Under their sultan, Solyman the Magnificent, the Turks had conquered most of Eastern Europe. The rulers of Christian Europe were at their wits' end to stem the tide of disaster. The Knights of St John, the fighting religious order drawn from most of the nations of Christendom had been driven from their island fortress of Rhodes 40 years earlier. From their new base of Malta their galleys had been so successful in their raids on Turkish shipping that the Sultan realised that only they stood between him and total mastery of the Mediterranean. He determined to obliterartethe Knights of Malta.

    His course on the history of civilization was extraordinary in its scope and in its impact on students.Like the course, The Evolution of Civilizations is a comprehensive and perceptive look at the factors behind the rise and fall of civilizations. Quigley examines the application of scientific method to the social sciences, then establishes his historical hypotheses. He poses a division of culture into six levels from the abstract to the more concrete. He then tests those hypotheses by a detailed analysis of five major civilizations: the Mesopotamian, the Canaanite, the Minoan, the classical, and the Western.Quigley defines a civilization as “a producing society with an instrument of expansion.” A civilization’s decline is not inevitable but occurs when its instrument of expansion is transformed into an institution—that is, when social arrangements that meet real social needs are transformed into social institutions serving their own purposes regardless of real social needs.

    Since its first publication, Hugh Thomas's The Spanish Civil War has become established as the definitive one-volume history of a conflict that continues to provoke intense controversy today.What was it that roused left-wing sympathizers from all over the world to fight against Franco between 1936 and 1939? Why did the British and US governments refuse to intervene? And why did the Republican cause collapse so violently? Now revised and updated, Hugh Thomas's classic account presents the most objective and unbiased analysis of a passionate struggle where fascism and democracy, communism and Catholicism were at stake - and which was as much an international war as a Spanish one.

    Originally called the "Black Hat Brigade" because soldiers wore the army's regular dress black hat instead of the more typical blue cap, the Iron Brigade was the only all-Western brigade in the Eastern armies of the Union. The brigade was initially made up of the 2nd, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin and the 19th Indiana Volunteers; later it was reinforced by the 24th Michigan Volunteers. Battery B of the 4th U.S. Artillery, consisting in large part of infantry detached from the brigade, was closely associated with it. It was at Brawner Farm in Northern Virginia, on August 28, 1862 that the brigade saw its first significant action. From that time forward - at Second Bull Run, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg - the Western soldiers earned and justified the proud name Iron Brigade. And when the war was over, the records showed that it led all Federal brigades in percentage of deaths in battle. The North might well have lost the battle of Gettysburg if not for the Iron Brigade's famous stand. Nolan also includes in his account observations on some of the major figures of the War - such as Abraham Lincoln and Generals Grant, McClellan, Hancock, and Doubleday - as they were viewed by members of the Iron Brigade. Read this book and you will understand what one officer meant when he wrote: .".. the great Western or Iron Brigade... looking like giants with their tall black hats... and giants they were, in action."

    Peter Freuchen's Famous Book of the Eskimos [Mass Market Paperback] Peter Freuchen (Author)

    Shirer was a correspondent for six years in Nazi Germany-and had a front-row seat for Hitler's rise to power. His most definitive work on the subject, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, is a riveting account defined by first-person experience interviewing Hitler, watching his impassioned speeches, and living in a country transformed by war and dictatorship.William Shirer was originally commissioned to write The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler for a young adult audience. This account loses none of the immediacy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich-capturing Hitler's rise from obscurity, the horror of Nazi Germany's mass killings, and the paranoia and insanity that marked Hitler's downfall. This book is by no means simplified-and is sure to appeal to adults as well as young people with an interest in World War II history.

    Bend your energies towards making friends of key-men in all classes of voters."Party Politics in the Age of Caesar is a shrewd commentary on this text, designed to clarify the true meaning in Roman political life of such terms as "party" and "faction." Taylor brilliantly explains the mechanics of Roman politics as she discusses the relations of nobles and their clients, the manipulation of the state religion for political expedience, and the practical means of delivering the vote.

    With a richness of detail and sweeping breadth of historical examples, he chronicles and analyzes the history of the opposite ideological extremes of Fascism and Marxism and their descent into totalitarianism via secular religiosity. Aron also examines French imperialism through the examples of Algeria and Indochina, as well as America's role as an "imperial republic" during and after World War II. Aron was never orthodox in his ideology; neither his republican political penchants nor his dialectical intellectual orientation ever gained the upper hand over his devotion to empirical reality. The result here is an intellectual history that seems less concerned about where it falls on the political spectrum than about getting it right.

    Scientists from England, France, Germany, Italy, and Denmark made their contributions as time passed; among them Ernest Rutherford, who shot off a new kind of "gun" and shattered the atom under the gun's heavy bombardment; the Curies; the chemists Hahn and Strassman who split the uranium atom into two almost equal parts; Lise Meitner-exiled from Hitler's Germany-who recognized this "division into two" as one of the most revolutionary discoveries of all time; Enrico Fermi and his fellow scientists in Rome; and Niels Bohr and Alber Einstein.The high spot came on a December day in 1942 when Enrico Fermi stood on a squash court in Chicago and directed a unique experiment that formally opened the era of controlled release of nuclear energy. That experiment led to the making of the first atomic bomb.But the story of atomic energy did not end there, with the making of deadly weapons. Soon after World War II a scientific brotherhood arose which spanned both hemispheres. Its purpose is to harness the power of the atom for peace. Industry, medicine, and many fields of research have already benefited. Mrs. Fermi, widow of the renowned physicist, shows clearly that the age of the "peaceful" atom is at last well under way.

    She was the sister of beloved New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Gemma and her Hungarian Jewish husband were living in Budapest in 1944 when Nazi troops stormed the city. The Gestapo arrested her as a political prisoner because she was La Guardia's sister. Gluck recounts the plight of Budapest's Jews, deportation to Mutthausen with her husband, and enslavement at Ravensbrück, a notorious concentration camp for women. With painful sensitivity she chronicles unspeakable evil, kindness at great risk, and courage among women in a prefeminist world. She also recalls her girlhood years spent in the Old West, Native Americans befriended by her mother, international travel with her father, and her brother's ambitions and rise to success. Her story, first published in 1961, has been out of print for decades. This revised edition contains a new prologue, epilogue, photos, and annotated material inspired by recently discovered notes and letters.

    Using the Central American Archives, the author traces all of the known attempts at federation and analyzes the more basic reasons for continued lack of success. Originally published in 1961. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

    Folio size, beautiful color maps and color illustrations throughout.