This concise history traces the country's growth from pre-history, through its days as the center of a powerful medieval empire and five centuries of Ottoman rule, to the political upheavals of the twentieth century which led to three wars. It highlights 1995 to 2004, a vital period during which Bulgaria endured financial meltdown, set itself seriously on the road to reform, elected its former King as prime minister, and finally secured membership in NATO and admission to the European Union. First Edition Hb (1997) 0-521-56183-3 First Edition Pb (1997) 0-521-56719-X

    Rice, Jr. draws together the main lines of change that account for a period of rapid transition from medieval civilization to early modern. From a chapter on science, technology, and the voyages of exploration, Professor Rice goes on to examine economic expansion within Europe, Renaissance society and the new humanist culture, the rise of the sovereign state, and, ultimately, the clash between the established Church and the Protestant reformers.

    A saint in her own right, she married Ferdinand of Aragon, and they forged modern Spain, cast out the Moslems, discovered the New World by backing Columbus, and established a powerful central government in Spain. This story is so thrilling it reads like a novel. Makes history really come alive. Highly readable and truly great in every respect! 576 pgs, PB

    Two men conspired to save the continent from French rule: John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and Prince Eugène of Savoy. Deep in Germany, these two committed allies sought to engage Louis's superior forces. At Blenheim, their daring plans came to fruition. The French were utterly destroyed. From the deliberations of kings and princes, to the eyewitness accounts of frontline soldiers, ‘Blenheim: Battle for Europe’ is a compelling account of an often overlooked but major turning point in European history. ‘Not only a highly accomplished account of the battle and its wider consequences, but also a shrewd and persuasive reassessment of the personalities involved’ – Sunday Telegraph ‘Charles Spencer’s new study offers not only a highly accomplished account of the battle and its wider consequences, but also a shrewd and persuasive reassessment of the personalities involved...Spencer’s account maintains the detachment of the professional historian, and is safely ancestor-worship free’ – John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph ‘Charles Spencer has written a history of the War of Spanish Succession — the struggle for European dominance between France and her major European rivals in the early 18th century — in a splendidly old-fashioned style, full of bold epithets and broad judgments...The result is a book that is compulsively readable...the pages of this vividly written book are populated by memorable secondary characters’ – Andrew Roberts, Mail on Sunday ‘Where Spencer has made a real contribution to our understanding of the war of the Spanish succession is in his exploitation of the French sources — diplomatic and military, including the correspondence between Louis XIV and his generals and diplomats’ – John Crossland, Sunday Times ‘There is much to enjoy in this racy, fast-paced narrative, well stocked with larger-than-life characters...The account of the storming of the Schellenberg heights...is truly gripping’ – Tim Blanning, Times Literary Supplement Charles Spencer was educated at Eton College and obtained his degree in Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford. He is the author of five books, including the Sunday Times bestseller ‘Blenheim: The Battle for Europe’ (shortlisted for History Book of the Year, National Book Awards), 'Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I', ‘The Spencer Family’ and ‘Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier’.

    Carlos Eire, popular professor and gifted writer, chronicles the two-hundred-year era of the Renaissance and Reformation with particular attention to issues that persist as concerns in the present day. Eire connects the Protestant and Catholic Reformations in new and profound ways, and he demonstrates convincingly that this crucial turning point in history not only affected people long gone, but continues to shape our world and define who we are today.   The book focuses on the vast changes that took place in Western civilization between 1450 and 1650, from Gutenberg’s printing press and the subsequent revolution in the spread of ideas to the close of the Thirty Years’ War. Eire devotes equal attention to the various Protestant traditions and churches as well as to Catholicism, skepticism, and secularism, and he takes into account the expansion of European culture and religion into other lands, particularly the Americas and Asia. He also underscores how changes in religion transformed the Western secular world. A book created with students and nonspecialists in mind, Reformations is an inspiring, provocative volume for any reader who is curious about the role of ideas and beliefs in history.

    Recognizing that The Great War was the psychological turning point . . . for modernism as a whole, author Modris Eksteins examines the lives of ordinary people, works of modern literature, and pivotal historical events to redefine the way we look at our past and toward our future.

    From difficult childhoods to fashion icons, from love matches to divorces, and from unrehearsed coronations to assassination attempts and untimely deaths.Curiosity about Britain’s rulers and their next of kin never seems to wane, and it is this compendium about the lives of the members of the Royal Family that makes this so utterly compelling.

    His History, translated throughout Europe and achieving sales in America second only to the Bible, immediately became the canon of historical orthodoxy, replacing previous histories so completely that it is now difficult to see past its long and apparently effortless triumph.

    At least two hundred students were shot dead and many more were detained. Then the bodies were trucked out, the cobblestones were washed clean. Detainees were held without recourse until 1971. Official denial of the killing continues even today: In the first week of February 2003, Mexico's Education Secretary Reyes Tamez ordered a new history textbook that mentions the massacre--Claudia Sierra's History of Mexico: An Analytical Approach--removed from shelves and classrooms. (Public outcry led Tamez to reverse his decision days later.) No one has yet been held accountable for the official acts of savagery. With provocative, anecdotal, and analytical prose, Taibo claims for history "one more of the many unredeemed and sleepless ghosts that live in our lands."

    Her diary vividly captures that “gritty nightmare” as it was lived by one rural family—and by millions of other Americans. The books opens in 1927—“the last of the good years”—when Ann Marie is a teenager living with her parents, brother, and sister on a stock farm in southeastern North Dakota. We follow her family and friends, descendants of homesteaders, through the next ten years—a time of searing summer heat and desiccated fields, dying livestock, dust to the tops of fence posts and prices at rock bottom—a time when whole communities lost their homes and livelihoods to mortgages and, hardest of all, to government recovery programs. We also see the coming to maturity of the author in the face of economic hardship, frustrating family circumstances, and the stifling restrictions that society then placed on young women. Ann Marie Low’s diary, supplemented with reminiscences, offers a rich, circumstantial view of rural life a half century ago: planting and threshing before the prevalence of gasoline-powered engines, washing with rain water and ironing with sadirons, hauling coal on sleds over snow-clogged roads, going to end-of-school picnics and country dances, and hoarding the egg and cream money for college. Here, too, is an iconoclastic on-the-scene account of how a federal work project, the construction of a wildlife refuge, actually operated. Many readers will recognize parts of their own past in Ann Marie Low’s story; for others it will serve as a compelling record of the Dust Bowl experience.

    Building on research that has only recently confirmed that the world endured a 500year cold snap, renowned archaeologist Brian Fagan shows how the increasing cold influenced familiar events from Norse exploration to the settlement of North America to the Industrial Revolution. This is a fascinating book for anyone interested in history, climate, and how they interact.

    Neil Hanson — acclaimed author of The Great Fire of London — traces the origins of the conflict from the Old World to the New, delineating the Armada campaign in rousing prose. He illuminates the lives of kings and popes, spymasters and assassins, military commanders and common sailors, and the ordinary men and women caught up in this great event when the fate of nations hung in the balance. The Confident Hope of a Miracle is authentic and original history written with the pace and drama of a novel.

    This bloodcurdling account of instruments of torture through the ages includes descriptions of cells too cramped to allow for lying down, skull crushers, the pendulum, the gridiron, and other gruesome devices.

    A landmark book from one of the original scholars of our time: a magnificent revelation of turn-of-the-century Vienna where out of a crisis of political & social disintegration so much of modern art & thought was born.This edition contains:IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPolitics & the psyche: Schnitzler & HoffmannsthalThe Ringstrasse, its critics & the birth of urban modernismPolitics in a new key: an Austrian trioPolitics & patricide in Freud's Interpretation of dreamsGustav Klimt: painting & the crisis of the liberal egoThe transformation of the garden Explosion in the garden: Kokoschka & SchoenbergIndex

    It considers the evolving economy and society - the basic facts of life for the majority of Europe's people. It shows how the religious and intellectual unity of western culture fragmented anddissolved under the impact of new ideas. It also examines politics to consider the emergence of modern attitudes and techniques in governing.