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Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England


Charles Harding Firth - 1900
     Frith describes the years which led to Cromwell seizing power. These years included the rise and fall of megalomaniac King Charles I, meetings of the Long Parliaments of the 1640s and the discussions concerning the newer ideas in English Christianity (Presbyterianism, Calvinism and so forth). Then came the Puritan rebellion against Charles following their Nineteen Propositions of 1642. Throughout the 1640s and 1650s the Royalists, fighting on behalf of the King, were engaged in fighting with the Puritans, and Firth gives excellent and vivid descriptions of battle based on first-hand accounts. Assisted by the Scottish Army, the Battle of Marston Moor was a key point in the conflict, where Cromwell gained the nickname ‘Ironsides’ from his followers and ‘Lord of the Fens’ from his opponents due to his support of the rights of peasants. In 1648 he joined the army to quell any outbreak of civil war and anarchy, persuading the soldiers to side with him and Parliament. He also formulated ‘The Agreement of the People’. Then Ireland rose up against its Parliament, leading to Cromwell’s attempt to convert the nation to Protestantism, and England went to war with Scotland and the Netherlands. After the execution of Charles I in 1649, Cromwell was placed at the head of the English Republic, ‘a perpetual Parliament always sitting’, which became the Little Parliament within a few years. Opposed to him were the Levellers and Presbyterians, which shows that the events had both a political and religious dimension. He also gave kindness to the Quakers and formed an alliance with France against Spain in a move that was much criticised in the years that followed. Cromwell initially wanted to incorporate the army into how England was governed, but by 1653 civilian rule had been restored. Cromwell was given the title of Protector and set about promoting the separation of powers within government and the reform of law and the English courts system. He also encouraged education and scholarship, which were linked with his own religious ideals to unite the branches of the English church, and hoped to secure England’s commercial and religious interests within Europe and the colonies. Right up to his death in 1660, argues Firth in a wide-ranging and brilliant study of Puritanism and the man who stood at its head, no man exerted more influence on the religious development of England. Charles Firth (1857-1936) was Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University and president of the Royal Historical Society. His works concerned seventeenth-century England and included Scotland and the Commonwealth.

The Byzantine World War


Nick Holmes - 2019
    But why did they happen?Their origins are revealed in a new light. As part of a medieval world war that stretched from Asia to Europe. At its centre was an ancient empire – Byzantium.Told for the first time as a single, linked narrative are three great events that changed history: the fall of Byzantium in the eleventh century, the epic campaign of the First Crusade and the origins of modern Turkey.Nick Holmes not only presents the First Crusade in a wider global context but he also puts forwards new interpretations of the original sources, suggesting that its success was in fact largely accidental, and that the central role of Byzantium in the Crusades has been underestimated.

The Court of Last Resort: The True Story of a Team of Crime Experts Who Fought to Save the Wrongfully Convicted


Erle Stanley Gardner - 1952
       In 1945, Erle Stanley Gardner, noted attorney and author of the popular Perry Mason mysteries, was contacted by an overwhelmed California public defender who believed his doomed client was innocent. William Marvin Lindley had been convicted of the rape and murder of a young girl along the banks of the Yuba River, and was awaiting execution at San Quentin. After reviewing the case, Gardner agreed to help—it seemed the fate of the “Red-Headed Killer” hinged on the testimony of a colorblind witness.   Gardner’s intervention sparked the Court of Last Resort. The Innocence Project of its day, this ambitious and ultimately successful undertaking was devoted to investigating, reviewing, and reversing wrongful convictions owing to poor legal representation, prosecutorial abuses, biased police activity, bench corruption, unreliable witnesses, and careless forensic-evidence testimony. The crimes: rape, murder, kidnapping, and manslaughter. The prisoners: underprivileged and vulnerable men wrongly convicted and condemned to life sentences or death row with only one hope—the devotion of Erle Stanley Gardner and the Court of Last Resort.   Featuring Gardner’s most damning cases of injustice from across the country, The Court of Last Resort won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. Originating as a monthly column in Argosy magazine, it was produced as a dramatized court TV show for NBC.

The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick"


Nat Love - 1906
    Born to slaves in Davidson County, Tennessee, the newly freed Love struck out for Kansas after the war. He was fifteen and already endowed with a reckless and romantic readiness. In wide-open Dodge City he joined up with an outfit from the Texas Panhandle to begin a career riding the range and fighting Indians, outlaws, and the elements. Years later he would say, “I had an unusually adventurous life.” That was rare understatement. More characteristic was Love’s claim: “I carry the marks of fourteen bullet wounds on different parts of my body, most any one of which would be sufficient to kill an ordinary man, but I am not even crippled.” In 1876 a virtuoso rodeo performance in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, won him the moniker of Deadwood Dick. He became known as DD all over the West, entering into dime novels as a mysteriously dark and heroic presence. This vivid autobiography includes encounters with Bat Masterson and Billy the Kid, a soon-after view of the Custer battlefield, and a successful courtship. Love left the range in 1890, the year of the official closing of the frontier. Then, as a Pullman train conductor he traveled his old trails, and those good times bring his story to a satisfying end.

The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Extreme Edition: Extreme Edition


Joshua Piven - 2000
    Here are all new scenarios for living life on the very edge. Imperiled readers will learn immediate, hands-on strategies for surviving an elephant stampede, a 16-car pile-up, a mine collapse, and a nuclear attack. Discover how to take a bullet, control a runaway hot air balloon, break a gorilla's grip, endure a Turkish prison, and free a limb from a beartrap. Whether stranded on an iceberg, being chased by a pack of wolves, spinning out on a motorcycle, or being buried alive, The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Extreme Edition has all the right stuff for those times when everything goes wrong.

Sweet, Savage Death


Jane Haddam - 1984
    This Edgar-nominated whodunit is a behind-the-scenes look at the romance business - authors, agents, editors, publishers, and fans.

A Once and Future Love: a time travel romance


Anne Kelleher - 1998
    When Richard Lambert’s beloved wife dies, he thinks he will never find love again. Until, while exploring a medieval tower, he falls from the steps—and into another time… England, 1214. When Richard wakes, he’s in the body of his ancestor, who is near death from battle. As his wife nurses him back to health, she finds he is not the cruel man she knew. And he discovers a second chance—with his one and only love.

Where There's A Will


Mary Roberts Rinehart - 1912
    The story is told by Minnie, who has essentially run the spa for years and inherited the care of its famous spring from her father. When the old doctor dies and leaves the Hope Springs Spa to his ne'er-do-well grandson with the stipulation that he live on premises for two months in order to inherit, the grandson is nowhere to be found. So Minnie tries to save the spa by enlisting the help of family and friends to trick the lawyer and keep the spa running.

The King and the Catholics: The Fight for Religious Liberty in Georgian England


Antonia Fraser - 2018
    Nearly one thousand people were killed, looting was widespread, and torch-bearing protestors marched on the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. These were the Gordon Riots: the worst civil disturbance in British history, triggered by an act of Parliament designed to loosen two centuries of systemic oppression of Catholics in the British Isles. While many London Catholics saw their homes ransacked and chapels desecrated, the riots marked a crucial turning point in their fight to return to public life. Over the next fifty years, factions battled one another to reform the laws of the land: wealthy English Catholics yearned to rejoin the political elite; the protestant aristocracy in Ireland feared an empowered Catholic populace; and the priesthood coveted old authority that royal decree had forbidden. Kings George III and George IV stubbornly refused to address the "Catholic Question" even when pressed by their prime ministers--governments fell over it--and events in America and Europe made many skeptical of disrupting the social order. But in 1829, through the dogged work of charismatic Irish lawyer Daniel O'Connell and with the support of the Duke of Wellington, the Roman Catholic Relief Act finally passed. It was a watershed moment, opening the door to future social reform and the radical transformation of the Victorian age.The King and the Catholics is a gripping, character-driven example of narrative history at its best. It is also a distant mirror of our own times, reflecting the dire consequences of state-sanctioned intolerance and showing how collective action and the political process can triumph over wrongheaded legislation.

W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963


David Levering Lewis - 2000
    This monumental biography--eight years in the research and writing--treats the early and middle phases of a long and intense career: a crucial fifty-year period that demonstrates how Du Bois changed forever the way Americans think about themselves.

When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew: A Memoir


Hendrika de Vries - 2019
    In the aftermath of her father’s departure, Hendrika watches as freedoms formerly taken for granted are eroded with escalating brutality by men with swastika armbands who aim to exterminate those they deem “inferior” and those who do not obey. As time goes on, Hendrika absorbs her mother’s strength and faith, and learns about moral choice and forced silence. She sees her hidden Jewish “stepsister” betrayed, and her mother interrogated at gunpoint. She and her mother suffer near starvation, and they narrowly escape death on the day of liberation. But they survive it all—and through these harrowing experiences, Hendrika discovers the woman she wants to become.

The Theory of Relativity and Other Essays


Albert Einstein - 1950
    Discover the thought process and physics behind general relativity and Einstein’s contribution to science, in this authorized edition. In this collection of his seven most important essays on physics, Einstein guides his reader step-by-step through the many layers of scientific theory that formed a starting point for his discoveries. By both supporting and refuting the theories and scientific efforts of his predecessors, Einstein reveals in a clear voice the origins and meaning of such significant topics as physics and reality, the fundamentals of theoretical physics, the common language of science, the laws of science and of ethics, and an elementary derivation of the equivalence of mass and energy. This remarkable collection allows the general reader to understand not only the significance of Einstein’s masterpiece, but also the brilliant mind behind it.This authorized ebook features a new introduction by Neil Berger and an illustrated biography of Albert Einstein, which includes rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The Harlem Hellfighters: When Pride Met Courage


Walter Dean Myers - 2005
    . . . It is the story of men who acted as men, and who gave a good account of themselves when so many people thought, even hoped, that they would fail.What defines a true hero?The "Harlem Hellfighters," the African American soldiers of the 369th Infantry Regiment of World War I, redefined heroism -- for America, and for the world. At a time of widespread bigotry and racism, these soldiers put their lives on the line in the name of democracy.The Harlem Hellfighters: When Pride Met Courage is a portrait of bravery and honor. With compelling narrative and never-before-published photographs, Michael L. Printz Award winner Walter Dean Myers and renowned filmmaker Bill Miles deftly portray the true story of these unsung American heroes.

Zoomies, Subs, and Zeros (Annotated)


Hans C. Adamson - 2019
    The League helped save the lives of hundreds of Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps pilots - including future President George H. W. Bush - from Japanese planes as well as from death at sea. Author Charles Lockwood (Hellcats of the Sea, Sink 'Em All) brings his usual flair for submarine stories to this eye-witness narrative of the hair-raising adventures of this little-known sub-division of the US Naval Fleet.*Includes annotations and images.

The Other Log of Phileas Fogg


Philip José Farmer - 1973
    Phileas Fogg's epic global journey is not the product of a daft wager but, in fact, a covert mission to chase down the elusive Captain Nemo, who is none other than Professor Moriarty. About a hundred years ago, a group of mutant supermen began playing a major role in our affairs. In the Wold Newton universe, It was no accident characters such as Sherlock Holmes, Flash Gordon, Doc Savage, James Bond and Jack the Ripper are all mysteriously connected. Nor was it accidental that their biographers titillated their public with hints of their true natures while not daring to part the veil. Just what was it that restrained them from telling all?