Best of
18th-Century

1973

The Winter Soldiers: The Battles for Trenton and Princeton


Richard M. Ketchum - 1973
    New York fell and the anguished retreat through New Jersey followed. Winter came with a vengeance, bringing what Thomas Paine called “the times that try men’s souls.”The Winter Soldiers is the story of a small band of men held together by George Washington in the face of disaster and hopelessness, desperately needing at least one victory to salvage both cause and country. It is a tale of unimaginable hardship and suffering that culminated in the battles of Trenton and Princeton. Without these triumphs, the rebellion that had begun so bravely could not have gone on.Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Richard M. Ketchum graduated from Yale Unviersity and commanded a subchaser in the South Atlantic during World War II. As director of book publishing at American Heritage Publishing Company for twenty years, he edited many of that firm’s volumes, including The American Heritage Book of the Revolution and The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War, which received a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation. Ketcham was the cofounder and editor of Blair & Ketcham’s Country Journal, a monthly magazine about rural life. He and his wife live on a sheep farm in Vermont. He is the author of two other Revolutionary War classics: Decisive Day and The Winter Soldiers.

Engravings by Hogarth


William Hogarth - 1973
    Sean Shesgreen, a foremost authority on Hogarth, has consistently selected the best states of the plates to be used in this edition and has carefully introduced them, commenting upon the artist's milieu and the importance of plot, character, time, setting, and other dimensions. A most important aspect of this book, found in no other Hogarth edition, is the positioning of the editor's commentary on each plate on a facing page. With the incredible and sometimes overwhelming amount of detail and action going on in these engravings, this is a most helpful feature.

Marlborough as Military Commander (Spellmount Classics)


David G. Chandler - 1973
    It offers a description and analysis of Marlborough's qualities; details the battle of Sedgemoor, Marlborough's first engagement in which he played a leading role; examines the Art of War in early 18th century warfare; and explores Continental campaigns such as Donauworth, Hochstadt, Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet.

The Prisons / Le Carceri


Giovanni Battista Piranesi - 1973
    Combining the influences of Tiepolo, Bibiena, and Rembrandt, these works of architectural fantasy challenge the boundaries of perception, creating a vast system of visual provocation. Innumerable staircases, immense vaults, and other ambiguous structures are compounded with projecting beams, pulleys, rickety catwalks and gangways, dangling ropes and chains, and the occasional shadowy human figure.This full reproduction in book form of The Prisons, made directly from mint copies of original prints, presents both editions of Piranesi's work, with prints on facing pages for convenient comparison. The first edition (circa 1745) ranks among the most rare and valuable print collections in existence and abounds in a multiplicity of perspectives—an innovation that predates Cubism by two centuries. For the second (1761) edition, Piranesi reworked the plates, adding elaborate details that alter some of them almost beyond recognition. It is in the second, more emotionally challenging renditions that his masterful management of light and shadow is most evident. This edition features an informative Introduction by Philip Hofer, in addition to a Preface by John Howe, a conceptual designer on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian


Richard Hough - 1973
    But the combination of the tough discipline of Bligh and the attractions of life in the South Sea Islands drove Fletcher Christian and part of the crew to mutiny, and Bligh along with those loyal to him were set adrift in the ship's launch. Their remarkable 3,600-mile, open-boat voyage to Timor is one of the great feats of navigation, while the story of the mutineers' discovery of the uninhabited island of Pitcairn and their attempt to fashion a community away from the pursuing ships of the Royal Navy is as tense as it is horrific. This drama of mutiny, courage, remarkable voyages, human deceit and treachery, first published in 1972, provides an account of this episode of maritime history.

The Bedside Book of Bastards


Dorothy M. Johnson - 1973
    As the authors say in their preface: "History records the names and misdeeds of some perfectly awful people. The list, alas, is all too long. We present some of the worst of them, some famous and some obscure."

A History of Russian Turkestan and the Central Asian Khanates from the Earliest Times


Francis Henry Skrine - 1973
    Francis Henry Skrine’s A History of Russian Turkestan and the Central Asian Khanates from the Earliest Times is a comprehensive study of the history of Russia and its interactions with their neighbors to the east, from the time of Alexander up until the 19th century. Skrine noted in the preface: “A time when Russia's movements in the East are being watched by all with such keen interest seems a fitting one for the appearance of a work dealing with her Central Asian possessions. "That eternal struggle between East and West," to quote Sir William Hunter's apt phrase, has made Russia supreme in Central Asia, as it has made England mistress of India : and thus it has come to pass that two of the greatest European Powers find themselves face to face on the Asiatic Continent. On the results of that contact depends the future of Asia.Ten years have elapsed since Lord Curzon of Kedleston published his work entitled Russia in Central Asia, and in the interval no book on this subject has appeared in English. The intervening period has been one of change— almost of transformation—in the countries so brilliantly described by the present Viceroy of India.The authors of the present work have visited independently the land of which they write, and each may claim to have had exceptional facilities for studying those questions in which they were most interested.”

The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century


Martin Price - 1973
    The authors represented in this volume include Congreve (The Way of the World), Gay (The Beggar's Opera), Dryden (Absalom and Achitophel and MacFlecknoe), Swift, Pope, Boswell, and Samuel Johnson.

Lord Hervey: Eighteenth-Century Courtier


Robert Halsband - 1973
    

A History of Jewish Costume


Alfred Rubens - 1973
    A Scholarly and thorough history of Jewish Costume throughout the centuries.