With characteristic critical fervor and sure-eyed insight, Hughes brings us the story of an artist whose life and work bridged the transition from the eighteenth-century reign of the old masters to the early days of the nineteenth-century moderns. With his salient passion for the artist and the art, Hughes brings Goya vividly to life through dazzling analysis of a vast breadth of his work. Building upon the historical evidence that exists, Hughes tracks Goya s development, as man and artist, without missing a beat, from the early works commissioned by the Church, through his long, productive, and tempestuous career at court, to the darkly sinister and cryptic work he did at the end of his life. In a work that is at once interpretive biography and cultural epic, Hughes grounds Goya firmly in the context of his time, taking us on a wild romp through Spanish history; from the brutality and easy violence of street life to the fiery terrors of the Holy Inquisition to the grave realities of war, Hughes shows us in vibrant detail the cultural forces that shaped Goya s work. Underlying the exhaustive, critical analysis and the rich historical background is Hughes s own intimately personal relationship to his subject. This is a book informed not only by lifelong love and study, but by his own recent experiences of mortality and death. As such this is a uniquely moving and human book; with the same relentless and fearless intelligence he has brought to every subject he has ever tackled, Hughes here transcends biography to bring us a rich and fiercely brave book about art and life, love and rage, impotence and death. This is one genius writing at full capacity about another and the result is truly spectacular.

    Neil Hanson — acclaimed author of The Great Fire of London — traces the origins of the conflict from the Old World to the New, delineating the Armada campaign in rousing prose. He illuminates the lives of kings and popes, spymasters and assassins, military commanders and common sailors, and the ordinary men and women caught up in this great event when the fate of nations hung in the balance. The Confident Hope of a Miracle is authentic and original history written with the pace and drama of a novel.

    When confronted by this horrific scene the normally dispassionate homicide detective Javier Falcon is inexplicably afraid. What could be so terrible?"

    Cusick tells how, just before the United States went to war against Great Britain in 1812, an ill-advised invasion of a Spanish colony became a stage on which the young republic clumsily acted out its imperial ambitions and racial fears. With the halfhearted backing of President James Madison and Secretary of State James Monroe, a party of Georgians invaded East Florida, confident that partisans there would help them swiftly wrest the colony away from Spain. The raid was a strategic and political disaster. Few sympathizers materialized, official U.S. support dissolved, and an extended guerrilla war ensued.This was the "other war of 1812," or the Patriot War. Cusick, a lively storyteller as well as a meticulous scholar, conveys the savagery of the borderlands conflict that pitted American adventurers and anti-Spanish partisans against Spanish loyalists and their allies, who included Seminole Indians and escaped slaves. At the same time, Cusick looks at the American motivations behind the invasion, including apprehensions about Florida's growing population of unregulated blacks and geopolitical intrigues involving Spain, Britain, and France.

    Profiles of over 30 village gems make up the four main sections of this book.

    In this biography, Nicholas Rankin reveals his extraordinary life.

    Stewart has rediscovered the compelling story of the strange and noble life--and dream--of a 19th-century utopian social revolutionary and self-taught engineer, who invented the world's first fully operational submarine.

    Born in 1875, Machado, along with Juan Ramon Jimenez and Miquel de Unamuno, formed the famed "generation of 1898," which ushered in a new Spanish poetics. In this series of brief poems, Machado utilizes traditional Spanish verse forms to create a wide-ranging collection."Machado, in these Sappho-like fragments, takes us down not only the road less traveled but the road not seen, where transformation and transfiguration come not from self-made millions but from changing ‘love into theology’"—Thomas Rain Crowe

    The novel follows the family of Abu Jaafar, the bookbinder, his wife, widowed daughter-in-law, her two children, and his two apprentices as they witness Christopher Columbus and his entourage in a triumphant parade featuring exotic plants and animals and human captives from the New World. Embedded in the narrative is the preparation for the marriage of Saad, one of the apprentices, and Saleema, Abu Jaafar's granddaughter -- a scenario that is elegantly revealed in a number of parallel scenes. As the new rulers of Granada confiscate books and officials burn the collected volumes, Abu Jaafur quietly moves his rich library out of town. Persecuted Muslims fight to form an independent government, but increasing economic and cultural pressures on the Arabs of Spain and Christian rulers culminate in Christian conversions and Muslim uprisings. A tale that is both vigorous and heartbreaking, this novel will appeal to general readers of Spanish and Arabic literature as well as anyone interested in Christian-Muslim relations.

    How did a playful, moody young prince, educated to sustain Franco's dicatorship, mature into the skilful, calm and brave king who defended Spain's infant democracy from siege and then nurtured it into health? It's a fascinating story, given definitively here in this gripping portrait. There are two central mysteries in the life of Juan Carlos, one personal, the other political. How to explain the apparent serenity with which he accepted that his father had surrendered him, to all intents and purposes, into the safekeeping of the Franco regime? In any normal family, this would have been considered a kind of cruelty or, at the very least, baleful negligence. But a royal family can never be normal, and the decision to send the young Juan Carlos away from Spain was governed by a certain 'superior' dynastic logic. The second mystery lies in how a prince raised in a family with the strictest authoritarian tradtiions, obliged to conform to the Francoist norms during his youth and early manhood, and educated to be a cornerstone of the plans for the reinforcement of the dictatorship, sided, when he had to, so emphatically and courageously with democratic principles. Paul Preston -- who has thrown more light onto the sometimes inspiring, often shameful, always eventful history of Spain in the twentieth century than any other living commentator -- has set out to address these mysteries and in so doing written perhaps the definitive biography of King Juan Carlos. He tackles the king's turbulent relationship with his father, his cloistered education and his resistance to it, his bravery in opposing the attempt to overthrow the infant democracy a few years after Franco's death, and his immense hard work in consolidating parliamentary democracy in Spain. The resultant biography is both rigorous and riveting, its vibrant prose doing justice to its vibrant subject. It is a book fit for a king.

    This hand-held, compact collection of hundreds of images illustrates the complete arc of his career, which can be read as a history of the entire Surrealist movement. An insightful introduction by respected art critic Robert Hughes places this enigmatic man in context with his contemporaries. Essential for any art lover, "The Portable Dali" presents an unusual value; only a full-sized catalogue raisonne would offer a broader selection of color reproductions.

    With a foreword by Jack Jones.

    These same economic pressures ought to be felt by the collectives, obliging them to co-operate in the economic life of the nation. But to accomplish this needs no central council or supreme committee, which carry the seeds of authoritarianism and are the focal points of dictatorship, as well as being nests of bureaucracy. We said that we have no need of an architect or any ordaining authority beyond the mutual agreement between localities. As soon as each and every locality (city, village, or hamlet) has placed its internal life in order, the organisation of the nation will be complete. And there is something else we might add concerning the localities. Once all its individual members are assured that their needs will be met, then the economic life of the municipality or of the federation will also be perfected. . .’This seminal anarchist text was first published in 1932 by the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union, the National Confederation of Labour (CNT), with many subsequent editions. The first English translation, by Paul Sharkey, appeared in ‘The Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review' #6 Orkney, 1982.

    England, in particular, had successfully mustered the financial resources necessary to confront its Atlantic rivals by mobilizing both aristocracy and merchant bourgeoisie in support of its imperial ambitions. Spain, meanwhile, remained overly dependent on the profits of its New World silver mines to finance both metropolitan and colonial imperatives, and England's naval superiority constantly threatened the vital flow of specie.When Charles III ascended the Spanish throne in 1759, then, after a quarter-century as ruler of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Spain and its colonial empire were seriously imperiled. Two hundred years of Hapsburg rule, followed by a half-century of ineffectual Bourbon "reforms," had done little to modernize Spain's increasingly antiquated political, social, economic, and intellectual institutions. Charles III, recognizing the pressing need to renovate these institutions, set his Italian staff—notably the Marqués de Esquilache, who became Secretary of the Consejo de Hacienda (the Exchequer)—to this formidable task.In Apogee of Empire, Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein trace the attempt, initially under Esquilache's direction, to reform the Spanish establishment and, later, to modify and modernize the relationship between the metropole and its colonies. Within Spain, Charles and his architects of reform had to be mindful of determining what adjustments could be made that would help Spain confront its enemies without also radically altering the Hapsburg inheritance. As described in impressive detail by the authors, the bitter, seven-year conflict that ensued between reformers and traditionalists ended in a coup in 1766 that forced Charles to send Esquilache back to Italy. After this setback at home, Charles still hoped to effect constructive change in Spain's imperial system, primarily through the incremental implementation of a policy of comercio libre (free-trade). These reforms, made half-heartedly at best, failed as well, and by 1789 Spain would find itself ill prepared for the coming decades of upheaval in Europe and America.An in-depth study of incremental response by an old imperial order to challenges at home and abroad, Apogee of Empire is also a sweeping account of the personalities, places, and policies that helped to shape the modern Atlantic world.

    In the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, the cloister was a refuge for women with intellectual aspirations. A few of these women produced biographies of founding sisters, histories of their orders and even poetry and theatre. Most of these writings were never published and only now, at the beginning of the 21st century, are researchers beginning to unearth and transcribe them. placing early modern Spanish women's writing within the broader context of Europe of the time. The remaining text is in Spanish, and for each of the selections Mujica offers an introduction with biographical and critical information.

    Their unsolicited arrival began one of the most bizarre episodes in British history, as the Protestant heir to the Stuart throne struggled to win the Spanish Infanta as his bride. The prince's visit marked the end of a decade of high-level negotiation to secure a marriage between the leading Protestant and Catholic royal families and heal Europe's century-old division into warring Christian camps. The effort was a diplomatic disaster. It split political and religious opinion in Britain, alienated much of Italy and Germany, confused the Spaniards (who thought that the English crown was about to convert), and failed to secure a marriage or to resolve the Thirty Years' War. Drawing on archival material from five countries, Glyn Redworth provides the definitive explanation of this pivotal moment and tells a fascinating story of early modern politicking, cultural misunderstanding, and religious confusion."The most convincing account we have. It throws floods of light on the internal and international politics of the early 1620s."-John Morrill, University of Cambridge Author Biography: Glyn Redworth teaches history at the University of Manchester and at the Centro de Estudios Historicos, Madrid.

    Sometimes, though, it has to be done. With this book, I am after the truth. In the beginning I could not share it with anyone. It was an uncomfortable truth. It was a very dangerous truth.