His wife, Marguerite, has accused squire Jacques Le Gris of rape. A deadlocked court decrees a “trial by combat” between the two men that also leaves Marguerite’s fate in the balance. For if her husband loses the duel, she will be put to death as a false accuser. While enemy troops pillage the land, and rebellion and plague threaten the lives of all, Carrouges and Le Gris meet in full armor on a walled field in Paris. What follows is a fierce duel, the final one sanctioned by governing powers, before a massive crowd that includes the teenage King Charles VI, during which both combatants are wounded—but only one fatally.Based on extensive research in Normandy and Paris, THE LAST DUEL brings to life a colorful, turbulent age and three unforgettable characters caught in a fatal triangle of crime, scandal, and revenge. THE LAST DUEL is at once a moving human drama, a captivating true crime story, and an engrossing work of historical intrigue with themes that echo powerfully centuries later.

    Leonardo da Vinci, inventor extraordinarie and artist, is illustrated beautifully in this historical biography by Emily Hahn.

    She convincingly portrays the hell-bent pursuit of whale oil as the first time the human desire for light thrust us toward an environmental tipping point. Only decades later, gas street lights opened up the evening hours to leisure, which changed the ways we live and sleep and the world’s ecosystems.Edison’s “tiny strip of paper that a breath would blow away” produced a light that seemed to its users all but divorced from human effort or cost. And yet, as Brox’s informative and hair-raising portrait of our current grid system shows, the cost is ever with us.Brilliant is infused with human voices, startling insights, and—only a few years before it becomes illegal to sell most incandescent light bulbs in the United States—timely questions about how our future lives will be shaped by light.

    On the bloody battlefield of Waterloo, the Emperor Napoleon and his hastily formed legions clashed with the Anglo-Allied armies led by the Duke of Wellington -- the only time the two greatest military strategists of their age faced each other in combat.With precision and elegance, Andrew Roberts sets the political, strategic, and historical scene, providing a breathtaking account of each successive stage of the battle while also examining new evidence that reveals exactly how Napoleon was defeated. Illuminating, authoritative, and engrossing, Waterloo is a masterful work of history.

    The Rudomin family has been arrested by the Russians. They are "capitalists' enemies of the people." Forced from their home and friends in Vilna, Poland, they are herded into crowded cattle cars. Their destination: the endless steppe of Siberia.For five years, Esther and her family live in exile, weeding potato fields and working in the mines, struggling for enough food and clothing to stay alive. Only the strength of family sustains them and gives them hope for the future.

    With full colour illustrations.

    Noun, his useful friend Pronoun, little ragged Article, talkative Adjective, busy Dr. Verb and Adverb, perky Preposition, convenient Conjunction, and irksome Interjection—are brought to trial by Judge Grammar to settle disputes over the rules of language. Each part of speech is called in turn to take the stand, where they are questioned by Doctor Syntax and Sergeant Parsing. In the course of the amusing trial, the reader, perhaps without even realizing it, is exposed to the most important rules of grammar.            This charming facsimile edition once again brings the characters of Grammar-Land to life for the entertainment and edification of a new generation of adults and children alike.

    It is 701 B.C - rule of the Kushite dynasty in ancient Egypt. Young Prince Taharka, a very minor royal son, succeeds unexpectedly to the throne of Kush and Egypt - a "divine" rulership. It's not long, however, before a treacherous plot pushes him into sudden exile and into the hands of Amos, an emissary of King Hezekiah seeking help with whom he will fight - the mighty Assyrian, Sennacherib, promising alliance or Hezekiah, the Jew who trusts in Yahweh. A novel inspired by research of the historical King Taharka and period. Includes an introduction with home-education suggestions.

    Written shortly after World War I by Calvert School's first Head Master, Virgil Hillyer, this history storybook combines charm with facts to stimulate young minds and leave them yearning for more information. This volume of A Child's History of the World contains 79 stories that start at the beginning of time and reach to the present. With many illustrations by Carle Michel Book and M.S. Wright.

    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.

    Concentrating on the lives of blacks who achieved freedom, this book describes how, against formidable odds, they amassed property, established plantations, acquired dependent labourers, and lived for several generations as free and independent members of Virginia society.

    They quickly signed up to serve as maid, waiter, concierge, nanny, and occasionally doctor and undertaker to cars full of white passengers, making the Pullman Company the largest employer of African Americans in the country by the 1920s.Drawing on extensive interviews with dozens of porters and their descendants, Larry Tye reconstructs the complicated world of the Pullman porter and the vital cultural, political, and economic roles they played as forerunners of the modern black middle class. Rising from the Rails provides a lively and enlightening look at this important social phenomenon.

    Illustrations.

    It was the Countess, dressed in ermine and pearls, who took command of Lifeboat No. 8, rowing for hours through the black and icy water. In the words of one of the Titanic’s crew, she was “more of a man than any we have on board.”At the heart of Kaye’s tale is a budding romance between the Countess’s maid, Roberta Maioni, and the Titanic’s valiant wireless operator, Jack Phillips. While Roberta made it safely onto Lifeboat No. 8, holding nothing but a photo of Jack she had run back to her cabin to retrieve, he remained on the ship, where he would send out the world’s first SOS signal. But would it be received in time to save his life?Surviving that fateful night in the North Atlantic was not the end of the saga for those aboard Lifeboat No 8. Kaye reveals what happened to each passenger and crew member and how the legendary maritime disaster haunted them forever.A century later, we’re still captivated by the Titanic and its passengers. With its skillful use of survivors’ letters, diaries, and testimonies, “Lifeboat No. 8” adds a dramatic new chapter to the ongoing story.

    The Cherokees journeyed through bitter cold and blazing heat, with little food or water. One out of every four died --- and with them died a culture that had existed for hundreds of years, a civilization that had existed for hundred of years, a civilization that had embraced the white man's ways only to perish through his betrayal. Today, only the names remain of this once great nation.