Best of
18th-Century

2008

With Zeal and with Bayonets Only: The British Army on Campaign in North America, 1775-1783


Matthew H. Spring - 2008
    Now Matthew H. Spring reveals how British infantry in the American Revolutionary War really fought. This groundbreaking book offers a new analysis of the British Army during the American rebellion at both operational and tactical levels. Presenting fresh insights into the speed of British tactical movements, Spring discloses how the system for training the army prior to 1775 was overhauled and adapted to the peculiar conditions confronting it in North America. First scrutinizing such operational problems as logistics, manpower shortages, and poor intelligence, Spring then focuses on battlefield tactics to examine how troops marched to the battlefield, deployed, advanced, and fought. In particular, he documents the use of turning movements, the loosening of formations, and a reliance on bayonet-oriented shock tactics, and he also highlights the army's ability to tailor its tactical methods to local conditions. Written with flair and a wealth of details that will engage scholars and history enthusiasts alike, With Zeal and with Bayonets Only offers a thorough reinterpretation of how the British Army's North American campaign progressed and invites serious reassessment of most of its battles.

The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England


John Styles - 2008
    The material lives of ordinary English men and women were transformed in the years following the restoration of Charles II in 1660. Tea and sugar, the fruits of British mercantile and colonial expansion, altered their diets. Pendulum clocks and Staffordshire pottery, the products of British manufacturing ingenuity, enriched their homes. But it was in their clothing that ordinary people enjoyed the greatest change in their material lives. This book retrieves the unknown story of ordinary consumers in eighteenth-century England and provides a wealth of information about what they wore.John Styles reveals that ownership of new fabrics and new fashions was not confined to the rich but extended far down the social scale to the small farmers, day laborers, and petty tradespeople who formed a majority of the population. The author focuses on the clothes ordinary people wore, the ways they acquired them, and the meanings they attached to them, shedding new light on all types of attire and the occasions on which they were worn.

Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought


Joshua A. Berman - 2008
    He proposes that the Pentateuch can be read as the earliest prescription on record for the establishment of an egalitarian polity. What emerges is the blueprint for a society that would stand in stark contrast to the surrounding cultures of the ancient Near East -- Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ugarit, and the Hittite Empire - in which the hierarchical structure of the polity was centered on the figure of the king and his retinue. Berman shows that an egalitarian ideal is articulated in comprehensive fashion in the Pentateuch and is expressed in its theology, politics, economics, use of technologies of communication, and in its narrative literature. Throughout, he invokes parallels from the modern period as heuristic devices to illuminate ancient developments. Thus, for example, the constitutional principles in the Book of Deuteronomy are examined in the light of those espoused by Montesquieu, and the rise of the novel in 18th-century England serves to illuminate the advent of new modes of storytelling in biblical narrative.

Imagining Head-Smashed-In: Aboriginal Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains


Jack W. Brink - 2008
    Archaeologist Jack Brink has written a major study of the mass buffalo hunts and the culture they supported before and after European contact. By way of example, he draws on his 25 years excavating at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in southwestern Alberta, Canada – a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

George Washington's Secret Navy: How the American Revolution Went to Sea


James L. Nelson - 2008
    Mining previously overlooked sources, James L. Nelson's swiftly moving narrative shows that George Washington deliberately withheld knowledge of his tiny navy from the Continental Congress for more than two critical months, and that he did so precisely because he knew Congress would not approve.Mr. Nelson has taken an episode that occupies no more than a few paragraphs in other histories of the Revolution and, with convincing research and vivid narrative style, turned it into an important, marvelously readable book.--Thomas Fleming, author of The Perils of Peace: America's Struggle to Survive after YorktownA gripping and fascinating book about the daring and heroic mariners who helped George Washington change the course of history and create a nation. Nelson wonderfully brings to life a largely forgotten but critically important piece of America's past.--Eric Jay Dolin, author of Leviathan: The History of Whaling in AmericaThe political machinations are as exciting as the blood-stirring ship actions in this meticulously researched story of the shadowy beginnings of American might on the seas.--John Druett, author of Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World

Fighting at Sea in the Eighteenth Century: The Art of Sailing Warfare


Sam Willis - 2008
    In this book the author presents new evidence from contemporary sources that overturns many old assumptions and introduces a host of new ideas. In a series of thematic chapters, following the rough chronology of a sea fight from initial contact to damage repair, the author offers a dramatic interpretation of fighting at sea in the eighteenth century, and explains in greater depth than ever before how and why sea battles (including Trafalgar) were won and lost in the great Age of Sail. He explains in detail how two ships or fleets identified each other to be enemies; how and why they manoeuvred for battle; how a commander communicated his ideas, and how and why his subordinates acted in the way that they did. SAM WILLIS has lectured at Bristol University and at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. He is also the author of Fighting Ships, 1750-1850(Quercus).

Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective


Craig S. WomackCheryl Suzack - 2008
    Cheryl Suzack situates feminist theories within Native culture with an eye to applying them to subjugated groups across Indian Country; Christopher B. Teuton organizes Native literary criticism into three modes based on community awareness; Sean Teuton opens up new sites for literary performance inside prisons with Native inmates; Robert Warrior wants literary analysis to consider the challenges of eroticism; Craig S. Womack introduces the book by historicizing book-length Native-authored criticism published between 1986 and 1997, and he concludes the volume with an essay on theorizing experience.Reasoning Together proposes nothing less than a paradigm shift in American Indian literary criticism, closing the gap between theory and activism by situating Native literature in real-life experiences and tribal histories. It is an accessible collection that will suit a wide range of courses—and will educate and energize anyone engaged in criticism of Native literature.

Magnificence of the Tsars: Ceremonial Men's Dress of the Russian Imperial Court, 1721-1917


Svetlana Amelekhina - 2008
    The luxurious, opulent lifestyles enjoyed by the Russian tsars, their families, and courts were among the world’s most extravagant for nearly two centuries, continue to be a source of endless fascination today. In this exquisitely illustrated collection, the grandeur of Imperial Russia is displayed in full. Starting in the 1730s with exquisitely embroidered coats and elaborately patterned silks from the wardrobe of Tsar Peter II these resplendent garments document a unique dialogue between military uniform, court dress, European fashion, and traditional Russian dress.

The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450-2000


Yuval Noah Harari - 2008
    In the period 1750-1850 war became much more than a test: it became a secular revelation. This new understanding of war as revelation completely transformed Western war culture, revolutionizing politics, the personal experience of war, the status of common soldiers, and the tenets of military theory.

Mistress of the Revolution


Catherine Delors - 2008
    A time of decadence in a country embroiled in revolution. An unforgettably high-spirited heroine. Set in opulent, decadent, turbulent revolutionary France, Mistress of the Revolution is the story of Gabrielle de Montserrat. An impoverished noblewoman blessed with fiery red hair and a mischievous demeanor, Gabrielle is only fifteen when she meets her true love, a commoner named Pierre-André Coffinhal. But her brother forbids their union, choosing for her instead an aging, wealthy baron. Widowed and a mother while still a teen, Gabrielle arrives at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in time to be swept up in the emerging cataclysm. As a new order rises, Gabrielle finds her own lovely neck on the chopping block—and who should be selected to sit on the Revolutionary Tribunal but her first love, Pierre-André. . . . Replete with historical detail, complex and realistic characters (several of whom actually existed), and a heroine who demands—and rewards—attention, Mistress of the Revolution is an unforgettable debut. A stunning new talent in historical fiction makes her debut with a novel perfect for readers of In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant

The Royal Palaces of London


David Souden - 2008
    'The Royal Palaces of London' brings together the stories of these buildings and the characters, events and art that have filled their grand spaces and intimate corners from the Norman Conquest to modern times.

Building St Paul's


James W.P. Campbell - 2008
    'Building St Paul's' tells the story of this remarkable building and of those responsible for its construction, from the time of the disastrous Great Fire to the cathedral's final completion in 1708.

Dorset Murders (True Crime History)


Nicola Sly - 2008
    These include arguments between lovers with fatal consequences, family murders, child murders and mortal altercations at Dorset's notorious Portland Prison. The entire country thrilled to the scandalous cases of Alma Rattenbury and Charlotte Bryant who, in the 1930s, found living with their husbands so difficult that both found a terminal solution to the problem. In 1856, Elizabeth Browne rid herself of a husband and, in doing so, became the inspiriation for Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. The mystery of the Coverdale Kennels at Tarrant Keynston, where not one, but two kennel managers died in suspicious circumstances, remains unsolved to this day. And it was in Bournemouth that Neville Heath committed the second of his two murders, which led to his arrest and eventual execution in 1946. Illustrated with fifty intriguing illustrations, Dorset Murders will appeal to anyone interested in the shady side of the county's history.

Somerset Murders


Nicola Sly - 2008
    They include the cases of Elizabeth and Betty Branch, a mother and daughter who beat a young servant girl to death in Hemington in 1740; 13-year-old Betty Trump, whose throat was cut while walking home at Buckland St Mary in 1823; factory worker Joan Turner, battered to death in Chard in 1829; George Watkins, killed in a bare knuckle fight outside the Running Horse pub in Yeovil in 1843; Mary Fisher, stabbed to death by her husband in Weston-super-Mare in 1844; and elderly landlady, Mrs Emily Bowers, strangled in bed in Middlezoy in 1947. This carefully researched, well-illustrated and enthralling text will appeal to anyone interested in the shady side of Somerset's history.

The Whiskey Rebels


David Liss - 2008
    Now Liss delivers his best novel yet in an entirely new setting–America in the years after the Revolution, an unstable nation where desperate schemers vie for wealth, power, and a chance to shape a country’s destiny.Ethan Saunders, once among General Washington’s most valued spies, now lives in disgrace, haunting the taverns of Philadelphia. An accusation of treason has long since cost him his reputation and his beloved fiancée, Cynthia Pearson, but at his most desperate moment he is recruited for an unlikely task–finding Cynthia’s missing husband. To help her, Saunders must serve his old enemy, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, who is engaged in a bitter power struggle with political rival Thomas Jefferson over the fragile young nation’s first real financial institution: the Bank of the United States.Meanwhile, Joan Maycott is a young woman married to another Revolutionary War veteran. With the new states unable to support their ex-soldiers, the Maycotts make a desperate gamble: trade the chance of future payment for the hope of a better life on the western Pennsylvania frontier. There, amid hardship and deprivation, they find unlikely friendship and a chance for prosperity with a new method of distilling whiskey. But on an isolated frontier, whiskey is more than a drink; it is currency and power, and the Maycotts’ success attracts the brutal attention of men in Hamilton’s orbit, men who threaten to destroy all Joan holds dear.As their causes intertwine, Joan and Saunders–both patriots in their own way–find themselves on opposing sides of a daring scheme that will forever change their lives and their new country. The Whiskey Rebels is a superb rendering of a perilous age and a nation nearly torn apart–and David Liss’s most powerful novel yet.

For the Royal Table: Dining at the Palace


Kathryn Jones - 2008
    An illustrated behind-the-scenes look at 350 years of royal banquets, from Charles II to the present day.

Nor the Battle to the Strong: A Novel of the American Revolution in the South


Charles F. Price - 2008
    Major General Nathanael Greene, commander of the Southern Continental Army and Private James Johnson, Scottish immigrant and runaway servant.

War Horse: A History of the Military Horse and Rider


Louis A. DiMarco - 2008
    Armed with weapons and accessories ranging from a simple javelin to the hand-held laser designator, the horse and rider have fought from the steppes of central Asia to the plains of North America. Understanding the employment of the military horse is key to understanding the successes and the limitations of military operations and campaigns throughout history. Over the centuries, horses have been used to pull chariots, support armor-laden knights, move scouts rapidly over harsh terrain, and carry waves of tightly formed cavalry. In War Horse: A History of the Military Horse and Rider, Louis A. DiMarco discusses all of the uses of horses in battle, including the Greek, Persian, and Roman cavalry, the medieval knight and his mount, the horse warriors—Huns, Mongols, Arabs, and Cossacks—the mounted formations of Frederick the Great and Napoleon, and mounted unconventional fighters, such as American Indians, the Boers, and partisans during World War II. The book also covers the weapons and forces which were developed to oppose horsemen, including longbowmen, pike armies, cannon, muskets, and machine guns. The development of organizations and tactics are addressed beginning with those of the chariot armies and traced through the evolution of cavalry formations from Alexander the Great to the Red Army of World War II.In addition, the author examines the training and equipping of the rider and details the types of horses used as military mounts at different points in history, the breeding systems that produced those horses, and the techniques used to train and control them. Finally, the book reviews the importance of the horse and rider to battle and military operations throughout history, and concludes with a survey of the current military use of horses. War Horse is a comprehensive look at this oldest and most important aspect of military history, the relationship between human and animal, a weapons system that has been central to warfare longer than any other.

The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova, Vol 5 of 6: In London and Moscow


Giacomo Casanova - 2008
    His main book Histoire de Ma Vie (History of My Life), part autobiography and part memoir, is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century. So famous a womanizer was the Italian-born libertine Giacomo Casanova that, a full two centuries after his death, his name remains synonymous with the art of seduction. But for the years he spent in the employ of Count Waldstein of Bohemia as a librarian, Casanova, "the world's greatest lover" - at one-time the company of European royalty, popes and cardinals, and man known to the likes of Voltaire, Goethe and Mozart - would have been consigned to obscurity. He began to think about writing his memoirs around 1780 and began in earnest by 1789, as "the only remedy to keep from going mad or dying of grief." The first draft was completed by July 1792, and he spent the next six years revising it.

Excursions in Identity: Travel and the Intersection of Place, Gender, and Status in Edo Japan


Laura Nenzi - 2008
    The wayfarers of the time, however, discovered that travel provided the opportunity to escape from the confines of the everyday. Cultured travelers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wrote travel memoirs to celebrate their profession as belle-lettrists. For women in particular the open road and the blank page of the diary offered a precious opportunity to create personal hierarchies defined less by gender and more by culture and refinement. After the mid-eighteenth century--which saw the popularization of culture and the rise of commercial printing--textbooks, guides, comical fiction, and woodblock prints allowed not a few commoners to acquaint themselves with the historical, lyrical, or artistic pedigree of Japan's famous sites. By identifying themselves with famous literary and historical icons of the past, some among these erudite commoners saw an opportunity to rewrite their lives and re-create their identities in the pages of their travel diaries.The chapters in Part One, "Re-creating Spaces," introduce the notion that the spaces of travel were malleable, accommodating reconceptualization across interpretive frames. Laura Nenzi shows that, far from being static backgrounds, these travelscapes proliferated in a myriad of loci where one person's center was another's periphery. In Part Two, "Re-creating Identities," we see how, in the course of the Edo period, educated persons used travel to, or through, revered lyrical sites to assert and enhance their roles and identities. Finally, in Part Three, "Purchasing Re-creation," Nenzi looks at the intersection between recreational travel and the rising commercial economy, which allowed visitors to appropriate landscapes through new means: monetary transactions, acquisition of tangible icons, or other forms of physical interaction.

Whitehall Palace: The Official Illustrated History


Simon Thurley - 2008
    As such, it holds a key place in the architectural, political, and social history of England. This book is the first to discuss the architecture and archaeology of this Influential building.Simon Thurley traces the development of the palace from its origins, using previously unpublished archaeological evidence to establish that York Place, as it was then called, was already one of the largest and most important residences in London before it became a royal palace. Thurley reconstructs the various phases of the palace's development, showing how successive kings and queens altered the vast mass of Whitehall to meet their individual needs. He also charts the plans of monarchs to replace the Tudor building with one that might have rivaled the great baroque palaces of Europe, and he reveals the reasons they failed to achieve this. Throughout, the book is illustrated with specially commissioned plans and diagrams of Whitehall as well as unique photographs taken while the palace was being excavated in the 1930s.

Calvinistic Methodist Fathers of Wales: 2 Volume Set


John Morgan Jones - 2008
    

The Complete State of the Union Addresses of James Madison


James Madison - 2008
    Considered to be the "Father of the Constitution," he was the principal author of the document. In 1788, he wrote over a third of the Federalist Papers, still the most influential commentary on the Constitution. As a leader in the first Congresses, he drafted many basic laws and was responsible for the first ten amendments to the Constitution (said to be based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights), and thus is also known as the "Father of the Bill of Rights." As a political theorist, Madison's most distinctive belief was that the new republic needed checks and balances to limit the powers of special interests, which Madison called factions. He believed very strongly that the new nation should fight against aristocracy and corruption and was deeply committed to creating mechanisms that would ensure republicanism in the United States.

Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo, and the Culture of Early Modern Japan


Constantine Nomikos Vaporis - 2008
    This text renders alternate attendance as a lived experience, for not only the daimyo but also the samurai retainers who accompanied them.

The Revolutionary War Begins: Would You Join the Fight?


Elaine Landau - 2008
    Colonial minutemen were waiting for them. Although the Revolutionary War lasted for several years, the first shots fired at Lexington and Concord began the American colonists' fight for independence. Author Elaine Landau invites readers to make the important decisions during the colonies first battles against the British.

Versailles: A Biography of a Palace


Tony Spawforth - 2008
    The palace itself has been radically altered since 1789, and the court was long ago swept away. Versailles sets out to rediscover what is now a vanished world: a great center of power, seat of royal government, and, for thousands, a home both grand and squalid, bound by social codes almost incomprehensible to us today.Using eyewitness testimony as well as the latest historical research, Spawforth offers the first full account of Versailles in English in over thirty years. Blowing away the myths of Versailles, he analyses afresh the politics behind the Sun King’s construction of the palace and shows how Versailles worked as the seat of a royal court. He probes the conventional picture of a “perpetual house party” of courtiers and gives full weight to the darker side: not just the mounting discomfort of the aging buildings but also the intrigue and status anxiety of its aristocrats. The book brings out clearly the fateful consequences for the French monarchy of its relocation to Versailles and also examines the changing place of Versailles in France’s national identity since 1789. Many books have told the stories of the royals and artists living in Versailles, but this is the first to turn its focus on the palace itself---from architecture and politics to scandal and restoration.

Dilettanti: The Antic and the Antique in Eighteenth-Century England


Bruce Redford - 2008
    He dissects the British connoisseurs whose expeditions, collections, and publications laid the groundwork for the Neoclassical revival and for the scholarly study of Graeco-Roman antiquity.After the foundation of the society in 1732, portraits of the Dilettanti were painted by George Knapton, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Sir Thomas Lawrence. These include a striking group of mock-classical and mock-religious portraits, which Redford deconstructs deliciously.The society’s support of expeditions to the Levant yielded pioneering architectural and archaeological folios, from The Antiquities of Athens (1762) to Specimens of Ancient Sculpture (1809). These monumental volumes aspired to empirical exactitude in text and image alike. As Redford shows, they combine the didactic (detailed investigations into technique, condition, restoration, and provenance) with the connoisseurial (plates that bring the illustration of ancient sculpture to new artistic heights).

Chinese Dress: From the Qing Dynasty to the Present


Valery M. Garrett - 2008
    Chapters include:Dress of the Qing Manchu Rulers 1644-1911Dress of the Manchu Consorts 1644-1911Attire of Mandarins and MerchantsAttire of Chinese WomenRepublican Dress 1912-1949Clothing of the Lower ClassesClothing for ChildrenDress in New China 1950-2006From Imperial robes to foot binding to the cheongsam, Chinese Dress spotlights traditional Chinese dress against a background of historical, cultural and social change, opening a fascinating window for anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of China, Chinese culture and Chinese fashion history.

Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship


Barry Clifford - 2008
    One of the most advanced sailing ships of the early 18th-century when she first set sail from London in late 1716, this vessel brought adventure, wealth, and doom to all who sailed on her. The Whydah was christened after the West African trading post of Ouidah. Commissioned as a slave ship, the Whydah was built with a deep cargo hold to pack in her human cargo, African captives bound for sale to Caribbean planters. The Whydah would make only one such voyage, before being captured by pirates off the Bahamas in February 1717. She fell into the hands of captain Sam Bellamy who soon replaced the English flag with the Jolly Roger. Fate had still more in store for the Whydah. During one of the worst nor’easters ever recorded, she sank off Cape Cod on April 26, 1717. Packed with plunder, she was lashed to pieces by the storm and sank rapidly. There were few survivors. The sea swallowed the Whydah along with her treasure, yet the fascinating saga of this storied ship was far from over. Centuries later, underwater explorer Barry Clifford, raised on legends of the sea around Cape Cod, set out to find the wreck. His quest literally led him into the history books, and he located the first authenticated pirate ship ever in 1984. Illustrated with dramatic color artwork by Greg Manchess, and awash with Ken Garrett’s dazzling photographs of the artifacts raised by Barry Clifford, this book captures the golden age of piracy in all its glory. Real Pirates will delight rambunctious pirates-at-heart and armchair treasure hunters alike. Thanks to Barry Clifford, the multifaceted story of the ship that lay hidden in a watery grave for more than 250 years can now be told. Driven by a lively narrative and illustrated with such stunning photography, this book is pure gold.

French Style and Decoration: A Sourcebook of Original Designs


Stafford Cliff - 2008
    Drawing upon an impressive array of original sources, this illustrated book offers a panoply of sketches, engravings and printed patterns, representing French interior design and decoration from the Baroque, Racoco, Louis Seize and Empire periods through the 19th century to art nouveau, art deco and modernism.

Witchcraft and Demonology in South-West England, 1640-1789


Jonathan Barry - 2008
    Using south-western England as a focus for considering the continued place of witchcraft and demonology in provincial culture in the period between the English and French revolutions, Barry shows how witch-beliefs were intricately woven into the fabric of daily life, even at a time when they arguably ceased to be of interest to the educated.

Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution: The Culture of Calumny and the Problem of Free Speech


Charles Walton - 2008
    Censorship was abolished, and France appeared to be on a path towards tolerance, pluralism, and civil liberties. A mere four years later, the country descended into a period of political terror, as thousands were arrested, tried, and executed for crimes of expression and opinion.In Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution, Charles Walton traces the origins of this reversal back to the Old Regime. He shows that while early advocates of press freedom sought to abolish pre-publication censorship, the majority still firmly believed injurious speech--or calumny--constituted a crime, even treason if it undermined the honor of sovereign authority or sacred collective values, such as religion and civic spirit.With the collapse of institutions responsible for regulating honor and morality in 1789, calumny proliferated, as did obsessions with it. Drawing on wide-ranging sources, from National Assembly debates to local police archives, Walton shows how struggles to set legal and moral limits on free speech led to the radicalization of politics, and eventually to the brutal liquidation of calumniators and fanatical efforts to rebuild society's moral foundation during the Terror of 1793-1794.With its emphasis on how revolutionaries drew upon cultural and political legacies of the Old Regime, this study sheds new light on the origins of the Terror and the French Revolution, as well as the history of free expression.