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The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens
Par Nicola Clark. 2023
'Written in a lively, accessible style, The Waiting Game is full of insight' Suzannah Lipscomb, Literary ReviewEvery Tudor Queen had…
ladies-in-waiting. They were her confidantes and her chaperones. Only the Queen's ladies had the right to enter her most private chambers, spending hours helping her to get dressed and undressed, caring for her clothes and jewels, listening to her secrets. But they also held a unique power. A quiet word behind the scenes, an appropriately timed gift, a well-negotiated marriage alliance were all forms of political agency wielded expertly by women. The Waiting Game explores the daily lives of ladies-in-waiting, revealing the secrets of recruitment, costume, what they ate, where (and with whom) they slept. We meet María de Salinas, who travelled to England with Catherine of Aragon when just a teenager and spied for her during the divorce from Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn's lady-in-waiting Jane Parker was instrumental in the execution of not one, but two queens. And maid-of-honour Anne Basset kept her place through the last four consorts, negotiating the conflicting loyalties of her birth family, her mistress the Queen, and even the desires of the King himself. As Henry changed wives, and changed the very fabric of the country's structure besides, these women had to make choices about loyalty that simply didn't exist before. The Waiting Game is the first time their vital story has been told.Nordic Welfare Cities: Negotiating Urban Citizenship since 1850 (ISSN)
Par Magnus Linnarsson, Mats Hallenberg. 2024
This book examines Nordic cities from 1850 and their transformation from traditional, oligarchic towns to modern, inclusive welfare cities.In the…
contemporary world, the role of cities as hotbeds for progressive change has become increasingly topical. Historical studies on how Nordic cities addressed social and environmental questions a hundred years ago and how they eventually created new and inclusive policies for the future is a useful contribution to the current debate. The concept of the welfare city is addressed and elaborated upon to analyse the attempts by urban authorities to solve the problems following industrialization and urbanization. From the late nineteenth century, municipal public services promoted the integration of new groups in the urban community including workers, immigrants, women and children. The contributions in this book analyse various examples of welfare and public services that include infrastructure and transport systems, health care, housing conditions, outdoor life and entertainment. The chapters highlight the arguments and considerations promoting welfare policies, while also addressing differences between the Nordic countries. The evolution of the Nordic welfare city was a process of several overlapping phases or dimensions.This volume will be of value to students and scholars alike interested in urban history, social and cultural history and European history.A History of the World in 47 Borders: The Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps
Par Jonn Elledge. 2024
'Fascinating and hugely entertaining' MARINA HYDE'By turns surprising, funny, bleak, ridiculous, or all four of those at once' GIDEON DEFOEPeople…
have been drawing lines on maps for as long as there have been maps to draw on. Sometimes rooted in physical geography, sometimes entirely arbitrary, these lines might often have looked very different if a war or treaty or the decisions of a handful of tired Europeans had gone a different way. By telling the stories of these borders, we can learn a lot about how political identities are shaped, why the world looks the way it does - and about the scale of human folly.From the Roman attempts to define the boundaries of civilisation, to the secret British-French agreement to carve up the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, to the reason why landlocked Bolivia still maintains a navy, this is a fascinating, witty and surprising look at the history of the world told through its borders.A History of the World in 47 Borders: The Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps
Par Jonn Elledge. 2024
'Fascinating and hugely entertaining' MARINA HYDE'By turns surprising, funny, bleak, ridiculous, or all four of those at once' GIDEON DEFOEPeople…
have been drawing lines on maps for as long as there have been maps to draw on. Sometimes rooted in physical geography, sometimes entirely arbitrary, these lines might often have looked very different if a war or treaty or the decisions of a handful of tired Europeans had gone a different way. By telling the stories of these borders, we can learn a lot about how political identities are shaped, why the world looks the way it does - and about the scale of human folly.From the Roman attempts to define the boundaries of civilisation, to the secret British-French agreement to carve up the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, to the reason why landlocked Bolivia still maintains a navy, this is a fascinating, witty and surprising look at the history of the world told through its borders.Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization
Par Steven Solomon. 2011
“I read this wide-ranging and thoughtful book while sitting on the banks of the Ganges near Varanasi—it's a river already…
badly polluted, and now threatened by the melting of the loss of the glaciers at its source to global warming. Four hundred million people depend on it, and there's no backup plan. As Steven Solomon makes clear, the same is true the world over; this volume will give you the background to understand the forces that will drive much of 21st century history.” —Bill McKibben In Water, esteemed journalist Steven Solomon describes a terrifying—and all too real—world in which access to fresh water has replaced oil as the primary cause of global conflicts that increasingly emanate from drought-ridden, overpopulated areas of the world. Meticulously researched and undeniably prescient, Water is a stunningly clear-eyed action statement on what Robert F Kennedy, Jr. calls “the biggest environmental and political challenge of our time.”The End of Catholic Mexico: Causes and Consequences of the Mexican Reforma (1855–1861)
Par David Gilbert. 2024
In The End of Catholic Mexico, historian David Gilbert provides a new interpretation of one of the defining events of…
Mexican history: the Reforma. During this period, Mexico was transformed from a Catholic confessional state into a modern secular nation, sparking a three-year civil war in the process. While past accounts have portrayed the Reforma as a political contest, ending with a liberal triumph over conservative elites, Gilbert argues that it was a much broader culture war centered on religion. This dynamic, he contends, explains why the resulting conflict was more violent and the outcome more extreme than other similar contests during the nineteenth century. Gilbert&’s fresh account of this pivotal moment in Mexican history will be of interest to scholars of postindependence Mexico, Latin American religious history, nineteenth-century church history, and US historians of the antebellum republic.Moederland: Nine Daughters of South Africa
Par Cato Pedder. 2024
'Exploring the past, bringing it to vivid life with wonderful prose . . . Pedder writes with perspicacity and sensitivity…
. . . We need more books like this' Observer'Fascincating and engrossing' Literary ReviewHow did South Africa turn out the way it did? In Moederland - 'Motherland', in Afrikaans - Cato Pedder takes us on an eye-opening journey across four centuries, tracing the country's turbulent past and the rise and fall of apartheid (and her family's charged legacy) through the lives of nine very different women.KROTOA is Khoikhoi translator to the newly arrived Dutch East India Company ANGELA, a former slave from Bengal, climbs the ladder of settler society ELSJE arrives from Germany aged 3, marries at 13, a mother at 15ANNA, mistress of the Cape's grandest estate, regains control from her violent husbandMARGARETHA, uncompromising Afrikaner farmer, resists the abolition of slavery ANNA loads her family on an ox-wagon and treks into the interior to elude the British ISIE survives the Boer War to become wife of South Africa's Prime Minister and 'Mother of the Nation' CATO escapes to England and the Quakers as white supremacy mutates into apartheidPETRONELLA, returning to the Motherland, falls in love across the colour bar and risks everything to fight the system her grandfather set in motion.The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things
Par Paula Byrne. 2013
“A vivacious portrait. . . . Byrne’s Austen emerges as a worldly woman, profoundly enmeshed in a wider world than…
she’s often acknowledged to occupy. This is an Austen with a sense for the political as well as for the finer points of sensibility—and one who will be unfamiliar (though never unrecognizable) to many readers.” — Publishers WeeklyIn The Real Jane Austen, acclaimed literary biographer Paula Byrne provides the most intimate and revealing portrait yet of a beloved but complex novelist.Just as letters and tokens in Jane Austen’s novels often signal key turning points in the narrative, Byrne explores the small things – a scrap of paper, a gold chain, an ivory miniature – that held significance in Austen’s personal and creative life.Byrne transports us to different worlds, from the East Indies to revolutionary Paris, and to different events, from a high society scandal to a case of petty shoplifting. In this ground-breaking biography, Austen is set on a wider stage than ever before, revealing a well-traveled and politically aware writer – important aspects of her artistic development that have long been overlooked.The Real Jane Austen is a fresh, compelling, and surprising biography of the author of some of our most enduring classic books – from Pride and Prejudice to Sense and Sensibility, Emma to Persuasion – and a vivid evocation of the world that shaped her.The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World
Par Lucette Lagnado. 2007
“Poignant . . . deeply personal . . . an indelible history of the largely forgotten Jews of Egypt .…
. . ”—Miami HeraldIn vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado re-creates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the years before Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power. With Nasser’s nationalization of Egyptian industry, her father, Leon, a boulevardier who conducted business in his white sharkskin suit, loses everything, and departs with the family for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxtaposed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind. An inversion of the American dream set against the stunning portraits of three world cities, Lucette Lagnado’s memoir offers a grand and sweeping story of faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph.Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII
Par David Starkey. 2003
“Extraordinary. . . . It is a tribute to Starkey’s narrative drive, his puckish wit, and sharp discrimination that it…
doesn’t seem a page too long. . . . With each queen, Starkey offers a vivid character study but also has fresh discoveries that subtly alter the picture he started out with.” — Sunday Times (London)The dramatic, legendary story of Henry VIII, his six wives, and the England they ruled—told by one of the world’s preeminent historians of the Tudor era.Perhaps no one in history had a more eventful career in matrimony than Henry VIII. His marriages were tumultuous and complicated, and made instant legends of six very different women. Henry took his first bride, Catherine of Aragon, when he was 17. Their 24-year marriage was a relatively stable prelude to what followed. Anne Boleyn, a pretty, French-educated Protestant who was the mother of Elizabeth I, was eventually beheaded. Jane Seymour served as a demure contrast to the vampish Boleyn, and gave birth to Henry’s longed-for son (Edward VI). After a brief marriage to the plain Anne of Cleves, Henry married a flirtatious teenager, Catherine Howard, who would be the second of his brides to lose her head along with the king’s favor. Finally, there was Catherine Parr, a shrewd Protestant bluestocking.In this brilliant new work, one of the world’s most respected historians weaves startling new facts and fresh interpretations into a spellbinding account of the emotional drama and political intrigue that attended Henry’s six marriages. With a keen eye for both the personal and the global stage, David Starkey masterfully recaptures the Tudor era—and the wives of Henry VIII—as only he can.American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama
Par Rachel L. Swarns. 2012
A remarkable history of First Lady Michelle Obama’s mixed ancestry, American Tapestry by Rachel L. Swarns is nothing less than…
a breathtaking and expansive portrait of America itself.In this extraordinary feat of genealogical research—in the tradition of The Hemmingses of Monticello and Slaves in the Family—author Swarns, a respected Washington-based reporter for the New York Times, tells the fascinating and hitherto untold story of Ms. Obama’s black, white, and multiracial ancestors; a history that the First Lady herself did not know.At once epic, provocative, and inspiring, American Tapestry is more than a true family saga; it is an illuminating mirror in which we may all see ourselves.Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945–1990
Par Eric Marcus. 2002
When Making History was first published in 1992, the acclaimed oral historian Studs Terkel called it, “One of the definitive…
works on gay life.” Novelist Armistead Maupin said that author “Eric Marcus not only writes with grace and clarity but makes it look so easy—the ultimate measure of historian and novelist alike.” Now, for the first time, the original complete edition of Making History is available in e-book. Through his engaging oral histories, Eric Marcus traces the unfolding of LGBTQ civil rights effort from a group of small, independent underground organizations and publications into a national movement, covering the years from 1945 to 1990. Here are the stories of its remarkable pioneers: a diverse group of nearly fifty Americans, who hail from all corners of the nation. From the period in history when homosexuals were routinely beaten by police to the day when gay rights leaders were first invited to the White House, Making History is the story of an against-all-odds struggle that has succeeded in bringing about changes in American society that were once unimaginable.The Mobility of Memory: Migrations and Diasporas across European Borders (Worlds of Memory #5)
Par Luisa Passerini, Milica Trakilović, Gabriele Proglio. 2021
Migration is most concretely defined by the movement of human bodies, but it leaves indelible traces on everything from individual…
psychology to major social movements. Drawing on extensive field research, and with a special focus on Italy and the Netherlands, this interdisciplinary volume explores the interrelationship of migration and memory at scales both large and small, ranging across topics that include oral and visual forms of memory, archives, and artistic innovations. By engaging with the complex tensions between roots and routes, minds and bodies, The Mobility of Memory offers an incisive and empirically grounded perspective on a social phenomenon that continues to reshape both Europe and the world.The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz: A Powerful True Story of Hope and Survival
Par Thomas Geve. 2021
An inspiring true story of hope and survival, this is the testimony of a boy who was imprisoned in Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen…
and Buchenwald and recorded his experiences through words and color drawings.In June 1943, after long years of hardship and persecution, thirteen-year-old Thomas Geve and his mother were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Separated upon arrival, he was left to fend for himself in the men’s camp of Auschwitz I.During 22 harsh months in three camps, Thomas experienced and witnessed the cruel and inhumane world of Nazi concentration and death camps. Nonetheless, he never gave up the will to live. Miraculously, he survived and was liberated from Buchenwald at the age of fifteen.While still in the camp and too weak to leave, Thomas felt a compelling need to document it all, and drew over eighty drawings, all portrayed in simple yet poignant detail with extraordinary accuracy. He not only shared the infamous scenes, but also the day-to-day events of life in the camps, alongside inmates' manifestations of humanity, support and friendship.To honor his lost friends and the millions of silenced victims of the Holocaust, in the years following the war, Thomas put his story into words. Despite the evil of the camps, his account provides a striking affirmation of life.The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz, accompanied with 56 of his color illustrations, is the unique testimony of young Thomas and his quest for a brighter tomorrow.Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World
Par Tom Burgis. 2020
A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year • An Economist Book of the Year“A must-read for anyone wanting to better…
understand what has already happened here in America and what lies ahead if Trump is reelected in November…. A magisterial account of the money and violence behind the world’s most powerful dictatorships.” –Washington PostIn this shocking, meticulously reported work of narrative nonfiction, an award-winning investigative journalist exposes “capitalism’s monster”—global kleptocracy—and reveals how it is corrupting the world around us.They are everywhere, the thieves and their people. Masters of secrecy. Until now we have detected their presence only by what they leave behind. A body in a burned-out Audi. Workers riddled with bullets in the Kazakh Desert. A rigged election in Zimbabwe. A British banker silenced and humiliated for trying to expose the truth about the City of London.They have amassed more money than most countries. But what they are really stealing is power.In this real-life thriller packed with jaw-dropping revelations, award-winning investigative journalist Tom Burgis weaves together four stories that reveal a terrifying global web of corruption: the troublemaker from Basingstoke who stumbles on the secrets of a Swiss bank, the ex-Soviet billionaire constructing a private empire, the righteous Canadian lawyer with a mysterious client, and the Brooklyn crook protected by the CIA.Glimpses of this shadowy world have emerged over the years. In Kleptopia, Burgis connects the dots. He follows the dirty money that is flooding the global economy, emboldening dictators, and poisoning democracies. From the Kremlin to Beijing, Harare to Riyadh, Paris to the White House, the trail shows something even more sinister: the thieves are uniting. And the human cost will be great.Circling the Square: Stories from the Egyptian Revolution
Par Wendell Steavenson. 2015
What happened to the promise of Tahrir Square and the Arab Spring?On January 25, 2011, the world was watching Cairo.…
Egyptians of every stripe came together in Tahrir Square to protest Hosni Mubarak's three decades of brutal rule. After many hopeful, turbulent years, however, Egypt seems to be back where it began, with another strongman, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in power. How did this happen?In Circling the Square, Wendell Steavenson uses literary reportage to describe the intimate ironies and ad hoc movements of the Egyptian revolution—from Mubarak's fall to Mohammed Morsi's. Vignettes, incidents, anecdotes, conversations, musings, observations and character sketches cast a fresh light on this vital Middle Eastern story.Closely observing a wide range of people from a thug in a slum with a homemade gun to the democracy/documentary makers on Tahrir Square, to fundamentalist imams and military intelligence officers, Steavenson dares to ask: what am I looking at and how can I begin to understand it?With a novelist's eye for character, Steavenson paints indelible, instantly recognizable portraits and dilemmas that illuminate universal questions. What does democracy mean? What happens when a revolution throws the ideas and values of a society into crisis? What is a revolution, and, finally, what can it accomplish?To the Edges of the Earth: 1909, the Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration
Par Edward J. Larson. 2018
Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a "suspenseful" (WSJ) and "adrenaline-fueled" (Outside) entwined narrative of…
the most adventurous year of all time, when three expeditions simultaneously raced to the top, bottom, and heights of the world. As 1909 dawned, the greatest jewels of exploration—set at the world’s frozen extremes—lay unclaimed: the North and South Poles and the so-called “Third Pole,” the pole of altitude, located in unexplored heights of the Himalaya. Before the calendar turned, three expeditions had faced death, mutiny, and the harshest conditions on the planet to plant flags at the furthest edges of the Earth.In the course of one extraordinary year, Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson were hailed worldwide at the discovers of the North Pole; Britain’s Ernest Shackleton had set a new geographic “Furthest South” record, while his expedition mate, Australian Douglas Mawson, had reached the Magnetic South Pole; and at the roof of the world, Italy’s Duke of the Abruzzi had attained an altitude record that would stand for a generation, the result of the first major mountaineering expedition to the Himalaya's eastern Karakoram, where the daring aristocrat attempted K2 and established the standard route up the most notorious mountain on the planet. Based on extensive archival and on-the-ground research, Edward J. Larson weaves these narratives into one thrilling adventure story. Larson, author of the acclaimed polar history Empire of Ice, draws on his own voyages to the Himalaya, the arctic, and the ice sheets of the Antarctic, where he himself reached the South Pole and lived in Shackleton’s Cape Royds hut as a fellow in the National Science Foundations’ Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. These three legendary expeditions, overlapping in time, danger, and stakes, were glorified upon their return, their leaders celebrated as the preeminent heroes of their day. Stripping away the myth, Larson, a master historian, illuminates one of the great, overlooked tales of exploration, revealing the extraordinary human achievement at the heart of these journeys.Dominion: The Railway and the Rise of Canada
Par Stephen Bown. 2023
A thrilling new account of the engineering triumph that created a nationIn The Company, his bestselling work of revisionist history,…
Stephen R. Bown told the dramatic, adventurous and bloody tale of Canada's origins in the fur trade. With Dominion he continues the nation's creation story with an equally gripping and eye-opening account of the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway.In the late 19th century, demand for fur was in sharp decline. This could have spelled economic disaster for the venerable Hudson's Bay Company. But an idea emerged in political and business circles in Ottawa and Montreal to connect the disparate British colonies into a single entity that would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. With over 3,000 kilometres of track, much of it driven through wildly inhospitable terrain, the CPR would be the longest railway in the world and the most difficult to build. Its construction was the defining event of its era and a catalyst for powerful global forces.The times were marked by greed, hubris, blatant empire building, oppression, corruption and theft. They were good for some, hard for most, disastrous for others. The CPR enabled a new country, but it came at a terrible price.Stephen R. Bown again widens our view of the past to include the adventures and hardships of explorers and surveyors, the resistance of Indigenous peoples, and the terrific and horrific work of many thousands of labourers. His vivid portrayal of the powerful forces that were moulding the world in the late 19th century provides a revelatory new picture of modern Canada's creation as an independent state.The Inequality Machine: How College Divides Us
Par Paul Tough. 2019
First published as The Years That Matter MostFrom best-selling author Paul Tough, an indelible and explosive book on the glaring injustices of higher…
education, including unfair admissions tests, entrenched racial barriers, and crushing student debt. Now updated and expanded for the pandemic era. When higher education works the way it&’s supposed to, there is no better tool for social mobility—for lifting young people out of challenging circumstances and into the middle class and beyond. In reality, though, American colleges and universities have become the ultimate tool of social immobility—a system that secures a comfortable future for the children of the wealthy while throwing roadblocks in the way of students from struggling families. Combining vivid and powerful personal stories with deep, authoritative reporting, Paul Tough explains how we got into this mess and explores the innovative reforms that might get us out. Tough examines the systemic racism that pervades American higher education, shows exactly how the SATs give an unfair advantage to wealthy students, and guides readers from Ivy League seminar rooms to the welding shop at a rural community college. At every stop, he introduces us to young Americans yearning for a better life—and praying that a college education might help them get there. With a new preface and afterword by the author exposing how the coronavirus pandemic has shaken the higher education system anew.The United States of Beer: A Freewheeling History of the All-American Drink
Par Dane Huckelbridge. 2016
From the author of Bourbon, “the definitive history” (Sacramento Bee), comes the rollicking and revealing story of beer in America,…
in the spirit of Salt or Cod.In The United States of Beer, Dane Huckelbridge, the author of Bourbon: A History of the American Spirit—a Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance bestseller—charts the surprisingly fascinating history of Americans’ relationship with their most popular alcoholic beverage. Huckelbridge shows how beer has evolved along with the country—from a local and regional product (once upon a time every American city has its own brewery and iconic beer brand) to the rise of global mega-brands like Budweiser and Miller that are synonymous with U.S. capitalism.We learn of George Washington’s failed attempt to brew beer at Mount Vernon with molasses instead of barley, of the 19th century “Beer Barons” like Captain Frederick Pabst, Adolphus Busch, and Joseph Schlitz who revolutionized commercial brewing and built lucrative empires—and the American immigrant experience—and of the advances in brewing and bottling technology that allowed beer to flow in the saloons of the Wild West. Throughout, Huckelbridge draws connections between seemingly remote fragments of the American past, and shares his reports from the frontlines of today’s craft-brewing revolution.