolutionary path of modernism from its Parisian origins to its emergence as the dominant cultural movement in world capitals such as Berlin and New York. A work unique in its breadth and brilliance, Modernism presents a thrilling pageant of heretics that includes (among others) Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, and D. W. Griffiths; James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and T. S. Eliot; Walter Gropius, Arnold Schoenberg, and (of course!) Andy Warhol. Finally, Gay examines the hostility of totalitarian regimes to modernist freedom and the role of Pop Art in sounding the death knell of a movement that dominated Western culture for 120 years. Lavishly illustrated, Modernism is a superlative achievement by one of our greatest historians. 92 illustrations, 16 pages of color.
The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848
by Eric Hobsbawm
from Vintage
This magisterial volume follows the death of ancient traditions, the triumph of new classes, and the emergence of new technologies, sciences, and ideologies, with vast intellectual daring and aphoristic elegance. Part of Eric Hobsbawm's epic four-volume history of the modern world, along with The Age of Capitalism, The Age of Empire, and The Age of Extremes.
Age of Empire: 1875-1914
by Eric Hobsbawm
from Vintage
Discusses the evolution of European economics, politics, arts, sciences, and cultural life from the height of the industrial revolution to the First World War.
The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers
by Tom Standage
from Walker & Company
Imagine an almost instantaneous communication system that would allow people and governments all over the world to send and receive messages about politics, war, illness, and family events. The government has tried and failed to control it, and its revolutionary nature is trumpeted loudly by its backers. The Internet? Nope, the humble telegraph fit this bill way back in the 1800s. The parallels between the now-ubiquitous Internet and the telegraph are amazing, offering insight into the ways new technologies can change the very fabric of society within a single generation. In The Victorian Internet, Tom Standage examines the history of the telegraph, beginning with a horrifically funny story of a mile-long line of monks holding a wire and getting simultaneous shocks in the interest of investigating electricity, and ending with the advent of the telephone. All the early "online" pioneers are here: Samuel Morse, Thomas Edison, and a seemingly endless parade of code-makers, entrepreneurs, and spies who helped ensure the success of this communications revolution. Fans of Longitude will enjoy another story of the human side of dramatic technological developments, complete with personal rivalry, vicious competition, and agonizing failures. --Therese Littleton
The Victorian Internet tells the colorful story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it, from the eighteenth-century French scientist Jean-Antoine Nollet to Samuel F. B. Morse and Thomas Edison. The electric telegraph nullified distance and shrank the world quicker and further than ever before or since, and its story mirrors and predicts that of the Internet in numerous ways.
Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon
by Andrea Di Robilant
from Knopf
Q&A with Andrea di Robilant
Q. A discovery of letters between a young beauty, Giustiniana Wynne, and your ancestor, the Venetian nobleman Andrea Memmo, inspired your first work, A Venetian Affair. What lead to the discovery of Lucia's letters and what inspired you to tell her story in your new book, Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon?
Q. How did the experience of writing Lucia differ from that of A Venetian Affair? In writing A Venetian Affair I was entirely absorbed by the intensity of the love story between Andrea and Giustiniana. Lucia, instead, is more like a rich family saga. Whereas I had something of a crush on Giustiniana, the relationship I developed with Lucia was at once deeper and more complex. I grew to love and admire her. She was a strong, courageous, passionate woman. But she also irritated me at times, and disappointed me and even exasperated me.
Q. Who was Colonel Plunkett and what role did he play in Lucia's life? After the fall of the Venetian Republic, Colonel Plunkett, a dashing officer with the occupying Austrian troops, became Lucia's secret lover. He fathered her only surviving child, Alvisetto, before being killed in action while fighting the French in Switzerland. All traces of this love affair were carefully erased by Lucia. Alvisetto was passed off as Alvise's son, thereby ensuring the survival of the Mocenigo line.
See the entire Q&A with Andrea di Robilant
From the acclaimed author of A Venetian Affair comes the vivid and dramatic story of the fall of Venice and the rise of a new age during the tumultuous Napoleonic period, as seen through the eyes of his great-great-great-great-grandmother.
In 1787, Lucia, the beautiful sixteen-year-old daughter of a prominent Venetian statesman, is married off to Alvise Mocenigo, scion of one of the most powerful Venetian families. But their life as a golden couple will be suddenly transformed when Venice falls to Bonaparte. As the larger events unfolding around Lucia mingle with her most personal concerns, we witness—through her letters to her sister and other primary sources—her painful series of miscarriages and the pressure on her to produce an heir; her impassioned affair with an Austrian officer and its stunning results; the glamour and strain of her career as a hostess in Hapsburg Vienna and lady-in-waiting at the court of Napoleon’s stepson, Prince Eugène de Beauharnais, as well as her intimate relationship with the Empress Joséphine; and her amazing firsthand account of the defeat of Napoleon in Paris in 1814. In her later years, Lucia, regal and still beautiful and a bit battle-hardened herself, was Byron’s landlord during the poet’s stay in Venice. In a fitting finale to this sweeping drama, Lucia stands as a relic of a lost golden age: she created, in part, the aura that gave rise to the Romantic view of Italy and its culture that we still nourish today.
With the brave and articulate Lucia at the center of his re-creation of this remarkable historical period, Andrea di Robilant has once again reached across the centuries, and deep into his own past, to bring history to rich and vivid life on the page.
The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire
by Joe Jackson
from Viking Adult
The story of one man’s journey down the Amazon—and how it changed history
In 1876, a man named Henry Wickham smuggled seventy thousand rubber tree seeds out of the rainforests of Brazil and delivered them to Victorian England’s most prestigious scientists at Kew Gardens. Those seeds, planted around the world in England’s colonial outposts, gave rise to the great rubber boom of the early twentieth century—an explosion of entrepreneurial and scientific industry that would change the world. The story of how Wickham got his hands on those seeds—a sought-after prize for which many suffered and died—is the stuff of legend. In this utterly engaging account of obsession, greed, bravery, and betrayal, author and journalist Joe Jackson brings to life a classic Victorian fortune hunter and the empire that fueled, then abandoned, him.
In his single-minded pursuit of glory, Wickham faced deadly insects, poisonous snakes, horrific illnesses, and, ultimately, the neglect and contempt of the very government he wished to serve. His idealism and determination, as well as his outright thievery, perfectly encapsulate the essential nature of Great BritainÂ’s colonial adventure in South America. The Thief at the End of the World is a thrilling true story of reckless courage and ambition.
The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805
by Richard Zacks
from Hyperion
In an attempt to stop the legendary Barbary Pirates of North Africa from hijacking American ships, William Eaton set out on a secret mission to overthrow the government of Tripoli. The operation was sanctioned by President Thomas Jefferson, who at the last moment grew wary of intermeddling in a foreign government and sent Eaton off without proper national support. Short on supplies, given very little money and only a few men, Eaton and his mission seemed doomed from the start. He triumphed against all odds, recruited a band of European mercenaries in Alexandria, and led them on a march across the Libyan Desert. Once in Tripoli, the ragtag army defeated the local troops and successfully captured Derne, laying the groundwork for the demise of the Barbary Pirates. Now, Richard Zacks brings this important story of Americas first overseas covert op to life.
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