After angry Protestants tossed three representatives of the Holy Roman Empire out the window of the royal castle in Prague, world war spread from Bohemia with similar abandon and relentless persistence, destroying European powers from Spain to Sweden as they marched on the contested soil of Germany. Fanatics, speculators, and ordinary people found themselves trapped in a nightmarish world of famine, disease, and seemingly unstoppable destruction. The Thirty Years War was a turning point in the making of modern Europe and the modern world: out of it came the system of nation-states that remains fundamental to international law. C.V. Wedgwood's magisterial book is the only comprehensive account of the war in English, as well as a triumph of scholarship and literature. Includes maps and charts.

    Robert Ferguson's new interpretation of the Viking Age, whilst rejecting the cliches aims to return some of the violence to the mix. He argues that the Viking raids were qualitatively different than anything that had gone before precisely because of this violence, and his largely narrative account gives plentiful details of battles and conquest alongside evidence for their more peaceful activities. The thread which runs through the account though is the confrontation between a Heathen Scandinavia and the Christian kingdoms to its south and west, and the processes whereby the Viking kingdoms came to be Christianised.

    It immediately became very popular and this first handhistory of the Buccaneers of America was soon translated into theprincipal European languages. The first English edition was printed in1684.Of the author, John Esquemeling, very little is known although it isgenerally conceded that he was in all probability a Fleming orHollander, a quite natural supposition as his first works were writtenin the Dutch language. He came to the island of Tortuga, theheadquarters of the Buccaneers, in 1666 in the employ of the French WestIndia Company. Several years later this same company, owing tounsuccessful business arrangements, recalled their representatives toFrance and gave their officers orders to sell the company's land and allits servants. Esquemeling then a servant of the company was sold to astern master by whom he was treated with great cruelty. Owing to hardwork, poor food and exposure he became dangerously ill, and his masterseeing his weak condition and fearing to lose the money Esquemeling hadcost him resold him to a surgeon. This new master treated him kindly sothat Esquemeling's health was speedily restored, and after one year'sservice he was set at liberty upon a promise to pay his benefactor, thesurgeon, 100 pieces of eight at such a time as he found himself infunds.Once more a free man he determined to join the pirates and was receivedinto their society and remained with them until 1672. Esquemeling servedthe Buccaneers in the capacity of barber-surgeon, and was present at alltheir exploits. Little did he suspect that his first hand observationswould some day be cherished as the only authentic and true history ofthe Buccaneers and Marooners of the Spanish Main.From time to time new editions of this work have been published, but inmany cases much new material, not always authentic, has been added andthe result has been to mar the original narrative as set forth byEsquemeling. In arranging this edition, the original English text onlyhas been used, and but few changes made by cutting out the long andtedious description of plant and animal life of the West Indies of whichEsquemeling had only a smattering of truth. But, the history of CaptainMorgan and his fellow buccaneers is here printed almost identical withthe original English translation, and we believe it is the first timethis history has been published in a suitable form for the juvenilereader with no loss of interest to the adult.The world wide attention at this time in the Isthmus of Panama and thegreat canal connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean lends to thisnarrative an additional stimulus. Here are set forth the deeds of daringof the wild freebooters in crossing the isthmus to attack the cities,Puerto Bellow and Panama. The sacking and burning of these placesaccompanied by pillage, fire, and treasure seeking both on land and onsea form exciting reading. _The Buccaneers and Marooners of America_well deserves a place on the book shelf with those old world-widefavorites _Robinson Crusoe_ and the _Swiss Family Robinson_.

    Martin as source material for Game of Thrones, comes a classic book on innovation and technological change in medieval EuropeIn this account of Europe’s rise to world leadership in technology, Frances and Joseph Gies show how early modern technology and experimental science were direct outgrowths of the decisive innovations of medieval Europe, in the tools and techniques of agriculture, craft industry, metallurgy, building construction, navigation, and war. The Gieses report that many of Europe’s most important inventions—the horse harness, the stirrup, the magnetic compass, cotton and silk cultivation and manufacture, papermaking, firearms, and “Arabic” numerals—had their origins outside Europe, in China, India, and the Middle East. Europe synthesized its own innovations—the three-field system, water power in industry, the full-rigged ship, the putting-out system—into a powerful new combination of technology, economics, and politics.

    Here is a new Loeb Classical Library edition of the great Roman poet's Odes and Epodes, a fluid translation facing the Latin text. Horace took pride in being the first Roman to write a body of lyric poetry. For models he turned to Greek lyric, especially to the poetry of Alcaeus, Sappho, and Pindar; but his poems are set in a Roman context. His four books of odes cover a wide range of moods and topics. Some are public poems, upholding the traditional values of courage, loyalty, and piety; and there are hymns to the gods. But most of the odes are on private themes: chiding or advising friends; speaking about love and amorous situations, often amusingly. Horace's seventeen epodes, which he called iambi, were also an innovation for Roman literature. Like the odes they were inspired by a Greek model: the seventh-century imabic poetry of Archilochus. Love and political concerns are frequent themes; here the tone is generally that of satirical lampoons. In his language he is triumphantly adventurous, Quintilian said of Horace;Content:Odes* Book I* Book II* Book III* Book IVHymn for a New AgeEpodes

    Now, the richly illustrated Medieval Warfare illuminates this era, examining over seven hundred years of European conflict, from the time of Charlemagne to the end of the middle ages (1500). Twelve scholars examine medieval warfare in two sections. The first section explores the experience of war chronologically, with essays on the Viking age, on the wars and expansion of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, on the Crusades, and on the great Hundred Years War between England and France. The second section traces developments in the art of warfare: fortification and siege craft, the role of armored cavalrymen, the use of mercenary forces, the birth of gunpowder artillery, and the new skills in navigation and shipbuilding.

    In the east these Northmen thrust down the great rivers of Russia to the Caspian & the Black Sea. In the west they sailed along the Atlantic coasts, past Arab Spain, thru the Straits of Gibraltar & over the Mediterranean. They reached out across the unknown Atlantic, to Iceland, Greenland & America. How did it happen? Why did Europe permit Danes & Norwegians to rule parts of England, Ireland & France, & Swedes to form a ruling class in Western Russia? Why was Scandinavia strong, the rest of Europe weak? What inner forces led to the Viking raids? Professor Brondsted's classic study examines the motives of their voyages & investigates the origin of the people, their industries & equipment, ships, armies, social organization, daily life & religious beliefs as they are reflected in runic inscriptions, burial customs & Icelandic medieval literature.Acknowledgements & NoteMap of ScandinaviaMap of the DanevirkeBefore the VikingsThe Viking RaidsThe 9th CenturyThe 10th CenturyThe 11th CenturyWeapons & ToolsDress & JewelleryTransportTowns, Earthworks & CampsCoins & Weights & MeasuresRunic InscriptionsArtThe Viking Way of LifeReligious Belief & Burial CustomsPoetry & the Viking SpiritThe Vikings' Place in European HistorySelect BibliographyIndex

    Southern describes the chief forms of social, political & religious organization.

    For the events between 133 and 70 BC he is the only surviving continuous narrative source. The subsequent books vividly describe Catiline's conspiracy, the rise and fall of the First Triumvirate, and Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon, defeat of Pompey and untimely death. The climax comes with the birth of the Second Triumvirate out of anarchy, the terrible purges of Proscriptions which followed, and the titanic struggle for world mastery which was only to end with Augustus's defeat of Antony and Cleopatra. If Appian's Roman History as a whole reveals how an empire was born of the struggle against a series of external enemies, these five books concentrate on an even greater ordeal. Despite the rhetorical flourishes, John Carter suggests in his Introduction, the impressive 'overall conception of the decline of the Roman state into violence, with its sombre highlights and the leitmotif of fate, is neither trivial nor inaccurate'.

    

    She is the legend that will not die–Pope Joan, the ninth-century woman who disguised herself as a man and rose to become the only female ever to sit on the throne of St. Peter. Now in this riveting novel, Donna Woolfolk Cross paints a sweeping portrait of an unforgettable heroine who struggles against restrictions her soul cannot accept.Brilliant and talented, young Joan rebels against medieval social strictures forbidding women to learn. When her brother is brutally killed during a Viking attack, Joan takes up his cloak–and his identity–and enters the monastery of Fulda. As Brother John Anglicus, Joan distinguishes herself as a great scholar and healer. Eventually, she is drawn to Rome, where she becomes enmeshed in a dangerous web of love, passion, and politics. Triumphing over appalling odds, she finally attains the highest office in Christendom–wielding a power greater than any woman before or since. But such power always comes at a price . . .In this international bestseller, Cross brings the Dark Ages to life in all their brutal splendor and shares the dramatic story of a woman whose strength of vision led her to defy the social restrictions of her day.

    It is a tour through a now unrecognizable city of abysmal poverty and habitual violence cobbled, as Luc Sante has written, "from legend, memory, police records, the self-aggrandizements of aging crooks, popular journalism, and solid historical research." Asbury presents the definitive work on this subject, an illumination of the gangs of old New York that ultimately gave rise to the modern Mafia and its depiction in films like The Godfather.

    In Bakhtin's view, the spirit of laughter and irreverence prevailing at carnival time is the dominant quality of Rabelais's art. The work of both Rabelais and Bakhtin springs from an age of revolution, and each reflects a particularly open sense of the literary text. For both, carnival, with its emphasis on the earthly and the grotesque, signified the symbolic destruction of authority and official culture and the assertion of popular renewal. Bakhtin evokes carnival as a special, creative life form, with its own space and time.Written in the Soviet Union in the 1930s at the height of the Stalin era but published there for the first time only in 1965, Bakhtin's book is both a major contribution to the poetics of the novel and a subtle condemnation of the degeneration of the Russian revolution into Stalinist orthodoxy. One of the essential texts of a theorist who is rapidly becoming a major reference in contemporary thought, Rabelais and His World is essential reading for anyone interested in problems of language and text and in cultural interpretation.

    There are wars and sieges, scandals and seductions, fountains playing in deserted squares and crowds thronging the markets.And there is a dark undertone too, of shadowy corners and dead ends, prisons and punishment.The language and way of thinking of the Venetians sets them aside from the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and to the tides rather than the land.'The moon rules Venice,' Ackroyd writes: 'It is built on ocean shells and ocean ground; it has the aspect of infinity.It is the floating world... changing and variable and accidental.'This book, like a magic gondola, transports its readers to thatsensual, surprising realm. We could have no better guide - reading Ackroyd's Venice is, in itself, a glorious journey and the perfect holiday.

    Here are fascinating insights, based on Pernoud's sound knowledge and extensive experience as an archivist at the French National Archives. The book will be provocative for the general readers as well as a helpful resource for teachers.Scorned for centuries, although lauded by the Romantics, these thousand years of history have most often been concealed behind the dark clouds of ignorance: Why, didn't godiche (clumsy, oafish) come from gothique (Gothic)? Doesn't fuedal refer to the most hopeless obscurantism? Isn't Medieval applied to dust-covered, outmoded things?Here the old varnish is stripped away and a thousand years of history finally emerge—the "Middle Ages" are dead, long live the Middle Ages!