The Louvre Palace was expanded, Notre-Dame Cathedral was restored and the French masterpiece of the Second Empire, the Opéra Garnier, was built. A very large part of what we see when we visit Paris today originates from this short span of twenty-two years.The vision for the new Nineteenth Century Paris belonged to Napoleon III, who had led a long and difficult climb to absolute power. But his plans faltered until he brought in a civil servant, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, to take charge of the implementation. Heedless of controversy, at tremendous cost, Haussmann pressed ahead with the giant undertaking until, in 1870, his political enemies brought him down, just months before the collapse of the whole regime brought about the end of an era.Paris Reborn is a must-read for anyone who ever wondered how Paris, the city universally admired as a standard of urban beauty, became what it is.

    During Chopin's eighteen years in Paris, lasting nearly half his short life, he shone at the center of the immensely talented artists who were defining their time -- Hugo, Balzac, Stendhal, Delacroix, Liszt, Berlioz, and, of course, George Sand, a rebel feminist writer who became Chopin's lover and protector. Tad Szulc, the author of Fidel and Pope John Paul II, approaches his subject with imagination and insight, drawing extensively on diaries, memoirs, correspondence, and the composer's own journal, portions of which appear here for the first time in English. He uses contemporary sources to chronicle Chopin's meteoric rise in his native Poland, an ascent that had brought him to play before the reigning Russian grand duke at the age of eight. He left his homeland when he was eighteen, just before Warsaw's patriotic uprising was crushed by the tsar's armies. Carrying the memories of Poland and its folk music that would later surface in his polonaises and mazurkas, Chopin traveled to Vienna. There he established his reputation in the most demanding city of Europe. But Chopin soon left for Paris, where his extraordinary creative powers would come to fruition amid the revolutions roiling much of Europe. He quickly gained fame and a circle of powerful friends and acquaintances ranging from Rothschild, the banker, to Karl Marx. Distinguished by his fastidious dress and the wracking cough that would cut short his life, Chopin spent his days composing and giving piano lessons to a select group of students. His evenings were spent at the keyboard, playing for his friends. It was at one of these Chopin gatherings that he met George Sand, nine years his senior. Through their long and often stormy relationship, Chopin enjoyed his richest creative period. As she wrote dozens of novels, he composed furiously -- both were compulsive creators. After their affair unraveled, Chopin became the protÉgÉ of Jane Stirling, a wealthy Scotswoman, who paraded him in his final year across England and Scotland to play for the aristocracy and even Queen Victoria. In 1849, at the age of thirty-nine, Chopin succumbed to the tuberculosis that had plagued him from childhood. Chopin in Paris is an illuminating biography of a tragic figure who was one of the most important composers of all time. Szulc brings to life the complex, contradictory genius whose works will live forever. It is compelling reading about an exciting epoch of European history, culture, and music -- and about one of the great love dramas of the nineteenth century.

    His unique, melodic compositions were released on the Prestige jazz label. In the late 1960s the Viking-garbed Moondog was a pop music sensation on Columbia Records. Moondog is the noted inspiration for the contemporary freak folk movement led by Devendra Banhart.Moondog's compositional style influenced his former roommate, Philip Glass, whose Preface and performances of Moondog works appear in the book. Moondog's work transcends labels and redefines the distinction between popular and high culture. A CD compilation with a variety of Moondog's compositions is bound into the book.The CD tracklisting is as follows:1: Caribea (1:32)Performer/Composer: Moondog2: To a Sea Horse (1:43)Performer/Composer: Moondog3: Trees Against the Sky (.51)Performer/Composer: Moondog4: Oo Debut (1:09)Performer/Composer: Moondog5: Autumn (2:07)Performer/Composer: Moondog6: Moondog Monologue (8:24)Performer/Composer: Moondog7: Moondog’s Theme (1:53)Performer/Composer: Moondog8: Trimbas in Quarters (1:47)Performer/Composer: Moondog9: I Came Into This World Alone (1:19)Performers: Moondog, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Jon GibsonComposer: Moondog10: Be a Hobo (1:22)Performers: Moondog, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Jon GibsonComposer: Moondog11: Why Spend the Dark Night With You (1:40)Performers: Moondog, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Jon GibsonComposer: Moondog12: All is Loneliness (1:38)Performers: Moondog, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Jon GibsonComposer: Moondog13: Organ Rounds (2:04)Performer/Composer: Moondog14: Canon in F Major, Book I (.43)Performer: Paul JordanComposer: Moondog15: Canon in B Flat Major, Book III (1:36)Performer: Paul JordanComposer: Moondog16: Canon in B Flat Major, Book I (.43)Performer: Paul JordanComposer: Moondog17: Canon in B Flat Major, Book II (.28)Performer: Paul JordanComposer: Moondog18: Canon in G Sharp Minor, Book I (.44)Performer: Paul JordanComposer: Moondog19: Canon in C Sharp Minor, Book II (1:32)Performer: Paul JordanComposer: Moondog20: 5/4 Snakebite Rattle (3:41)Performer: Stefan LakatosComposer: Moondog21: Trimbas and Woodblock in 5/2 (1:26)Performer: Stefan LakatosComposer: Moondog22: When I Am Deep in Sleep (2:17)Performer: Stefan LakatosComposer: Moondog23: Rabbit Hop (2:25)Performer/Composer: Moondog24: Dog Trot (2:25)Performer/Composer: Moondog25: Bird’s Lament (2:00)Performer/Composer: Moondog26: Viking 1 (2:55)Performer/Composer: Moondog27: Heimdall Fanfare (3:06)Performer/Composer: Moondog28: Intro and Overtone Continuum (2:22)Performer/Composer: Moondog

    Charles Mee, historian and playwright, renders a finely textured portrait of the artist against a richly described background of seventeenth-century life.He captures the human Rembrandt, the ordinary man and unexpected genius. We see the youthful, arrogant poseur, son of a small-town miller, seeking a life of art amid the cosmopolitan bustle of Amsterdam in its heyday. We see the outsider struggling to rise without patron or court commissions, failing as an entrepreneur while immortalizing simple people in works of haunting complexity.We see the inspired moments behind masterworks like TheAnatomy Lesson and Nightwatch and all the conflicting guises of their creator - bohemian and aspiring bourgeois, husband and lover, honored genius, penurious vagabond, and, finally, the essential dichotomy - the egocentric master who, despite his intense self-absorption, captured the diversity of humanity with extraordinary empathy, sensitivity, and grace.Charles Mee’s Rembrandt’s Portrait is a major, enduring work.

    The couples are John Ruskin and Effie Gray; Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh; John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor; George Eliot and G. H. Lewes; Charles Dickens and Catherine Hogarth.

    Two centuries have passed since Chopin's birth, yet his legacy is all around us today. The quiet revolution he wrought influenced the development of Western music profoundly, and he is still probably the most widely studied and revered composer. For many, he is the object of a cult. Yet most people know little of his life, of the man, his thoughts and his feelings; his public image is a sugary blur of sentimentality and melodrama. Adam Zamoyski cuts through the myths and legends to tell the story of Chopin's life, and to reveal all that can be discovered about him as a person. He pays particular attention to recent revelations about the composer's health, and places him within the intellectual and spiritual environment of his day.

    Ingrid D. Rowland’s pathbreaking life of Bruno establishes him once and for all as a peer of Erasmus, Shakespeare, and Galileo, a thinker whose vision of the world prefigures ours.By the time Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 on Rome’s Campo dei Fiori, he had taught in Naples, Rome, Venice, Geneva, France, England, Germany, and the “magic Prague” of Emperor Rudolph II. His powers of memory and his provocative ideas about the infinity of the universe had attracted the attention of the pope, Queen Elizabeth—and the Inquisition, which condemned him to death in Rome as part of a yearlong jubilee.Writing with great verve and sympathy for her protagonist, Rowland traces Bruno’s wanderings through a sixteenth-century Europe where every certainty of religion and philosophy had been called into question and shows him valiantly defending his ideas (and his right to maintain them) to the very end. An incisive, independent thinker just when natural philosophy was transformed into modern science, he was also a writer of sublime talent. His eloquence and his courage inspired thinkers across Europe, finding expression in the work of Shakespeare and Galileo.Giordano Bruno allows us to encounter a legendary European figure as if for the first time.

     The order of the Knights Templar was founded by Hugh de Payens, a French nobleman from the Champagne region, along with eight of his companions, in Jerusalem around 1119. They originally consisted of a group of knights who protected Christian pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land against attack from brigands and Saracen pirates, after the crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099. The order's full name was the "Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon". They were given quarters next to the temple and adopted their distinctive uniform – white tunics with an eight-pointed blood-red cross. In 1129 they took monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and pledged themselves ready to die for their faith. They were gradually transformed into a chivalric order of warrior-monks who fought with distinction in the Crusades. Scroll to the top of the page and click Add To Cart to read more about this extraordinary chapter of history

    *Includes a bibliography for further reading.*Includes a table of contents. “A feller came up to me the other day and said ‘I don’t know whether this means anything to you but you’ve given me and my family a lot of enjoyment over the years.’ And I said to him, ‘Does it mean anything to me? It means everything to me. That’s the ballgame. That's it.’ And I think that if I have done that to that man, and maybe a couple more…then I’m proud of that.” – Jimmy StewartA lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history’s most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors’ American Legends series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of America’s most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. When the American Film Institute assembled its top 100 actors of all time at the close of the 20th century, Jimmy Stewart ranked third, behind only Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant. There is a certain inevitability to these three actors ranking at the top of the list; after all, they were the dominant faces of Hollywood during the height of the era known as classical Hollywood cinema, a time before the onset of television when the movies still enjoyed relatively uncontested supremacy over American entertainment. The popularity of Stewart, Grant, and Bogart also extends well beyond the success of any of their individual films, reflecting their much broader cultural significance as monuments of Hollywood during its Golden Age. In fact, if the list was reconstructed today, it is entirely possible that Stewart would rank first. Not only have movies such as It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and Vertigo (1958) continued to gain in popularity even into the 21st century, but Stewart has come to embody an accessible image of American values that is easy for everyone to embrace. The wholesome, happy-go-lucky persona he cultivated represents perhaps a more palatable image of American masculinity than the gritty realism of Bogart or the erudite but occasionally snobbish tendencies of Cary Grant. If there is any actor that embodies not only classical Hollywood but also American culture more generally, it’s difficult to argue against Jimmy Stewart.The phenomenon of Jimmy Stewart becomes even more remarkable when considering the incredible harmony between the characters he portrayed in his films and his personality off the movie set. Most actors and actresses cultivate a persona in order to achieve success, and in most cases it’s an image that bears only a tangential relationship to an actor’s true personality, but there was no such division for Stewart. The all-American image conveyed in films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and It’s a Wonderful Life corresponds seamlessly with Stewart’s off-screen pursuits, which included a degree in architecture from Princeton and an extended tenure as a pilot during World War II. There were elements of his life story that resisted cultural norms - he waited until age 41 before marrying, and his very decision to pursue acting in 1930s America could be seen as a deviation from more characteristically masculine professions - but there was an almost seamless congruence between the Stewart that audiences saw on screen and the man he was in real life. Naturally, his defining traits developed out of and in response to the values instilled in him by his family and cultural background, and for this reason, examining his filmography alongside his life story paints a complete picture of the delicate unity of Jimmy Stewart’s life.

    Petersburg has embodied power, heroism, and fortitude. It has encompassed all the things that the Russians are and that they hope to become. Opulence and artistic brilliance blended with images of suffering on a monumental scale make up the historic persona of the late W. Bruce Lincoln's lavish "biography" of this mysterious, complex city. Climate and comfort were not what Tsar Peter the Great had in mind when, in the spring of 1703, he decided to build a new capital in the muddy marshes of the Neva River delta. Located 500 miles below the Arctic Circle, this area, with its foul weather, bad water, and sodden soil, was so unattractive that only a handful of Finnish fisherman had ever settled there. Bathed in sunlight at midnight in the summer, it brooded in darkness at noon in the winter, and its canals froze solid at least five months out of every year. Yet to the Tsar, the place he named Sankt Pieter Burkh had the makings of a "paradise." His vision was soon borne out: though St. Petersburg was closer to London, Paris, and Vienna than to Russia's far-off eastern lands, it quickly became the political, cultural, and economic center of an empire that stretched across more than a dozen time zones and over three continents. In this book, revolutionaries and laborers brush shoulders with tsars, and builders, soldiers, and statesmen share pride of place with poets. For only the entire historical experience of this magnificent and mysterious city can reveal the wealth of human and natural forces that shaped the modern history of it and the nation it represents.

    Re-introduced to the Tour in 1976, Alpe d’Huez has risen to mythical status, thanks initially to a string of victories by riders from Holland, whose exploits attracted tens of thousands of their compatriots to the climb, which has become known as ‘Dutch mountain’. A snaking 13.8-kilometre ascent rising up through 21 numbered hairpins at an average gradient of 7.8%, Alpe d’Huez is the climb on which every great rider wants to win. Many of the sport’s most famous and now even infamous names have won on the Alpe, including Bernard Hinault, Joop Zoetemelk, Lucho Herrera, Marco Pantani and Lance Armstrong. As well as days of brilliance, there have controversies such as the high-speed and drug-fuelled duels of the EPO years in the 1990s and into the new millennium.  In Alpe d’Huez, veteran cycling journalist Peter Cossins reveals the triumphs, passion and despair behind the great exploits on the Alpe and discloses the untold details that have led to the mountain becoming as important to the Tour as the race is to resort at its summit. It is a tale of man and machine battling against breath-taking terrain for the ultimate prize.

     ""It’s an astonishing performance. Wise goes through every piece of evidence, every report, every word and comes to the conclusion that investigators were deliberately and brilliantly misled by whoever took over the plane to look in the wrong place. Read this stunning piece of investigative journalism and see if he convinces you." -- John Podhoretz, Commentary magazine. Five years after a state-of-the-art Boeing 777 vanished into the night over the South China Sea, renowned science and aviation author Jeff Wise offers a compelling and detailed account of what happened that night and in the months and years that followed. In his follow-up to "The Plane That Wasn't There," named the Best Kindle Single of 2015, Wise walks readers through the many developments that have taken place in the meantime and explains why despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars and searching an area of seabed the size of Great Britain, authorities were unable to locate the plane's wreckage. Officials and independent experts were stunned by their failure, but Wise predicted it four years ago. Here he distills the fruits of exhaustive research and arrives at a conclusion that upends our understanding of what humans are capable of, both technologically and morally. Jeff Wise is a science journalist specializing in aviation and psychology. A licensed pilot of gliders and light airplanes, he has also written for New York, the New York Times, Time, Businessweek, Esquire, Popular Mechanics, and many others. He is also the author of Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger. A native of Massachusetts, he lives outside New York City with his wife and two sons.

    Goa Freaks begins in the mid 1970s and tells of Cleo's love affair with Goa, a resort in India where the Freaks (hippies) of the world converge to partake in a heady bohemian lifestyle. To finance their astounding appetites for cocaine, heroin, and hashish, the Freaks spend each monsoon season acting as drug couriers, and soon cleo is running her own "scams" in Canada, Australis, and the United States. (She even gets her Aunt Sadie in on the action.) Wish her earnings she builds a veritable palace on the beach- the only Goa house with running water and a flushing toilet. Cleo becomes the hostess of Anjuna Beach, holding days-long poker games and movie nights and, as her money begins to run out, transforming the house into a for-profit drug den. Tracing Cleo's love affairs, her stint hiding out at the ashram of the infamous Bhagwan Rajneesh, and her sometimes-harrowing drug experiences, Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years in India is candid and compelling, bringin to life the spirit of a now-lost era.

    The boy bore disturbing signs of torture, and a story soon spread that it was a ritual murder, performed by Jews in imitation of the Crucifixion as a mockery of Christianity. The outline of William's tale swiftly gained currency far beyond Norwich, and the idea that Jews engaged in ritual murder became firmly rooted in the European imagination. Emily Rose's engaging book delves into the story of William's murder and the notorious trial that followed to uncover the origin of the ritual murder accusation--known as the "blood libel"--in western Europe in the Middle Ages. Focusing on the specific historical context-the 12th--century reform of the Church, the position of Jews in England, and the Second Crusade--and suspensefully unraveling the facts of the case, Rose makes a powerful argument for why the Norwich Jews (and particularly one Jewish banker) were accused of killing the youth, and how the malevolent blood libel accusation managed to take hold. She also considers four "copycat" cases, in which Jews were similarly blamed for the death of young Christians, and traces the adaptations of the story over time. In the centuries after its appearance, the ritual murder accusation provoked instances of torture, death and expulsion of thousands of Jews and the extermination of hundreds of communities. Although no charge of ritual murder has withstood historical scrutiny, the concept of the blood libel is so emotionally charged and deeply rooted in cultural memory that it endures even today. Rose's groundbreaking work, driven by fascinating characters, a gripping narrative, and impressive scholarship, provides clear answers as to why the blood libel emerged when it did and how it was able to gain such widespread acceptance, laying the foundations for enduring anti-Semitic myths that continue to the present.

    Never has the role of women in the political world ever been more on the news agenda, and Sophy has interviewed current and former politicians including among others, Nicola Sturgeon, Ruth Davidson, Betty Boothroyd gain exclusive insight into the role women play in politics at the highest level. The book also includes Theresa May's first at-length interview about her journey to becoming Prime Minister. These interviews have revealed the shocking truth about the sexism that is rife among the House of Commons both in the past and today, with sometimes shocking, and sometimes amusing anecdotes revealing how women in Westminster have worked to counter the gender bias. Sophy provides gripping insight into historical and contemporary stories which will fascinate not just those interested in politics but those who want to know more about women's vital role in democracy. From royalty to writers and from class warriors to suffragettes, Sophy tells the story of those who put their lives on the line for equal rights, and those who were the first to set foot inside the chambers of power, bringing together stories that you may think you know, and stories that have recently been discovered to reveal the truth about what it is to be a woman in Westminster. This book is a celebration of the differing ways that women have shaped the political landscape. The book also, importantly, sheds light on the challenges faced by women in government today, telling us the ways that women working in politics battle the sexism that confront them on a daily basis.