THE UNPARALLELED HISTORY OF THE FALL OF OLD MEXICO

Drawing on newly discovered sources and writing with brilliance, drama, and profound historical insight, Hugh Thomas presents an engrossing narrative of one of the most significant events of Western history.

Ringing with the fury of two great empires locked in an epic battle, Conquest captures in extraordinary detail the Mexican and Spanish civilizations and offers unprecedented in-depth portraits of the legendary opponents, Montezuma and Cortés. Conquest is an essential work of history from one of our most gifted historians.

After many years of research, award-winning historian Hugh Thomas portrays, in a balanced account, the complete history of the slave trade. Beginning with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, he describes and analyzes the rise of one of the largest and most elaborate maritime and commercial ventures in all of history. Between 1492 and 1870, approximately eleven million black slaves were carried from Africa to the Americas to work on plantations, in mines, or as servants in houses. The Slave Trade is alive with villains and heroes and illuminated by eyewitness accounts. Hugh Thomas's achievement is not only to present a compelling history of the time but to answer as well such controversial questions as who the traders were, the extent of the profits, and why so many African rulers and peoples willingly collaborated. Thomas also movingly describes such accounts as are available from the slaves themselves.

The first part of his trilogy on the Spanish Empire, Hugh Thomas's Rivers of Gold brings the rise of Spain's global empire vividly to life, capturing the spirit of an ebullient age. Inspired by hopes of both riches and of converting native people to Christianity, the Spanish adventurers of the fifteenth century convinced themselves that an Earthly Paradise existed in the Caribbean. This is the story of the hundreds of conquistadors who set sail on the precarious journey across the Atlantic - taking with them wheat, the horse, the guitar and the wheel as well as guns, malaria and slaves - to create an empire that made Spain the envy of the world. 'Affirms Hugh Thomas's record as one of the most productive and wide-ranging historians of modern times' The New York Times 'Splendid ... bold and strong in its outlines, rich in fasinating details' Paul Johnson, Literary Review 'So steeped is he in the spirit of the time, so familiar with its people and places that we almost feel he must have been there at the time' Sunday Telegraph 'A vivid, dramatic and compelling narrative' Arthur Schlesinger, Jr 'As a historian, Thomas is master of the big picture ... Rivers of Gold sweeps us restlessly on' Jonathan Keates, Spectator 'An epic history of an extraordinary age' Michael Kerrigan, Scotsman Hugh Thomas is the author of, among other books, The Spanish Civil War (1962) which won the Somerset Maugham Award, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes and the Fall of Old Mexico (1994), An Unfinished History of the World (1979) and The Slave Trade (1997). The second volume of his planned trilogy on the Spanish Empire, The Golden Age: The Spanish Empire of Charles V was published in 2011.

January 1984 marked the 25th anniversary of Fidel Castro's emergence to power. The Cuban Revolution: 25 Years Later is a product of the CSIS Cuba Project, a long-term effort to focus public as well as policymaker's attention on Cuba-related affairs. The lead author, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, is the dean of political-historical studies on Cuba, and author of the encyclopedic Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom. A great deal of myth surrounds the evolution of Cuba since Castro's emergence to power over 25 years ago. Some of this myth is the product of official Cuban propaganda; some of it is also due to a generally misinformed American public. Sifting through available data to distinguish between fact and fiction, this book evaluates broadly the impact of Castro's regime on Cuba itself. Based on the findings of the CSIS Cuba Project, the book draws on the assessments of 18 top Cuban specialists on the political, economic, cuiturai, and social development of Cuba since 1959. In contrast to democracies such as Costa Rica, the equalization of society that has taken place under Castro's leadership has been accomplished by redistributing existing resources, not by creating new wealth. Moreover, the authors conclude that in politics, culture, and the economy, Cuba under Castro has become and remains rigid, stagnant, enormously militarized, and ideologically absolutist.

The continuing success of the Asian Miracle relies on an entrepreneurial revolution that has increased the productivity and flexibility of economies across the region. Yet this revolution has largely been necessity-driven, traditional and vulnerable to erosion as the region becomes increasingly prosperous and well educated. How to educate the next wave of entrepreneurs is a pressing Asian question that resonates around the world and is the subject of this volume. Hugh Thomas and Donna Kelley draw on 24 scholars from 15 institutions to report on regional entrepreneurship education. They identify problems encountered by educators and describe solutions that stimulate students to create value. The approaches are hands-on, project-based and multidisciplinary, geared to develop educator-to-business entrepreneurial ecosystems. The entrepreneurial programs described in this book involve inter-cultural experience: working with major corporations, consulting to small and medium sized enterprises, traveling to distant lands, addressing environmental and social problems, and reaching out to the disadvantaged. Social entrepreneurship is combined with for-profit entrepreneurship in programs that extend the concept of value creation to activities. This book eloquently and expertly describes how entrepreneurship education - whether in Vietnam, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, China or elsewhere on the globe - can combine with community to help youth create a better world. Students and scholars the world over, along with administrators, researchers, and all those with an interest in education and entrepreneurship, will find much of interest in this enlightening volume. Contributors: G. Abe, P. Adriaens, D. Chang, G. Du, V. Duong TE, T. Faley, S. Guan, D. Kelley, B. Koo, H. Lingyu, J.J. Lee, J. Levie, L. Liu, A.C. Martinez, P. Mohan, T. Ohe, R.J. Saemundsson, T. Schott, S. Tih, Y. Wang, K. Wilson, L. Xu, J. Yu

This title was first published in 2011.After World War II, a systems approach to solving complex problems and managing complex systems came into vogue among engineers, scientists, and managers, fostered in part by the diffusion of digital computing power.Enthusiasm for the approach peaked during the Johnson administration, when it was applied to everything from military command and control systems to poverty in American cities. Although its failure in the social sphere, coupled with increasing skepticism about the role of technology and "experts" in American society, led to a retrenchment, systems methods are still part of modern managerial practice.

January 1984 marked the 25th anniversary of Fidel Castro's emergence to power. The Cuban Revolution: 25 Years Later is a product of the CSIS Cuba Project, a long-term effort to focus public as well as policymaker's attention on Cuba-related affairs. The lead author, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, is the dean of political-historical studies on Cuba, and author of the encyclopedic Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom. A great deal of myth surrounds the evolution of Cuba since Castro's emergence to power over 25 years ago. Some of this myth is the product of official Cuban propaganda; some of it is also due to a generally misinformed American public. Sifting through available data to distinguish between fact and fiction, this book evaluates broadly the impact of Castro's regime on Cuba itself. Based on the findings of the CSIS Cuba Project, the book draws on the assessments of 18 top Cuban specialists on the political, economic, cuiturai, and social development of Cuba since 1959. In contrast to democracies such as Costa Rica, the equalization of society that has taken place under Castro's leadership has been accomplished by redistributing existing resources, not by creating new wealth. Moreover, the authors conclude that in politics, culture, and the economy, Cuba under Castro has become and remains rigid, stagnant, enormously militarized, and ideologically absolutist.

This title was first published in 2011.After World War II, a systems approach to solving complex problems and managing complex systems came into vogue among engineers, scientists, and managers, fostered in part by the diffusion of digital computing power.Enthusiasm for the approach peaked during the Johnson administration, when it was applied to everything from military command and control systems to poverty in American cities. Although its failure in the social sphere, coupled with increasing skepticism about the role of technology and "experts" in American society, led to a retrenchment, systems methods are still part of modern managerial practice.

First serious examination of the curious demise of Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler that also investigates an extraordinary web of secret deals and international intrigue. On 23 May 1945 Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS and architect of the Holocaust, committed suicide in Allied custody. So why was MI6's most talented secret agent Kim Philby unconvinced by the story of Himmler's suicide? Hugh Thomas set out to answer Philby's question and has uncovered a maze of corruption, high finance, political gambles and international intrigue.

The rise and fall of the business of slave trading - by a bestselling historian The Atlantic slave trade was one of the largest and most elaborate maritime and commercial ventures. Between 1492 and about 1870, ten million or more black slaves were carried from Africa to one port or another of the Americas. In this wide-ranging book, Hugh Thomas follows the development of this massive shift of human lives across the centuries until the slave trade's abolition in the late nineteenth century.

**"Washington Post" Best Books of 2013**
The celebrated TRANSYLVANIAN TRILOGY by Count Miklos Banffy is a stunning historical epic set in the lost world of the Hungarian aristocracy just before World War I. Written in the 1930s and first discovered by the English-speaking world after the fall of communism in Hungary, Banffy's novels were translated in the late 1990s to critical acclaim and appear here for the first time in hardcover.
"They Were Found Wanting "and "They Were Divided, "the second and third novels in the trilogy, continue the story of the two aristocratic cousins introduced in "They Were Counted "as they navigate a dissolute society teetering on the brink of catastrophe. Count Balint Abady, a liberal politician who defends his homeland's downtrodden Romanian peasants, loses his beautiful lover, Adrienne, who is married to a sinister and dangerously insane man, while his cousin Laszlo loses himself in reckless and self-destructive addictions. Meanwhile, no one seems to notice the gathering clouds that are threatening the Austro-Hungarian Empire and that will soon lead to the brutal dismemberment of their country. Set amid magnificent scenery of wild forests, snowcapped mountains, and ancient castles, THE TRANSYLVANIAN TRILOGY combines a Proustian nostalgia for a lost world, insight into a collapsing empire reminiscent of the work of Joseph Roth, and the drama and epic sweep of Tolstoy.

Innovation has shaped society since civilization began. Imperial China was the most innovative society on earth, but it failed to join the 19th century industrial revolution. In the 20th century, the Communist Party of China addressed that failure. Today China boasts an internationally compliant, rapidly developing IP system. State planning continues to be critical as the case of the largest, single, technology acquisition and infrastructure project in world history, high speed rail, demonstrates. But most of the innovation in China comes from the private sector: government incubators are among the government stimuli of private initiative, both local and global. And as the case on Cisco shows, foreign MNCs management of innovation in China is attractive but must involve co-ordination with government policy.This book presents cases where managers determine policy in China's increasingly innovative society. Readers take the roles of decision-makers to make strategy decisions. The cases in this volume showcase China's traditional three teachings, socialist market institutions, and modern management using studies on current Chinese companies and their leaders, among them big names such as Haier and Huawei. Each case stands alone as teaching material for instructors. Taken together, the book presents evolving models of innovation. Their subtle differences from western constructs critically impact the development of our global society.

Few RAF pilots flew operationally from the beginning to the end of the Second World War. Fewer still can claim to have taken part in the Battle of France, Battle of Britain, El Alamein, and the D-Day landings as well as bomber escort duties in the closing days of the war. Peter Ayerst is one such man and his tale is, as yet, untold.

Illustrated with photographs, this is the previously unpublished story of an RAF Second World War fighter pilot ace. Peter Ayerst joined the RAF in 1938 on a short service commission and was despatched as part of the Advanced Air Striking Force to France at the beginning of September 1939, gaining his first kills. He became the first RAF pilot to engage a Bf 109 in combat and survived a confrontation with twenty-seven enemy aircraft, his Hurricane riddled with bullets. With the fall of France, Peter was recalled to England where he spent the Battle of Britain summer of 1940 instructing at No. 7 OTU Hawarden, shooting down a Heinkel He 111 bomber.

Peter was then posted to North Africa in 1942 where he was shot down in the desrt and crash-landed in a minefield! He flew a variety of missions, culminating in a strafing of Axis motor targets 400 miles behind enemy lines, personally detroying a Junkers Ju 52 and seventeen vehicles. Following a period of instructing in South Africa, Peter returned to Britain in 1944, flying high-altitude Spitfires on interception flights over France. He took part in escort duties on D-Day and at the end of 1944 he was awarded the DFC. Peter also flew bomber escort duties of the Ruhr and escorted King George VI's personal flight. In the closing months of the war he flew Spitfires in support of mass daylight bomber raids deepinto Germany.

By the war's end, Peter had flown every operational mark of Spitfire and Hurricane in the RAF's inventory. Alex Henshaw was instrumental in choosing him as a test pilot for Vickers at Castle Bromwich where he flew production Spitfire Mk XIs, XVIs and 22s.

The charm of Madrid is elusive, but for those who know how to find it, Madrid has magic. Its magic can be found in the shadow cast over the present by the past. In this Traveller's Reader, a city that was once the seat of power for perhaps the most ambitious political enterprise the western world had seen since the fall of Rome, the Spanish Empire, is brought to life in vivid diaries, letters, memoirs and histories. The Earl of Clarendon describes seventeenth-century bullfights; Salvador Dali plays a surrealist joke on a snooty barman at the Ritz; Rubens visits the Alcázar; Manet is at the Prado; generals and anarchists meet in the Puerta del Sol. The many stories included here evoke for today's tourist the dramas and personalities of a city's past, by drawing on the eyewitness accounts and commentaries of visitors and residents of earlier centuries. Hugh Thomas has chosen these and other vivid snapshots of Madrid's history from diaries, letters, memoirs and novels across five centuries to delight and fascinate the armchair and prospective traveller alike.

A masterpiece of the historian’s art, Hugh Thomas’s The Spanish Civil War remains the best, most engrossing narrative of one of the most emblematic and misunderstood wars of the twentieth century. Revised and updated with significant new material, including new revelations about atrocities perpetrated against civilians by both sides in this epic conflict, this "definitive work on the subject" (Richard Bernstein, The New York Times) has been given a fresh face forty years after its initial publication in 1961. In brilliant, moving detail, Thomas analyzes a devastating conflict in which the hopes, dreams, and dogmas of a century exploded onto the battlefield. Like no other account, The Spanish Civil War dramatically reassembles the events that led a European nation, in a continent on the brink of world war, to divide against itself, bringing into play the machinations of Franco and Hitler, the bloodshed of Guernica, and the deeply inspiring heroics of those who rallied to the side of democracy. Communists, anarchists, monarchists, fascists, socialists, democrats -- the various forces of the Spanish Civil War composed a fabric of the twentieth century itself, and Thomas masterfully weaves the diffuse and fascinating threads of the war together in a manner that has established the book as a genuine classic of modern history.

Since its first publication, The Spanish Civil War has become established as the definitive one-volume history of a conflict that continues to provoke intense controversy. What was it that roused left-wing sympathizers from over the world to fight against Franco between 1936–39? Why did the British and US governments refuse to intervene? And why did the Republican cause collapse so violently? Now revised and updated, Hugh Thomas’s classic account presents the most objective and unbiased analysis of a passionate struggle where fascism and democracy, communism and Catholicism were at stake – and which was as much an international war as a Spanish one.

**"Washington Post" Best Books of 2013**
The celebrated TRANSYLVANIAN TRILOGY by Count Miklos Banffy is a stunning historical epic set in the lost world of the Hungarian aristocracy just before World War I. Written in the 1930s and first discovered by the English-speaking world after the fall of communism in Hungary, Banffy's novels were translated in the late 1990s to critical acclaim and now appear for the first time in hardcover.
"They Were Counted, "the first novel in the trilogy, introduces us to a decadent, frivolous, and corrupt society unwittingly bent on its own destruction during the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Banffy's lush depiction of an opulent lost paradise focuses on two upper-class cousins who couldn't be more different: Count Balint Abady, a liberal politician who compassionately defends his homeland's downtrodden Romanian peasants, and his dissipated cousin Laszlo, whose life is a whirl of parties, balls, hunting, and gambling. "They Were Counted" launches a story that brims with intrigues, love affairs, duels, murder, comedy, and tragedy, set against the rugged and ravishing scenery of Transylvania. Along with the other two novels in the trilogy--"They Were Found Wanting "and "They Were Divided"--it combines a Proustian nostalgia for the past, insight into a collapsing empire reminiscent of the work of Joseph Roth, and the drama and epic sweep of Tolstoy.

From award-winning historian Hugh Thomas, Cuba: A History is the essential work for understanding one of the most fascinating and controversial countries in the world. Hugh Thomas's acclaimed book explores the whole sweep of Cuban history from the British capture of Havana in 1762 through the years of Spanish and United States domination, down to the twentieth century and the extraordinary revolution of Fidel Castro. Throughout this period of over two hundred years, Hugh Thomas analyses the political, economic and social events that have shaped Cuban history with extraordinary insight and panache, covering subjects ranging from sugar, tobacco and education to slavery, war and occupation. Encyclopaedic in range and breathtaking in execution, Cuba is surely one of the seminal works of world history. 'An astonishing feat ... the author does more to explain the phenomenon of Fidel's rise to power than anybody else has done so far' Spectator 'Brilliant' The New York Times 'Immensely readable. Thomas's notion of history's scope is generous, for he has not limited himself to telling old political and military events; he describes Cuban culture at all stages ... not merely accessible but absorbing. His language is witty but never mocking, crisp but never harsh' New Yorker 'Thomas seems to have talked to everybody not dead or in jail, and read everything. He is scrupulously fair' Time Hugh Thomas is the author of, among other books, The Spanish Civil War (1962), which won the Somerset Maugham Award, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (1971), An Unfinished History of the World (1979), and the first two volumes of his Spanish Empire trilogy, Rivers of Gold (2003) and The Golden Age (2010).