Love him or hate him, Pierre Trudeau has marked us all. The man whose motto was "reason over passion"managed to arouse in Canadians the fiercest of passions of every hue, ones that even today cloud our view of him and of his place in history. Acclaimed novelist Nino Ricci takes as his starting point the crucial role Trudeau played in the formation of his own sense of identity to look at how Trudeau expanded us as a people, not in spite of his contradictions but because of them.

    It describes the evolution, use and eclipse of the battleship.’ Lloyds’ List ‘With crisp scholarship, Peter Padfield traces the development of the battleship from sailing ships much like Nelson’s which had been fitted with auxiliary steam engines and had iron armour hung on their sides, to the ultimate: the Japanese battleship, Yamato, a giant of more than 70,000 tons firing 18 inch shells more than 20 miles.’ Books and Bookmen ‘A fascinating documentary account of particular interest to the armchair strategist.’ Booklist ‘A worthy addition to anyone’s library that wishes to learn more of the rise and fall of the battleship.’ Good Book Guide The battleship reigned supreme at sea from the 1860s to the 1940s, the ultimate symbol of naval power and national pride, queen on the naval chessboard. This book describes its evolution from the wooden man-of-war plated with iron armour to the great steel leviathan of the Second World War, and its ultimate displacement as arbiter of naval power by the aircraft carrier. At the same time the author explains how strategy and battle tactics changed in response to the mounting of ever larger guns with greater range and penetrative power, and the development of threatening new weapon systems, particularly torpedoes, torpedo boats, mines and submarines; and he explores the chilling reality of action with vivid descriptions of major naval battles including the Yalu in the first Sino-Japanese War, Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War, Jutland in the First World War and many lesser known engagements. The pioneer naval architects and engineers and the commanders who fought these great ships in action, Togo, Jellicoe, Beatty, Scheer, Hipper, Cunningham, Lee, Oldendorf find their way naturally into this absorbing, often horrifying history of what was once the arbiter of naval power.

    Nicholas became Tsar at the age of 26. Though a conscientious man who was passionate in his devotion to his country, he was weak, sentimental, dogmatic and indecisive. Ironically he could have made an effective constitutional monarch, but these flaws rendered him fatally unsuited to be the sole ruler of a nation that was in the throes of painful modernisation. That he failed is not surprising, for many abler monarchs could not have succeeded. Rather to be wondered at is that he managed, for 23 years, to hold on to power despite the overwhelming force of circumstances. Though Nicholas was exasperating, he had many endearing qualities. A modern audience, aware - as contemporaries were not - of the private pressures under which he lived, can empathise with him and forgive some of his errors of judgement. To some readers he seems a fool, to others a monster, but many are touched by the story of a well-meaning man doing his best under impossible conditions. He is, in other words, a biographical subject that engages readers whatever their viewpoint. His family was of great importance to Nicholas. He and his wife, Alexandra, married for love and retained this affection to the end of their lives. His four daughters, all different and intriguing personalities, were beautiful and charming. His son, the family's - and the nation's - hope for the future, was disabled by an illness that had to be concealed from Russia and from the world. It was this circumstance that made possible the nefarious influence of Rasputin, which in turn hastened the end of the dynasty.This story has everything: romance and tragedy, grandeur and misery, human frailty and an international catastrophe that would not only bring down the Tsar but put an end to the glittering era of European monarchies.

    This critically acclaimed biography offers an unprecedented look at William Masters and Virginia Johnson, their pioneering studies on intimacy, and their lasting impact on the love lives of today's men and women.

    That, of course, is a matter of opinion. And there are other layers to the story.With a combination of novelistic flair and historical accuracy, Kate Williams begins by relating the heartbreaking story of Princess Charlotte, the Queen who never was, and her impact on the young Victoria. Our perception of Victoria the Queen is coloured by portraits of her older, widowed self - her dour expression embodying the repressive morality propagated in her time. But Becoming Queen reveals an energetic and vibrant woman, determined to battle for power. It also documents the Byzantine machinations behind Victoria's quest to occupy the throne, and shows how her struggles did not end when finally the crown was placed on her head.In the late eighteenth century, monarchies were in crisis across Europe. Discontented with their mad King, George III, and his spendthrift offspring, the English pinned their hopes on the only legitimate grandchild: Princess Charlotte, daughter of George, Prince of Wales. But Charlotte died at the age of twenty-two, a few hours after giving birth to a stillborn son. A grieving nation immediately began venerating her as someone who would have made an ideal Queen while Charlotte's rackety uncles embarked on a race to produce the next heir.No one thought that little Victoria, daughter of the Duke of Kent, would ascend the throne. She, in turn, became increasingly determined to take control of her own destiny, and clashed constantly not only with her hugely ambitious mother but with her protégé and household comptroller, the Irish adventurer, John Conroy. After she became Queen, ministers, even her beloved Prince Albert, still attempted to steal power away from her.Revealing how Charlotte's death shaped Victoria's reign and laying bare the passions that swirled around the throne, Becoming Queen is an absorbingly dramatic tale of secrets, sexual repression and endless conflict. After her lauded biography of Emma Hamilton, England's Mistress, Kate Williams has produced a most original and intimate portrait of Great Britain's longest reigning monarch.

     Its glittering Tsars and Tsarinas were autocratic despots, who between them embraced all the vices (and too few of the virtues) of absolute rulers. Their name has become a byword for excess, avarice and cruelty, they have aroused intrigue and horror in equal measure. Virginia Cowles offers a portrait gallery of the outstanding members of this incredible family — from Alexis (a Tartar in his wrath) and Peter the Great (a terrifying giant) to the nymphomaniac Catherine and the doomed Nicholas II, last of the Tsars. Their domination of Russia was brought to an end in March 1917, as a result of the February Revolution. Of the 65 family members, 18 were killed by the Bolsheviks and the remaining 47 were exiled abroad. Delving behind the mass of obscure and unfamiliar historical detail, she reveals the characters and personal ties behind these strange, and often daunting, figures. She looks beyond what is written about them in the history books and explores how their family lives and secrets affected the entirety of Russia and its many citizens. ‘Recounted at great speed, and with splendid life, vigour and readability’ – Antonia Fraser, Evening Standard Virginia Spencer Cowles OBE was a noted American journalist, biographer, and travel writer. During her long career, Cowles went from covering fashion, to covering the Spanish Civil War, the turbulent period in Europe leading up to World War II, and the entire war. After the war, she published a number of critically acclaimed biographies of historical figures. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

    Having given birth to daughter after daughter after daughter, she becomes desperate and turns to the first of her mystical advisors, Msgr. Philippe, who persuades her, among other things, that she is invisible.And then comes the moment of her greatest triumph with the birth of her son and the heir to the throne of all the Russias, the Tsarevich Alexei.All four volumes are (planned) as follows:1. 'The Funeral Bride' 1884-1894 - published November 20152. 'The Empress of Tears' 1895-1904 - published March 20163. 'The Pride of Eagles' 1905-1914 - to be published by November 20164. 'No Greater Crown' 1914-1918 - to be published by April 2017

    Lee's retreat through Pennsylvania and escape across the Potomac. Award-winning historian Craig L. Symonds recounts the events of three hot, brutal days in July when Americans struggled battled one another across a dozen square miles of rolling Pennsylvania countryside. Symonds details the military strategy of both sides, including the Confederate decision to invade the North, the cat-and-mouse game in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and, finally, the terrible clash of arms on the hills and fields of Gettysburg. Firsthand accounts humanize generals and individual soldiers of the Blue and Gray who fought for their lives, their homes, and their convictions. This is the story of Gettysburg as it has never been told before.

    A box set consisting of three Bill Bryson books, 'Notes from a Small Island', 'Notes from a Big Country' and 'A Walk in the Woods'.

    It's a pedestrian's world, where the streets are clean, the employees are friendly, and the trains run on time. All of its elements are themed, presented in a consistent architectural, decorative, horticultural, musical, even olfactory tone, with rides, shows, restaurants, scenery, and costumed characters coordinated to tell a consistent set of stories. It is beguiling and exasperating, a place of ambivalence and ambiguity. In Vinyl Leaves Professor Fjellman analyzes each ride and theater show of Walt Disney World and discusses the history, political economy, technical infrastructure, and urban planning of the area as well as its relationship with Metropolitan Orlando and the state of Florida.Vinyl Leaves argues that Disney, in pursuit of its own economic interests, acts as the muse for the allied transnational corporations that sponsor it as well as for the world of late capitalism, where the commodity form has colonized much of human life. With brilliant technological legerdemain, Disney puts visitors into cinematically structured stories in which pieces of American and world culture become ideological tokens in arguments in favor of commodification and techno-corporate control. Culture is construed as spirit, colonialism and entrepreneurial violence as exotic zaniness, and the Other as child.Exhaustion and cognitive overload lead visitors into the bliss of Commodity Zen—the characteristic state of postmodern life. While we were watching for Orwell, Huxley rode into town, bringing soma, cable, and charge cards—and wearing mouse ears. This book is the story of our commodity fairyland.

    Here he began a twelve-year ordeal that included imprisonment on Devil's Island, trial, and long delayed pardon. This book is an account of the Dreyfus Affair, the scandal that rocked 19th century France.

    The authors' accompanying history of both societal and psychiatric standards for women reveals the degree to which the prevailing societal conventions could reinforce the perception that these women were mad.

    Here's the first book to dissect the trio that countless critics and musicians have cited as one of the most influential bands of the 1980s. Author Andrew Earles examines how Hüsker Dü became the first hardcore band to marry pop melodies with psychedelic influences and ear-shattering volume. Readers witness the band create the untouchable noise-pop of LPs like New Day Rising, Flip Your Wig, and Candy Apple Grey, not to mention the sprawling double-length Zen Arcade. Few bands from the original American indie movement did more to inform the alternative rock styles that breached the mainstream in the 1990s. Hüsker Dü truly were visionaries.

    Schwartz, Ph.D., there is compelling scientific evidence that we no longer have to accept God on faith alone. Through a multidisciplinary approach, Harvard University-educated Dr. Schwartz blends psychology, quantum physics, and mathematics to examine the science of spirit. Faith and science are not mutually exclusive, and a better understanding of their relationship can lead us to recognize how God operates in everything.Trained in the scientific method as an "open-minded skeptic," Dr. Schwartz was taught how to raise questions, turn them into hypotheses, and design experiments to test them. He was not trained to consider the nature of God. And yet, his scientific research led him directly to the discovery of God's existence in intelligent evolution and everyday life.Scientifically rigorous and spiritually reassuring, this eye-opening book is a wake-up call for anyone who wonders about life's true meaning and who longs to believe in the existence of a universal intelligence.

    To some he was a monster and a criminal and nothing more; to others, a literary genius; to still others, an apostle of freedom who dared to expose society's hypocrisies in sexual matters. But who was the real Marquis de Sade?In this definitive biography, the first to have complete access to the Sade family archives, Maurice Lever brilliantly reconstructs the life and times of the author of Justine and The 120 Days of Sodom. Bringing the eighteenth century to life as vividly as Simon Schama does in Citizens, Lever paints a minutely detailed portrait of the aristocratic milieu that produced the "divine marquis." The exquisite subtleties of this hierarchy, where Sade was not alone in thinking that his inferiors existed for his pleasure, emerge from hundreds of letters in which the men and women of the past speak in their own voices. In Sade we learn how a count went about seeking a suitable wife for his son; how a libertine courted an opera singer; how a police spy described the debauches of dukes and bishops for the delectation of the king at Versailles.Above all, we find a society headed for ruin. Sade gets caught up in great events. He is imprisoned in the Bastille just before it is stormed. Years later he is incarcerated in a revolutionary prison, sentenced to die on the very day that Robespierre is deposed. He escapes the Reign of Terror only to run afoul of that other tyrant, Napoleon, who is persuaded that this by now elderly, corpulent man of letters poses a mortal danger to the greatest empire the world has ever seen.This was a life, then, of washbuckling adventure, narrow escapes, wild abandon, and bloody crime. Yet the marquis was not unloved. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the book is Maurice Lever's analysis of the relation between the marquis and his wife, a demure, religious woman who tried to rescue from persecution the man who betrayed her with her own sister. Freud would have found it fascinating, and so will any reader curious about "dangerous liaisons" and the extremes of human behavior. Irresistibly readable, Sade is a monumental work that offers an extraordinary portrait of a life, a time, and a love—in all its splendor and perversity.To some the Marquis de Sade was a monster, to others an apostle of sexual freedom and a literary genius. Lever reconstructs the life of the "divine marquis" in all its splendor and perversity. Named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.