Her election marked a decisive break with the past and her premiership transformed not just her country, but the nature of democratic leadership. Simon Jenkins analyses this revolution from its beginnings in the turmoil of the 1970s through the social and economic changes of the 1980s. Was Thatcherism a mere medicine for an ailing economy or a complete political philosophy? And did it eventually fall victim to the dogmatism and control which made it possible? This is the story of the events, personalities, defeats and victories which will be familiar to all those who lived through them, but seen through a new lens. It is also an argument about how Thatcher’s legacy has continued down to the present. Not just John Major, but Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are her heirs and acolytes. And as the Conservative party reinvents itself as a viable political force once again, is the age of Thatcher finally over?

     Free BONUS Inside! The Hundred Years’ War was a series of conflicts waged between England and France between 1337 and 1453. The war involved several generations of kings on both sides and was fought over a single issue: whether the English had the right to rule the kingdom of France. The origins of the war can be traced back to the invasion of England in 1066 by William the Conqueror, the duke of Normandy. William became king of England, but he also retained control over his lands in Normandy. From that time on, English kings ruled not just over their own country but also over areas of western France. What is now France was at the time of the Norman conquest not a single country but rather a group of semi-independent principalities. By the early 1300s, the kingdom of France was consolidating and emerging as an important European power, and it was almost inevitable that there would be a conflict between France and England over the English lands in western France. The Hundred Years’ War marked important changes in the very nature of warfare. When it began, the principal weapons on both sides were heavily armored knights who generally followed an agreed code of conduct. By the time the war ended, the Age of Chivalry had been superseded by the appearance of gunpowder weapons which rendered these knights and their notions of chivalrous combat obsolete. The Hundred Years’ War was an important element in the creation of modern Europe and in the definition of the national characters of both England and France. This book tells the story of this long, complex, and fascinating conflict. Discover a plethora of topics such as The War Begins The Caroline War England Triumphant French Revival and Joan of Arc Peace at Last And much more! So if you want a concise and informative book on the The Hundred Years War, simply scroll up and click the "Buy now" button for instant access!

    It lay in biological solutions, focusing on mental illness as a problem of the brain, to be managed or improved through drugs. We entered the Prozac Age and believed we had moved far beyond the time of frontal lobotomies to an age of good and successful mental healthcare. Biological psychiatry had triumphed.Except maybe it hadn't. Starting with surprising evidence from the World Health Organization that suggests that people recover better from mental illness in a developing country than in the first world, Doctoring the Mind asks the question: how good are our mental healthcare services, really? Richard P. Bentall picks apart the science that underlies our current psychiatric practice. He puts the patient back at the heart of treatment for mental illness, making the case that a good relationship between patients and their doctors is the most important indicator of whether someone will recover.Arguing passionately for a future of mental health treatment that focuses as much on patients as individuals as on the brain itself, this is a book set to redefine our understanding of the treatment of madness in the twenty-first century.

    In 1887, 23-year-old reporter Nellie Bly had herself committed to a New York City asylum for 10 days to expose the horrific conditions for 19th-century century mental patients.

    There, one man and his five brilliant sons made their fortune as court agents to a royal prince. It would take Napoleon’s earth-shattering quest to conquer Europe to scatter the five brothers to the four winds, but when the dust of war settled, there was a Rothschild brother and a Rothschild bank in five cities: London, Paris, Frankfurt, Naples, and Vienna. The era of haute finance had begun, and the legend of a banking dynasty more powerful than any royal family in history was established. In this book, you will follow the progress of the Rothschild family through the centuries. Their ranks included not only bankers and financiers but doctors, scientists, bomb experts, and collectors who amassed not only some of the finest art collections in Europe, but also one of the finest bug collections. Find out for yourself how the Rothschilds prevented wars, crowned and uncrowned kings, helped win the battle of Waterloo, looked down their noses at Nazis, and established a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

    In this brilliant history of the phenomenon, Richardson shares debutantes’ own words—from diaries, letters, and interviews—throughout her vivid telling, beginning in Henry VIII’s era, sweeping through Queen Elizabeth I’s court, crossing back and forth the Atlantic to colonial Philadelphia, African American communities, Jane Austen’s England, and Mrs. Astor’s parties, ultimately arriving at the contemporary New York Infirmary and International balls.Whether maligned for its archaic attitude and objectification of women or praised for raising money for charities and providing a necessary coming-of-age ritual, the debutante tradition has more to tell us in this entertaining and illuminating book.

    That fall, the Black Knights of Army were the class of the nation. Mark Beech, a second-generation West Pointer, recounts this memorable and never-to-be-repeated season with:- Pete Dawkins, the Heisman Trophy winner who rose to the rank of Brigadier General - The long-reclusive Bill Carpenter, the fabled "lonesome end" who earned the Distinguished Service Cross for saving his company in Vietnam - Red Blaik, who led Army back to glory after the cribbing scandal and had the field at Michie Stadium named in his honorCombining the triumph of The Junction Boys with the heroics of The Long Gray Line, Beech captures a unique period in the history of football, the military, and mid-twentieth-century America.

    The Jack-Roller helped to establish the life-history or "own story" as an important instrument of sociological research. The book remains as relevant today to the study and treatment of juvenile delinquency and maladjustment as it was when originally published in 1930.

    Between 1792 and 1815, Europe plunged into an abyss of destruction.It was during this time, Bell argues, that our modern attitudes toward war were born. In the eighteenth century, educated Europeans thought war was disappearing from the civilized world. So when large-scale conflict broke out during the French Revolution, they could not resist treating it as "the last war" -- a final, terrible spasm of redemptive violence that would usher in a reign of perpetual peace. As this brilliant interpretive history shows, a war for such stakes could only be apocalyptic, fought without restraint or mercy.Ever since, the dream of perpetual peace and the nightmare of total war have been bound tightly together in the Western world -- right down to the present day, in which the hopes for an "end to history" after the cold war quickly gave way to renewed fears of full-scale slaughter.With a historian's keen insight and a journalist's flair for detail, Bell exposes the surprising parallels between Napoleon's day and our own -- including the way that ambition "wars of liberation," such as the one in Iraq, can degenerate into a gruesome guerrilla conflict. The result is a book that is as timely and important as it is unforgettable.

    His conception of the universe pervades Christian theology. Knowledge of his thought is necessary to understand Bacon, Galileo, and the modern scientific view of nature, as well as Dante and many passages from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton. Many phrases such as liberal education and theory contrasted with practice originated with this student of Plato and tutor of Alexander the Great.Writing to inform the beginner and stimulate the expert, eminent scholar A. E. Taylor presents a searching analysis of Aristotle's thought, including classification of the sciences; formal logic; theory of knowledge; matter and form; the four causes; God; physics; biology; sensation; ethics; theory of the state; and the fine arts. He also considers Aristotle's provincialism, errors regarding the nervous system and astronomy, and defense of slavery.The Giants of Philosophy is a series of dramatic presentations, in understandable language, of the concerns, questions, interests, and overall world view of history's greatest philosophers. Special emphasis on clear and relevant explanations gives you a new arsenal of insights toward living a better life.

    The first two - the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution - have inspired the greatest volume of literature. But the third - the romantic revolution - was perhaps the most fundamental and far-reaching.From Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Burns, to Beethoven, Wagner, Berlioz, Rossini and Liszt, to Goya, Turner, Delacroix and Blake, the romantics brought about nothing less than a revolution when they tore up the artistic rule book of the old regime. This was the period in which art acquired its modern meaning; for the first time the creator, rather than the created, took centre-stage. Artists became the high priests of a new religion, and as the concert hall and gallery came to take the place of the church, the public found a new subject worthy of veneration in paintings, poetry and music. Tim Blanning's wide-ranging survey traces the roots and evolution of a cultural revolution whose reverberations continue to be felt today.

    Cowan provides the definitive account of the origins of coffee drinking and coffeehouse society, and in so doing he reshapes our understanding of the commercial and consumer revolutions in Britain during the long Stuart century.Britain’s virtuosi, gentlemanly patrons of the arts and sciences, were profoundly interested in things strange and exotic. Cowan explores how such virtuosi spurred initial consumer interest in coffee and invented the social template for the first coffeehouses. As the coffeehouse evolved, rising to take a central role in British commercial and civil society, the virtuosi were also transformed by their own invention.

    The powerful epic of an imperial mother, determined to forge alliances through marriage, and the price her children paid for it.

    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.