A cruel childhood forced him to lie, deceive and cheat in order to enjoy, if only for brief periods, the life of an intellectual. Once on the throne he spent many years of often brilliant field command of his army in seemingly endless campaigns. He remained an intellectual, however, an essayist, historian, poet, flautist, consorting when possible with the French writer Voltaire.

    

    A remarkable popular history of the English Civil War, from the perspectives of those involved in this most significant turning point in British history.The compelling narrative draws on new sources such as letters, memoirs, ballads and plays to bring to life the Roundheads and Cavaliers, the foot soldiers, war widows and witchfinders of one of the most significant turning points in British history, culminating in Oliver Cromwell’s triumph and the execution of Charles I.By blending the political and the personal, Diane Purkiss illuminates both the ideologies behind the English Civil War and the fears of those who fought in it; the men who were destroyed by the conflict and those, such as Oliver Cromwell, who were defined by it.

    As Jardine boldly states, "The seeds of our own exuberant multiculturalism and bravura consumerism were planted in the European Renaissance." While Europe's royalty and merchants competed with each other to acquire works of art, vicious commercial battles were being fought over who should control the centers for trade around the globe. Jardine encompasses Renaissance culture from its western borders in Christendom to its eastern reaches in the Islamic Ottoman Empire, bringing this opulent epoch to life in all its material splendor and competitive acquisitiveness. "A savvy, street-smart history of the Renaissance."—Dan Cryer, Newsday "Jardine's lively book is specific and down-to-earth. A particularly fascinating section recalls how books suddenly ceased to be principally collector's items or aids to scholars and became the sixteenth century's Internet, dispensing fact and fancy to high and low."—The New Yorker

    Set in 1507, when the author himself was an attaché to the Duke of Urbino, the book consists of a series of fictional conversations between members of the Duke's retinue. All aspects of leadership come under discussion, but the primary focus rests upon the relationship between advisors and those whom they counsel. Ever-relevant subjects include the decision-making process, maintaining an ethical stance, and the best ways of interacting with authority figures. Frequently assigned in university courses on literature, history, and Renaissance studies, the Dover edition of this classic work will be the lowest-priced edition available.

    Here is a narrative account of decisive engagements that succeeded by brilliant strategy more than by direct force. The reader accompanies those who fought, from Roman legionaries and Mongol horsemen to Napoleonic soldiery, American Civil War Rebels and Yankees, World War I Tommies, Lawrence of Arabia's bedouins, Chinese revolutionaries, British Desert Rats, Rommel's Afrika Korps, and Douglas MacArthur's Inchon invaders. However varied their weapons, the soldiers of all these eras followed a commander who faced the same obstacles and demonstrated the strategic and tactical genius essential for victory. "All warfare is based on deception," wrote Sun Tzu in The Art of War in 400 BCE. Bevin Alexander shows how great generals have interpreted this advice, and why it still holds true today.

    "Meet the assaulters: Pathfinders plunging from the black, coxswains plowing the whitecaps, bareknuckle Rangers scaling sheer rock... Fast-paced and up-close, this is history's greatest story reinvigorated as only Alex Kershaw can."--Adam Makos, New York Times bestselling author of Spearhead and A Higher Call Beginning in the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944, The First Wave follows the remarkable men who carried out D-Day's most perilous missions. The charismatic, unforgettable cast includes the first American paratrooper to touch down on Normandy soil; the glider pilot who braved antiaircraft fire to crash-land mere yards from the vital Pegasus Bridge; the brothers who led their troops onto Juno Beach under withering fire; as well as a French commando, returning to his native land, who fought to destroy German strongholds on Sword Beach and beyond. Readers will experience the sheer grit of the Rangers who scaled Pointe du Hoc and the astonishing courage of the airborne soldiers who captured the Merville Gun Battery in the face of devastating enemy counterattacks. The first to fight when the stakes were highest and the odds longest, these men would determine the fate of the invasion of Hitler's Fortress Europe--and the very history of the twentieth century.The result is an epic of close combat and extraordinary heroism. It is the capstone Alex Kershaw's remarkable career, built on his close friendships with D-Day survivors and his intimate understanding of the Normandy battlefield. For the seventy-fifth anniversary, here is a fresh take on World War II's longest day.

    Combining Guderian’s land offensive with Luftwaffe attacks, the Nazi Blitzkrieg decimated the defenses of Poland, Norway, France—and, very nearly, Russia—at the war’s outset. But in 1941, when Guderian advised that ground forces should take a step back, Hitler dismissed him. In these pages, the outspoken general shares his candid point of view on what would have led Germany to victory, and what ensured that it didn’t. In addition to providing a rare inside look at key members of the Nazi party, Guderian reveals in detail how he developed the Panzer tank forces and orchestrated their various campaigns, from the breakthrough at Sedan to his drive to the Channel coast that virtually decided the Battle of France. Panzer Leader became a bestseller within one year of its original publication in 1952 and has since been recognized as a classic account of the greatest conflict of our time.

    The tale of Charles Edward Stuart, "Bonnie Prince Charlie," and his heroic but doomed attempt to regain his grandfather's (James II) crown - remains the stuff of legend: the hunted fugitive, Flora MacDonald, and the dramatic escape over the sea to the Isle of Skye. But the full story - the real history - is even more dramatic, captivating, and revelatory.Much more than a rebellion, the events of '45 were the final act in an ongoing civil war that threatened to destabilize the British nation and destroy its embryonic empire. The Bonnie Prince and his army of Scottish highlanders alone couldn't have been much of a threat, but with the involvement of England's perennial enemy, Catholic France, it was a far more dangerous and potentially catastrophic situation for the English crown. With encouragement and support from Louis XIV, Charles Edward's triumphant Jacobite army encroached all the way to Derby, a mere 120 miles from London, before a series of missteps ultimately doomed the rebellion to crushing defeat and annihilation at Culloden in April 1746 - the last battle ever fought on British soil.Jacqueline Riding conveys the full weight of these monumental years of English history as the future course of Great Britain as a united kingdom was irreversibly altered.

    Yet this major subject is not well known and is little understood. That is why the publication of James Falkner's absorbing new study is so timely and important. In a clear and perceptive narrative he describes and analyses the complex political manoeuvres and a series of military campaigns which also involved the threat posed by Ottoman Turks in the east and Sweden and Russia in the north. Fighting took place not just in Europe but in the Americas and Canada, and on the high seas. All European powers, large and small, were involved - France, Spain, Great Britain, Holland, Austria and Portugal were the major players. The end result of eleven years of outright war was a French prince firmly established on the throne in Madrid and a division of the old Spanish empire. More notably though, French power, previously so dominant, was curbed for almost ninety years.

    She also explores the ambiguous moral implications inherent in this kind of warfare: Are these nefarious forms of weaponry ingenious or cowardly? Admirable or reprehensible?

    An extraordinary series of events, fastidiously researched here, saved the city from what Hitler wanted to leave to the Allies "nothing but a field of ruins."

    Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World has been read and re-read for close to 150 years. It is not only the authoritative account of each battle that makes Creasy's work such a classic--it is his command of narrative, his interest in human struggle, his profound deductions as to effects of the battles, and his striving after truth. Furthermore, his selections seem as wise and well-considered today as when Fifteen Decisive Battles first appeared in 1851: Nobody since has made better ones, nor given us better accounts. Apart from the scholarship and literary skill of Creasy's book, there is another reason it has endured: Creasy was essentially fair-minded. He had been a judge, and when he became England's great military critic and historian, he maintained a thoroughly judicial attitude. He was not a British partisan, nor French, nor German--he was a cosmopolitan observer of great events.Out of 2300 years, Creasy only found fifteen battles which he called decisive in the highest sense. He chose them not for the number of killed and wounded, nor for their status in myth and lore, but because they fundamentally changed the course of world history. In doing so, he made his book a miniature military history of the western world, a classic that will repay continued study for generations to come, as it has for generations.

    Visitors stand on bridges that were crossed by Julius Caesar and Cicero, walk around temples visited by Roman emperors, and step into churches that have hardly changed since popes celebrated mass in them sixteen centuries ago.These architectural survivals are all the more remarkable considering the violent disasters that have struck the city. Afflicted by earthquakes, floods, fires and plagues, it has most of all been repeatedly ravaged by roving armies. Rome: A History in Seven Sackings examines the most important of these attacks and reveals, with fascinating insight, how they transformed the city - and not always for the worse. From the Gauls to the Nazis, Kneale vividly recounts those threatening the city, while drawing an intense and vibrant portrait of the city and its inhabitants, both before and after being attacked. In these troubled times when our cities can seem fragile, Rome's history offers a picture that is both shocking and also reassuring. Like the Neapolitans from Norman Lewis's Naples 44, Romans have repeatedly shrugged off catastrophes and made their city anew.A meticulously researched, magical and novel blend of travelogue, social and cultural history, Rome: A History in Seven Sackings is part celebration of the fierce courage, panache and vitality of the Roman people, and part passionate love letter to Rome. This is a popular history of the famous, incomparable city like no other.

    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