It is one of many awe-inspiring, magical processes that have evolved among the fungi, yet this group remains the least studied and most poorly understood kingdom of organisms. In Mushroom, NicholasMoney offers a vibrant introduction to the world of mushrooms, investigating the science behind these organisms as well as their enduring cultural and imaginative appeal. Beginning with the basics of mushroom biology, Money leads us through a history of mushroom research, painting portraits of thecolorful characters involved in their study--among them, Beatrix Potter, the celebrated author and creator of Peter Rabbit, and Captain Charles McIlvaine, a Civil War veteran who engaged in a dangerous quest to determine the edibility of every mushroom in North America. Money also discusses the usesof mushrooms today, exploring their importance as food and medicine, their use as recreational drugs, and as the cause of horrific poisonings. A cultural, natural, and scientific history in one, Mushroom is a must-read for mycophiles, mushroom gatherers, and nature lovers alike.

    Yet this formidable dominion never inspired the awe of its predecessor. Voltaire distilled the disdain of generations when he quipped it was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. Yet as Peter Wilson shows, the Holy Roman Empire tells a millennial story of Europe better than the histories of individual nation-states. And its legacy can be seen today in debates over the nature of the European Union.Heart of Europe traces the Empire from its origins within Charlemagne’s kingdom in 800 to its demise in 1806. By the mid-tenth century its core rested in the German kingdom, and ultimately its territory stretched from France and Denmark to Italy and Poland. Yet the Empire remained stubbornly abstract, with no fixed capital and no common language or culture. The source of its continuity and legitimacy was the ideal of a unified Christian civilization, but this did not prevent emperors from clashing with the pope over supremacy―the nadir being the sack of Rome in 1527 that killed 147 Vatican soldiers.Though the title of Holy Roman Emperor retained prestige, rising states such as Austria and Prussia wielded power in a way the Empire could not. While it gradually lost the flexibility to cope with political, economic, and social changes, the Empire was far from being in crisis until the onslaught of the French revolutionary wars, when a crushing defeat by Napoleon at Austerlitz compelled Francis II to dissolve his realm.

    With 1066, Professor Paxton's exciting and historically rich six-lecture course, you can experience for yourself the drama of this dynamic year. Taking you from the shores of Scandinavia and France to the battlefields of the English countryside, 1066 will plunge you into a world of fierce Viking warriors, powerful noble families, politically charged marriages, tense succession crises, epic military invasions, and much more.This is #8422 in The Great Courses series of lectures.

    Roger Crowley's readable and comprehensive account of the battle between Mehmed II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and Constantine XI, the 57th emperor of Byzantium, illuminates the period in history that was a precursor to the current jihad between the West and the Middle East.

    Originating from the “Norsemen,” they were one of the most successful warrior tribes of the Dark Ages dominating Europe from the Baltic Sea to the island of Sicily and the borders of Eastern Europe. As a military force they were unstoppable; as conquerors, they established their own kingdom in Normandy from where they set out on a number of devastating campaigns, as well as introduced innovations in politics, architecture and culture.

    Yet Edward has not achieved the martial reputation of other warrior kings such as Henry V - perhaps because he fought battles against his own people in a civil war. It has also been suggested that he lacked the personal discipline expected of a truly great commander. But, as David Santiuste shows in this perceptive and highly readable new study, Edward was a formidable military leader whose strengths and subtlety have not been fully recognized.This reassessment of Edward's military role, and of the Wars of the Roses in which he played such a vital part, gives a fascinating insight into Edward the man as well as the politics and the fighting. Based on contemporary sources and the latest scholarly research, Edward IV and the Wars of the Roses brings to life an extraordinary period of English history.

    Justinian, the great law-giver, appears as a hateful tyrant, wedded to an ex-prostitute, Theodora; and Belisarius, the brilliant general whose secretary Procopius had been, is seen as the pliable dupe of his wife Antonina, a woman as corrupt and scheming as Theodora herself.

    This tremendous survey of England and its people was made at the behest of the Norman, William the Conqueror. Michael Wood's "Domesday: A Search for the Roots of England" is a study of the ancient manuscript and an attempt to analyse the world that the Domesday Book portrayed. He uses the Domesday record to examine Norman society, and also to penetrate beyond it to the Anglo-Saxon, Roman and Iron Age cultures that preceded it. Michael Wood is also author of "In Search of the Dark Ages" and "In Search of the Trojan War".

    This book looks at the savage spectacles of Rome and traces their development from entertainment to hysterical obsession until their eventual decline and disappearance.

    Can democracy survive there? What does the future hold for the once expansive, still powerful, Russian nation? Is Soviet Communism truly dead? Top diplomats struggle daily with questions like these. With this course, you can begin investigating them for yourself.LECTURES16 Lectures1. Nicholas II and the Russian Empire2. The Failure of Constitutional Government3. Russia and the First World War4. Lenin and the Origins of Bolshevism5. Lenin Comes to Power6. Lenin and the Making of a Bolshevik State7. The Twenties8. Stalin and the "Second October Revolution"9. Stalin and the "Great Terror"10. Stalin, Hitler and the Road to War11. The USSR at War12. Stalin's Last Years13. De-Stalinization14. Gorbachev and Perestroika15. The Disintegration of the USSR16. Rebirth of Russia or the Rebirth of the USSR?

    These recipes, stories, jokes, advice, farm lore, and illustrations were collected from a wide variety of American agricultural sources from the 1880s to the 1950s.

    South, by historian Hunter Stewart, chronicles the competition between two fierce rivals - Robert F. Scott and Roald Amundsen - to secure their place in history as the first man to lead an expedition to the most uninhabitable place on earth. South dramatically tells the story of the quest that is marked by heartbreak, greed, ego, and bravery - not only by Scott and Amundsen but by the courageous crews and financial backers who supported them. The journey to reach the South Pole was truly, as it was later called, "The Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration."

    Throughout the book the authors make use of original sources such as chronicles, charters, manuscripts and coins, works of art, archaelogical remains and surviving buildings.The nature of power and kingship, role of wealth, rewards, conquest and blood-feud in the perennial struggle for power, structure of society, the development of Christianity and the relations between church and secular authority are discussed at length, while particular topics are explored in 19 "picture essays".

    They affect how we grant legitimacy to authority, define what is possible, create standards of right and wrong, and even view the potential of human life. Between 1600 and 1800, such a revolution of the intellect seized Europe, shaking the minds of the continent as few things before or since. What we now know as the Enlightenment challenged previously accepted ways of understanding reality, bringing about modern science, representative democracy, and a wave of wars, sparking what Professor Kors calls, "perhaps the most profound transformation of European, if not human, life."In this series of 24 insightful lectures, you'll explore the astonishing conceptual and cultural revolution of the Enlightenment. You'll witness in its tumultuous history the birth of modern thought in the dilemmas, debates, and extraordinary works of the 17th and 18th-century mind, as wielded by the likes of thinkers like Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, Newton, Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau.And you'll understand why educated Europeans came to believe that they had a new understanding - of thought and the human mind, of method, of nature, and of the uses of knowledge - with which they could come to know the world correctly for the first time in human history, and with which they could rewrite the possibilities of human life.Disclaimer: Please note that this recording may include references to supplemental texts or print references that are not essential to the program and not supplied with your purchase.

    In his capital at Constantinople he built the world's most beautiful building, married its most powerful empress, and wrote its most enduring legal code, seemingly restoring Rome's fortunes for the next five hundred years. Then, in the summer of 542, he encountered a flea. The ensuing outbreak of bubonic plague killed five thousand people a day in Constantinople and nearly killed Justinian himself. In Justinian's Flea, William Rosen tells the story of history's first pandemic plague seven centuries before the Black Death that killed tens of millions, devastated the empires of Persia and Rome, left a path of victims from Ireland to Iraq, and opened the way for the armies of Islam. Weaving together evolutionary microbiology, economics, military strategy, ecology, and ancient and modern medicine, Rosen offers a sweeping narrative of one of the great hinge moments in history, one that will appeal to readers of John Kelly's The Great Mortality, John Barry's The Great Influenza, and Jared Diamond's Collapse .