The Travels of Sherlock Holmes (A Sherlock Mystery Book 1)


John Hall - 1999
     While mourning and memorialising Sherlock, the best and the wisest man he has ever known, Watson suffers an additional bereavement - the death of his wife. Alone in the world, Watson’s only choice is to move forwards with his life and also move out of London, a place where he knows the past will haunt him. While working in a convalescent hospital in Surrey, Watson meets a patient who claims to know the truth and can answer his painstaking questions. The patient, delirious with pain, says he witnessed Sherlock in Tibet, Persia and other exotic locations. Thus begins Watson's hunt for the truth which leads him from the darkest alleys of London all the way to the upper echelons of the British Empire. The Travels of Sherlock Holmes is the First of John Hall's Sherlockian pastiches and a brilliant addition to the Holmes and Watson casebooks. John Hall spent many years in the civil service before becoming a professional writer specialising in crime fiction. His book Death of a Collector won the Sherlock Magazine’s competition for the best new fictional detective. He is also the author of several other Sherlock mysteries.

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 Last Wild Men of Borneo: A True Story of Death and Treasure


Carl Hoffman - 2018
    The other vanished forever into an endless jungle. Had he shed civilization—or lost his mind? Global headlines suspected murder. Lured by these mysteries, New York Times bestselling author Carl Hoffman journeyed to find the truth, discovering that nothing is as it seems in the world’s last Eden, where the lines between sinner and saint blur into one.In 1984, Swiss traveler Bruno Manser joined an expedition to the Mulu caves on Borneo, the planet’s third largest island. There he slipped into the forest interior to make contact with the Penan, an indigenous tribe of peace-loving nomads living among the Dayak people, the fabled “Headhunters of Borneo.” Bruno lived for years with the Penan, gaining acceptance as a member of the tribe. However, when commercial logging began devouring the Penan’s homeland, Bruno led the tribe against these outside forces, earning him status as an enemy of the state, but also worldwide fame as an environmental hero. He escaped captivity under gunfire twice, but the strain took a psychological toll. Then, in 2000, Bruno disappeared without a trace. Had he become a madman, a hermit, or a martyr?American Michael Palmieri is, in many ways, Bruno’s opposite. Evading the Vietnam War, the Californian wandered the world, finally settling in Bali in the 1970s. From there, he staged expeditions into the Bornean jungle to acquire astonishing art and artifacts from the Dayaks. He would become one of the world’s most successful tribal-art field collectors, supplying sacred works to prestigious museums and wealthy private collectors. And yet suspicion shadowed this self-styled buccaneer who made his living extracting the treasure of the Dayak: Was he preserving or exploiting native culture?As Carl Hoffman unravels the deepening riddle of Bruno’s disappearance and seeks answers to the questions surrounding both men, it becomes clear saint and sinner are not so easily defined and Michael and Bruno are, in a sense, two parts of one whole: each spent his life in pursuit of the sacred fire of indigenous people. The Last Wild Men of Borneo is the product of Hoffman’s extensive travels to the region, guided by Penan through jungle paths traveled by Bruno and by Palmieri himself up rivers to remote villages. Hoffman also draws on exclusive interviews with Manser’s family and colleagues, and rare access to his letters and journals. Here is a peerless adventure propelled by the entwined lives of two singular, enigmatic men whose stories reveal both the grandeur and the precarious fate of the wildest place on earth.

A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States


Frederick Law Olmsted - 2007
     His dispatches to The New York Times form the basis of this fascinating account of slavery before the American Civil War. This first-person account of the pre-war South presents a stark depiction of those states which relied upon a slave economy. He provides a vivid description of how both the slave-owning elites and the African-American populations lived and worked, supporting his observations with critical analysis. “A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States remains a classic on a par with Alexis de Tocqueville’s endlessly cited critique of a generation earlier.” The New York Review of Books “As an argument against slavery, his book seems to us worth any number of Uncle Tom’s Cabins; for he writes upon the subject without noise or passion, and contents himself with stating in a simple manner what he has observed, and what conclusions he has founded upon his observations.” The Saturday Review “No one can ever understand rightly the industrial and economic history of the southern states without a definite conception of the practical workings of slavery itself. These are the considerations which make Mr. Olmstead’s book of permanent value.” Francis W. Shepardson, Journal of Political Economy “Some of the most interesting works that have been written on America … are the production of a native, Mr. F. L. Olmsted.” The British Quarterly Review A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States is essential reading for anyone interested in nineteenth century American history and the development of the abolition movement before the American Civil War. Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator and landscape architect. He was particularly famous for assisting in the design of many of America’s most loved parks, including Central Park in New York City, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and Elm Park in Worcester, Massachusetts. He wrote three different accounts of his travels across America. A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States is his most famous and was published in 1856. Olmsted died in 1903.

History of the Wars, Volume I: Books 1-2 (Persian War)


Procopius
    In 527 CE he was made legal adviser and secretary of Belisarius, commander against the Persians, and went with Belisarius again in 533 against the Vandals and in 535 against the Ostrogoths. Sometime after 540 he returned to Constantinople. He may have been that Procopius who was prefect of Constantinople in 562, but the date of his death (after 558) is unknown.Procopius's History of the Wars in 8 books recounts the Persian Wars of emperors Justinus and Justinian down to 550 (2 books); the Vandalic War and after-events in Africa 532-546 (2 books); the Gothic War against the Ostrogoths in Sicily and Italy 536-552 (3 books); and a sketch of events to 554 (1 book). The whole consists largely of military history, with much information about peoples and places as well, and about special events. He was a diligent, careful, judicious narrator of facts and developments and shows good powers of description. He is just to the empire's enemies and boldly criticises emperor Justinian. Other works by Procopius are the Anecdota or Secret History--vehement attacks on Justinian, Theodora, and others; and The Buildings of Justinian (down to 558 CE) including roads and bridges as well as churches, forts, hospitals, and so on in various parts of the empire.The Loeb Classical Library edition of Procopius is in seven volumes.

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.

Remember Us: My Journey from the Shtetl Through the Holocaust


Martin Small - 2008
    All this is torn apart with the arrival of the Holocaust, beginning a crucible fraught with twists and turns so unpredictable and surprising that they defy any attempt to find reason within them. From work camps to the partisans of the Nowogrudek forests, from the Mauthausen concentration camp to life as a displaced person in Italy, and from fighting the Egyptian army in a tiny Israeli kibbutz in 1948 to starting a new life in a new world in New York, this book encompasses the mythical “hero’s journey” in very real historical events. Through the eyes of 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Martin Small, we learn that these priceless memories that are too painful to remember are also too painful to forget.

Reconstruction after the Civil War


John Hope Franklin - 1961
    New are Franklin’s references to important, later texts that enrich the original narrative. In addition, the extensive bibliography has been thoroughly revised.What has not changed, however, is the foundation Franklin has laid. Still compelling are his arguments concerning the brevity of the North’s military occupation of the South, the limited amount of power wielded by former slaves, the influence of moderate southerners, the flaws of the constitutions drawn up by the Radical state governments, and the reasons for the downfall of Reconstruction.

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.

Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty Space


Lisa Randall - 2012
    The particle—a Higgs boson—is the key to verifying and understanding the Higgs mechanism that underlies elementary particle masses. Harvard University Professor Lisa Randall, one of the world's most cited and influential theoretical physicists, and author of the bestselling Knocking on Heaven's Door and Warped Passages, deftly explains both this epochal discovery and its startlingly beautiful implications.

Rome: The Emperor's Spy


M.C. Scott - 2009
    I, your Emperor, order it.'The Emperor: Nero, Emperor of Rome and all her provinces, feared by his subjects for his temper and cruelty, is in possession of an ancient document predicting that Rome will burn.The Spy: Sebastos Pantera, assassin and spy for the Roman Legions, is ordered to stop the impending cataclysm. He knows that if he does not, his life - and those of thousands of others - are in terrible danger.The Chariot Boy: Math, a young charioteer, is a pawn drawn into the deadly game between the Emperor and the Spy, where death stalks the drivers - on the track and off it.From the author of the bestselling Boudica series, The Emperor's Spy begins a compelling new series of novels featuring Sebastos Pantera. Rich characterisation and spine tingling adventure combine in a vividly realised novel set amid the bloodshed and the chaos, the heroism and murderous betrayal of ancient Rome.

The Origin and Deeds of the Goths


Jordanes
    Though he wrote a history of Rome (Romana), the book most of interest to us now are the manuscripts the source of De origine actibusque Getarum (The Origin and Deeds of the Goths), or Getica, written in Latin (probably Jordanes' third language) at Constantinople about 551 CE. He was asked by a friend to write this book by the church as a summary of a lost multi-volume history of the Goths by the statesman, Cassiodorus. The major factors in the selection of Jordanes for this task were his interest in history (he was working on a history of Rome), his ability to write succinctly and his own Gothic background. He had been a high-level notarius, or secretary, of a small client state on the Roman frontier in Moesia, modern northern Bulgaria.

The English Air


D.E. Stevenson - 1940
     Franz von Heiden, son of a Nazi official and an English mother, comes to England early in 1938 to visit his English cousins – and to study them. He is both accepted and entertained by Wynne Braithwaite’s family and friends. But the peace and abundance which he finds about him are not what he had been taught to expect. These people are not the decadent enemy; their casual talk and happy lives betray no weakness. Franz is disturbed – his reports to his father at home are not what had been expected there. Finding himself in love with Wynne, he is further troubled at the thought of his mother’s broken life in Germany. Would Wynne suffer the same slow death? As tremendous events succeed each other – Munich, Czechoslovakia and war itself – Franz’s dilemma grows increasingly acute. His final devastating choice is a thrilling climax to a moving book. Written in 1940, this book is a fascinating insight into the interwar years. Praise for The English Air: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'This book was pure wisdom mixed with British charm and wit' - Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Her descriptive imagery brings the British countryside to life' - Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'has a lovely, graceful-while-yet-down-to-earth style' - Goodreads Reviewer D. E. Stevenson was born in Edinburgh. Her father was a first cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson. She was educated privately and travelled widely in France and Italy with her parents. She married a major in the Highland Light Infantry and moved with the regiment from place to place gaining valuable experience of life and people.

Slavery's Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification


David Waldstreicher - 2009
    Constitution. Famously, the Constitution never mentions slavery. And yet, of its eighty-four clauses, six were directly concerned with slaves and the interests of their owners. Five other clauses had implications for slavery that were considered and debated by the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the citizens of the states during ratification. This “peculiar institution” was not a moral blind spot for America’s otherwise enlightened framers, nor was it the expression of a mere economic interest. Slavery was as important to the making of the Constitution as the Constitution was to the survival of slavery. By tracing slavery from before the revolution, through the Constitution’s framing, and into the public debate that followed, Waldstreicher rigorously shows that slavery was not only actively discussed behind the closed and locked doors of the Constitutional Convention, but that it was also deftly woven into the Constitution itself. For one thing, slavery was central to the American economy, and since the document set the stage for a national economy, the Constitution could not avoid having implications for slavery. Even more, since the government defined sovereignty over individuals, as well as property in them, discussion of sovereignty led directly to debate over slavery’s place in the new republic. Finding meaning in silences that have long been ignored, Slavery’s Constitution is a vital and sorely needed contribution to the conversation about the origins, impact, and meaning of our nation’s founding document.

The Bad Child's Book of Beasts


Hilaire Belloc - 1896