История. Социология. Политика [Q-Z]

Her personal life riven by passion, illness and intrigue, Queen Anne presided over some of the most momentous events in British history. Like Antonia Fraser's life of Marie Antoinette or Amanda Foreman's 'The Duchess', 'Queen Anne' is historical biography at its best.

In 1702, fourteen years after she helped oust her father from his throne and deprived her newborn half-brother of his birthright, Queen Anne inherited the crowns of England and Scotland.

Childless, despite seventeen pregnancies that had all either ended in failure or produced heartrendingly short-lived children, in some respects she was a pitiable figure. But against all expectation she proved Britain's most successful Stuart ruler.

Her reign was marked by many triumphs, including union with Scotland and glorious victories in war against France.

Traditionally depicted as a weak ruler dominated by female favourites and haunted by remorse at having deposed her father, Queen Anne emerges as a woman whose unshakeable commitment to duty enabled her to overcome private tragedy and painful disabilities, and set her kingdom on the path to greatness.

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From the best-selling author of George VI, Elizabeth and Diana, the definitive biography of Queen Elizabeth II, to tie in with the Diamond Jubilee

Elizabeth II has lived through the Abdication, the Blitz and World War Two, the sex and spy scandals of the swinging sixties, the Cold War and the nuclear threat and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. She has known 11 US Presidents including JFK and Ronald Reagan, and other world leaders like President Mandela and Pope John XXII. Her Prime Ministers have ranged from Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher to David Cameron, the last only ten years older than her grandson.

Her own family experiences, a mixture of happiness and crisis, weddings and divorces, and, in the case of Diana, violent death, have been lived in the glare of tabloid headlines. More than 2 billion people watched the wedding of her grandson Prince William to Catherine Middleton in 2010 shortly before she made the first State Visit to Ireland by a British monarch for 100 years. Our world has changed more in her lifetime than in any of her predecessors': the Queen has remained a calm presence at the centre, earning the respect of monarchists and republicans. How has she done it?

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Did you know that the word prestige derives from the Latin word for illusion ? Or that infantry stems from a Latin word meaning one who could not speak?

In this original and highly entertaining book, Peter Jones reveals the roots of Latin words that are now common in the English language and shows how Romans actually used them in the ancient world.

Covering every aspect of Roman life from politics, philosophy, religion and the arts, to technology, warfare, medicine and botany Quid Pro Quo highlights the vital role Latin has played in the creation of our vast vocabulary.

Серия: Classic Civilisations

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In this extraordinary journey through twenty-six countries, Simon Mundy meets the people on the front lines of the climate crisis, showing how the struggle to respond is already reshaping the modern world - shattering communities, shaking up global business, and propelling a groundbreaking wave of cutting-edge innovation.

How is China's green energy push driving a hazardous mining rush in Congo?

Why is a maverick scientist building a home for engineered mammoths in northeast Siberia?

Can an Israeli fake meat startup make a fortune while helping to save the Amazon?

Will Greenland's melting sea ice put its people at the centre of a global power struggle?

Who are the entrepreneurs chasing breakthroughs in fusion power, electric cars, and technology to suck carbon from the atmosphere?

As the impacts of climate change cascade across the planet and the global economy, who is battling to survive the worst impacts - and who is chasing the most lucrative rewards?

Telling unforgettable human stories from six continents, this is an account of disaster, of promise, of frantic adaptation and relentless innovation, of hope, of survival, and of the forces that will define our future.

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In the last few years the world has changed in unexpected ways. The power of radical ideas and groups is growing. What was once considered extreme is now the mainstream. But what is life like on the political fringes? What is the real power of radicals?

Radicals is an exploration of the individuals, groups and movements who are rejecting the way we live now, and attempting to find alternatives. In it, Jamie Bartlett, one of the world's leading thinkers on radical politics and technology, takes us inside the strange and exciting worlds of the innovators, disruptors, idealists and extremists who think society is broken, and believe they know how to fix it. From dawn raids into open mines to the darkest recesses of the internet, Radicals introduces us to some of the most secretive and influential movements today: techno-futurists questing for immortality, far-right groups seeking to close borders, militant environmentalists striving to save the planet's natural reserves by any means possible, libertarian movements founding new countries, autonomous cooperatives in self-sustaining micro-societies, and psychedelic pioneers attempting to heal society with the help of powerful hallucinogens.

As well as providing a fascinating glimpse at the people and ideas driving these groups, Radicals also presents a startling argument: radicals are not only the symptoms of a deep unrest within the world today, but might also offer the most plausible models for our future.

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India joined the railway age late: the first line was not completed until 1853 but, by 1929, 41, 000 miles of track served the country. However, the creation of this vast network was not intended to modernize India for the sake of its people but rather was a means for the colonial power to govern the huge country under its control, serving its British economic and military interests.

Despite the dubious intentions behind the construction of the network, the Indian people quickly took to the railways, as the trains allowed them to travel easily for the first time. The Indian Railways network remains one of the largest in the world, serving over 25 million passengers each day.

In this expertly told history, Christian Wolmar reveals the full story of India s railways, from its very beginnings to the present day, and examines the chequered role they have played in Indian history and the creation of today s modern state.

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In the twenty-first century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that discovered vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures and conspiracy theorizing?

In Rationality, Pinker rejects the cynical cliche that humans are simply an irrational species - cavemen out of time fatally cursed with biases, fallacies and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives and set the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, he explains, we think in ways that suit the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we have built up over millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, causal inference, and decision-making under uncertainty. These tools are not a standard part of our educational curricula, and have never been presented clearly and entertainingly in a single book - until now.

Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Brimming with insight and humour, Rationality will enlighten, inspire and empower.

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Herein lie the men of Raven Smith. Each of them has left a mark, a memory, a stain, whether they meant to or not. Some hit deep, and I caught feels. Some I discarded like a clip-on neck tie

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Raven Smith s Trivial Pursuits, comes a pin sharp, hilarious and incisive exploration of what it means to be a man in the modern day.

This book is about men because, in an annoying way, everything is. Funny men, tall men, charming men. Stepdads, actual dads and ripped sports dads . Raven Smith has been trying to distil what it is about men that has kept him intrigued his whole life.

Part memoir, part exploration of the peculiar dynamics and amorphous boundaries of masculinity, Raven looks unflinchingly at his own history, offering a cautious reverence of a life lived in parallel with other men. Blending the personal, the primal and the perennial, these are Raven Smith s men in all their infuriating, labyrinthine complexity.

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In 402 AD, after invading tribes broke through the Alpine frontiers of Italy and threatened the imperial government in Milan, the young Emperor Honorius made the momentous decision to move his capital to a small, easy defendable city in the Po estuary - Ravenna. From then until 751 AD, Ravenna was first the capital of the Western Roman Empire, then that of the immense kingdom of Theoderic the Goth and finally the centre of Byzantine power in Italy.

In this engrossing account Judith Herrin explains how scholars, lawyers, doctors, craftsmen, cosmologists and religious luminaries were drawn to Ravenna where they created a cultural and political capital that dominated northern Italy and the Adriatic. As she traces the lives of Ravenna's rulers, chroniclers and inhabitants, Herrin shows how the city became the pivot between East and West; and the meeting place of Greek, Latin, Christian and barbarian cultures. The book offers a fresh account of the waning of Rome, the Gothic and Lombard invasions, the rise of Islam and the devastating divisions within Christianity. It argues that the fifth to eighth centuries should not be perceived as a time of decline from antiquity but rather, thanks to Byzantium, as one of great creativity - the period of 'Early Christendom'. These were the formative centuries of Europe.

While Ravenna's palaces have crumbled, its churches have survived. In them, Catholic Romans and Arian Goths competed to produce an unrivalled concentration of spectacular mosaics, many of which still astonish visitors today. Beautifully illustrated with specially commissioned photographs, and drawing on the latest archaeological and documentary discoveries, Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe brings the early Middle Ages to life through the history of this dazzling city.

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From the bestselling author of Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge comes the dramatic conclusion of how conservatism took control of American political power.

Over two decades, Rick Perlstein has published three definitive works about the emerging dominance of conservatism in modern American politics. With the saga's final installment, he has delivered yet another stunning literary and historical achievement.

In late 1976, Ronald Reagan was dismissed as a man without a political future: defeated in his nomination bid against a sitting president of his own party, blamed for President Gerald Ford's defeat, too old to make another run. His comeback was fueled by an extraordinary confluence: fundamentalist preachers and former segregationists reinventing themselves as militant crusaders against gay rights and feminism; business executives uniting against regulation in an era of economic decline; a cadre of secretive "New Right" organizers deploying state-of-the-art technology, bending political norms to the breaking point-and Reagan's own unbending optimism, his ability to convey unshakable confidence in America as the world's "shining city on a hill."

Meanwhile, a civil war broke out in the Democratic party. When President Jimmy Carter called Americans to a new ethic of austerity, Senator Ted Kennedy reacted with horror, challenging him for reelection. Carter's Oval Office tenure was further imperiled by the Iranian hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, near-catastrophe at a Pennsylvania nuclear plant, aviation accidents, serial killers on the loose, and endless gas lines.

Backed by a reenergized conservative Republican base, Reagan ran on the campaign slogan "Make America Great Again"-and prevailed. Reaganland is the story of how that happened, tracing conservatives' cutthroat strategies to gain power and explaining why they endure four decades later.

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An indelible exploration of the Cultural Revolution and how it shapes China today, Red Memory uncovers forty years of silence through the rarely heard stories of individuals who lived through Mao's decade of madness.
A 13-year-old Red Guard revels in the great adventure, and struggles with her doubts. A silenced composer, facing death, determines to capture the turmoil. An idealistic student becomes the 'corpse master'
More than fifty years on, the Cultural Revolution's scar runs through the heart of Chinese society, and through the souls of its citizens. Stationed in Beijing for the Guardian, Tania Branigan came to realise that this brutal and turbulent decade continues to propel and shape China to this day. Yet official suppression and personal trauma have conspired in national amnesia: it exists, for the most part, as an absence.
Red Memory explores the stories of those who are driven to confront the era, fearing or yearning its return. What happens to a society when you can no longer trust those closest to you? What happens to the present when the past is buried, exploited or redrawn? And how do you live with yourself when the worst is over?

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In the headline-making and bestselling tradition of Bill Browder's Freezing Order comes a unique and incendiary memoir from an entrepreneur who rose to the zenith of power and money in 21st century China and whose wife was disappeared - and then mysteriously reappeared four years later on the eve of Red Roulette's publication and global media coverage about it.

As Desmond Shum was growing up impoverished in China, he vowed his life would be different. Through hard work and sheer tenacity, he earned an American college degree and returned to his native country to establish himself in business. There, he met his future wife, the highly intelligent and equally ambitious Whitney Duan who was determined to make her mark within China's male-dominated society. Whitney and Desmond formed an effective team and, aided by relationships they formed with top members of China's Communist Party, the so-called Red Aristocracy, he vaulted into China's billionaire class.

Soon they were developing the massive air cargo facility at Beijing International Airport, and they followed that feat with the creation of one of Beijing's premier hotels. They were dazzlingly successful, travelling in private jets, funding multi-million-dollar buildings and endowments, and purchasing expensive homes, vehicles and art. But in 2017, their fates diverged irrevocably when Desmond, while living overseas with his son, learned that his now ex-wife Whitney had vanished along with three co-workers.

In this updated edition of Red Roulette Desmond Shum pulls back the curtain on China's ruling elite and reveals the real truth of what is happening inside China's wealth-making machine. This is both Desmond's story and Whitney's, because she has not been able to tell it herself.

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Through an amazing array of posters, photographs, paintings, magazines, book jackets, advertisements, pamphlets and other rare ephemera, "Red Star Over Russia" tells the story of the Soviet Union, from the Russian Revolution to the death of Stalin. During this period Soviet citizens endured revolutionary upheavals, civil war, Nazi invasion, famine and appalling oppression. For countless millions, revolutionary dreams were transformed into unspeakable tragedy. Yet it was also a time of intense creativity, in which the hopes, aspirations and revolutionary fervour of a people were captured in an extraordinary outpouring of visual material. Universally acclaimed on its publication in 2009, David King's masterful book is the fruit of over 40 years of research. In it, he rescues many of the unsung heroes of the epic struggles that shaped the Soviet Union from obscurity and commemorates the talent of some of the most brilliant artists, photographers and designers of the twentieth century.

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Redcoat is the story of the British soldier from c.1760 until c.1860 - surely one of the most enduring and magnetic subjects of the British past. Solidly based on the letters and diaries of the men who served and the women who followed them, the book is rich in the history of the period. It charts Wolfe's victory and death at Quebec, the American War of Independence, the Duke of York's campaign in Flanders, Wellington's Peninsular War, Waterloo, the retreat from Kabul, the Sikh wars in 1845-9, the Crimean war and the Indian Mutiny.The focus of Redcoat, however, is the individual recollection and experience of the ordinary soldiers serving in the wars fought by Georgian and early Victorian England.Through their stories and anecdotes - of uniforms, equipment, 'taking the King's shilling', flogging, wounds, food, barrack life, courage, comradeship, death, love and loss - Richard Holmes provides a comprehensive portrait of a fallible but extraordinarily successful fighting force.

'Such a scene of mortal strife from the fire of fifty men was never witnessed ' writes Harry Smith of the 95th Rifles, recounting the death of a brother officer in Spain in 1813. 'I wept over his remains with a bursting heart as, with his company who adored him, I consigned to the grave the last external appearance of Daniel Cadoux. His fame can never die.' Smith's account is typical of the emotions and experiences of the men who appear on every page of this book, sporting their red uniforms to fight for King and country.

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Burke's seminal work was written during the early months of the French Revolution, and it predicted with uncanny accuracy many of its worst excesses, including the Reign of Terror. A scathing attack on the revolution's attitudes to existing institutions, property and religion, it makes a cogent case for upholding inherited rights and established customs, argues for piecemeal reform rather than revolutionary change - and deplores the influence Burke feared the revolution might have in Britain. Reflections on the Revolution in France is now widely regarded as a classic statement of conservative political thought, and is one of the eighteenth century's great works of political rhetoric.

Серия: Penguin Classics

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Philosopher, statesman and founder of conservatism, Edmund Burke is both the greatest and the most underrated political thinker of the past three hundred years. He was one of the eighteenth century's golden generation, which included his friends Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson and Edward Gibbon; a dazzling orator and a visionary theorist who spent his long political career fighting the abuse of power against the backdrop of the the revolt of the American colonies, the expansion of the British empire, the collapse of Ireland and the French revolution.
In this single volume Burke's greatest work, Reflections on the Revolution in France, is accompanied by a comprehensive selection if his other writings, including pamphlets, speeches, public letters, private correspondence and, for the first time, two important and previously unpublished early essays. Burke should be a core part of every civilised library, and this is an essential collection for students, for scholars, and for the general reader.

Серия: Everyman`s Library

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'We were an army of shadows, of ghosts, walking as if to the beat of some dark psychic mechanism...'

The Cuban Revolution changed the course of the twentieth century. Following years of brutal tyranny and poverty, a band of idealistic young people fought against immense odds to overthrow a dictator and emerged victorious. This is the story of how they did it. Che Guevara's classic eyewitness account chronicles the transformation of a country, and of Che himself, from troop doctor to revolutionary icon.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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An authoritative new translation of Plato's The Republic by Christopher Rowe, with notes and an introduction.

'We set about founding the best city we could, because we could be confident that if it was good we would find justice in it'

The Republic, Plato's masterwork, was first enjoyed 2, 400 years ago and remains one of the most widely-read books in the world: as a foundational work of Western philosophy, and for the richness of its ideas and virtuosity of its writing. Presented as a dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and various interlocutors, it is an exhortation to philosophy, inviting its readers to reflect on the choices to be made if we are to live the best life available to us. This complex, dynamic work creates a picture of an ideal society governed not by the desire for money, power or fame, but by philosophy, wisdom and justice.

Christopher Rowe's accurate and enjoyable new translation remains faithful to the many variations of the Republic's tone, style and pace. This edition also contains a chronology, further reading, an outline of the work's main arguments and an introduction discussing Plato's relationship with Socrates, and the Republic's style, ideas and historical context.

Серия: Penguin Classics

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In the volatile landscape of social media and viral news, professional reputations can be wrecked within a matter of hours. Passivity in the face of public criticism is often perceived as conceding guilt, while an ill-judged response can just make things worse. But few senior business leaders, entrepreneurs, public figure, talent managers, in-house lawyers and even PR professionals are aware of the full array of strategies available that can both prevent and mitigate PR crises.

In Reputation Matters, Jonathan Coad draws upon his decades of expertise (both as one of the country's leading PR lawyers and as a highly regarded editorial lawyer) to provide this essential guide to protecting and managing both your professional reputation and that of your organization.

With the blurred lines between traditional and social media and the growing predominance of misinformation, reputations are now more valuable and vulnerable than ever. Reputation Matters grants readers a unique insider's insight into how the media works, teaches the best strategies for countering any threats, and uncovers the intricacies of litigation PR. In this engaging and essential book, Jonathan gives practical advice on how to cultivate and secure your reputation, which is enriched and supported by a selection of first-hand case studies from his illustrious career.

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Resistance in the GULAG
Memoirs. Letters. Documents.

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After darkness, there is always light

In a time of increasing uncertainty, Rethink offers a guide to a much-needed global 'reset moment', with leading international figures giving us glimpses of a better future after the pandemic. Each contribution explores a different aspect of public and private life that can be re-examined - from Pope Francis on poverty and the Dalai Lama on the role of ancient wisdom to Brenda Hale on the courts and Tara Westover on the education divide; from Elif Shafak on uncertainty and Steven Pinker on Human Nature to Xine Yao on masks and Jarvis Cocker on environmental revolution. Collectively, they offer a roadmap for positive change after a year of unprecedented hardship.

Based on the hit BBC podcast, and with introductions by presenter and journalist Amol Rajan, Rethink gives us the opportunity to consider what a better world might look like and reaffirms that after darkness there is always light.

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In the spring of 1839, Britain invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Nearly 20, 000 British and East India Company troops poured through the high mountain passes and re-established on the throne Shah Shuja ul-Mulk.

On the way in, the British faced little resistance. But after two years of occupation, the Afghan people rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into violent rebellion. The First Anglo-Afghan War ended in Britain's greatest military humiliation of the nineteenth century: an entire army of the then most powerful nation in the world ambushed in retreat and utterly routed by poorly equipped tribesmen.

Using a range of forgotten Afghan and Indian sources, William Dalrymple's masterful retelling of Britain's greatest imperial disaster is a powerful parable of colonial ambition and cultural collision, folly and hubris. Return of a King is history at its most urgent and important.

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For some 40 years the Islamic Republic has resisted widespread condemnation, sanctions, and sustained attacks by Iraq in an eight-year war. Many policy-makers today share a weary wish that Iran would somehow just disappear as a problem. But with Iran's continuing commitment to a nuclear programme and its reputation as a trouble-maker in Syria, Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere, this is unlikely any time soon. An unending stream of assertions about the revolution's finally running down continue to be defied by events, and Iran's institutions are still formidable.
This is the definitive history of this subject, from one of the world's principal experts.

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There can be few more exciting or frightening moments in European history than the spring of 1848. Almost as if by magic, in city after city, from Palermo to Paris to Venice, huge crowds gathered, sometimes peaceful and sometimes violent, and the political order that had held sway since the defeat of Napoleon simply collapsed.

Christopher Clark's spectacular new book recreates with verve, wit and insight this extraordinary period. Some rulers gave up at once, others fought bitterly, but everywhere new politicians, beliefs and expectations surged forward. The role of women in society, the end of slavery, the right to work, national independence and the final emancipation of the Jews all became live issues.

In a brilliant series of set-pieces, Clark conjures up both this ferment of new ideas and then the increasingly ruthless and effective series of counter-attacks launched by regimes who still turned out to have many cards to play. But even in defeat, exiles spread the ideas of 1848 around the world and - for better and sometimes much worse - a new and very different Europe emerged from the wreckage.

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Rights of Man is a classic statement of the belief in humanity's potential to change the world for the better. Published as a reply to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, it differs from that great work in every relevant respect. Where Burke uses the language of the governing classes, Paine writes with the vigour of a self-taught mast-maker and exciseman. With passionate and rapier wit, Paine challenges Burke's assertion that society cannot be judged by rational standards and found wanting.
Rights of Man contains a fully-costed budget, advocating measures such as free education, old age pensions, welfare benefits and child allowance over 100 years before these things were introduced in Britain. It remains a compelling manifesto for social change.

Серия: World Literature

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For the empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary the Great War - which had begun with such high hopes for a fast, dramatic outcome - rapidly degenerated as invasions of both France and Serbia ended in catastrophe. For four years the fighting now turned into a siege on a quite monstrous scale. Europe became the focus of fighting of a kind previously unimagined. Despite local successes - and an apparent triumph in Russia - Germany and Austria-Hungary were never able to break out of the the Allies' ring of steel.

In Alexander Watson's compelling new history of the Great War, all the major events of the war are seen from the perspective of Berlin and Vienna. It is fundamentally a history of ordinary people. In 1914 both empires were flooded by genuine mass enthusiasm and their troubled elites were at one with most of the population. But the course of the war put this under impossible strain, with a fatal rupture between an ever more extreme and unrealistic leadership and an exhausted and embittered people. In the end they failed and were overwhelmed by defeat and revolution.

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Following on from his epic '1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow', bestselling author Adam Zamoyski has written the dramatic story of the Congress of Vienna.
In the wake of his disastrous Russian campaign of 1812, Napoleon's imperious grip on Europe began to weaken, raising the question of how the Continent was to be reconstructed after his defeat. There were many who dreamed of a peace to end all wars, in which the interests of peoples as well as those of rulers would be taken into account. But what followed was an unseemly and at times brutal scramble for territory by the most powerful states, in which countries were traded as if they had been private and their inhabitants counted like cattle.

The results, fixed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, not only laid the foundations of the European world we know; it put in place a social order and a security system that lie at the root of many of the problems which dog the world today. Although the defining moments took place in Vienna, and the principle players included Tsar Alexander I of Russia, the Austrian Chancellor Metternich, the Duke of Wellington and the French master of diplomacy Talleyrand, as well as Napoleon himself, the accepted view of the gathering of statesmen reordering the Continent in elegant salons is a false one. Many of the crucial questions were decided on the battlefield or in squalid roadside cottages amid the vagaries of war. And the proceedings in Vienna itself were not as decorous as is usually represented.

Drawing on a wide range of first-hand sources in six languages, which include not only official documents, private letters, diaries and first-hand accounts, but also the reports of police spies and informers, Adam Zamoyski gets below the thin veneer of courtliness and reveals that the new Europe was forged by men in thrall to fear, greed and lust, in an atmosphere of moral depravity in which sexual favours were traded as readily as provinces and the 'souls' who inhabited them. He has created a chilling account, full of menace as well as frivolity.

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Mary and Elizabeth: cousins, rivals, queens. They allied and fought and plotted - but could never escape their bond... A story which inspired the Hollywood film MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

At the end of the Tudor era, two queens ruled one island. But sixteenth-century Europe was a man s world and powerful voices believed that no woman could govern. All around Mary and Elizabeth were sycophants, spies and detractors who wanted their dominion, their favour and their bodies.

Elizabeth and Mary shared the struggle to be both woman and queen. But the forces rising against the two regnants, and the conflicts of love and dynasty, drove them apart. For Mary, Elizabeth was a fellow queen with whom she dreamed of a lasting friendship. For Elizabeth, Mary was a threat. It was a schism that would end in secret assassination plots, devastating betrayal and, eventually, a terrible final act.

Mary is often seen as a defeated or tragic sovereign, but Rival Queens reveals instead how she attempted to reinvent queenship and the monarchy in one of the hardest fights in royal history.

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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.

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Rivers, more than any road, technology or political event, have shaped the course of civilization.
Rivers have opened frontiers, defined borders, supported trade, generated energy and fed billions. Most of our greatest cities stand on river banks or deltas, and our quest for mastery has spurred staggering advances in engineering, science and law. Rivers and their topographic divides have shaped the territories of nations and the migration of peoples, and yet - as their resources become ever more precious - can foster cooperation even among enemy states. And though they become increasingly domesticated, they remain a formidable global force: these vast arterial powers promote life but are capable of destroying everything in their path.
From ancient Egypt to our growing contemporary metropolises, Rivers of Power reveals why rivers matter so profoundly to human civilization, and how they continue to be indispensable to our societies and wellbeing.

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The story of one of the most brutal battles in modern history - fought at a major turning point of the Second World War.
Kohima. In this remote Indian village near the border with Burma, a tiny force of British and Indian troops faced the might of the Imperial Japanese Army. Outnumbered ten to one, the defenders fought the Japanese hand to hand in a battle that was amongst the most savage in modern warfare.
A garrison of no more than 1, 500 fighting men, desperately short of water and with the wounded compelled to lie in the open, faced a force of 15, 000 Japanese. They held the pass and prevented a Japanese victory that would have proved disastrous for the British. Another six weeks of bitter fighting followed as British and Indian reinforcements strove to drive the enemy out of India. When the battle was over, a Japanese army that had invaded India on a mission of imperial conquest had suffered the worst defeat in its history. Thousands of men lay dead on a devastated landscape, while tens of thousands more Japanese starved in a catastrophic retreat eastwards. They called the journey back to Burma the 'Road of Bones', as friends and comrades committed suicide or dropped dead from hunger along the jungle paths.
Fergal Keane has reported for the BBC from conflicts on every continent over the past 25 years, and he brings to this work of history not only rigorous scholarship but a raw understanding of the pitiless nature of war. It is a story filled with vivid characters: the millionaire's son who refused a commission and was awarded a VC for his sacrifice in battle, the Roedean debutante who led a guerrilla band in the jungle, and the General who defied the orders of a hated superior in order to save the lives of his men. Based on original research in Japan, Britain and India, 'Road of Bones' is a story about extraordinary courage and the folly of imperial dreams.

Серия: Military History

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Explore Earth's natural treasures, from their primeval origins to traditional uses and modern-day appeal with this illustrated guide to rocks, minerals, crystals, gems and more!

Featuring sparkling crystals, vibrant gemstones, and other precious materials often prized for their beauty, such as amber, coral, and fossils, this illustrated guide is sure to captivate every rockhound and budding gemmologist.

Learn how to identify more than 450 rock and mineral specimens through beautiful photographs and key characteristics. Discover more about rocks and minerals through folklore and historical artefacts, and find out the fascinating stories behind some of the amazing natural treasures, including the Hope Diamond and the Great Mogul emerald. Plus there is information on polishing and displaying your finds to further equip you with all the knowledge needed to become a rock and mineral collector.

Practical advice on cutting, polishing, and displaying your finds further equips you with all the knowledge needed to delve into the arena of rock and mineral collecting.

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The Romanovs were the most successful dynasty of modern times, ruling a sixth of the world's surface. How did one family turn a war-ruined principality into the world's greatest empire? And how did they lose it all? This is the intimate story of twenty tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness, but all inspired by holy autocracy and imperial ambition. Montefiore's gripping chronicle reveals their secret world of unlimited power and ruthless empire-building, overshadowed by palace conspiracy, family rivalries, sexual decadence and wild extravagance, and peopled by a cast of adventurers, courtesans, revolutionaries and poets. Written with dazzling literary flair, drawing on new archival research, THE ROMANOVS is at once an enthralling chronicle of triumph and tragedy, love and death, a universal study of power, and an essential portrait of the empire that still defines Russia today.

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A sweeping history of the city of Rome, seen through the eyes of its most significant sackings, from the Gauls to the Nazis and everything in between.

No city on earth has preserved its past as Rome has. Visitors can cross bridges that were crossed by Julius Caesar and explore temples visited by Roman emperors. These architectural survivals are all the more remarkable considering the city has been repeatedly ravaged by roving armies.

From the Gauls to the Nazis, Matthew Kneale tells the stories behind the seven most important of these attacks and reveals, with fascinating insight, how they transformed the city - and not always for the worse.

A meticulously researched, magical blend of travelogue, social and cultural history, Rome: A History in Seven Sackings is a celebration of the fierce courage, panache and vitality of the Roman people. Most of all, it is a passionate love letter to this incomparable city.

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The Roman Republic was the most remarkable state in history. What began as a small community of peasants camped among marshes and hills ended up ruling the known world. Rubicon paints a vivid portrait of the Republic at the climax of its greatness - the same greatness which would herald the catastrophe of its fall.

It is a story of incomparable drama. This was the century of Julius Caesar, the gambler whose addiction to glory led him to the banks of the Rubicon and beyond; of Cicero, whose defence of freedom would make him a byword for eloquence; of Spartacus, the slave who dared to challenge a superpower; of Cleopatra, the queen who did the same.

Tom Holland brings to life this strange and unsettling civilisation, with its extremes of ambition and self-sacrifice, bloodshed and desire. Yet alien as it was, the Republic still holds up a mirror to us. Its citizens were obsessed by celebrity chefs, all-night dancing and exotic pets; they fought elections in law courts and were addicted to spin; they toppled foreign tyrants in the name of self-defence. Two thousand years may have passed, but we remain the Romans' heirs.

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A celebration of Britain's most wild and wonderfully atmospheric places - its ruins, including castles, follies, abbeys and country houses.

From romantic ruined castles to mysterious stone circles, from frivolous follies to crumbling towers by the sea, there is something about ruins that excites our imagination - and the National Trust has many of the best examples in Britain.

This is a beautifully illustrated celebration of these wild and wonderfully atmospheric places across the country, dating from Roman times to the twentieth century. From Cornwall to Scotland, the book is organised by region and includes overview maps, so you can plot your own journey around Britain's remarkable ruins.

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Britain is an island ruled by nostalgia, but nostalgia today isn't what it used to be...

Longing to go back to the 'good old days' is nothing new. For hundreds of years, the British have mourned the loss of older national identities and called for a revival 'simple', 'better' ways of life - from Margaret Thatcher's call for a return to 'Victorian values' in the 1980s, to William Blake's protest against the 'dark satanic mills' of the Industrial Revolution that were fast transforming England's green and pleasant land, to sixteenth-century observers looking back wistfully to a 'Merry England' before the upheavals of the Reformation. By the time we reach the 1500s, we find a country nostalgic for a vision of home that looks very different to our own.

But were the 'good old days' ever quite how we remember them? Beginning in the present, cultural historian Hannah Rose Woods takes us back on an eye-opening tour through five hundred years of Britain's perennial fixation with its own past to reveal that history is more complex than we care to remember. Asking why nostalgia has been such an enduring and seductive emotion across hundreds of years of change, Woods separates the history from the fantasy, debunks pervasive myths about the past, and illuminates the remarkable influence that nostalgia's perpetual backwards glance has had on British history, politics and society.

Rule, Nostalgia is a timely and enlightening interrogation of national character, emotion, identity and myth making that elucidates how this nostalgic isle's history was written, re-written and (rightly or wrongly) remembered.

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Do gentlemen wear shorts? What are the rules regarding interior decor in a high-security prison? Is it ever acceptable to send Valentine's cards to one's pets?
The twenty-first century is an age of innumerable social conundrums. Around every corner lies a potential faux pas waiting to happen. But if you've ever struggled for the right response to an unwelcome gift or floundered for conversation at the dinner party from hell, fear not: help is at hand.
In Rules for Modern Life, Sir David Tang, resident agony uncle at the Financial Times, delivers a satirical masterclass in navigating the social niceties of modern life. Whether you're unsure of the etiquette of doggy bags or wondering whether a massage room in your second home would be de trop, Sir David has the answer to all your social anxieties - and much more besides.

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'A compulsive page-turner... a triumph of brilliant storytelling... an instant classic that is an awesome, remarkable and exuberant achievement' Simon Sebag Montefiore
Winner of the Wolfson History Prize and shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize
In the summer of 1812 Napoleon, the master of Europe, marched into Russia with the largest army ever assembled, confident that he would sweep everything before him. Yet less than two years later his empire lay in ruins, and Russia had triumphed. This is the first history to explore in depth Russia's crucial role in the Napoleonic Wars, re-creating the epic battle between two empires as never before.
Dominic Lieven writes with great panache and insight to describe from the Russians' viewpoint how they went from retreat, defeat and the burning of Moscow to becoming the new liberators of Europe; the consequences of which could not have been more important.
Ultimately this book shows, memorably and brilliantly, Russia embarking on its strange, central role in Europe's existence, as both threat and protector - a role that continues, in all its complexity, into our own lifetimes.

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'This exciting and provocative book blows apart misconceptions about the Russian past' Lara Douds, Times Higher Education

Russia is an exceptional country, the biggest in the world. It is both European and exotic, powerful and weak, brilliant and flawed. Why are we so afraid of it?

Time and again, we judge Russia by unique standards. We have usually assumed that it possesses higher levels of cunning, malevolence and brutality. Yet the country has more often than not been a crucial ally, not least against Napoleon and in the two world wars. We admire its music and its writers. We lavish praise on the Russian soul. And still we think of Russia as a unique menace. What is it about this extraordinary country that consistently provokes such excessive responses? And why is this so dangerous?

Ranging from the earliest times to the present, Mark B. Smith's remarkable new book is a history of this 'Russia Anxiety'. Whether ally or enemy, superpower or failing state, Russia grips our imagination and fuels our fears unlike any other country. This book shows how history itself offers a clearer view and a better future.

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Russia is a country of contradictions: a nation of cultural refinement and artistic originality and yet also a country that rules by 'the iron fist'. In this riveting history, Martin Sixsmith shows how Russia's complex identity has been formed over a thousand years, and how it can help us understand its often baffling behaviour at home and abroad.
Combining in-depth research and interviews with his personal experiences as a former BBC Moscow correspondent, Sixsmith skilfully traces the conundrums of modern Russia to their roots in its troubled past, and explains the nation's seemingly split personality as the result of influences that have divided it for centuries.
A Sunday Times bestseller, Russia is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the complex political landscape of this country, and its unique place in the modern world.

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The histories of the British and Russian royal families have been entwined for centuries. In the first publication to examine the relationship between Britain and Russia using artworks drawn exclusively from the Royal Collection, Russia: Art, Royalty and the Romanovs interweaves the familial, political, diplomatic, and artistic stories of these two nations over more than four hundred years. From initial contacts in the mid-sixteenth century, through alliances, marriages, and two World Wars, up to the current reign, this richly illustrated book gives readers a glimpse into the public and personal dealings of these two fascinating dynasties. With new research on previously unpublished works, including Imperial porcelain, arms, costume, insignia, and photographs, together with paintings by both Russian artists and British artists working in Russia, this will be the first time that the uniquely interlinked narrative of the art connecting

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Russia and Crimea. Crimea and Russia. They are one and the same - single mutual history, laced with geopolitics. Remember the unparalled heroism of the two defenses of Sevastopol. Remember Marshals Suvorov and Kutuzov, Admirals Nakhimov, Kornilov, and Istomin. Remember Catherine the Great's political foresight and Nikita Khrushchev's extravagance on the verge of treason.
Each time after uniting with Crimea, Russia was also becoming the superpower. Each loss of Crimea resulted in the loss of this status. In 2014, our country has become superpower once again, thanks to the fortitude and courage on the part of the Crimeans and a strong political will on that of the Russian President.
All these issues are the subject of this new book by Nikolay Starikov (the author of the bestselling Geopolitics. How it is done and Nationalizing the Ruble: The Way to Russia's Freedom) and Dmitry Belyaev (the author of "Mess in Brains": Information War on Russia). The book strives to answer the most poignant questions of today:
- How did Crimea find its way back home in 2014?
- Who orchestrated the Kiev coup? Why was it done?
- What was the story of the loss of Crimea in 1991?
- Why did Khrushchev cede Crimea to Ukraine and all but cede the Kuril Islands to Japan?
- What was happening in Crimea during the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945?
- What horrors did Crimea endure during the Civil War?
Crimea and Russia. Russia and Crimea. One land, one country, one history. Now and forevermore.

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Between 1917 and 1921 a devastating struggle took place in Russia following the collapse of the Tsarist empire. Many regard this savage civil war as the most influential event of the modern era. An incompatible White alliance of moderate socialists and reactionary monarchists stood little chance against Trotsky's Red Army and Lenin's single-minded Communist dictatorship. Terror begat terror, which in turn led to even greater cruelty with man's inhumanity to man, woman and child. The struggle became a world war by proxy as Churchill deployed weaponry and troops from the British empire, while armed forces from the United States, France, Italy, Japan, Poland and Czechoslovakia played rival parts.

Using the most up to date scholarship and archival research, Antony Beevor, author of the acclaimed international bestseller Stalingrad, assembles the complete picture in a gripping narrative that conveys the conflict through the eyes of everyone from the worker on the streets of Petrograd to the cavalry officer on the battlefield and the woman doctor in an improvised hospital.

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When Compendium II was published about a year ago, we remarked that Russia had gone through legislative and political changes in 2012/2013 that - from a lawyer's perspective - could be described as dramatic. We would have been more cautious about using the word 'dramatic' had we known then what developments were to come in the year that followed. The impact of the Ukraine crisis on the Russian business environment, including business law, has been profound. Planned areas of development (such as reforming the civil law regime and introducing WTO rules following Russia's accession in 2012) have been outside the spotlight, while the political disputes between Russia and many Western countries relating to the events in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, followed by the imposition of U.S. and EU sanctions, seemed capable of threatening the foundations of Russian business. The Ukraine crisis is not yet over, and the threat of more severe sanctions still hangs over business relations between Russia and its foreign partners. As a result, a significant number of chapters in this Compendium III discuss legal changes and sanctions legislation triggered by the situation in Ukraine.
At the level of 'normal' legislative developments, there were still numerous changes over the past year with far-reaching consequences for Russian business law. The reform of the Russian Civil Code has been continuing, with various bills already enacted, and this process will continue.
Readership. Managers, businesspeople, in-house counsel, lawyers in private practice and students will, we hope, find this book to be especially useful.

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This publication is intended to provide you with accurate and authoritative information concerning the subject matter covered. However, this publication is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. If you require a legal or other expert advice, you should seek the services of a competent attorney or other professional.
2nd edition.

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In Rutherford and Fry's comprehensive guidebook, they tell the complete story of the universe and absolutely everything in it - skipping over some of the boring parts.
This is a celebration of the weirdness of the cosmos, the strangeness of humans and the fact that amid all the mess, we can somehow make sense of life.

Our brains have evolved to tell us all sorts of things that feel intuitively right but just aren't true: the world looks flat, the stars seem fixed in the heavenly firmament, a day is 24 hours... This book is crammed full of tales of how stuff really works. With the power of science, Rutherford and Fry show us how to bypass our monkey-brains, taking us on a journey from the origin of time and space, via planets, galaxies, evolution, the dinosaurs, all the way into our minds, and wrestling with some truly head-scratching questions that only science can answer:

What is time, and where does it come from?
Why are animals the size and shape they are?
How horoscopes work (Spoiler: they don't, but you think they do)
Does my dog love me?
Why nothing is truly round?
Do you need your eyes to see?

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In the summer of 1941, at the height of the war in the Western Desert, a bored and eccentric young officer, David Stirling, has a vision for a new kind of war: attacking the enemy where they least expect it - from behind their own lines.

Despite the intense opposition of many in British High Command, Winston Churchill personally gives Stirling permission to recruit the toughest, brightest and most ruthless soldiers he can find. And so begins the most celebrated and mysterious military organisation in the world: the SAS.

With unprecedented access to the SAS secret files, unseen footage and exclusive interviews with its founder members, SAS: Rogue Heroes tells the remarkable story behind an extraordinary fighting force, and the immense cost of making it a reality.

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The biggest single loss of life for the SAS since World War Two . . .

1982, the British task force sails to liberate the Falkland Islands. Aboard: SAS D Squadron, determined to make their mark.

No one more so than Mark 'Splash' Aston.

But they have barely seen action when their Sea King helicopter crashes in freezing South Atlantic waters, killing 22 of Mark's comrades.

The last out of the sinking wreck, he suffers a broken neck. But defying medical evacuation orders, Mark sneaks off ship, re-joins his SAS comrades to land on a mountain near Port Stanley - to defend it against days of attacks by Argentine special forces . . .

SAS Sea King Down is a pulse-pounding account of D-Squadron's tragic loss and subsequent heroic stand in one of the most hostile places on Earth.

A story told by a man who barely survived to tell it.

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Ancient Rome matters.

Its history of empire, conquest, cruelty and excess is something against which we still judge ourselves. Its myths and stories - from Romulus and Remus to the Rape of Lucretia - still strike a chord with us. And its debates about citizenship, security and the rights of the individual still influence our own debates on civil liberty today.

SPQR is a new look at Roman history from one of the world's foremost classicists. It explores not only how Rome grew from an insignificant village in central Italy to a power that controlled territory from Spain to Syria, but also how the Romans thought about themselves and their achievements, and why they are still important to us. Covering 1, 000 years of history, and casting fresh light on the basics of Roman culture from slavery to running water, as well as exploring democracy, migration, religious controversy, social mobility and exploitation in the larger context of the empire, this is a definitive history of ancient Rome.

SPQR is the Romans' own abbreviation for their state: Senatus Populusque Romanus, 'the Senate and People of Rome'.

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In 1975 Richard Beard was sent away to boarding school. So were Boris Johnson and David Cameron.

He didn't enjoy it. But the first and most important lesson was not to let that show.

A public school education has long been accepted in Britain as a preparation for leadership, but being separated from your parents at a young age is traumatic. What sort of adult does it mould? Tackling debates about privilege head-on, Sad Little Men reveals what happens when you put a succession of men from boarding schools into positions of influence, including at 10 Downing Street, and asks the question: is this really who we want in charge?

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'Salt is the fascinating, indispensable history of an indispensable ingredient. It's a must-have book for any serious cook or foodie' Anthony Bourdain

Homer called it a divine substance. Plato described it as especially dear to the gods. As Mark Kurlansky so brilliantly relates here, salt has shaped civilisation from the beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of mankind. Wars have been fought over salt and, while salt taxes secured empires across Europe and Asia, they have also inspired revolution - Gandhi's salt march in 1930 began the overthrow of British rule in India.

From the rural Sichuan province where the last home-made soya sauce is produced to the Cheshire brine springs that supplied salt around the globe, Mark Kurlansky has produced a kaleidoscope of world history, a multi-layered masterpiece that blends political, commercial, scientific, religious and culinary records into a rich and memorable tale.

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The name 'Samurai' is synonymous with the ultimate warrior. With their elaborate armour, fierce swordsmanship and code of honour, the samurai have become iconic figures whose influence can still be felt today . From Kurosawa's epic Seven Samurai to the figure of Darth Vader in Star Wars, to Manga comics and video games, the figure of the fighting samurai still inspires us today. In John Man's new book we discover the truth behind the legend.

From his birth in the shadow of the great volcano Sakurajima, to his glorious death by ritual suicide and disembowelment, Saigo Takamori was the ultimate Samurai leader. His fall brought about the end of hundreds of years of Samurai tradition and in many ways marks the birth of modern Japan. Saigo was a man trapped by paradox: a faithful servant to the emperor, and yet a leader of rebel troops; a mighty Samurai warrior, and also a master of Chinese poetry. His life, and ultimately his death, offer a window into the hundreds of years of culture and tradition that defined the samurai.

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One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen alive again. Her disappearance would haunt her orphaned children, the perpetrators of the brutal crime and a whole society in Northern Ireland for decades.

Through the unsolved case of Jean McConville s abduction, Patrick Radden Keefe tells the larger story of the Troubles, investigating Dolours Price, the first woman to join the IRA, who bombed the Old Bailey; Gerry Adams, the politician who helped end the fighting but denied his IRA past; and Brendan Hughes, an IRA commander who broke their code of silence. A gripping story forensically reported, Say Nothing explores the extremes people will go to for an ideal, and the way societies mend or don t after long and bloody conflict.

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In Scenes from Prehistoric Life, the distinguished archaeologist Francis Pryor paints a vivid picture of British and Irish prehistory, from the Old Stone Age (about one million years ago) to the arrival of the Romans in AD 43, in a sequence of fifteen profiles of ancient landscapes. Whether writing about the early human family who trod the estuarine muds of Happisburgh in Norfolk c.900, 000 BC, the craftsmen who built a wooden trackway in the Somerset Levels early in the fourth millennium BC, or the Iron Age denizens of Britain's first towns, Pryor uses excavations and surveys to uncover the daily routines of our ancient ancestors. By revealing how our prehistoric forebears coped with both simple practical problems and more existential challenges, Francis Pryor offers remarkable insights into the long and unrecorded centuries of our early history, and a convincing, well-attested and movingly human portrait of prehistoric life as it was really lived.

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Avocado or beans on toast? Gin or claret? Nut roast or game pie? Milk in first or milk in last? And do you have tea, dinner or supper in the evening?

In this fascinating social history of food in Britain, Pen Vogler examines the origins of our eating habits and reveals how they are loaded with centuries of class prejudice. Covering such topics as fish and chips, roast beef, avocados, tripe, fish knives and the surprising origins of breakfast, Scoff reveals how in Britain we have become experts at using eating habits to make judgements about social background.

Bringing together evidence from cookbooks, literature, artworks and social records from 1066 to the present, Vogler traces the changing fortunes of the food we encounter today, and unpicks the aspirations and prejudices of the people who have shaped our cuisine for better or worse.

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A comprehensive and absorbing history of a country that is constantly evolving.

From Bannockburn and Robert the Bruce to the union of the crowns and Mary, Queen of Scots; from the Reformation and John Knox, to the Enlightenment and the Highland Clearances, and right up to devolution, Scotland is the definitive history of a country that has experienced centuries of dramatic change.

Michael Lynch, named as 'one of the most influential historians in Scotland of the last thirty years', has penned an extraordinary one-volume history of the country that spans twenty centuries, from the Picts to the present day.

Thrilling, comprehensive, provocative and timely, Scotland is a monumental work of scholarship.

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Scotland's history is wide and vast. Depending on the lens applied, it can be seen as an unrelenting tale of oppression and poverty or a glowing roll-call of innovation, exploration and entrepreneurship. In fact, it's all of the above.

In Scotland: An Autobiography, Professor Rosemary Goring shows Scotland's history as it happened by those who were there - from criminals, servants, house-wives, poets, journalists and nurses to politicians, novelists, prisoners, comedians, sportsmen and even queens. It is the good and the bad. The everyday and the key historical moments.

A vivid, panoramic and engrossing account, she has created a living history and the perfect read for anyone not only seeking to understand Scotland's past but also its heart and soul.

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A timely and vivid look at Scotland s long and difficult road to nationhood, re-exploring some cherished myths and unearthing a wealth of fascinating new detail.

Magnus Magnusson s starting point is Sir Walter Scott s classic version of Scotland s history, Tales of a Grandfather (1827-29), which has moulded the views of generations of Scottish schoolchildren. Like Scott, Magnus Magnusson is a master story teller. In investigating the many questions raised by the nation s turbulent and often poignant past, he gives full weight to the living treasure of local legends and tradition which he believes has as much resonance as academic analysis.

Where did the Scots come from? What is the truth about such historical figures as Macbeth, William Wallace and Robert Bruce? What was the significance of the tragic reign of Mary Queen of Scots? What was the impact of Bonnie Prince Charlie and his brutal defeat at Culloden?

Incorporating the findings of many leading modern historians, Scotland: The Story of a Nation casts the nation s history in a fascinating new light. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Scotland at this pivotal moment in its history.

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For more than a millennium, Polynesians have occupied the remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, a vast triangle stretching from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island. Until the arrival of European explorers they were the only people to have ever lived there. Both the most closely related and the most widely dispersed people in the world before the era of mass migration, Polynesians can trace their roots to a group of epic voyagers who ventured out into the unknown in one of the greatest adventures in human history.

How did the earliest Polynesians find and colonise these far-flung islands? How did a people without writing or metal tools conquer the largest ocean in the world? This conundrum, which came to be known as the Problem of Polynesian Origins, emerged in the eighteenth century as one of the great geographical mysteries of mankind.

For Christina Thompson, this mystery is personal: her Maori husband and their sons descend directly from these ancient navigators. In Sea People, Thompson explores the fascinating story of these ancestors, as well as those of the many sailors, linguists, archaeologists, folklorists, biologists and geographers who have puzzled over this history for three hundred years. A masterful mix of history, geography, anthropology, and the science of navigation, Sea People is a vivid tour of one of the most captivating regions in the world.

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An enthralling history of Britain's rock lighthouses, and the people who built and inhabited them

Lighthouses are enduring monuments to our relationship with the sea. They encapsulate a romantic vision of solitary homes amongst the waves, but their original purpose was much more noble, conceived as navigational gifts for the safety of all. Still today, we depend upon their guiding lights for the safe passage of ships. Nowhere is this truer than in the rock lighthouses of Great Britain and Ireland: twenty towers built between 1811 and 1904, so-called because they were constructed on desolate, slippery rock formations in the middle of the sea, rising, mirage-like, straight out of the waves, with lights shining at the their summits.

Seashaken Houses is a lyrical exploration of these magnificent, isolated sentinels, the ingenuity of those who conceived them, the people who risked their lives building and rebuilding them, those that inhabited their circular rooms, and the ways in which we value emblems of our history in a changing world.

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When President Habyarimana s jet was shot down in April 1994, Rwanda erupted into a hundred-day orgy of killing which left up to a million dead. Fergal Keane travelled through the country as the genocide was continuing, and his powerful analysis reveals the terrible truth behind the headlines.

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Dominic Sandbrook's magnificent account of the late 1970s in Britain

The late 1970s were Britain's years of strife and the good life. They saw inflation, riots, the peak of trade union power - and also the birth of home computers, the rise of the ready meal and the triumph of a Grantham grocer's daughter who would change everything. Dominic Sandbrook recreates this extraordinary period in all its chaos and contradiction, revealing it as a turning point in our recent history, where, in everything from families and schools to punk and Doctor Who, the future of the nation was being decided.

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Discover the stories of the brave men and women who worked, trained and fought across the UK, from Bletchley Park in southern England all the way to Arisaig in northern Scotland, in an unbelievable effort to defeat the Nazis and win the Second World War .

From the outset of the war, most of Britain felt like a mystery even to those who lived there. All road and railway signs were removed up and down the country to thwart potential enemy spies. An invisible web of cunning spread across the United Kingdom; secret laboratories were hidden in marshes, underground bases were built to conceal key strategic plans and grand country houses became secret and silent locations for eccentric boffins to do their confidential cryptography work.

In Secret Britain, Sinclair McKay maps out the UK through the hidden bases and battlegrounds of WWII. These locations are full of history and intrigue, but if you don't know where to look, you might just miss them. Journeying through secret wildernesses, suburbs, underground tunnels and manor houses, Sinclair gives a glimpse into the stories of the incredible people behind the war effort, and shows how you might be able to visit these mysterious and evocative locations yourself.

With his trademark warmth and compassion, Sinclair unearths the truths of the war that have remained under layers of secrecy since the war was won in 1945.

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Between 1941 and 1944, sixteen thousand plucky homing pigeons were dropped in an arc from Bordeaux to Copenhagen as part of 'Columba' - a secret British operation to bring back intelligence from those living under Nazi occupation. The messages flooded back written on tiny pieces of rice paper tucked into canisters and tied to the legs of the birds. Authentic voices from rural France, the Netherlands and Belgium - they were sometimes comic, often tragic and occasionally invaluable with details of German troop movements and fortifications, new Nazi weapons, radar system or the deployment of the feared V-1 and V-2 rockets that terrorized London.

Who were the people who provided this rich seam of intelligence? Many were not trained agents nor, with a few exceptions, people with any experience of spying. At the centre of this book is the 'Leopold Vindictive' network - a small group of Belgian villagers prepared to take huge risks. They were led by an extraordinary priest, Joseph Raskin - a man connected to royalty and whose intelligence was so valuable it was shown to Churchill, leading MI6 to parachute agents in to assist him.

A powerful and tragic tale of wartime espionage, the book brings together the British and Belgian sides of the Leopold Vindictive's story and reveals for the first time the wider history of a quirky, quarrelsome band of spy masters and their special wartime operations, as well as how bitter rivalries in London placed the lives of secret agents at risk. It is a book not so much about pigeons as the remarkable people living in occupied Europe who were faced with the choice of how to respond to a call for help, and took the decision to resist.

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A provocative and shocking look at how western society is misunderstanding and mistreating mental illness. Perfect for fans of Empire of Pain and Dope Sick.

In Britain alone, more than 20% of the adult population take a psychiatric drug in any one year. This is an increase of over 500% since 1980 and the numbers continue to grow. Yet, despite this prescription epidemic, levels of mental illness of all types have actually increased in number and severity.

Using a wealth of studies, interviews with experts, and detailed analysis, Dr James Davies argues that this is because we have fundamentally mischaracterised the problem. Rather than viewing most mental distress as an understandable reaction to wider societal problems, we have embraced a medical model which situates the problem solely within the sufferer and their brain.

Urgent and persuasive, Sedated systematically examines why this individualistic view of mental illness has been promoted by successive governments and big business - and why it is so misplaced and dangerous.

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Today's defining celebrities have crafted public personae that walk the tightrope between authenticity and artificiality. Ordinary people now follow suit: lovingly tending our 'personal brands' for economic gain and self-expression alike.
Instagram culture is part of a story that goes back centuries. The vision that we not only can but should 'make' our own selves to shape our own destiny is an inextricable part of the formation of the modern world.
As traditional powers of pre-modernity - church and throne - waned, a new myth took their place: that of the 'self-made man', whose unique powers of personality - or canny self-presentation - give him not just the opportunity, but the obligation, to remake reality in the image of what he wants it to be.
From the Renaissance genius to the Regency dandy, the American prophets of capitalism to the aspirational ubermensch of European fascism, Hollywood's Golden Age to today's Silicon Valley, Self-Made takes us on a dazzling tour of modern history's most prominent self-makers, uncovering both self-making's liberatory power, and the dangers this idea can unleash.

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With a sharp eye for the magnificently absurd, Rod Liddle sets light to modern-day Britain.

'I, and my generation, seem feckless and irresponsible, endlessly selfish, whining, avaricious, self-deluding, self-obsessed, spoiled and corrupt and ill.'

What is it that has transformed the British who in living memory were admired for their unassuming, stiff-upper-lipped capacity for `muddling through' into the feckless,
obese, self-deluding, avaricious and self-obsessed whingers we have become? Savagely funny and relentlessly contrary, yet with a poignant sense of all that we have lost, Rod Liddle mercilessly exposes the absurdity, cant and humbuggery of the way we live now.

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In the tradition of Dava Sobel's 'Longitude' comes sailing expert David Barrie's compelling and dramatic tale of invention and discovery - an eloquent elegy to one of the most important navigational instruments ever created, and the daring mariners who used it to explore, conquer, and map the world.

This is the dramatic story of an instrument that changed history. Built around David Barrie's own transatlantic passage using the very same navigational tools as Captain Cook, Sextant tells how one of the most vital navigational instruments was invented and used - and why the golden age of celestial navigation has now come to an end. From Cook, Bligh and Vancouver to Bougainville, La Perouse, Flinders and FitzRoy, Barrie recounts the fortunes of the explorers who risked their lives in charting the Pacific, as well as the intrepid adventures of Slocum, Shackleton and Worsley. A heady mix of history, science and adventure, this elegy to a lost technology is infused with the wonder of discovery and the sublimity of the cosmos.

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In 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton's attempt to be the first to traverse the Antarctic was cut short when his ship, Endurance, became trapped in ice.

He and his crew should have died.

Instead, through a long, dark winter, Shackleton fought back: enduring sub-zero temperatures, a perilous lifeboat journey across icy seas, and a murderous march over glaciers to seek help.

Shackleton's epic trek is one of history's most enthralling adventures. But who was he? How did previous Antarctic expeditions and his rivalry with Captain Scott forge him? And what happened afterwards to the man many believed was invincible?

In this astonishing account, Fiennes brings the story vividly to life in a book that is part celebration, part vindication and all adventure.

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Colin Thurbon s beautiful prose unfolds along the Silk Road, unearthing a richly layered past on his most ambitious journey.

On buses, donkey carts, trains, jeeps and camels, Colin Thubron traces the drifts of the first great trade route out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey. A magnificent account of an ancient world in modern ferment, Thubron covers over 7000 miles in eight months enduring a near-miss with a drunk-driver, incarceration in a Chinese cell, and undergoing root canal treatment without anaesthetic, along the way.

Vintage Voyages: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mind

Серия: Vintage Voyages

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Drowned. Buried by sand. Decimated by plague. Plunged off a cliff.

This is the forgotten history of Britain s lost cities, ghost towns and vanished villages: our shadowlands.

Historian Matthew Green travels across Britain to tell the forgotten history of our lost cities, ghost towns and vanished villages. Revealing the extraordinary stories of how these places met their fate and exploring how they have left their mark on our landscape and our imagination Shadowlands is a deeply evocative and dazzlingly original account of Britain s past.

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Shah of Shahs depicts the final years of the Shah in Iran, and is a compelling meditation on the nature of revolution and the devastating results of fear. Here, Kapuscinski describes the tyrannical monarch, who, despite his cruel oppression of the Iranian people, sees himself as the father of a nation, who can turn a backward country into a great power - a vain hope that proves a complete failure. Yet even as Iran becomes a 'behemoth of riches' and as the Shah lives like a European billionaire, its people live in a climate of fear, terrorized by the secret police. Told with intense power and feeling, Kapuscinski portrays the inevitable build-up to revolution - a cataclysmic upheaval that delivered Iran into the rule of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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When Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire received the call to serve as force commander of the UN mission to Rwanda, he thought he was heading off to Africa to help two warring parties achieve a peace both sides wanted. Instead, he and members of his small international force were caught up in a vortex of civil war and genocide. Dallaire left Rwanda a broken man; disillusioned, suicidal, and determined to tell his story.

An award-winning international sensation, Shake Hands with the Devil is a landmark contribution to the literature of war: a remarkable tale of a soldier's courage and an unforgettable portrait of modern warfare. It is also a stinging indictment of the petty bureaucrats who refused to give Dallaire the men and the operational freedom he needed to stop the killing. 'I know there is a God, ' Dallaire writes, 'because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists and therefore I know there is a God.'

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The Elizabethan age was a tumultuous time, when long-cherished certainties were crumbling and life was exhilaratingly uncertain. Shakespeare's Restless World uncovers the extraordinary stories behind twenty objects from the period to re-create an age at once distant and yet surprisingly familiar. From knife crime to belief in witches, religious battles to the horizons of the New World, Neil MacGregor brings the past to life in a fresh, unexpected portrait of a dangerous and dynamic era.

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