This book is the result of 45 years of part-time research into the Shropshire Speake families. It describes the history of the author's family through thirteen generations, as well as all other associated Shropshire Speake families. In some cases it follows them across the nearby border into Wales, and the possible reasons for their migration. It focuses on the period prior to the advent of census returns and the civil registration of births, marriage and deaths in the early nineteenth century. Prior to this date research becomes more difficult and time consuming, and the aim of this book is to help Speake family researchers to link their family trees back to this earlier period. This approach has enabled this book to be kept a reasonable size. It is the story of periods of prosperity in the late sixteenth century, with accompanying social advancement. This is contrasted with the problems of two court cases brought against them in the infamous Court of the Star Chamber in London, 150 miles distant. After the mid-seventeenth century they lived the precarious existence of the rural poor, at the mercy of poor harvests, poverty, accidents, chronic illnesses and sudden death. Outline family trees for the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are included, to help those interested in their Speake family to connect with the earlier information presented here. In particular, the very large Eaton-under-Heywood and Westbury families are comprehensively shown in outline. This reconstruction was made possible by the use of a large computerised relational database. Shropshire was an early leader in the Industrial Revolution and the new industries in Ironbridge and Ketley provided alternative employment for the rural poor. The later nineteenth century growth of local government also provided new opportunities for employment and increasing prosperity. The advent of the railways made it easier to seek work further afield and many Speake families migrated to the industrial districts of Lancashire, South Wales and the adjacent `Black Country' of the Midlands. More distant migrations were made to Canada, Patagonia, Australia and New Zealand. This book is a record of often short, hard lives, and although documentary evidence is hard to find, their lives can bring surprises. This book contains 130 family trees, nine specially commissioned maps, two original artworks and an extensive index. A comprehensive collection of Appendices contains summaries of all known Speake wills, lay subsidies, marriages licences and hearth tax entries and many other documents. These make this volume an essential addition to the book collection of family historians and others with an interest in Shropshire history and the Speake families.

Tim Wilkinson was born in Liverpool in 1951 and was educated at Merchant Taylorsa School, Crosby, then at Robert Gordona s College in Aberdeen. After graduating with an M.A. (Hons) in English at Aberdeen University, he then spent his entire career teaching English at Cults Academy. He has now retired to rural Aberdeenshire. He has written two histories of his local cricket club, Banchory C.C., for whom he has played for over 50 years. Tim suffers from the incurable disease of book collecting and has amassed a collection of over 3,000 first editions. Make that 3,001.

This book uncovers the complex interconnections between politics and finance in the midst of the French Revolution. Charting the trajectories of members of the financial elite between London, Paris and Amsterdam, this study reveals the ever-shifting relationship between market actors and the political world. The French Revolution paved the way for bankers, especially those working in international finance, to occupy a new position within not only the economic framework of the time but also on the political stage. The profession of banker went through a series of transitions in its relationship with the political authorities. These changes affecting the social, economic and political status of bankers led to increasingly active interactions between politics and finance that have become a feature of our modern societies. Using a transnational and interdisciplinary approach, this book highlights how during the Age of Revolution there emerged a dynamic which is still present today: the financial world and the sphere of politics became strongly intermixed while actors from both sides made efforts to overpower their counterparts. In this way, it provides an ideal perspective for bridging the gap that has long separated economic from cultural history in the study of the French Revolution.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Prairie Fires comes a terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond—a gripping investigation of how a new strain of psychopath emerged out of a toxic landscape of deadly industrial violence.

Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?

As Murderland indelibly maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem—the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, even Charles Manson—Fraser’s Northwestern death trip begins to uncover a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. At ground zero in Ted Bundy’s Tacoma stood one of the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was hardly unique in the West. As Fraser’s investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of these smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives but also warped young minds, including some who grew up to become serial killers.

A propulsive nonfiction thriller, Murderland transcends true-crime voyeurism and noir mythology, taking readers on a profound quest into the dark heart of the real American berserk.

Wars are expensive, both in human terms and monetary ones. But while warfare might be costly it has also, at times, been an important driver of economic change and progress. Over the long span of history nothing has shaped human institutions - and thus the process of economic development - as much as war and violence. Wars made states and states made wars. As the costs of warfighting grew so did state structures, taxation systems and national markets for debt. And as warfare became ever more destructive the incentive for governments to resort to it changed too.

Blood and Treasure looks at the history and economics of warfare from the Viking Age to the war in Ukraine, examining how incentives and institutions have changed over time. It surveys how warfare may have driven Europe's rise to global prominence, and it explains how the total wars of the twentieth century required a new type of strategy, one that took economics seriously.

Along the way it asks whether Genghis Khan should be regarded as the father of globalisation, explains how New World gold and silver kept Spain poor, ponders why some economists think of witch trials as a form of 'non-price competition', notes how pirate captains were pioneers of effective HR techniques, asks if handing out medals hurt the Luftwaffe in the Second World War and assesses if economic theories helped to create a tragedy in Vietnam. As well as considering why some medieval kings were right to arm their soldiers with inferior weapons, taking some management lessons from Joseph Stalin and asking if a culture of patronage and cronyism helped the Royal Navy rise to greatness.

Underpinning it all is a focus on how and why the economics of conflict have changed over time. Economics can help to explain war and understanding the history of warfare can help explain modern economics.