Pius and idealistic, the young Sophie shed her cloak of innocence to become Catherine The Great. At the urging of her ambitious mother, Johanna, Sophie married Peter III, the only grandson of Russian legend, Peter I. After scandalous love affairs and the mysterious sudden death of her husband, Peter III, Catherine ascended the Russian throne. The most intriguing aspect of the story is the fact that Catherine had no moral or legal right to the Russian throne. During that era, the laws of succession were rigidly enforced. In Russia, there were three living heirs, each with a legitimate right to the throne; one of those heirs was her husband, Peter III, the grandson of Peter I, a giant in Russian history, known affectionately as The Father of Russia. Catherine was cautioned repeatedly that she would not be able to sidestep her husband, Peter III and Ivan VI (who was living but in prison), while at the same time ignoring the rights of her own son, Paul I. Highly placed members of the Russian aristocracy warned Catherine that the Russian people would take up arms against her solely for the fact that she was German, not Russian. The fact that Catherine was able to overcome so many obstacles to ascend the throne of Russia is a monument to her brilliance, strength and determination. Not only was she crowned Empress, her rule would last thirty years. Catherine's extraordinary success as a ruler has made her a legend in her own right.

    This book argues that in several respects Kubrick was one of the cinema's last modernists.

    The entire family, including their personal physician, retainers, and even their pets, became tragic victims of the Bolshevik revolution. They were arrested, exiled, and ultimately secretly murdered in a small cellar of a house in the Urals, in the summer of 1918. In this book, you will follow the events which led up to their eventual tragic fate through personal words of each family member, as well as their close friends and associates. Their letters, diaries, and postcards - many of which have been translated into English here for the first time - tell a unique story, and have yet a lot to reveal. Translated from Russian by Helen Azar, along with Eva and Dan McDonald, who translated most of the 1918 letters from French, this book offers an extraordinary glimpse into the very private world, and the final years, of the last Russian imperial family - which they chronicle in their own words.

    This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

    Now with a built-in Resource Manual and Study Guide, Language, Culture, and Society is the teaching text for the linguistic anthropology course.

    As the first "hunger winter" sets in, the city's residents strip the bark off trees, boil and eat moss-covered stones, and trade priceless antiques for half a loaf of bread--and sex for a chunk of sugar. But the scientists at the Institute of Plant Industry pledge to protect their collection of rare seeds, painstakingly gathered from all over the world, no matter the human cost. One scientist describes how his small group of colleagues, including his quietly determined wife, Alena, splinters between those who would preserve their principles at the price of starvation, and others who turn to deception--and more sinister measures--to survive. His memories of the years before the war, when he traveled throughout the world and tasted the sensual pleasures of life's lush richness, offset his heartbreaking account of the most wrenching decisions a human being can make. HUNGER is a powerful, beautifully crafted novel about human nature under life's harshest pressures, and the beauty and pain that can come of it.- Like Bernhard Schlink's The Reader, HUNGER is a deeply personal story of ordinary people caught up in devastating historical events.- Like Andrea Barrett's Ship Fever and Servants of the Map, the central characters are scientists who see the natural world in a unique way.- A small, lovely, literary package, in the tradition of best-sellers Einstein's Dreams and Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress.

    In The Anna Karenina Fix, Groskop mines these and other works, as well as the lives of their celebrated creators and her own experiences as a student of Russian, to answer the question “How should you live your life?” or at least be less miserable. This is a charming and fiercely intelligent book, a love letter to Russian literature.

    Guerrillas on skis, heroic single-handed attacks on tanks, unfathomable endurance, and the charismatic leadership of one of this century's true military geniuses - these are the elements of both the Finnish victory and a gripping tale of war.

    First published in 1970, the book seeks to explain the causes for the 13 May 1969 riots in Kuala Lumpur.Dr Mahathir sets out his view as to why the Malays are economically backward and why they feel they must insist upon immigrants becoming real Malaysians speaking in due course nothing but Malay, as do immigrants to America or Australia speak nothing but the language of what the author calls “the definitive people”. He argues that the Malays are the rightful owners of Malaya. He also argues that immigrants are guests until properly absorbed, and that they are not properly absorbed until they have abandoned the language and culture of their past.

    Though local inhabitants had known about it for century, Bingham documented and photographed the ruins of a 15th century settlement nestled along a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru, placed so perfectly from a defensive standpoint that it’s believed the Spanish never conquered it and may have never known about it.

    It doesn't matter how small the tunnel is you never know what's around the bend ... You don't know if it's abandoned, you don't know if it's booby trapped and you don't know why the tunnel is there in the first place."They were young, they were Australian, they were Army engineers and they were the first allied soldiers to risk their lives in the darkness of the Vietcong tunnels of South Vietnam. Staring death squarely in the face every day, not only did they follow their enemy down into these unknown underground labyrinths, but matched the Vietcong's jungle warfare skills and defused thousands of their clever booby traps.Off duty, it was a different story. The bad boys of 3 Field Troop were a boozing, brawling, bonking bunch of larrikins, who cut a swathe through the bars and brothels of Saigon, fought American Military Police to a standstill, built a secret casino and booby-trapped their own HQ to teach their officers a lesson.Thrilling, inspiring and action packed, this is the true story of the unsung heroes of Australia's war in Vietnam. Living up to their motto of 'We Make and We Break', they created the legend of the Tunnel Rats.

    Now revised and updated to include expanded coverage of monetary policy, this volume traces the history of macroeconomics and the evolution of macroeconomic thought and the resulting theory and policy.

    Public transportation, electrical illumination, standard time, and an improved water supply radically altered the life of the modest folk, who found time for travel and leisure activities--including sports such as cycling. Change became the nature of things, and people believed that further improvement was not only possible but inevitable.In this thoroughly engaging history, Eugen Weber describes ways of life, not as recorded by general history, but as contemporaries experienced them. He writes about political atmosphere and public prejudices rather than standard political history. Water and washing, bicycles and public transportation engage him more than great scientific discoveries. He discusses academic painting and poster art, the popular stage and music halls, at greater length than avant-garde and classic theater or opera. In this book the importance of telephones, plumbing, and central heating outranks such traditional subjects as international developments, the rise of organized labor, and the spread of socialism.Weber does not neglect the darker side of the fin de si�cle. The discrepancy between material advance and spiritual dejection, characteristic of our own times, interests him as much as the idea of progress, and he reminds us that for most people the period was far from elegant. In the lurid context of military defeat, political instability, public scandal, and clamorous social criticism, one had also to contend with civic dirt, unsanitary food, mob violence, and the seeds of modern-day scourges: pollution, drugs, sensationalism, debased art, the erosion of moral character. Yet millions of fin de si�cle French lived as only thousands had lived fifty years before; while their advance was slow, their right to improvement was conceded.

    There’s a famous piece of writing advice—offered by Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, and myriad writers in between—not to use -ly adverbs like “quickly” or “fitfully.” It sounds like solid advice, but can we actually test it? If we were to count all the -ly adverbs these authors used in their careers, do they follow their own advice compared to other celebrated authors? What’s more, do great books in general—the classics and the bestsellers—share this trait?In Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve, statistician and journalist Ben Blatt brings big data to the literary canon, exploring the wealth of fun findings that remain hidden in the works of the world’s greatest writers. He assembles a database of thousands of books and hundreds of millions of words, and starts asking the questions that have intrigued curious word nerds and book lovers for generations: What are our favorite authors’ favorite words? Do men and women write differently? Are bestsellers getting dumber over time? Which bestselling writer uses the most clichés? What makes a great opening sentence? How can we judge a book by its cover? And which writerly advice is worth following or ignoring?

    Kim Il Sung wasted little time before plunging the country into a futile war which cost more than two million people their lives. His son, Kim Jong Il, would wallow in obscene luxury as North Korea suffered one of the Twentieth Century’s most terrible famines. Kim Jong Un has only recently ascended to power. However, he has already ordered his own uncle’s execution by antiaircraft gun. The North Korean people are told that they are the most fortunate in the world. In reality they are the most oppressed. North Korea is a country where criticising the government, or even watching a foreign film, can lead to imprisonment and death.North Korea: A Bare Bones History tells the story of one of the world’s most enigmatic nations. It’s an extraordinary history of war, assassination, kidnapping, terrorism, and an attempt to decapitate a rival head of state.