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Books > History > World history > General
Featuring a renowned author team and the best recent scholarship, World in the Making: A Global History explores both the global and local dimensions of world history. Abundant full-color maps and images, along with other special pedagogical features that highlight the lives and voices of the world's peoples, make this synthesis accessible and memorable for students-all at an affordable low price.
Welcome to another round of history's most absurd stories and the timeless lessons that come with them. In More Lessons from History, Alex Deane has unearthed yet more bizarre tales that you certainly haven't heard before. If you're wondering how large, flightless birds might organise themselves against a military regiment, how you should respond to the glare of an international rugby player whose glass eye you just knocked out, exactly why carrots are orange, or whether the world's worst-run battleship ever ceased firing upon her comrades-in-arms, then look no further. In this second volume of his acclaimed series, Alex Deane reminds us that, throughout history, human nature has remained exactly the same, and the way that people responded to the most amusing, horrifying and convoluted of circumstances in the past can teach us everything we need to know about who we are today.
* BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK * 'Anybody who loves the printed word will be bowled over by this amusing, erudite, beautiful book about books. It is in every way a triumph. One of the loveliest books to have been published for many, many years' Alexander McCall Smith 'Quite simply the best gift for any book lover this year, or perhaps ever' Lucy Atkins, Sunday Times Literary Book of the Year 'An utterly joyous journey into the deepest eccentricities of the human mind... The most cheering, fascinating book I've read for ages' Guardian From the author of the critically acclaimed and globally successful The Phantom Atlas, The Golden Atlas and The Sky Atlas comes a stunning new work. The Madman's Library is a unique, beautifully illustrated journey through the entire history of literature, delving into its darkest territories to hunt down the very strangest books ever written, and uncover the fascinating stories behind their creation. This is a madman's library of eccentric and extraordinary volumes from around the world, many of which have been completely forgotten. Books written in blood and books that kill, books of the insane and books that hoaxed the globe, books invisible to the naked eye and books so long they could destroy the Universe, books worn into battle, books of code and cypher whose secrets remain undiscovered... and a few others that are just plain weird. From the 605-page Qur'an written in the blood of Saddam Hussein, through the gorgeously decorated 15th-century lawsuit filed by the Devil against Jesus, to the lost art of binding books with human skin, every strand of strangeness imaginable (and many inconceivable) has been unearthed and bound together for a unique and richly illustrated collection ideal for every book-lover.
The Forgotten True Story of America's Daring First Exploration of the Pacific Just four years after the Revolutionary War and more than a decade before Lewis and Clark's expedition, a remarkable--but now forgotten--plan was hatched along the docks of Boston Harbor. Two ships carrying the flag of the newly formed United States would be dispatched in 1787 on a landmark adventure around South America's Cape Horn and into the largely uncharted waters of the Pacific Ocean, far past the western edge of the continent. The man chosen to lead the expedition was Captain John Kendrick, a master navigator who had made his name as a charismatic privateer during the Revolution. On the harrowing seven-year voyage that followed, Kendrick would establish the first American outpost in the remote Pacific Northwest, sail into a deadly cauldron of intertribal war in the Hawaiian Islands, wage a single-ship campaign to hold off advances of the British and Spanish empires, and narrowly escape capture by samurai in Japan before meeting his own violent and tragic end thousands of miles from home. Brilliantly brought to life by historian Scott Ridley, Morning of Fire is a startling rediscovery of a thrilling lost chapter of American history.
The No. 1 Sunday Times and international bestseller - a major reassessment of world history in light of the economic and political renaissance in the re-emerging east For centuries, fame and fortune was to be found in the west - in the New World of the Americas. Today, it is the east which calls out to those in search of adventure and riches. The region stretching from eastern Europe and sweeping right across Central Asia deep into China and India, is taking centre stage in international politics, commerce and culture - and is shaping the modern world. This region, the true centre of the earth, is obscure to many in the English-speaking world. Yet this is where civilization itself began, where the world's great religions were born and took root. The Silk Roads were no exotic series of connections, but networks that linked continents and oceans together. Along them flowed ideas, goods, disease and death. This was where empires were won - and where they were lost. As a new era emerges, the patterns of exchange are mirroring those that have criss-crossed Asia for millennia. The Silk Roads are rising again. A major reassessment of world history, The Silk Roads is an important account of the forces that have shaped the global economy and the political renaissance in the re-emerging east.
In "The Red Baron," graphic artist and author Wayne Vansant illustrates the incredible story of Manfred von Richthofen, whose unparalleled piloting prowess as a member of the Imperial German Army Air Service made him a World War I celebrity, both in the air and on the ground. In his signature style, enjoyed by readers of "Normandy" and "Bombing Nazi Germany," Vansant beautifully depicts the fearsome intelligence and mid-flight awareness that would earn Richthofen eighty documented air combat victories over the Western Front in the halcyon days of military aviation. From his beginnings as cavalry member and a pilot-in-training to the years he spent commanding Jasta 11 from the cockpit of his fabled red plane, to his eventual leadership of the ultra-mobile Jagdgeschwader 1 (aptly nicknamed "Richtofen's Flying Circus" by nervous foes because of the group's colorful airplanes and mobile airfields), "The Red Baron" brings the story of this legendary figure to life. Richthofen died young under controversial circumstances, but the Red Baron's astonishing skill and tactical acumen lived on far long after his death and helped usher in a new type of warfare that would reign supreme twenty-five years later: war in the air.
Growing up in Sussex during the turbulent 17th century, John became involved in the illegal 'owling' trade, where he learnt his seamanship. Whilst carousing in a Rye inn he was unexpectedly pressed into the Royal Navy. In 1694, disgruntled with the ill-fated Spanish Expedition, he joined 'Long Ben' Every's mutiny setting sail as his coxswain to the Indian Ocean in the Fancy, a ship of 46 guns,...'and bound to seek our fortunes' as they declared. It made Henry Every the richest pirate in the world, and was said, the most profitable raid in history. A popular ballad of the time proclaimed: "Here's to gentlemen at sea tonight, and a toast to all free men And when the devil comes to take us home, he'll drink With old Long Ben!" After the hue and cry, the slippery Every changed his name and disappeared. On returning to England John was caught and lost his fortune. Escaping the hangman, he emerges later as a respectable partner to John Coggs a London goldsmith banker, trading from the sign of the Kings Head in the Strand. Unfortunately he became disastrously embroiled in a massive bankruptcy fraud that shook the city.
Enter The Madman's Gallery - the perfect gift book for any art lover. Discover an eccentric exploration through the curious history of art, to find the strangest paintings, sculptures, drawings and other artistic oddities ever made. From the author of the bestseller The Madman's Library (SundayTimes Literature Book of the Year 2020, Radio 4 Book of the Week) comes an extraordinary new illustrated collection. This unique exhibition gathers more than a hundred magnificent works, each chosen for their striking beauty, weirdness and captivating story behind their creation. Obscure and forgotten treasures sit alongside famous masterpieces with secret stories to tell. Here are Doom paintings, screaming sculptures, magical manuscripts, impossible architecture, dog-headed saints, angel musketeers and the first portrait of a cannibal. Stolen art, outsider art, ghost art, revenge art, and art painted at the bottom of the sea take their place alongside scandalous art, forgeries and hoaxes, art of dreams and nightmares, and cryptic paintings yet to be decoded. Discover the remarkable Elizabethan portraits of men in flames, the mystery of the nude Mona Lisa, the gruesome ingredients of lost pigments, the werewolf legion of the Roman army, and the Italian monk who levitated so often he's recognised as the patron saint of aeroplane passengers. From prehistoric cave art to portraits painted by artificial intelligence, The Madman's Gallery draws on a remarkable depth of research and variety of images to form a book that surprises at every turn, and ultimately serves to celebrate the endless power and creativity of human imagination. '...a feast of artistic curiosities' - The Telegraph 'What that last book did for bibliophiles, this new, beautifully produced and elegantly written anthology does for art lovers ... The research that has gone into this is prodigious, but Brooke-Hitching loves storytelling even more than scholarship, and he has a gift for it.' - The Spectator 'Extraordinary' - Artists & Illustrators
In this fresh approach to the history of the Black Death, John Hatcher, a world-renowned scholar of the Middle Ages, recreates everyday life in a mid-fourteenth century rural English village. By focusing on the experiences of ordinary villagers as they lived--and died--during the Black Death (1345-50 AD), Hatcher vividly places the reader directly into those tumultuous years and describes in fascinating detail the day-to-day existence of people struggling with the tragic effects of the plague. Dramatic scenes portray how contemporaries must have experienced and thought about the momentous events--and how they tried to make sense of it all.
In interviews with Amin Maalouf, Thierry Hentsch, Sara Suleri, Marlene Nourbese Philip and Ackbar Abbas, history is discussed from a non-European perspective. "What's remarkable is the scope Samuel allows his interview subjects."--"Now""There is no shortage of thought-provoking material here."--"Books in Canada"
The book follows the development of a Welsh town and neighbourhood from its early beginnings in the 16th century through to the present day, and shows the effects on its development by the growth of Religion, Industry, Commerce and the War years up to the present day.
Presents a program designed for English learners to introduce and reinforce social studies terms and skills. In this title, each lesson presents material with a globally and culturally relevant format though beautiful images and engaging content, such as Primary Source documents and graphic organizers.
'Excellent . . . bursting with extraordinary women' - Anita Anand 'Brilliant' - Daisy Buchanan "My hope is that this book will inspire as I have been inspired. It's a love letter to the importance of history and about how, without knowing where we come from - truthfully and entirely - we cannot know who we are." Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries is a celebration of unheard and under-heard women's history. Within these pages you'll meet nearly 1000 women whose names deserve to be better known: from the Mothers of Invention and the trailblazing women at the Bar; warrior queens and pirate commanders; the women who dedicated their lives to the natural world or to medicine; those women of courage who resisted and fought for what they believed; to the unsung heroes of stage, screen and stadium. It is global, travelling the world and spanning all periods of time. It is also an intensely moving detective story of the author's own family history as Kate Mosse pieces together the forgotten life of her great-grandmother, Lily Watson, a famous and highly-successful novelist in her day who has all but disappeared from the record . . . Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries is accessible, ambitious in its scope and fascinating in its detail. A beautifully illustrated dictionary of women, it is a love letter to family history and a personal memoir about the nature of women's struggles to be heard and their achievements acknowledged. Joyous, celebratory and engaging, it is a book for everyone who has ever wondered how history is made.
As early as the third century, St Maurice-an Egyptian-became leader of the legendary Roman Theban Legion. Ever since, there have been richly varied encounters between those defined as 'Africans' and those called 'Europeans'. Yet Africans and African Europeans are still widely believed to be only a recent presence in Europe. Olivette Otele traces a long African European heritage through the lives of individuals both ordinary and extraordinary. She uncovers a forgotten past, from Emperor Septimius Severus, to enslaved Africans living in Europe during the Renaissance, and all the way to present-day migrants moving to Europe's cities. By exploring a history that has been long overlooked, she sheds light on questions very much alive today-on racism, identity, citizenship, power and resilience. African Europeans is a landmark account of a crucial thread in Europe's complex history.
For the owner or professional mechanic. Complete information for performing all required sevice operations and overhauls. Covers all components. Engine sizes 327, 350, 427 and 454.
Selected by Guernica magazine as an "Editors' Picks: Best of 2013"Unfurling like a medieval book of days, each page of Eduardo Galeano's Children of the Days has an illuminating story that takes inspiration from that date of the calendar year, resurrecting the heroes and heroines who have fallen off the historical map, but whose lives remind us of our darkest hours and sweetest victories.Challenging readers to consider the human condition and our own choices, Galeano elevates the little-known heroes of our world and decries the destruction of the intellectual, linguistic, and emotional treasures that we have all but forgotten.Readers will discover many inspiring narratives in this collection of vignettes: the Brazilians who held a smooch-in" to protest against a dictatorship for banning kisses that undermined public morals" the astonishing day Mexico invaded the United States and the sacrilegious" women who had the effrontery to marry each other in a church in the Galician city of A Coruna in 1901. Galeano also highlights individuals such as Pedro Fernandes Sardinha, the first bishop of Brazil, who was eaten by Caete Indians off the coast of Alagoas, as well as Abdul Kassem Ismael, the grand vizier of Persia, who kept books safe from war by creating a walking library of 117,000 tomes aboard four hundred camels, forming a mile-long caravan.Beautifully translated by Galeano's longtime collabourator, Mark Fried, Children of the Days is a majestic humanist treasure that shows us how to live and how to remember. It awakens the best in us.
Imagine what the world once looked like as you discover places that have disappeared from modern atlases in this stunningly illustrated and award-winning book. Have you ever wondered about cities that lie forgotten under the dust of newly settled land? Rivers and seas whose changing shape has shifted the landscape around them? Or, even, places that have seemingly vanished, without a trace? Following the international bestselling success of Atlas of Improbable Places and Atlas of the Unexpected, Travis Elborough takes you on a voyage to all corners of the world in search of the lost, disappearing and vanished. Discover ancient seats of power and long-forgotten civilizations through the Mayan city of Palenque; delve into the mystery of a disappeared Japanese islet; and uncover the incredible hidden sites like the submerged Old Adaminaby, once abandoned but slowly remerging. With beautiful maps and stunning colour photography, Atlas of Vanishing Places shows these places as they once were as well as how they look today: a fascinating guide to lost lands and the fragility of our relationship with the world around us. WINNER Illustrated Book of the Year - Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards 2020 Also in the Unexpected Atlas series: Atlas of Improbable Places, Atlas of Untamed Places, Atlas of the Unexpected.
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