Book picks similar to
Life in Ancient Egypt by Lionel Casson
history
non-fiction
ancient-egypt
a-a-aaa-aa-buffer
Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall
Eve LaPlante - 2007
The nefarious witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts represent a low point of American history, made famous in works by Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne (himself a descendant of one of the judges), and Arthur Miller. The trials might have doomed Sewall to infamy except for a courageous act of contrition now commemorated in a mural that hangs beneath the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House picturing Sewall's public repentance. He was the only Salem witch judge to make amends.But, remarkably, the judge's story didn't end there. Once he realized his error, Sewall turned his attention to other pressing social issues. Struck by the injustice of the New England slave trade, a commerce in which his own relatives and neighbors were engaged, he authored "The Selling of Joseph," America's first antislavery tract. While his peers viewed Native Americans as savages, Sewall advocated for their essential rights and encouraged their education, even paying for several Indian youths to attend Harvard College. Finally, at a time when women were universally considered inferior to men, Sewall published an essay affirming the fundamental equality of the sexes. The text of that essay, composed at the deathbed of his daughter Hannah, is republished here for the first time.In Salem Witch Judge, acclaimed biographer Eve LaPlante, Sewall's great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, draws on family lore, her ancestor's personal diaries, and archival documents to open a window onto life in colonial America, painting a portrait of a man traditionally vilified, but who was in fact an innovator and forefather who came to represent the best of the American spirit.
The Moghul
Thomas Hoover - 1983
An immediate European bestseller, optioned by Indian/German producers who commissioned a six-hour mini-series, then Canadian producers with BBC.Based on real people (ca. 1620), THE MOGHUL begins in a rip-roaring sea battle north of Bombay in which the vastly out-gunned adventurer, Brian Hawksworth, ship's captain and emissary of King James, blows away a flotilla of Portuguese galleons to gain access to an Indian port. He's come to open trade for “barbaric” England and squeeze out the Portuguese, who try to kill him at every turn. But once on land, he’s captive: the beauty and romance of the exquisite Moghul Empire seduce him from his material goals to a new quest – of supreme sensuality in music, visions, and sacred lovemaking. India, ruled by the son of great Akbar, is about to pass to one of his sons. Hawksworth must choose sides, but will he choose right? The future of England, and of India, depend on it. Assailed by intrigue and assassination, tormented by a forbidden love, enthralled by a mystic poet, Hawksworth engages war elephants, tiger hunts, the harem of the Red Fort of Agra, the Rajput warriors at Udaipur, becomes intimate champion to Shah Jahan, (builder of the Taj Mahal), and, in his supreme test, plays the sitar with a touch that elicits from the great Shah – “Finally, my English friend – you understand.”
Chasing Heisenberg: The Race for the Atom Bomb (Kindle Single)
Michael Joseloff - 2018
But far from the battlefields, Allied scientists are struggling.Intelligence reports put them a distant second behind the Germans in a competition that could determine the outcome of the war: the race to build the world's first nuclear weapon.For the Allies' top scientists, the race is deeply personal. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Samuel Goudsmit have known Hitler's chief atomic scientist, Werner Heisenberg, for years. A brilliant, world-renowned physicist and once a good friend, he's anti-Nazi but also a loyal German.Fear that he's put country first and is building a bomb haunts Oppenheimer and Fermi all through their months and years developing the Allied bomb. That same anxiety drives Goudsmit, now a top Allied intelligence officer, to risk his life as he attempts to track down Heisenberg and the site of Hitler's suspected atom bomb program.
Oh, the Things I Know!: A Guide to Success, Or, Failing That, Happiness
Al Franken - 2002
Al Franken, as he prefers to be called, has written the first truly indispensable book of the new millennium. Filled with wisdom, observations, and practical tips you can put to work right away, Oh, the Things I Know! is a cradle-to-grave guide to living, an easy-to-follow user's manual for human existence.What does a megasuccess like Al Franken--bestselling author, Emmy-award winning television star, sitting U.S. Senator, and honorary Ph.D.--have to say to ordinary people like you? Well, as Dr. Al himself says, There's no point in getting advice from hopeless failures.Join Mr. Franken--sorry, Dr. Franken--on a journey that will take you from your first job (Oh, Are You Going to Hate Your First Job!), through the perils and pitfalls of your twenties and thirties (Oh, the Person of Your Dreams vs. the Person You Can Actually Attract!), into the joys of marriage and parenthood (Oh, Just Looking at Your Spouse Will Make Your Skin Crawl!), all the way to the golden years of senior citizenship (Oh, the Nursing Home You'll Wind Up In!). Don't travel life's lonesome highway by yourself. Take Al Franken along, if not as an infallible guide, then at least as a friend who will make you laugh.
The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians
John Bagnell Bury - 1928
Bury's history is indispensable to anyone who seeks to understand the connection between the barbarian migrations of the third to the ninth century and the framework of modern Europe.
My First Coup d'Etat: And Other True Stories from the Lost Decades of Africa
John Dramani Mahama - 2012
He was seven years old when rumors of a coup reached his boarding school in Accra. His father, a minister of state, was suddenly missing, then imprisoned for more than a year. My First Coup d'Etat offers a look at the country that has long been considered Africa's success story. This is a one-of-a-kind book: Mahama's is a rare literary voice from a political leader, and his personal stories work on many levels - as fables, as history, as cultural and political analyses, and, of course, as the memoir of a young man who, unbeknownst to him or anyone else, would grow up to be vice president of his nation. Though nonfiction, these are stories that rise above their specific settings and transport the reader - much like the fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Nadine Gordimer - into a world all their own, one which straddles a time lost and explores the universal human emotions of love, fear, faith, despair, loss, longing, and hope despite all else.
Family
M.C.A. Hogarth - 2011
so when Jahir invites him home for a cousin's wedding, he is eager for the chance to find out more about these enigmatic aliens, and his friend in particular. Naturally, he gets more than he bargains for. By the end of his trip, he'll either know all Jahir's secrets...or he'll be dead... A 92-page novella set in the Pelted Universe.
China Sky
Pearl S. Buck - 1941
Buck set in war-time China. Dr. Gray Thompson, an American missionary doctor, works alongside Dr. Sara Durand in a hospital he has built in a small Chinese village, as Japanese forces approach. When Gray returns from a visit to America a trip, he shocks Sara (who is in love with him) by introducing his new socialite wife, Louise. In the midst of bombing attacks on the village, Dr. Thompson continues to help the local residents, and especially the insurgent leader Chen-Ta. To protect the hospital, a high-ranking Japanese prisoner gets a message to the Japanese commander which stops the bombing but, eventually, Japanese paratroopers land in the village, and fierce fighting ensues. China Sky was also the subject of a 1945 movie of the same name. Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938 and was the author of numerous novels, short-stories and works of non-fiction.
A Horseman Riding By: Three Novels
R.F. Delderfield - 1966
Spanning six decades, these three novels follow a man and his family as they struggle to adapt to life in a new world. From the death of Queen Victoria through the swinging sixties, this acclaimed saga is an unforgettable story of a farming family and a vanishing way of life. Long Summer Day: Lt. Paul Craddock returns to England after the Boer War to resume civilian life. His father has died, leaving Craddock heir to a scrap-metal business. But instead of continuing the family business, he purchases an auctioned-off thirteen-hundred-acre estate, Shallowford, where he will be changed by his love for two women: fiercely independent Grace Lovell and lovely, demure Claire Derwent. Post of Honour: Through hard work and love of the land, Craddock has transformed his sprawling estate and enjoys a peaceful country life with his wife and three children. But war has begun its inevitable march across England, and this remote corner of Devon cannot escape its destruction. As the Great War ends and another threatens to erupt, Craddock’s faith and the strength he derives from his family must sustain him and his village through trying, tumultuous times. The Green Gauntlet: Though Craddock’s village has endured despite the sorrows of war, he has new perils to face. Emerging property laws threaten his livelihood, dividing his family over the future of his beloved Shallowford. For his sons and daughter, the fifties and sixties will be a time of discovery and change that will resonate in the lives of their own children.
Ten Tea Parties: Patriotic Protests That History Forgot
Joseph Cummins - 2012
But do you know the history of the Philadelphia Tea Party (December 1773)? How about the York, Maine, Tea Party (September 1774) or the Wilmington, North Carolina, Tea Party (March 1775)?Ten Tea Parties is the first book to chronicle all these uniquely American protests. Author and historian Joseph Cummins begins with the history of the East India Company (the biggest global corporation in the eighteenth century) and their staggering financial losses during the Boston Tea Party (more than a million dollars in today’s money).From there we travel to Philadelphia, where Captain Samuel Ayres was nearly tarred and feathered by a mob of 8,000 angry patriots. Then we set sail for New York City, where the Sons of Liberty raided the London and heaved 18 chests of tea into the Hudson River. Still later, in Annapolis, Maryland, a brigantine carrying 2,320 pounds of the “wretched weed” was burned to ashes.Together, the stories in Ten Tea Parties illuminate the power of Americans banding together as Americans—for the very first time in the fledgling nation’s history. It’s no wonder these patriots remain an inspiration to so many people today.
The Isles of the Blest
Morgan Llywelyn - 1989
Willingly, he lets himself become intoxicated by the surreal beauty of a fairy-woman who offers to take him to a far away, forbidden land where all his desires will be fulfilled. He welcomes the opportunity to be away from the gruesome war that has consumed his life for so long, but what price will the warrior pay to be in a land void of death, loss and pain? Does the pleasure of the company of the stunning stranger outweigh the price he must pay to remain in The Isles of the Blest?
Dying for Living Boxset Vol. 2 : Books 4-7 of Dying for a Living series
Kory M. Shrum - 2018
Don’t believe us? Download a free sample and see for yourself!The Dying for a Living Boxset Vol. 2 includes Dying Light, Worth Dying For, Dying Breath, and Dying Day (Books 4-7) in the Dying for a Living series. If you like "supernatural thrill-rides" and a quirky team that can't be beat, you'll love this series. Jesse Sullivan’s father is a sadistic murder with plans to rule the world. Given his ability to control minds and teleport at will, it seems his dark vision is coming to fruition. All that stands in his way is Jesse.Yet no matter how badly he has hurt her and the ones she loves, Jesse can’t seem to forget he is her father. She must somehow forget the man she remembers from her childhood and see him for the monster he truly is. And she almost can…until he offers her the one thing she can’t refuse.
Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Biography
Noel B. Gerson - 1976
Noel Gerson explores the life of this fascinating woman who literally changed the course of American history with her book Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Harriet Beecher Stowe reveals a towering literary figure who was also a remarkable woman, a crusading feminist, and a woman who led a life more dramatic than anything she wrote. In an age when women were usually confined to the kitchen, the bedroom, and the parlour, Harriet Beecher Stowe argued emancipation with President Lincoln, had an extraordinary woman-to-woman relationship with Queen Victoria, and was regarded by Emile Zola as a comrade-in-arms in their separate crusades for a better world. Her super-abundant energy and refreshing humour enabled her to combine the duties of a devoted wife and mother of five with a renowned literary career and to become in the process one of the greatest celebrities of the nineteenth century. ‘Harriet Beecher Stowe’ is an impressive biography of a literary giant who changed the course of history forever. Noel Bertram Gerson (1913-1988) was a prolific American author, who wrote 325 books under his own name and under several pseudonyms. He channeled his own wartime experience in military intelligence into many of his novels, as well as writing widely about American history. His titles include ‘Liner’, ‘Daughter of Earth and Water: A Biography of Mary Shelley’, ‘The Conqueror’s Wife’ and ‘I’ll Storm Hell: A Novel of Mad Anthony Wayne’. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.
A Brief History of Venice
Elizabeth Horodowich - 2009
Elizabeth Horodowich, one of the leading historians of the city, tells the whole story, showing that Venice, alongside Florence and Rome, was one of the great Renaissance capitals. The book will also investigate the history of Venice as a multicultural trading city where Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived together at the crossroads between East and West. The narrative runs all the way to the present to the current problems with the sinking island.
The Islam Quintet: Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, The Book of Saladin, The Stone Woman, A Sultan in Palermo, and Night of the Golden Butterfly
Tariq Ali - 2014
At once a meditation on the millennia-spanning clash of Islam with the West and a series of riveting fictions, these five works are a compelling portrait of worlds in conflict and the lives lived between them.