Spanning five centuries and covering England, France, Spain, Germany and Austria, this book considers the key themes in the formation of the modern state in Europe.
The relationship of the nobility with the state is the key to understanding the development of modern government in Europe. By focusing on the implications of the incessant and costly wars which European governments waged against each other this book examines how modern states evolved.
Monarchy, Aristocracy and State in Europe 1300-1800 takes a fascinating thematic approach to this important topic in early modern history.

The Earliest English Kings is a fascinating survey of Anglo-Saxon History from the sixth century to the eighth century and the death of King Alfred. It explains and explores the 'Heptarchy' or the seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, as well as the various peoples within them, wars, religion, King Offa and the coming of the Vikings. With maps and family trees, this book reveals the complex, distant and tumultuous events of Anglo-Saxon politics.

The Earliest English Kings is a fascinating survey of Anglo-Saxon History from the sixth century to the eighth century and the death of King Alfred. It explains and explores the 'Heptarchy' or the seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, as well as the various peoples within them, wars, religion, King Offa and the coming of the Vikings. With maps and family trees, this book reveals the complex, distant and tumultuous events of Anglo-Saxon politics.

At her accession in 1558 Elizabeth I inherited a troublesome legacy with a long history of wars against France and Scotland. This international situation was becoming a huge financial burden on the English crown and economy.
Elizabeth I and Foreign Policy describes and assesses England's foreign policy during the second half of the sixteenth century. It includes coverage of Elizabeth's relations with foreign powers, the effect of Reformation on foreign affairs, Elizabeth's successs as a stateswoman and the war with Spain.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203136632

Names and never given accidentally; they are chosen and bestowed according to implicit or rules, and the kinds names are accidentally; they explicit of names given and the kinds of rules followed reflect fundamental features of the society and culture concerted. This path-breaking work of social history looks at the historical significance of names and naming practices across from the Ancient Greeks to the present day. As a fascinating survey, bridging anthropology and history, it will be of interest to a wide readership of scholars and students and to anyone who has had at some time to bestow a name.

Professor Woolrych surveys the establishment and history if the Commonwealth and Protectorate, first explaining how the country lost its king, and how Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector. Professor Woolrych challenges accepted views on the nature of the Protectorate, and finally offers some guidelines to the tangled period between Cromwell's death and the Restoration.

Family history is one of the most popular hobbies of recent years, with many looking into their roots and finding out about their past. In this book you will learn how to find dates and events in your ancestors' lives, and it will help put flesh on the skeletons too, giving clear instructions of how to start researching your family history in Birmingham. You will then begin to learn the full story of how Birmingham grew and how our 'Brummie' ancestors lived, played and worked. This book is not just a 'how to' book, but also tells the story of how Birmingham expanded during the nineteenth century, as our ancestors moved here to find work in the new industries. Some lived in the cramped conditions of back-to-back housing, whilst others prospered and joined the ranks of the more well-to-do. Not just the wealthy, but the poor, too, all played their part in the development of this now-sprawling city.

A portrait of a great American dynasty and its legacy in business, technology, the arts, and philanthropyMeyer Guggenheim, a Swiss immigrant, founded a great American business dynasty. At their peak in the early twentieth century, the Guggenheims were reckoned among America's wealthiest, and the richest Jewish family in the world after the Rothschilds. They belonged to Our Crowd, that tight social circle of New York Jewish plutocrats, but unlike the others -- primarily merchants and financiers -- they made their money by extracting and refining copper, silver, lead, tin, and gold.The secret of their success, the patriarch believed, was their unity, and in the early years Meyer's seven sons, under the leadership of Daniel, worked as one to expand their growing mining and smelting empire. Family solidarity eventually decayed (along with their Jewish faith), but even more damaging was the paucity of male heirs as Meyer and the original set of brothers passed from the scene.In the third generation, Harry Guggenheim, Daniel's son, took over leadership and made the family a force in aviation, publishing, and horse-racing. He desperately sought a successor but tragically failed and was forced to watch as the great Guggenheim business enterprise crumbled.Meanwhile, "Guggenheim" came to mean art more than industry. In the mid-twentieth century, led by Meyer's son Solomon and Solomon's niece Peggy, the Guggenheims became the agents of modernism in the visual arts. Peggy, in America during the war years, midwifed the school of abstract expressionism, which brought art leadership to New York City. Solomon's museum has been innovative in spreading the riches of Western art around the world. After the generation of Harry and Peggy, the family has continued to produce many accomplished members, such as publisher Roger Straus II and archaeologist Iris Love.In The Guggenheims, through meticulous research and absorbing prose, Irwin Unger, the winner of a Pulitzer Prize in history, and his wife, Debi Unger, convey a unique and remarkable story -- epic in its scope -- of one family's amazing rise to prominence.

What keeps a family together? In Imagining Futures, authors Carola Lentz and Isidore Lobnibe offer a unique look at one extended African family, currently comprising over five hundred members in Northern Ghana and Burkina Faso. Members of this extended family, like many others in the region, find themselves living increasingly farther apart and working in diverse occupations ranging from religious clergy and civil service to farming. What keeps them together as a family? In their groundbreaking work, Lentz and Lobnibe argue that shared memories, rather than only material interests, bind a family together. Imagining Futures explores the changing practices of remembering in an African family and offers a unique contribution to the growing field of memory studies, beyond the usual focus of Europe and America. Lentz and Lobnibe explore how, in an increasingly globalized, postcolonial world, memories themselves are not static accounts of past events but are actually malleable and shaped by both current concerns and imagined futures.

Since glasnost began, Russia's most eminent historians have taken advantage of new archival access and the end of censorship and conformity to reassess and reinterpret their history. Through this process they are linking up with Russia's great historiographic tradition while producing work that is fresh and modern. In "The Emperors and Empresses of Russia", renowned Russian historians tell the story of the Romanovs as complex individual personalities and as key institutional actors in Russian history, from the empire builder Peter I to the last tsar, Nicholas II. These portraits are contributions to the writing of history, partaking neither of wooden ideologisation nor of naive romanticisation.

Since glasnost began, Russia's most eminent historians have taken advantage of new archival access and the end of censorship and conformity to reassess and reinterpret their history. Through this process they are linking up with Russia's great historiographic tradition while producing work that is fresh and modern. In "The Emperors and Empresses of Russia", renowned Russian historians tell the story of the Romanovs as complex individual personalities and as key institutional actors in Russian history, from the empire builder Peter I to the last tsar, Nicholas II. These portraits are contributions to the writing of history, partaking neither of wooden ideologisation nor of naive romanticisation.

"[Snorri Sturluson] speaks-- as almost no other historian ever has spoken-- with the authority of a man whose masterful skills would have made him one of the formidable, foremost in any of the events he records. So he saturates even remotely past happenings with a gripping first-hand quality...Hollander's translation is very good, fresh on every page ...Wherever you open the book, the life grips you and you read on...." -- Ted Hughes, New York Review of Books "Among the many contibutions to world literature that ancient Iceland has given us, Heimskringla stands out as one of the truly monumental works. Among medieval European histories in the vernacular it has no equal." -- Modern Philology

Beginning with the dim prehistory of the mythical gods and their descendants, Heimskringla recounts the history of the kings of Norway through the reign of Olaf Haraldsson, who became Norway's patron saint. Once found in most homes and schools and still regarded as a national treasure, Heimskringla influenced the thinking and literary style of Scandinavia over several centuries.

The incredible conclusion to the investigation into Jesus and Mary's bloodline which first began in Gardner's Bloodline of the Holy Grail. Now Gardner reveals centuries of previously inaccessible archives that show the truth about what became of Jesus and Mary Magdalene's offspring. Much has been written about the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, who Jesus was, whether he and Mary had children, and what became of them. The Grail Enigma is the first book that can answer those questions in amazingly accurate detail. Unique to any book on the subject, this contains full genealogical charts that trace the messianic offspring, historically named Tamar, Joshua and Joseph, and their lineage through 600 years through to Arthur Pendragon. Gardner's unrivalled access to Vatican archives reveal Christian manuscripts dating back to the 2nd century that document Mary as the 'bride of Christ' and Jesus's heirs who became very influential within the Roman Empire. In the years following the crucifixion they were hunted down. Four hundred years later, the New Testament gospels of Mathew, Mark and Luke were compiled removing all reference to the messianic marriage and bloodline, but the older gospels still document their legacy. Tracing the messianic line through 600 years since Jesus's crucifixion, Gardner explains how the fate of the messianic line became encoded in the Grail legend of King Arthur. The mythology of Arthur also reflected his messianic ancestor Jesus - in the messianic tradition, these 'Once and Future Kings' both chosen to lead their people and prophesied to return again. Using new and previously unpublished documentary archives, The Grail Enigma traces the detailed history of the descendants of Jesus and how the Roman Church sought to destroy their legacy and the most fundamental elements of the original Christian movement.

In "Of Chastity and Power," Philippa Berry combines Renaissance scholarship with feminist literary criticism to reject former accounts of the cult of Elizabeth, which presented both the queen's gender and her marital status as unproblematic.
Through readings of key Elizabethan texts by Lyly, Raleigh, Chapman, Shakespeare and Spenser, Phillipa Berry shows that while Elizabeth's combination of chastity with political and religious power was repeatedly idealized, it was also perceived as extremely disturbing. By placing these texts within a wider context of European culture and history, Berry shows that the figure of the unmarried queen implicitly challenged the masculine focus of Renaissance discourses of love and of absolutist political ideology, ultimately subverting the philosophical division between spirit and matter upon which Renaissance ideas of women were founded.

Every family has its own story and an increasing number of us are taking the time to search out these histories and record them for this and future generations. My Family Tree is a beautifully designed book to record your unique family story, with space for family and individual records, census records, ancestry charts, family traditions and achievements, events and photographs. It offers helpful tips and advice, useful sections to guide your ancestral research, and allows you to gather all the information from both sides of your family in one place.

Susan Doran describes and analyses the process of the Elizabethan Reformation, placing it in an English and a European context. She examines the religious views and policies of the Queen, the making of the 1559 settlement and the resulting reforms. The changing beliefs of the English people are discussed, and the author charts the fortunes of both Puritanism and Catholicism. Finally she looks at the strengths and weaknesses of Elizabeth I as royal governor, and of the Church of England as a whole.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203130065

A must-have guide for parents-to-be everywhere. Whether you're Irish, of Irish heritage or you simply love Celtic-inspired names, this book is packed full of the most popular, unusual and creative names around. By the best-selling authors of Cool Names for Babies and Brilliant Book of Baby Names, this collection takes you beyond the straightforward listings of other books and gives opinion on what's hot and what's not in the world of Irish baby names. The information given really helps parents to make the right choices and includes loads of original features - pronunciation guides; which names are going up and which down in popularity; which are unisex, which are good as middle but not first names; and which should really be avoided at all costs. Packed full of creative lists such as Names that are Classic But Not Boring, Place Names, Names from Literature, Spiritual Names and Names of Irish Heroes and Heroines this is every new parent's one-stop guide to selecting the coolest Irish name for their baby.

This exciting and psychologically penetrating account of the life and rule of Russia's eighteenth-century tsar-reformer develops an important theme. What happens when the drive for "progress" is linked to an autocratic, expansionist impulse rather than a larger goal of human emancipation? What was the price of power - for Russia, and for Peter himself? Evgenii V. Anisimov's provocative history of Peter thus asks important questions with special resonance today.

Winner of the prestigious MacIver Award when it was first published, this remains a towering work of modern political sociology, especially of macrosociology. Its main objective is comparative analysis of political commonalities found in different societies, both historical and present. The book seeks to find some pattern or laws in the structure and development of such systems. The imaginative use of data helps to bring order into what might otherwise be considered a speculative volume.
The purpose of The Political Systems of Empires is to apply sociological concepts to the analysis of historical societies through the comparative analysis of a special type of political system. This analysis does not purport to be historical or descriptive. Its main objective is comparative analysis of political commonalities found in different societies. The book seeks to find some pattern or laws in the structure and development of such systems.

Gustavus Adolphus (1594--1632) dominated his age: he made Sweden the leading power of Northern Europe, was the principal upholder of the Protestant cause in the Thirty Years War, and was a great administrator as well as a brilliant soldier. His toleration and reforms helped define the development of the modern state. This concise study of his career, by the doyen of modern historians of the North, appeared in 1973. Long unavailable but now revised, expanded, updated and reset, it makes a welcome return in Profiles in Power.

The public seem to have an insatiable appetite for information about the Royal family. Every day the media carry news and pictures about the most famous family in the world. Yet social scientists have virtually ignored this strange mass obsession. Now, Michael Billig, a social psychologist, examines the significance of this interest in royalty. He argues that the Royal family is a symbol of continuity in national consciousness. He supports this claim with analyses of 63 English families discussing the Royal family. As the families talk about royalty, they are talking about much more: about gender, nationality, family life, the media, inequality, sex. Above all, they are talking about themselves. The book shows how this talk can be simultaneously serious and funny. There are jokes, criticism, praise and, above all, acceptance. Billig does much more than simply portray attitudes' towards royalty. He shows how our commonsense attitudes and ordinary desires are constructed and contributes new insights about ideology and popular memory. This book should be of interest to students of sociology, cultural studies, psychology, and the general reader.