So he takes up an offer to go on a seriously long walk – the ancient Christian pilgrimage of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the domain of the devout.Despite his good intentions, Tom's route takes him into every bar along the way while crossing paths with the loopy and the wise, the pious and the distinctly ungodly. He finds himself contending with song-happy evangelists, unlikely scholars and enlightened globetrotters, and randy backpackers out to bed every pilgrim they meet. Not to mention his own very restless demons, some of which lead him to confront troubles he thought he'd left at home.Unholy Pilgrims is an irreverent and engaging take on figuring out what the hell to do with your life.

    With no geographical raison d'etre and no obvious political roots in its Roman, Germanic, or Islamic pasts, it for long remained a small, struggling realm on Europe's outer fringe. Then, in the early fifteenth century, this unlikely springboard for Western expansion suddenly began to accumulate an empire of its own, eventually extending more than halfway around the globe. The History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire, drawing particularly on historical scholarship postdating the 1974 Portuguese Revolution, offers readers a comprehensive overview and reinterpretation of how all this happened - the first such account to appear in English for more than a generation. Volume I concerns the history of Portugal itself from pre-Roman times to the climactic French invasion of 1807, and Volume II traces the history of the Portuguese overseas empire.

    It sounds like Shakespeare and it could have very well been the plot of one of his plays." --Toronto StarIn 1494, award-winning author Stephen R. Bown tells the untold story of the explosive feud between monarchs, clergy, and explorers that split the globe between Spain and Portugal and made the world's oceans a battleground.When Columbus triumphantly returned from America to Spain in 1493, his discoveries inflamed an already-smouldering conflict between Spain's renowned monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, and Portugal's João II. Which nation was to control the world's oceans? To quell the argument, Pope Alexander VI—the notorious Rodrigo Borgia—issued a proclamation laying the foundation for the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, an edict that created an imaginary line in the Atlantic Ocean dividing the entire known (and unknown) world between Spain and Portugal. Just as the world's oceans were about to be opened by Columbus's epochal voyage, the treaty sought to limit the seas to these two favored Catholic nations. The edict was to have a profound influence on world history: it propelled Spain and Portugal to superpower status, steered many other European nations on a collision course, and became the central grievance in two centuries of international espionage, piracy, and warfare. The treaty also began the fight for "the freedom of the seas"—the epic struggle to determine whether the world's oceans, and thus global commerce, would be controlled by the decree of an autocrat or be open to the ships of any nation—a distinctly modern notion, championed in the early seventeenth century by the Dutch legal theorist Hugo Grotius, whose arguments became the foundation of international law.At the heart of one of the greatest international diplomatic and political agreements of the last five centuries were the strained relationships and passions of a handful of powerful individuals. They were linked by a shared history, mutual animosity, and personal obligations—quarrels, rivalries, and hatreds that dated back decades. Yet the struggle ultimately stemmed from a young woman's determination to defy tradition and the king, and to choose her own husband.

    The Spanish Civil War is burned into European consciousness, not simply because it prefigured the much larger world war that followed it, but because the intense manner of its prosecution was a harbinger of a new and horrific form of warfare that was universally dreaded. At the same time, the hopes awakened by the attempted social revolution in republican Spain chimed with the aspirations of many in Europe and the United States during the grim years of the great Depression.'The Concise History of the Spanish Civil War' is a full-blooded account of this pivotal period in the twentieth-century European history. Paul Preston vividly recounts the struggles of the war, analyses the wider implications of the revolution in the Republican zone, tracks the emergence of Francisco Franco's brutal (and, ultimately, extraordinarily durable) fascist dictatorship and assesses the way in which the Spanish Civil War was a portent of the Second World War that ensued so rapidly after it.

    Its scaffolding-cloaked spires reach up to the heavens, dominating the Barcelona skyline and drawing in millions of visitors every year. What seduces our attention is not only its architectural extravagance but the sheer longevity of its construction. More than a century after Gaudí saw the first stone laid in 1882, the Sagrada Familia remains unfinished, unlikely to be completed until 2026 at the very earliest. It has survived two World Wars, the ravages of the Spanish Civil War and the “Hunger Years” of Franco's rule. It has defied the critics, the penny-pinching accountants, the conservative town-planners, and the devotees of sterile modernism; it has enchanted and frustrated the citizens of Barcelona; and it has passed through some of the most momentous changes in society and history.The Sagrada Familia explores the evolution of this remarkable building, working through the decades right up to the present day before looking beyond to the final stretch of its construction. At once a guidebook and a history, it is also a moving study of man's aspiration toward the divine. Rich in detail, vast in scope, this is a revelatory chronicle of an iconic structure, its place in history, and the wild genius that created it.

    He served with the Legion in Cambodia and Bosnia, then returned to civilian life, but military habits would not allow him to settle.His need for intense excitement and extreme danger drove him back to the lifestyle he knew and loved, and using his Legion training, he became a ?hidden soldierOCO by opting for security missions in Iraq and Haiti.In Iraq he was the sole survivor of an ambush in no manOCOs land between Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, the most dangerous place on earth.An intense, exciting and vivid account of extraordinary and sometimes horrific events, "Hidden Soldier" lifts the veil on the dark and shadowy world of security contractors and what the situation is really like in Iraq as well as other trouble spots.This bestseller also includes photographs taken by Padraig OOCOKeeffe while he was a Legionnaire and when he was in Iraq."

    

    Thanks to his Devil's Mark - his eyes of different colors - Sigwulf is exiled to the Frankish court of King Carolus, the future Charlemagne. There Sigwulf survives on his wits while at the same time trying to come to terms with disturbingly prophetic dreams.He gains the friendship of Count Hroudland, Carolus's powerful and ambitious nephew - but, mysteriously, several attempts are made on Sigwulf's life. When he obtains a Book of Dreams, a rare text that explains their meaning, he attracts the attention of Carolus himself. But th Book proves to be a slippery guide in a world of double dealing. Sent into Spain to spy on the Saracens, Sigwulf becomes caught between loyalties; either he honors his debt to new Saracen friends, or he serves Count Hroudland in his quest for glory, gold and even the Grail itself.One after another Sigwulf's predictions come true, but often not as expected, and he finds himself swept forward into a final great battle that reveals who his enemies are...

    

    The Holy Land is in turmoil and desperately awaits the arrival of Edward Longshanks and his relieving army of French and English Crusaders. This is a time of brutality, an age of chivalry. A time of strong men with stronger hearts, an era with no place for the weak. Yet a thousand miles away, a fourteen year old boy learns a disturbing secret that drives him on a Crusade of his own. A quest to avenge his family, save his brother and in the process recover the holiest relic in the history of Christendom.

    Tom Swan is not a professional soldier. He's really a merchant and a scholar looking for remnants of Ancient Greece and Rome - temples, graves, pottery, fabulous animals, unicorn horns. But he also has a real talent for ending up in the midst of violence when he didn't mean to. Having used his wits to escape execution, he begins a series of adventures that take him to street duels in Italy, meetings with remarkable men - from Leonardo Da Vinci to Vlad Dracula - and from the intrigues of the War of the Roses to the fall of Constantinople.

    Yet it was also an age of constant, harrowing warfare. Armies, not philosophers, shaped the face of Europe as modern nation-states emerged from feudal society. In Furies, one of the leading scholars of Renaissance history captures the dark reality of the period in a gripping narrative mosaic. As Lauro Martines shows us, total war was no twentieth-century innovation. These conflicts spared no civilians in their path. A Renaissance army was a mobile city-indeed, a force of 20,000 or 40,000 men was larger than many cities of the day. And it was a monster, devouring food and supplies for miles around. It menaced towns and the countryside-and itself-with famine and disease, often more lethal than combat. Fighting itself was savage, its violence increased by the use of newly invented weapons, from muskets to mortars.For centuries, notes Martines, the history of this period has favored diplomacy, high politics, and military tactics. Furies puts us on the front lines of battle, and on the streets of cities under siege, to reveal what Europes wars meant to the men and women who endured them.

    Surrounded by her large family, Loma is happy living in the judería of Alcalá de Henares, Spain, and wants nothing more than to someday have a family of her own.Still, when her intimidating grandfather, her Belo, decides to bring her along on his travels, she’s excited to join him. Belo has the ear of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, and Loma relishes her adventures with him, adventures that are beyond the scope of most girls of the time. She soon learns just how dangerous the world is for the Jews of Spain, and how her grandfather’s influence keeps their people safe.But the older Loma gets, the more she longs to realize her own dreams—if Belo will ever allow her to leave his side.

    Davis provided the classic account of the European medieval world; equipping generations of undergraduate and 'A' level students with sufficient grasp of the period to debate diverse historical perspectives and reputations. His book has been important grounding for both modernists required to take a course in medieval history, and those who seek to specialise in the medieval period.In updating this classic work to a third edition, the additional author now enables students to see history in action; the diverse viewpoints and important research that has been undertaken since Davis' second edition, and progressed historical understanding. Each of Davis original chapters now concludes with a 'new directions and developments' section by Professor RI Moore, Emeritus of Newcastle University.A key work updated in a method that both enhances subject understanding and sets important research in its wider context. A vital resource, now up-to-date for generations of historians to come.

    Among the surviving records, the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer is the most vivid. Chaucer wrote about workaday lives outside the walls of the court—days spent at the pedal of a loom, or maintaining the ledgers of an estate, or on the high seas.In Chaucer’s People, Liza Picard puts these lives into historical context and sheds light on their mysteries. What was the Prioress, a well-mannered young nun, doing on the road to Canterbury with a band of men? How did the “gentle Knight” end up on military service in distant lands like Lithuania and Spain? Drawing on a vast range of subjects, including trade, religion, and medicine, Picard offers new insight into Chaucer’s characters and re-creates the medieval world in glorious detail.