It is a wonderful place to visit and to live in. Packed with fact, anecdote, and insight, A Traveller’s History of Paris offers a complete history of Paris and the people who have shaped its destiny, from its earliest settlement as the Roman village of Lutetia Parisiorum with a few hundred inhabitants, to 20 centuries later when Paris is a city of well over two million—nearly one-fifth of the population of France. This handy paperback is fully indexed and includes a Chronology of Major Events, as well as sections on Notre-Dame and historic churches, Modernism, parks, bridges, cemeteries, museums and galleries, the Metro, and the environs. Illustrated with line drawings and historical maps, this is an invaluable book for all visitors to read and enjoy.

    The acclaimed biographer of Gaudí traces the iconic painting's beginnings amid the Spanish Civil War through its use as a weapon in the propaganda battle against Fascism, through the years when it became the nucleus of the Museum of Modern Art's creation in New York, to its role as a symbol of reconciliation when it returned to Spain after the death of Franco, as democracy was reestablished.

    The contours of the war take shape through the words of the eyewitnesses. The atmosphere of events is vividly recaptured. And though the lived experience of the participants is revealed the uniquely tragic essence of all civil war. 'Fascinating and brilliantly unorthodox. ' Hugh Thomas, author of THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO.

    This provocative work of history attributes Spain's rise to power to the collaboration of international business interests, including Italian financiers, German technicians, and Dutch traders. At the height of its power, the Spanish Empire was a global enterprise in which non-Spaniards -- Portuguese, Basque, Aztec, Genoese, Chinese, Flemish, West African, Incan, and Neapolitan -- played an essential role.Challenging, persuasive, and unique in its thesis, Henry Kamen's Empire explores Spain's complex impact on world history with admirable clarity and intelligence.

    - The Skin I'm In: Maleeka Madison, with help from her teacher, must learn to love her dark skin--the skin she's in.- Money Hungry: Raspberry Hill is starved for money and will do anything legal to keep from becoming homeless again.- Begging for Change: A year later, Raspberry's thieving, drug-addicted father returns, sending her into a tailspin of worry, deceit, and ultimately, redemption.

    Ironically, the factors that led to the novel’s rejection—Rukeyser’s avant-garde impressionistic prose style, alternating with realistic scenes of brutal death and a few descriptions of sexual congress—are what make the book appealing today."—Publisher's WeeklyAs a young reporter in 1936, Muriel Rukeyser traveled to Barcelona to witness the first days of the Spanish Civil War. She turned this experience into an autobiographical novel so forward thinking for its time that it was never published. Recently discovered in her archive, this lyrical work charts her political and sexual awakening as she witnesses the popular front resistance to the fascist coup and falls in love with a German political exile who joins the first international brigade.Rukeyser's narrative is a modernist investigation into the psychology of violence, activism, and desire; a documentary text detailing the start of the war; and a testimony to those who fought and died for freedom and justice during the first major battle against European fascism.Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) was a prolific American writer and political activist, influencing generations of poets including Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Sharon Olds, and Alice Walker, to name a few. She wrote on the Scottsboro trial in Alabama, the Spanish Civil War, the Vietnam War, and the imprisonment of poet Kim Chi-Ha in South Korea. She was one of the few modernist writers to champion social justice issues, showing the place of memory and feelings in politics. Rukeyser's centenary will be celebrated in 2013.Rowena Kennedy-Epstein is a PhD candidate in English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

    Their achievements, rich culture and craftsmanship contributed greatly to our world today, and their explorations helped make up the boundaries of nations. The Vikings: Raiders, Explorers, and Seafaring Warriors by author Lance Hightower will give you a glimpse of the battles that raged for more than 300 years, sparked by the cultural and religious differences that were the trigger for warring with the Franks, England and Ireland, and for trade and exploration into the Muslim empire, the Byzantine Empire, as far as Russia, Spain and North America.They came from Sweden, Norway and Denmark, not as one army, but as separate tribes who assaulted their way through Christendom as retaliation for the destruction of their holy icon. They came from the sea in a way that ingeniously allowed them to go where no conventional ship dared, and they were able to navigate waters without benefit of the sun to guide them. They used boats that made ship-building history – light, fast, and equally efficient in shallow rivers and mighty oceans.They terrorized, traded, bartered, took slaves, colonized, fought and died all in the name of Odin, god of the battle-slain. Perhaps in the end, they fought more for territory and riches than principle, but the history of the Vikings will always remain as one of the most enthralling of all Ages, where honor was crucial, death on the battlefield was preferred to idleness, and the stormy pantheon of their gods still held the greatest influence in their lives.The brilliant sagas come to life with snippets of modern translations, told like tales of old should be told, with dread, heroics and excitement. Lance Hightower combines his own expertise with the latest archeological findings and information given to us from ancient text to present a first-rate portrayal of the Vikings in an easy-to-read format that is a refreshing change from the usual dry delivery of history.

    His account, in which he shows how Germans set out to "conquer" that most fundamental natural element, water, brings together politics, culture, economics, and ecology in a daring work of total history.

    He was then sentenced to execution and spent every day awaiting death—only to be released three months later under pressure from the British government. Out of this experience, Koestler wrote Darkness at Noon, his most acclaimed work in the United States, about a man arrested and executed in a Communist prison.Dialogue with Death is Koestler’s riveting account of the fall of Málaga to rebel forces, his surreal arrest, and his three months facing death from a prison cell. Despite the harrowing circumstances, Koestler manages to convey the stress of uncertainty, fear, and deprivation of human contact with the keen eye of a reporter.Lucas Wittmann | Newsweek:"Koestler’s harrowing memoir of his three months behind bars with the constant threat of execution inspired his iconic Darkness at Noon. Dialogue with Death is the more lasting book for its lucid, exact, and unrelenting depiction of an imprisoned man on the verge of death."

    What Michael doesn’t expect, is to be put in charge of a group of offenders and sent to a remote location in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Spain to teach them survival skills as part of their rehabilitation programme. But Michael knows nothing at all about survival skills. He was sort of in the SAS, yes, but his shining record on the “Escape and Evasion” courses was more a testament to his computer skills than his ability to catch wildlife and barbecue it over an impromptu fire. Basically, he was the SAS’s techy nerd and only achieved that position as a result of a bet with a fellow hacker. Facing a stark choice between starvation or returning home to serve out their sentences, the group of offenders under Michael’s supervision soon realise that the only way to survive is to use their own unique set of skills – the kind of skills that got them arrested in the first place.

    This time we have 35 true crime stories taking place in 27 countries from around the world. The book starts out in Argentina with one of the first cases to be decided by fingerprint evidence back in 1892. We have two stories from down under. Tracey Wigginton was known as the Lesbian Vampire Killer. A Terrifying Cycle of Abuse features a disturbing story of child abuse and murder. We might not think of ice cream in quite the same way after reading the chapter from Austria. There are two from Belgium including the Parachute Murder - the title might be a bit of a spoiler. The story from Brazil is another disturbing chapter on child abuse. There are two from Canada including the Meat Cleaver Murder. Others include Denmark with an Angel of Death story and one in Denmark...did ISIS recruit a 15 year old girl? Other countries represented are Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Iran, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, Qatar, Russia, Samoa, Singapore, Sweden, Thailand and the book ends with one from England and two from the United States.

    They have lifelong endearing names for each other – Lard Arse and Fat Man. Whilst on a fishing trip in Spain, they hatch a plan to travel around the Iberian Peninsula on motorbikes. No problem for Dave as a proficient biker of many years, but Martin is a complete beginner to riding motorcycles. He doesn’t even have a motorcycle licence. Follow Martin through the trials of taking his bike test, juggling a busy life and planning the journey with Dave while they live in different countries. Nothing can be taken for granted when these two plan anything. When everything is in place their journey through Spain and Portugal begins, starting in Marbella, then riding west along the Spanish coast and up through Portugal, through the northern coast of Spain and over the Pyrenees, finishing with the east coast of Spain and heading back into Marbella. Expect to laugh in places at their simple boyish behavior, as they act like two teenage, middle-aged men with mental age of young men going through puberty. They experience many comical events, as well as close calls for Martin the novice on his first-ever ride out. This book is a light-hearted but a true travel journal of two good friends enjoying their journey on the road in the sun.

    Bringing history alive, Ed undertakes the walk to experience some of the hardship of the wartime refugees, finding himself with fellow pilgrims each with their own personal reasons for commemorating an extraordinary and desperately moving aspect of WW2. The walk, interviews with the few remaining survivors, and previously unseen primary source material, combine into a hugely accessible, poignant dramatic and inspiring history.

    Violence in the Middle Ages, however, functioned differently, according to David Nirenberg. In this provocative book, he focuses on specific attacks against minorities in fourteenth-century France and the Crown of Aragon (Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia). He argues that these attacks--ranging from massacres to verbal assaults against Jews, Muslims, lepers, and prostitutes--were often perpetrated not by irrational masses laboring under inherited ideologies and prejudices, but by groups that manipulated and reshaped the available discourses on minorities. Nirenberg shows that their use of violence expressed complex beliefs about topics as diverse as divine history, kinship, sex, money, and disease, and that their actions were frequently contested by competing groups within their own society.Nirenberg's readings of archival and literary sources demonstrates how violence set the terms and limits of coexistence for medieval minorities. The particular and contingent nature of this coexistence is underscored by the book's juxtapositions--some systematic (for example, that of the Crown of Aragon with France, Jew with Muslim, medieval with modern), and some suggestive (such as African ritual rebellion with Catalan riots). Throughout, the book questions the applicability of dichotomies like tolerance versus intolerance to the Middle Ages, and suggests the limitations of those analyses that look for the origins of modern European persecutory violence in the medieval past.

    She returned to save another life. This experience transformed her, allowing her to enjoy a full and happy life, free from fear.In “24 Minutes on The Other Side”, Tessa tells us about her amazing journey to the afterlife―where she established contact with other beings―to help you understand the sense of life and death. One cannot exist without the other. Thanks to her experience with patients suffering from a terminal disease, the author learned that it is possible to live without fear of death and presently helps others to overcome their fear and die in peace, with dignity, knowing that death is only an awakening to a new life.Why are we afraid of dying? Is there life after death? Can we live without fear? Tessa invites us to follow her during her journey with the object of finding an answer to these fascinating mysteries. SELECTED REVIEWS “This shocking book gave me goosebumps. It successfully combines experience with science. The story is clear and the reading is fluid. Its pages present the author as a benevolent person with good intentions to help us. In hard times, I remember Tessa and her story, and try not to forget that there is life before death.” Benjamín Espinoza. Chemical engineer “This book has helped me face my death-related fears. It made me aware of how easy it is to live without fearing death as such. It gave me a lot of strength, energy and, most preciously, Love. Tessa taught me that instead of living in fear we should learn how to live.” Filli Ramírez. Entrepreneur. THE AUTHOR Tessa Romero is a writer, journalist, sociologist, and life coach. She is a volunteer for the defense of human rights and a journalist with a wide experience in Spain’s leading news media. She has written educational manuals on lyrical and symphonic music, tourist guides for several countries, as well as touristic and cultural articles for both the Spanish and the international printed press. She won her first literary award when she was only 8 years old and was prompted by her true vocation, as an author, to write her story and thus give life to this, her first personal-growth book, thus fulfilling her dream of helping others. Copyright©TessaRomero2020