Neither scholarship nor semi-fictional biography will ever be the same again. . . .Engels at last uses all the archaeological work done in Asia in the past generation and makes it accessible. . . . Careful analyses of terrain, climate, and supply requirements are throughout combined in a masterly fashion to help account for Alexander's strategic decision in the light of the options open to him...The chief merit of this splendid book is perhaps the way in which it brings an ancient army to life, as it really was and moved: the hours it took for simple operations of washing and cooking and feeding animals; the train of noncombatants moving with the army. . . . this is a book that will set the reader thinking. There are not many books on Alexander the Great that do."—New York Review of Books

    It is significant that it begins in 1900 and ends in 2000. Most accounts have begun in 1912 or 1922 and largely ignored the end of the century. Politics and political parties are examined in detail but high politics does not dominate the book, which rather sets out to answer the question: 'What was it like to grow up and live in 20th-century Ireland?' It makes extensive use of unused or neglected sources. It deals with the North in a comprehensive way, focusing on the social and cultural aspects, not just the obvious political and religious divisions.

    "The hushed reverence of the gallery can fool you into believing masterpieces are polite things; visions that soothe, charm and beguile, but actually they are thugs. Merciless and wily, the greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your sense of reality. . . ."With the same disarming force, The Power of Art propels us on an eye-opening, breathtaking odyssey, zooming in on eight extraordinary masterpieces, from Caravaggio's David and Goliath to Picasso's Guernica. Jolting us far from the comfort zone of the hushed art gallery, Schama closes in on intense make-or-break turning points in the lives of eight great artists who, under extreme stress, created something unprecedented, altering the course of art forever.The embattled heroes—Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso and Rothko—each in his own resolute way, faced crisis with steadfast defiance, pitting passion and conviction against scorn and short-sightedness. The masterpieces they created challenged convention, shattered complacency, shifted awareness and changed the way we look at the world.With vivid storytelling and powerfully evocative descriptive passages, Schama explores the dynamic personalities of the artists and the spirit of the times they lived through, capturing the flamboyant theatre of bourgeois life in Amsterdam, the passion and paranoia of Revolutionary Paris, and the carnage and pathos of Civil War Spain.Most compelling of all, The Power of Art traces the extraordinary evolution of eight "eye-popping" world-class works of art. Created in a bolt of illumination, such works "tell us something about how the world is, how it is to be inside our skins, that no more prosaic source of wisdom can deliver. And when they do that, they answer, irrefutably and majestically, the nagging question of every reluctant art-conscript . . . 'OK, OK, but what's art really for?'"

    While protesters in New York, Cairo, London, and Athens took to the streets in pursuit of emancipation, obscure destructive fantasies inspired the world’s racist populists in places as far apart as Hungary and Arizona, achieving a horrific consummation in the actions of mass murderer Anders Breivik.The subterranean work of dissatisfaction continues. Rage is building, and a new wave of revolts and disturbances will follow. Why? Because the events of 2011 augur a new political reality. These are limited, distorted—sometimes even perverted—fragments of a utopian future lying dormant in the present.

    The botched parliament at Stormont lumbers from crisis to crisis and has scarcely passed any laws. At the time of writing, Sinn Féin and the DUP are refusing to share power and Northern Ireland is facing being run directly from London.This remarkable book examines power-sharing and the peace process in Northern Ireland on the twentieth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and asks what it has achieved beyond an end to violence. She concludes that, although it brought an end to violent blood shed on Northern Ireland's streets, it also failed to create healthy and functional politics.The Good Friday Agreement served an important purpose in 1998, but has since been out-paced by local and global politics. It is no longer fit to facilitate the peaceful politics it made possible, as the current collapse of power-sharing sadly shows.

    She doesn’t talk about high finance or managing money; instead, she goes far deeper to explore debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human societies. By looking at how debt has informed our thinking from preliterate times to the present day, from the stories we tell of revenge and sin to the way we order social relationships, Atwood argues that the idea of what we owe may well be built into the human imagination as one of its most dynamic metaphors. Her final lecture addresses the notion of a debt to nature and the need to find new ways of interacting with the natural world before it is too late.

    Buckingham Palace is effectively an independent kingdom with its own rules and customs, now explained by Brian Hoey. Hundreds of anecdotes reveal the conditions in which the staff live and work and also their relationship with the Royals they serve.How does one get a job as personal footman to the Queen? Why does Prince Charles still have to send a note to her Page of the Backstairs requesting a meeting with his mother? How much do members of the household earn? Why does the Queen hate men in three-piece suits? Why are the Queen’s bedsheets six inches longer than Prince Philip’s? Why do her maids have to vacuum walking backwards? Why doesn’t the Queen allow square ice-cubes to be put in her drinks?

    During the late 1990s, Palmer was rated as rich as The Queen by the Sunday Times Rich List.Palmer earned his nickname Goldfinger after smelting (in his back garden) tens of millions of pounds worth of stolen gold bullion from the 20th century's most lucrative heist; the Brink's-Mat robbery. Palmer then used his share of the millions to become the vicious overlord of a vast illegal timeshare property empire in Tenerife. At the same time, Goldfinger financed huge international drugs shipments as well as some of the most notorious UK robberies of the past 30 years, including the £50m Securitas heist in Kent in 2006 and, many believe, the Hatton Garden heist in 2015.Palmer vowed to hunt down all his underworld enemies. But in the end it was those same criminals who decided to bring his life to an end. Murdered in June 2015, with charges of fraud, money laundering and worse pending, this book tells his murky story for the first time.As outrageous and bullet-riddled as the hit Netflix series Narcos, Killing Goldfinger tells the true story of Britain's underworld kingpin, who turned the sunshine holiday island of Tenerife into his very own Crime Incorporated and then paid the ultimate price.

    Beginning with: "It was Sappho who first called eros 'bittersweet.' No one who has been in love disputes her. What does the word mean?", Carson examines her subject from numerous points of view and styles, transcending the constraints of the scholarly exercise for an evocative and lyrical meditation in the tradition of William Carlos William's Spring and All and William H. Gass's On Being Blue.

     This area was dangerous and many who had ventured there alone had never returned. But slowly over the course of this century settlers continued to push further west until regions such as West Virginia were populated with more and more adventurous young men and women. The settlement of these lands did not occur without difficulties and colonizers frequently came into conflict with the local Native American populations. Wills De Hass’s remarkable book History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of West Virginia is a fascinating history of how the lands of the west were first settled by white emigrants in the eighteenth century and how these settlers came into frequent strife with the Native American tribes who had previously lived there. Beginning with Columbus’ discovery of this great continent Wills De Hass charts the colonization of this expansive land. He records with brilliant detail the early encounters that Europeans had with the men and women that they found already living across the region and explains how various nations from across the Atlantic made their first tentative footholds on this newly discovered land. De Hass records how settlers were not only conflict with Native Americans but also with each other as this region descended into war, firstly during the French and Indian War and shortly afterwards during the American War of Independence. Particularly fascinating throughout the book are the biographical sketches of various well-known frontiersmen who were particularly influential in the Ohio Valley and northwestern Virginia. This book is perfect for anyone interested in the early settlement of western regions prior to 1795 and how this area was frequently in conflict as settlers attempted to assert their rights against the wishes of the Native American populations. Wills de Hass was a lecturer and writer on archaeological and historical subjects. His book History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of Western Virginia was first published in 1851 and De Hass passed away 1910.

    It is Epictetus, a lame former slave exiled by Emperor Domitian, who offers by far the most precise and humane version of Stoic ideals. The Discourses, assembled by his pupil Arrian, catch him in action, publicly setting out his views on ethical dilemmas.Committed to communicating with the broadest possible audience, Epictetus uses humor, imagery conversations and homely comparisons to put his message across. The results are perfect universal justice and calm indifference in the face of pain. The most comprehensive edition available with an introduction, notes, selected criticism, glossary, and chronology of Epictetus' life and times.

    This selection from Cassius Dio's Roman History gives the fullest description of that long struggle and ultimate triumph - detailing the brutal battles and political feuds that led to the collapse of Rome's 400-year-old republic, and Augustus' subsequent reign as emperor. Included are accounts of military campaigns from Ethiopia to Yugoslavia, and of long conflict with Antony and Cleopatra. With skill and artistry, Dio brings to life many speeches from the era - among them Augustus' damning indictment of Antony's passion for the Egyptian queen - and provides a fascinating account of the debate between the great general Agrippa and Maecenas on the virtues of republicanism and monarchy.

    Murray Abraham on gaining an audience’s sympathy for Shylock, Sir Ben Kingsley on communicating Shakespeare’s ideas through performance, Germaine Greer on the playwright’s home life, Dame Harriet Walter on the complexity of his heroines, Brian Cox on social conflict in his time and ours, Jane Smiley on transposing King Lear to Iowa in A Thousand Acres, and Sir Antony Sher on feeling at home in Shakespeare’s language. Together these essays provide a fresh appreciation of Shakespeare’s works as a living legacy to be read, seen, performed, adapted, revised, wrestled with, and embraced by creative professionals and lay enthusiasts alike.

    This was the epoch of Alexander’s vast expansion of the Greco-Macedonian world, the rise and fall of his successors’ major dynasties in Egypt and Asia, and, ultimately, the establishment of Rome as the first Mediterranean superpower.The Hellenistic Age chronicles the years 336 to 30 BCE, from the days of Philip and Alexander of Macedon to the death of Cleopatra and the final triumph of Caesar’s heir, the young Augustus. Peter Green’s remarkably far-ranging study covers the prevalent themes and events of those centuries: the Hellenization of an immense swath of the known world–from Egypt to India–by Alexander’s conquests; the lengthy and chaotic partition of this empire by rival Macedonian marshals after Alexander’s death; the decline of the polis (city state) as the predominant political institution; and, finally, Rome’s moment of transition from republican to imperial rule.Predictably, this is a story of war and power-politics, and of the developing fortunes of art, science, and statecraft in the areas where Alexander’s coming disseminated Hellenic culture. It is a rich narrative tapestry of warlords, libertines, philosophers, courtesans and courtiers, dramatists, historians, scientists, merchants, mercenaries, and provocateurs of every stripe, spun by an accomplished classicist with an uncanny knack for infusing life into the distant past, and applying fresh insights that make ancient history seem alarmingly relevant to our own times.To consider the three centuries prior to the dawn of the common era in a single short volume demands a scholar with a great command of both subject and narrative line. The Hellenistic Age is that rare book that manages to coalesce a broad spectrum of events, persons, and themes into one brief, indispensable, and amazingly accessible survey.

    This book also reveals the biblical solution that will lead to the complete liberation of a people. All those who have descended from slaves, and consider themselves to be "Negro", "Black", or "African American" should have the audacity to read this book.