Merivel slips easily into a life of luxury and idleness, enthusiastically enjoying the women and wine of the vibrant Restoration age. But when he’s called on to serve the king in an unusual role, he transgresses the one law that he is forbidden to break and is brutally cast out from his newfound paradise. Thus begins Merivel’s journey to self-knowledge, which will take him down into the lowest depths of seventeenth-century society.

    Covering the lives of more than sixty singers from the end of the sixteenth century to the nineteenth, he blends history and anecdote as he examines their social origins and backgrounds, their training and debuts, their brilliant careers their relationship with society and the Church, and their decline and death.The castrati became a legend that still fascinates us today. Thousands flocked to hear and see these singing hybrids - part man, part woman, part child - who portrayed virile heroes on the operatic stage, their soprano or contralto voices weirdly at variance with their clothes and bearing. The sole surviving scratchy recording tells us little of the extraordinary effect of those voices on their audiences - thrilling, unlike any sound produced by the normal human voice.Illustrated with photographs and engravings, the book ranges from the glories of patronage and adulation to the darker side of a fashion that exploited the sons of poor families, denied them their manhood and left them, when they were old, to decline into poverty and loneliness. It is a story that will intrigue opera-lovers and general readers alike, superbly told by a writer who has researched his subject with the thoroughness of a true enthusiast.

    At the height of his career, he often performed in six different plays on six consecutive days. He stopped reinventing himself when he died on April 23, 1616, but, as Gary Taylor tells us in this bold, provocative, irreverent history of Shakespeare's reputation through the ages, we have been reinventing him ever since. Taylor, who sparked a worldwide controversy in 1985 by announcing his discovery of a new Shakespeare poem Shall I die?, presents a brilliantly argued, wryly humorous discussion of the ways in which society reinvents Shakespeare--and to some extent all great literature--to suit its own ends. He reveals how Shakespeare's reputation has benefited from such diverse and unpredictable factors as the dearth of new plays after the Restoration; the decline of tragedy in the eighteenth century, when, as Taylor puts it, Shakespeare was kept on the menu because he was the only serious dish [the repertoire companies] knew how to cook; the changing social status of women in the nineteenth century; England's longstanding rivalry with France, which turned Shakespeare into the great advocate of conservative British values; and the current trend in academia toward shockingly unorthodox views, which has turned Shakespeare into the great ally of radical Marxist and feminist critics. Through the centuries, critics have cited the same Shakespeare--often the very same play--as the supporter of a vast array of world views. Examining each period's method of invoking the Bard's greatness to support a series of conflicting values, Taylor questions what actually constitutes greatness. He insists on examining the criteria of each epoch on its own terms in order to demonstrate how literary criticism can often become the most telling form of social commentary. Reinventing Shakespeare offers nothing less than a major reevaluation of Shakespeare, his writing, his place in world history, and the very bases of aesthetic judgment.

    Uniquely comprehensive, The American Intellectual Tradition includes classic works in philosophy, religion, social theory, political thought, economics, psychology, and cultural and literary criticism. Organized chronologically into thematic sections, the two volumes trace the evolution of intellectual writing and thinking from its origins in Puritan beliefs to the most recent essays on diversity and postmodernity. Pedagogical features include introductions and headnotes to the selections, updated bibliographic material throughout, and detailed chronologies at the end of each book. Addressing such highly contested subjects as race, class, gender, aesthetics, political religion, and the role of the United States in the world, The American Intellectual Tradition, Fifth Edition, is invaluable for undergraduate courses in intellectual history. It is also an excellent supplement for graduate seminars and classes in American history, American studies, and American literature. Volumes I and II now offer new selections from Roger Williams, John Humphrey Noyes, Asa Gray, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Charles Augustus Briggs, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Walter Lippmann, Thurman Arnold, Henry Luce, Henry A. Wallace, Albert Einstein, Aldo Leopold, James Baldwin, George Kennan, Milton Friedman, Herbert Marcuse, Edward Said, Gloria Anzaldua, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Joan W. Scott, Samuel Huntington, and Carl Sagan.

    Many books have been written about the battles of that period, but few tell how the soldiers actually fought those battles using the weapons at hand. This book does. Painstakingly researched, and using actual battles for illustration, it tells the reader the "how" and "why" about the tactics used by infantry, cavalry and artillery. Well written, it provides a valuable resource to historians and history lovers of that long ago age.

    . .At court, dressed in silks and ribbons, he openly favored his male lovers . . .Despised but feared by his brother, he was the perpetual loser in a lifelong sibling rivalry . . .Philippe, brother of Louis XIV, might have been a prince of great renown in the service of the king--had the king only shown him his faith and trust. . . . This is an excellent book. I congratulate the author on a work that is objective and of high quality. Henry, Count of Paris

    It depicts the dramatic tale of the seventeenth-century newcomers to our shores as they were drawn and pushed to make their way in an unsettled and unsettling world.

    It explores a series of distinct worlds: Delft's Small-Cattle Market, where Vermeer's paternal family settled early in the century; the milieu of shady businessmen in Amsterdam that recruited Vermeer's grandfather to counterfeit coins; the artists, military contractors, and Protestant burghers who frequented the inn of Vermeer's father in Delft's Great Market Square; and the quiet, distinguished Papists Corner in which Vermeer, after marrying into a high-born Catholic family, retired to practice his art, while retaining ties with wealthy Protestant patrons. The relationship of Vermeer to his principal patron is one of many original discoveries in the book.