Search results for ""Author Merchant"

On the way back from visiting the Bronson Company, Connie is nearly kidnapped but saved in the nick of time by Aldous. Realizing just how much danger she’s in, she tries to keep Kate at a distance…but it’s all for naught when Kate is taken and a threatening blackmail letter arrives! Connie leaps into action to save her friend, but she’s not the only one on the move, as Amelia Hobbes and the merchant Vado both have their own plans…

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'Inspiring leadership lessons from the sea,' Rear Admiral Robert O. Wray Jr, USN (ret), author of Saltwater LeadershipAlthough merchant ships carry 90% of the world's trade, the mariners who run them have little guidance on leadership. This can result in disasters such as the Titanic, Costa Concordia, the Exxon Valdez, and the recent El Faro. With modern ships being worth several million dollars, seafarers need leadership advice at every level of their career. Golden Stripes, Leadership on the High Seas provides this guidance, and much more.Captain Parani weaves together his rich experience, cutting-edge insights and real-life stories in this book which has already garnered international acclaim. The reader will discover how to run a tight ship; enhance expertise; lead and communicate with a team; implement safety leadership; decide effectively in high-stake situations and be inspired by legendary sailors. It is a practical leadership action plan which can be applied at sea, or in any other workplace, anywhere.Golden Stripes is the first leadership book of its kind, written by a mariner specifically for commercial shipping.The author's experience both on board and from his corporate roles gives him a unique perspective on why, when and how sailors fail or succeed. Important messages are woven around engaging stories, quotes and practical leadership models, making this an indispensable read for all leaders.

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The rural county of Poyang, lying in northern Jiangxi Province, goes largely unmentioned in the annals of modern Chinese history. Yet records from the Public Security Bureau archive hold a treasure trove of data on the every day interactions between locals and the law. Drawing on these largely overlooked resources, Tiger, Tyrant, Bandit, Businessman follows four criminal cases that together uniquely illuminate the dawning years of the People's Republic. Using a unique casefile approach, Brian DeMare recounts stories of a Confucian scholar who found himself allied with bandits and secret society members; a farmer who murdered a cadre; an evil tyrant who exploited religious traditions to avoid prosecution; and a merchant accused of a crime he did not commit. Each case is a tremendous tale, complete with memorable characters, plot twists, and drama. And while all depict the enemies of New China, each also reveals details of village life during this most pivotal moment of recent Chinese history. Together, the narratives bring rural regime change to life, illustrating how the Chinese Communist Party cemented its authority through mass political campaigns, careful legal investigations, and sheer patience. Balancing storytelling with historical inquiry, this book is at once a grassroots view of rural China's legal system and its application to apparent counterrevolutionaries, and a lesson in archival research itself.

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A gritty and epic adventure to appeal to fans of Mark Lawrence, Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher and Joe Abercrombie - The Winter Road is a fantasy novel which remembers that battles leave all kinds of scars.'A bold, assured storyteller' PETER NEWMAN author of The VagrantThe greatest empire of them all began with a road.The Circle - a thousand miles of perilous forests and warring clans. No one has ever tamed such treacherous territory before, but ex-soldier Teyr Amondsen, veteran of a hundred battles, is determined to try. With a merchant caravan protected by a crew of skilled mercenaries, Amondsen embarks on a dangerous mission to forge a road across the untamed wilderness that was once her home. But a warlord rises in the wilds of the Circle, uniting its clans and terrorising its people. Teyr's battles may not be over yet . . .All roads lead back to war.Praise for Adrian Selby:'This book took me on an emotional rollercoaster . . . Highly recommended' JOHN GWYNNE'Perfect for fans of Joe Abercrombie' RT BOOK REVIEWS'A lot to enjoy, especially if you are a fan of dark, gritty, old-soldier stories' FANTASY FACTION'Wears its grimdark on its sleeve . . . a thrilling tale of adventure, betrayal, triumph and loss' INTERZONE 'I give it nothing but the highest recommendation' GRIMDARK MAGAZINE For more epic fantasy action from Adrian Selby, check out SNAKEWOOD or follow him on twitter at @adrianlselby for updates.

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On the way back from visiting the Bronson Company, Connie is nearly kidnapped but saved in the nick of time by Aldous. Realizing just how much danger she’s in, she tries to keep Kate at a distance…but it’s all for naught when Kate is taken and a threatening blackmail letter arrives! Connie leaps into action to save her friend, but she’s not the only one on the move, as Amelia Hobbes and the merchant Vado both have their own plans…

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New flies and old standbys from one of Umpqua Feather Merchant's top-selling fly designers with 500 step-by-step photos of 24 proven patterns for the most demanding troutPatterns for streams across the country, not just tailwaters; includes nymphs, emergers, and dry flies that imitate mayflies, midges, stoneflies, and caddisDetailed information on how to fish the patterns with over 30 rigging illustrations from artist Dave Hall

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Volume 9 continues to expand the range of early modern book owners represented in PLRE. The libraries in this volume were collected by statesmen, diplomats, government officials, and estate landowners; by merchants and tradesmen (a cooper, an apothecary, a clothier, a merchant adventurer); by a poet and pamphleteer, a churchwarden, and a lawyer. PLRE has also continued to seek out evidence of book ownership by early modern women, offering here book-lists associated with six aristocratic and upper gentry women, including the well-known diarists Elizabeth Isham and Lady Anne Clifford. The book-lists in this volume furthermore represent a range of locations within England, with records of libraries situated in Westmorland, Lancashire, Warwickshire, Yorkshire, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cornwall, and the Isle of Wight in addition to London. With this volume, nearly three hundred and forty personal libraries representing approximately 17,000 books itemized in personal catalogues, wills, and probate inventories between 1507 and 1653 have been transcribed, identified, and annotated, with each collection provided with an introductory essay.

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Why did modern capitalism not arise in late imperial China? One famous answer comes from Max Weber, whose The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism gave a canonical analysis of religious and cultural factors in early modern European economic development. In The Religions of China, Weber contended that China lacked the crucial religious impetus to capitalist growth that Protestantism gave Europe.The preeminent historian Ying-shih Yü offers a magisterial examination of religious and cultural influences in the development of China’s early modern economy, both complement and counterpoint to Weber’s inquiry. The Religious Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in Early Modern China investigates how evolving forms of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism created and promulgated their own concepts of the work ethic from the late seventh century into the Qing dynasty. The book traces how religious leaders developed the spiritual significance of labor and how merchants adopted this religious work ethic, raising their status in Chinese society. However, Yü argues, China’s early modern mercantile spirit was restricted by the imperial bureaucratic priority on social order. He challenges Marxists who championed China’s “sprouts of capitalism” during the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries as well as other modern scholars who credit Confucianism with producing dramatic economic growth in East Asian countries. Yü rejects the premise that China needed an early capitalist stage of development; moreover, the East Asian capitalism that flourished in the later half of the twentieth century was essentially part of the spread of global capitalism.Now available in English translation, this landmark work has been greatly influential among scholars in East Asia since its publication in Chinese in 1987.

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Late medieval Japan witnessed a growth in the power of the commoner, as seen in the spread of corporate villages (sō) marked by collective ownership and administration and other self-governing features. This study of a community of sō villages in central Japan from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries reconstructs the life of these villages by analyzing the rich and abundant communal records largely written by the villagers themselves and carefully preserved in the local shrine. The author show how these villagers founded and operated a shrine-centered organization that brought coherence, order, and prestige to the community at the same time it formalized the differences among the residents along gender and class lines. The Tokuchin-ho sō was a governmental, social, and religious institution that facilitated the movement toward localism, but, the author argues, its growing collective power and organization also benefited its local proprietor, the great monastic complex of Enryakuji. Political and economic resources flowed vertically between the client-village and the patron-proprietor as they collaborated to secure internal peace and wide-reaching commercial interests. The book traces the transformation of the sō as late medieval decentralization gave way to politically unified early modern society, with its enforced transfer of merchants from villages to towns, confiscation of shrine land, and the relinquishment of the sō's political authority. Despite these efforts, as a powerful organization experienced in promoting communal order, the sō was able to maintain its medieval legacy of self-determination, substantially preempting bureaucratic intervention in local governance. The local records allow the author to study the sō from the villagers' perspective, and she presents new information on the position of women in rural communities, the local mode of economic surplus accumulation, the detailed social and economic functions of a shrine, and the reaction to nationwide cadastral surveys. The book is illustrated with 21 halftones.

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'The Stardust Thief will transport you, enchant you, and revive your belief in the magic of storytelling' Shelley Parker-Chan, author of She Who Became the SunInspired by stories from One Thousand and One Nights, The Stardust Thief weaves the gripping tale of a legendary smuggler, a cowardly prince and a dangerous quest across the desert to find a magical lamp.Neither here nor there, but long ago...Loulie al-Nazari is the Midnight Merchant: a criminal who, with the help of her jinn bodyguard, hunts and sells illegal magic. When she saves the life of a cowardly prince, she draws the attention of his powerful father, the sultan, who blackmails her into finding an ancient lamp.With no choice but to obey or be executed, Loulie journeys with the sultan's oldest son to find the artefact. Aided by her bodyguard, who has secrets of his own, they must survive ghoul attacks, outwit a vengeful jinn queen and confront a malicious killer from Loulie's past. And, in a world where story is reality and illusion is truth, Loulie will discover that everything - her enemy, her magic, even her own past - is not what it seems, and she must decide who she will become in this new reality.Praise for The Stardust Thief:'Sizzling with action and secrets, The Stardust Thief is a grand adventure with unforgettable characters, enchanting magic, and plenty of heart' Melissa Caruso, author of The Tethered Mage'A thrilling adventure about found families, ancient magic and stories that linger' S. A. Chakraborty, author of The City of Brass'The Stardust Thief is a dream written upon a page - absorbing, lingering and poignantly told. Abdullah weaves a sweeping adventure of tales within tales, while laying bare the ways those we love can both uplift us and break our hearts' Andrea Stewart, author of The Bone Shard Daughter

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PART STORY, PART GAME - PURE ADVENTURE! "A new way of telling stories and in many ways the birth of modern gaming, these books captured the imaginations of a generation of kids - it's great to think that a new generation are going to be similarly captivated" bestselling author Charlie Higson YOU, the hero, a travel to the city of Salamonis to make your fortune. But will you join the Strongarms and travel across Allansia, guarding merchant caravans, or will you study at the famous Halls of Learning? Will you enter Bu Fon Fen in search of Cauldronweed, or rid King Salamon's Mine of the pests that plague it? Will you bring Cardinal Zyn to justice, or set off in search of the horn of the Black Unicorn? And just who is the Shivering Man, and what does he have to do with the mystery of the screaming sky? It is down to YOU to uncover the secrets of Salamonis! ABOUT THE SERIES The multi-million copy globally bestselling choose-your-own-adventure series is repackaged and reignited for a brand new generation of children. All you need is a dice and you can choose which way the story goes Be careful - the main character can die at any point! 20 million copies sold worldwide in 32 languages Perfect for kids who love gaming A great way to encourage children away from gaming on screens and get them back into reading books!

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Winner of 2022 Daphne du Maurier Award in Overall Published Division and Mainstream Suspense/Mystery As a barrister in 1818 London, William Snopes has witnessed firsthand the danger of only the wealthy having their voices heard, and he's a strong advocate who defends the poorer classes against the powerful. That changes the day a struggling heiress, Lady Madeleine Jameson, arrives at his door. In a last-ditch effort to save her faltering estate, Lady Jameson invested in a merchant brig, the Padget. The ship was granted a rare privilege by the king's regent: a Letter of Marque authorizing the captain to seize the cargo of French traders operating illegally in the Indian Sea. Yet when the Padget returns to London, her crew is met by soldiers ready to take possession of their goods and arrest the captain for piracy. And the Letter--the sole proof his actions were legal--has mysteriously vanished. Moved by the lady's distress, intrigued by the Letter, and goaded by an opposing solicitor, Snopes takes the case. But as he delves deeper into the mystery, he learns that the forces arrayed against Lady Jameson, and now himself, are even more perilous than he'd imagined. "The Barrister and the Letter of Marque combines the intrigue of John Grisham, the vibrant world of Charles Dickens, and a mystery worthy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. . . . This richly historical and lively paced story has all the makings of a modern classic."--JOCELYN GREEN, Christy Award-winning author of Shadows of the White City "At once atmospheric and gripping, Johnson's latest is a luminous and refreshing new offering in inspirational historical fiction."--RACHEL MCMILLAN, author of The London Restoration and The Mozart Code "A fascinating glimpse into a Regency London readers seldom see."--ROSEANNA M. WHITE, bestselling author of Edwardian fiction

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The merchant, Paul Brandt, moved from Stettin (now in Poland) to Hamburg in 1686. His business prospered and four generations later, fifteen-year-old Wilhelm Brandt was apprenticed to the merchant Alexander Christian Becker in Archangel. Trading flourished in a variety of commodities including timber, flax, skins and sugar, and in 1805 Wilhelm's older brother Emanuel Heinrich moved to London and set up the agency for the Archangel business which subsequently became the family bank. Peter Augustus Brandt (ninth generation) was born in 1931, and after Eton, Cambridge and national service in the Royal Navy joined Wm Brandt's in 1954, becoming managing director in 1966. After the bank's successes in the 1960s, it was taken over by National and Grindlays and eventually sold in 1972, 160 years after its founding. With over 70 illustrations, many in colour, including family portraits, houses, documents and artefacts from the archives. Maps of Germany, the Baltic, England and Archangel show places with which the family and its businesses were associated.

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In this pathbreaking work of scholarship, Laura Doyle reveals the central, formative role of race in the development of a transnational, English-language literature over three centuries. Identifying a recurring freedom plot organized around an Atlantic Ocean crossing, Doyle shows how this plot structures the texts of both African-Atlantic and Anglo-Atlantic writers and how it takes shape by way of submerged intertextual exchanges between the two traditions. For Anglo-Atlantic writers, Doyle locates the origins of this narrative in the seventeenth century. She argues that members of Parliament, religious refugees, and new Atlantic merchants together generated a racial rhetoric by which the English fashioned themselves as a “native,” “freedom-loving,” “Anglo-Saxon” people struggling against a tyrannical foreign king. Stories of a near ruinous yet triumphant Atlantic passage to freedom came to provide the narrative expression of this heroic Anglo-Saxon identity—in novels, memoirs, pamphlets, and national histories. At the same time, as Doyle traces through figures such as Friday in Robinson Crusoe, and through gothic and seduction narratives of ruin and captivity, these texts covertly register, distort, or appropriate the black Atlantic experience. African-Atlantic authors seize back the freedom plot, placing their agency at the origin of both their own and whites’ survival on the Atlantic. They also shrewdly expose the ways that their narratives have been “framed” by the Anglo-Atlantic tradition, even though their labor has provided the enabling condition for that tradition.Doyle brings together authors often separated by nation, race, and period, including Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, Olaudah Equiano, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Wilson, Pauline Hopkins, George Eliot, and Nella Larsen. In so doing, she reassesses the strategies of early women novelists, reinterprets the significance of rape and incest in the novel, and measures the power of race in the modern English-language imagination.

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Confronted by an increasingly restrictive imperial policy and mounting debt with England, Virginians envisioned the development of an independent economy safe from the constraits of parliamentary regulation and the influence of British merchants. Throughout the revolutionary era, from the earliest resistance to imperial policy in the 1760s to the debate on ratification of the Federal Constitution in 1788, Virginians pursued a vision of economic independence that they considered a prerequisite for the liberty, security, and prosperity of their state. That vision reflected a determination to free themselves from the demands of British merchants and the restrictions of the tobacco trade while maintaining the viability of Virginia's plantation systems. Pressed by debt and a declining economy, Virginia planters formed economic associations dedicated to protecting domestic agriculture and promoting local manufactures. Independence, they understood, was as much an economic condition as a political one. In this exciting reinterpretation of Virginia's path to Revolution, Bruce Ragsdale follows one colony's efforts to break economically with England and shows how this grassroots movement to become self-sufficient solidified into the political resistance leading to war.

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This book analyzes Confucian ideology as culture and culture as history by exploring the interplay between popular ritual performance of the opera Mulian and gentrified mercantile lineages in late imperial Huizhou. Mulian, originally a Buddhist tale featuring the monk Mulian's journey through the underworld to save his mother, underwent a Confucian transformation in the sixteenth century against a backdrop of vast socioeconomic, intellectual, cultural, and religious changes. The author shows how local elites appropriated the performance of Mulian, turning it into a powerful medium for conveying orthodox values and religious precepts and for negotiating local social and gender issues altered by the rising money economy. The sociocultural approach of this historical study lifts Mulian out of the exorcistic-dramatic-ethnographic milieu to which it is usually consigned. This new approach enables the author to develop an alternative interpretation of Chinese popular culture and the Confucian tradition, which in turn sheds significant new light upon the social history of late imperial China.

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In the bestselling tradition of The Swerve and A Distant Mirror, THE VERGE tells the story of a period that marked a decisive turning point for both European and world history. Here, author Patrick Wyman examines two complementary and contradictory sides of the same historical coin: the world-altering implications of the developments of printed mass media, extreme taxation, exploitative globalization, humanistic learning, gunpowder warfare, and mass religious conflict in the long term, and their intensely disruptive consequences in the short-term.As told through the lives of ten real people -- from famous figures like Christopher Columbus and wealthy banker Jakob Fugger to a ruthless small-time merchant and a one-armed mercenary captain -- THE VERGE illustrates how their lives, and the times in which they lived, set the stage for an unprecedented globalized future.Over an intense forty-year period, the seeds for the so-called "Great Divergence" between Western Europe and the rest of the globe would be planted. From Columbus's voyage across the Atlantic to Martin Luther's sparking the Protestant Reformation, the foundations of our own, recognizably modern world came into being.For the past 500 years, historians, economists, and the policy-oriented have argued which of these individual developments best explains the West's rise from backwater periphery to global dominance. As THE VERGE presents it, however, the answer is far more nuanced.

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A pioneering history that transforms our understanding of the colonial era and China's place in itChina has conventionally been considered a land empire whose lack of maritime and colonial reach contributed to its economic decline after the mid-eighteenth century. Distant Shores challenges this view, showing that the economic expansion of southeastern Chinese rivaled the colonial ambitions of Europeans overseas.In a story that dawns with the Industrial Revolution and culminates in the Great Depression, Melissa Macauley explains how sojourners from an ungovernable corner of China emerged among the commercial masters of the South China Sea. She focuses on Chaozhou, a region in the great maritime province of Guangdong, whose people shared a repertoire of ritual, cultural, and economic practices. Macauley traces how Chaozhouese at home and abroad reaped many of the benefits of an overseas colonial system without establishing formal governing authority. Their power was sustained instead through a mosaic of familial, fraternal, and commercial relationships spread across the ports of Bangkok, Singapore, Saigon, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Swatow. The picture that emerges is not one of Chinese divergence from European modernity but rather of a convergence in colonial sites that were critical to modern development and accelerating levels of capital accumulation.A magisterial work of scholarship, Distant Shores reveals how the transoceanic migration of Chaozhouese laborers and merchants across a far-flung maritime world linked the Chinese homeland to an ever-expanding frontier of settlement and economic extraction.

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Across the metropole, the colonies, and the wider eighteenth-century world, French children and youth participated in a diverse set of state-building initiatives, social reform programs, and imperial expansion efforts. Young Subjects explores the lives and experiences of these youth, revealing their role as active and vital agents in the shaping of early modern France.Through a set of regional case studies, Julia Gossard demonstrates how thousands of children and youth were engaged in the service of the state. In Lyon, charity schools cultivated children as agents of moral and social reform who carried their lessons home to their families. In Paris, orphaned and imprisoned youth trained in skilled trades or prepared for military service, while others were sent to the French colonies in North America as filles du roi and sturdy labourers. Young people from merchant families were recruited to serve as cultural brokers and translators on behalf of French commerical interests in the Ottoman Empire and Siam. In each case, Gossard considers how these youth played, negotiated, and sometimes resisted their roles, and what expressions of individual identity and agency were available to subjects under the legal control of others.As sources of labour, future taxpayers, colonial subjects, cultural mediators, and potential criminals, children and youth were objects of intense interest for civic authorities. Young Subjects refocuses our attention on these often overlooked historical subjects who helped to build France.

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The five United States military service academies are some of the most elite schools in the nation, taking the finest high school students and turning them into commissioned officers of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marine. Over 60,000 students a year begin the arduous process of applying, and about 4,000 get in. At West Point alone, over 15,000 candidates start the applications process. Less than a third of them finish it. Some figure out that they aren’t going to be competitive, some get derailed with specific problems, and some get lost and drop out even though they might have gotten in. From applications to Congressional nominations, from athletics to medical qualifications, the process is unlike any other for getting into college. This book leads students and their families through the process step by step, offering the tools needed for the very best chance of success. Covering special issues and concerns like LGBTQ, women and minorities, criminal records, and more, the author also discusses whether attending a service academy is RIGHT for the prospective student, and what he or she can expect upon acceptance, admission, and attendance. Using his personal experience in helping his son through the applications process, Michael Singer Dobson provides all candidates with the ins and outs of the competition for a spot at one of these prestigious schools.

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The Kriegsmarine's Schnellboote fast attack boats, or E-boats to the Allies, were the primary German naval attack units in coastal waters throughout the Second World War. Operating close to their various bases they became a devastatingly effective weapon in nearly all the Kriegsmarine's theatres of war, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It was in the English Channel, however, that they scored their most notable successes, destroying some forty warships and more than one hundred merchant ships. In addition to interception and attack, they were also used for minelaying, landing sabotage troops and general escort duties. There had been, until this book was published, no comprehensive operational history of the S-boat service in all the theatres in which it saw service, but due to the relatively small number of units it is possible to recount the duties and fates of each individual craft and in this book the author examines the career of each in detail. In addition, operations alongside the commando units of the Kleinkampfverbande are covered. As the war progressed, S-boats suffered from the increased Allied mastery of the seas and skies but they were a formidable foe right to the end; this fine book was the first to do full justice to their record of success, and remains the foremost work on their operational history. **'The history of naval warfare in the Second World War is a well-worn path, and it is refreshing to encounter a work that is significant and adds to our understanding. This is quite simply an outstanding book.'** _The Mariner's Mirror_

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The United States has one of the largest and costliest flood control systems in the world, even though only a small proportion of its land lies in floodplains. Rivers by Design traces the emergence of the mammoth U.S. flood management system, which is overseen by the federal government but implemented in conjunction with state governments and local contractors and levee districts. Karen M. O’Neill analyzes the social origins of the flood control program, showing how the system initially developed as a response to the demands of farmers and the business elite in outlying territories. The configuration of the current system continues to reflect decisions made in the nineteenth century and early twentieth. It favors economic development at the expense of environmental concerns.O’Neill focuses on the creation of flood control programs along the lower Mississippi River and the Sacramento River, the first two rivers to receive federal flood control aid. She describes how, in the early to mid-nineteenth century, planters, shippers, and merchants from both regions campaigned for federal assistance with flood control efforts. She explains how the federal government was slowly and reluctantly drawn into water management to the extent that, over time, nearly every river in the United States was reengineered. Her narrative culminates in the passage of the national Flood Control Act of 1936, which empowered the Army Corps of Engineers to build projects for all navigable rivers in conjunction with local authorities, effectively ending nationwide, comprehensive planning for the protection of water resources.

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Composed in a prison cell in 1298 by Venetian merchant Marco Polo and Arthurian romance writer Rustichello of Pisa, The Description of the World relates Polo's experiences in Asia and at the court of Qubilai, the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. In addition to a new translation based on the Franco-Italian "F" manuscript of Polo's text, this edition includes genealogies of the Mongol rulers and nine maps of Polo's journey, as well as thorough annotation and an extensive bibliography.

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In 1861 French silkworm merchant Hervé Joncour travels to Japan, where he encounters the mysterious Hara Kei. He develops a painful longing for Kei's beautiful concubine - but they cannot touch; they don't even speak. And he cannot read the note she sends him until he has returned to his own country. But the moment he does, Joncour is enslaved.Subtle, tender and surprising, Silk is an evocative tale of erotic possession.

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In 1872, the Mary Celeste merchant ship set sail from New York, bound for Italy. About a month later, it was spotted adrift in the ocean. The crew had vanished. The ship’s charts were found scattered, and crew members’ belongings were still onboard. The lifeboat was missing. What happened to the crew? Explore the theories behind the crew’s disappearance and why it has become one of history’s greatest mysteries.

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In 1872, the Mary Celeste merchant ship set sail from New York, bound for Italy. About a month later, it was spotted adrift in the ocean. The crew had vanished. The ship’s charts were found scattered, and crew members’ belongings were still onboard. The lifeboat was missing. What happened to the crew? Explore the theories behind the crew’s disappearance and why it has become one of history’s greatest mysteries.

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Moda Polska (Young Poland) emerged between 1890 and 1918. It was a unique movement in which Polish intellectuals attempted to combine native forms of expression with the ideals of European modernism to create artistically innovative and inherently Polish work. John. A. Merchant examines the impact of a contemporary movement, Irish-Ireland, on Polish culture during the same period. He traces both Young Poland and Irish-Ireland's ideas of culture and politics while analyzing their geopolitical differences. Of all the different cultural and political influences that helped shape Young Poland, the Irish-Ireland movement represents one of the most intriguing and, historically, the most overlooked.

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Learn how this son of German immigrants from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, turned his small food-packaging company into a booming business known for its fair treatment of workers and pioneering safe food preparation standards. This American success story follows Heinz from his early days as a pickle and vinegar merchant in the 1800s to the name behind the nation’s number-one brand of ketchup. The name that’s on everyone’s lips is now part of the Who Was? series.

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Fair pricing is an issue that affects us all, whether we?re consumers or merchants. Throughout her career, Sarah Maxwell has seen how pricing practices?across a variety of different areas, from mobile phones and airline tickets to prescription drugs and gasoline?impact our everyday lives. Now, with The Price Is Wrong, Maxwell shares her deepest insights on this issue and examines both the psychological and sociological basis of fair pricing.

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A captivating trio of sensual romances, linking the tales of wicked rakes and the flawless aristocratic young women whose hearts - and bodies - they melt. . . In Stolen Pleasures, Olivia Merrick, a merchant's daughter, finds out that her new husband, Sebastian Blake, is actually high-seas pirate Captain Phoenix, but will she make him walk the plank, or enjoy this newly discovered dangerous side?In Lucien's Gamble sparks fly when Lucien Remington, a debauched libertine, finds the untouchable Lady Julienne La Coeur dressed as a man in his gentleman's club. And in Her Mad Grace Hugh La Coeur, the Earl of Montrose, shelters from a snowstorm in an eerie mansion owned by a mad duchess. But her companion, fiercely independent Charlotte, might just keep him warm in the night . . . Praise for Sylvia Day, bestselling author of the sensational Crossfire series:'Move over Danielle Steel and Jackie Collins, this is the dawn of a new Day' Amuse 'Several shades darker and a hundred degrees hotter than anything you've read before' Reveal***Previously published as Bad Boys Ahoy***

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Smuggling along the Chinese coast has been a thorn in the side of many regimes. From opium and weapons concealed aboard foreign steamships in the Qing dynasty to nylon stockings and wristwatches trafficked in the People’s Republic, contests between state and smuggler have exerted a surprising but crucial influence on the political economy of modern China. Seeking to consolidate domestic authority and confront foreign challenges, states introduced tighter regulations, higher taxes, and harsher enforcement. These interventions sparked widespread defiance, triggering further coercive measures. Smuggling simultaneously threatened the state’s power while inviting repression that strengthened its authority.Philip Thai chronicles the vicissitudes of smuggling in modern China—its practice, suppression, and significance—to demonstrate the intimate link between illicit coastal trade and the amplification of state power. China’s War on Smuggling shows that the fight against smuggling was not a simple law enforcement problem but rather an impetus to centralize authority and expand economic controls. The smuggling epidemic gave Chinese states pretext to define legal and illegal behavior, and the resulting constraints on consumption and movement remade everyday life for individuals, merchants, and communities. Drawing from varied sources such as legal cases, customs records, and popular press reports and including diverse perspectives from political leaders, frontline enforcers, organized traffickers, and petty runners, Thai uncovers how different regimes policed maritime trade and the unintended consequences their campaigns unleashed. China’s War on Smuggling traces how defiance and repression redefined state power, offering new insights into modern Chinese social, legal, and economic history.

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Judge Dee presided over his imperial Chinese court with a unique brand of Confucian justice. A near mythic figure in China, he distinguished himself as a tribunal magistrate, inquisitor, and public avenger. Long after his death, accounts of his exploits were celebrated in Chinese folklore, and later immortalized by Robert van Gulik in his electrifying mysteries.In The Phantom of the Temple, three separate puzzles—the disappearance of a wealthy merchant's daughter, twenty missing bars of gold, and a decapitated corpse—are pieced together by the clever judge to solve three murders and one complex, gruesome plot. “Judge Dee belongs in that select group of fictional detectives headed by the renowned Sherlock Holmes. I assure you it is a compliment not given frivolously.”—Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles TimesRobert Van Gulik (1910-67) was a Dutch diplomat and an authority on Chinese history and culture. He drew his plots from the whole body of Chinese literature, especially from the popular detective novels that first appeared in the seventeenth century.

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Super sleuth Sister Fidelma returns in the twentieth historical mystery by Peter Tremayne, acclaimed author of THE COUNCIL OF THE CURSED, DANCING WITH DEMONS and many more.PRAISE FOR THE SISTER FIDELMA SERIES: 'Tremayne's super-sleuth is a vibrant creation' Morgan Llywelyn, 'A brilliant and beguiling heroine. Immensely appealing' Publishers Weekly AD 670. An Irish merchant ship is attacked by a pirate vessel off the coast of the Breton peninsular. Murchad, the captain, and a prince from the kingdom of Muman, are killed in cold blood after they have surrendered. Among the other passengers who manage to escape the slaughter are Sister Fidelma of Cashel and her faithful companion, Brother Eadulf. The prince was Fidelma's cousin and she is determined to bring the killers to justice...What readers are saying about THE DOVE OF DEATH:'Sister Fidelma makes ancient Ireland come alive''Yet another sure-fire winner in this long-running Irish series''Once again Peter Tremayne weaves a brilliant murder mystery in another story from ancient Ireland that keeps you spell bound until the very end'

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Founded by Alexander the Great in 332 BC, Alexandria was for a long time the largest city in the ancient world. Flattened by a tsunami in 365 AD, it was little more than a fishing village when captured by Napoleon in 1798. The 19th century saw it become the centre of the Egyptian cotton trade, bringing prosperity and an influx of European merchants. Then came the bombardment by the English in 1882, which almost flattened the city a second time, and the revolution of 1952, which in effect condemned many of its residential buildings to slow but picturesque decay. The ebbs and flows of history and different cultures (especially Arabic, Muslim, Greek, Italian, English, and, not least, Jewish) have all left their marks on Alexandria’s architecture. There are classical ruins; Ottoman fortifications; Egyptian okelles (medieval merchants’ buildings); a colourful fishing port; mosques, shrines, churches, and synagogues; mansions and apartment buildings in the neo-Renaissance, art deco, and international styles; brutalist post-revolutionary institutions. And then are oddities such as the Cotton Palace Tower, a skyscraper intended for use as the headquarters of the country’s cotton industry but inexplicably abandoned before completion. This book, the first systematic guide to the architecture of Alexandria, is the work of many enthusiastic hands. The texts and photographs were produced by students and staff at the Architecture Faculty of Alexandria University.

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An international collection of the traditional tales that inspired some of Shakespeare's greatest playsShakespeare knew a good story when he heard one, and he wasn't afraid to borrow from what he heard or read, especially traditional folktales. The Merchant of Venice, for example, draws from "A Pound of Flesh," while King Lear begins in the same way as "Love Like Salt," with a king asking his three daughters how much they love him, then banishing the youngest when her cryptic reply displeases him. This unique anthology presents more than forty versions of folktales related to eight Shakespeare plays: The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, All's Well That Ends Well, King Lear, Cymbeline, and The Tempest. These fascinating and diverse tales come from Europe, the Middle East, India, the Caribbean, and South America, and include stories by Gerald of Wales, Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Giambattista Basile, J. M. Synge, Zora Neale Hurston, Italo Calvino, and many more. Organized by play, each chapter includes a brief introduction discussing the intriguing connections between the play and the gathered folktales. Shakespeare and the Folktale can be read for the pure pleasure these lively tales give as much as for the insight into Shakespeare's plays they provide.

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Like its predecessors in the series, this book is an epic chronicle of previously unpublished topics, including the uniforms and equipment of the submarine force, PT boat squadrons, mine warfare men, gun crews, signalmen, and more. In addition, never-before addressed subjects including the U.S. Coast Guard, Merchant Marine, Public Health Service, Coast and Geodetic Survey and the Samoan Fita-Fita are examined. Clothing, accoutrements, insignia, small arms, knives, life jackets, novelty items and sweetheart jewelry are all covered.

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Like its predecessors in the series, this book is an epic chronicle of previously unpublished topics, including the uniforms and equipment of the submarine force, PT boat squadrons, mine warfare men, gun crews, signalmen, and more. In addition, never-before addressed subjects including the U.S. Coast Guard, Merchant Marine, Public Health Service, Coast and Geodetic Survey and the Samoan Fita-Fita are examined. Clothing, accoutrements, insignia, small arms, knives, life jackets, novelty items and sweetheart jewelry are all covered.

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Like its predecessors in the series, this book is an epic chronicle of previously unpublished topics, including the uniforms and equipment of the submarine force, PT boat squadrons, mine warfare men, gun crews, signalmen, and more. In addition, never-before addressed subjects including the U.S. Coast Guard, Merchant Marine, Public Health Service, Coast and Geodetic Survey and the Samoan Fita-Fita are examined. Clothing, accoutrements, insignia, small arms, knives, life jackets, novelty items and sweetheart jewelry are all covered.

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The Isle of Man is predominantly a maritime nation. For many generations its menfolk have made their living from the sea, sometimes as fishermen, but often as crewmen aboard merchant vessels or warships. Indeed, such were their skills of seamanship that they were in great demand for the latter in time of war. As smugglers, or as privateers they made their living on the waves, in the Atlantic, Caribbean or Pacific. Whether taken by a Press Gang, or enlisted voluntarily, the Manx saw action in some of the greatest naval events between 1760 and 1815. The Isle of Man had a high degree of literacy and education even among the poor at this time, and consequently a significant body of first-hand evidence has survived from those who served below decks, aboard merchant ships, privateers and warships. Some, such as Peter Heywood, were eyewitness to the most famous event in naval history, the Mutiny on the Bounty. Others, such as John Quilliam climbed the naval career ladder, served with Nelson and gained distinction at the greatest sea battle in history, Trafalgar. One, Captain Hugh Crow, fought against the French, made his fortune in the slave trade, and commanded the last legal voyage. In this book we meet them all, and their words echo to us across the waves and down the centuries.

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With the bathhouse in Selim’s care, ex-traveling merchant Lawrence and Holo theWisewolf set off on a journey again. Along the way, at a place called the VallanBishopric, where they were going to exchange coins, there is a familiar face waswaiting there to reunite with them-Elsa.Now a priestess, Elsa says that she came to the bishopric to manage the church’sassets. As collateral for exchanging their money, she asks Lawrence to investigate acursed mountain, where people are said to go in, but never come out. Hidden there isthe secret of the alchemist and the fallen angel-?!

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This is the fantastical, yet real, story of the merchants of Bethlehem, the young men who traveled to every corner of the globe in the nineteenth century. These men set off on the backs of donkeys with suitcases full of crosses and rosaries, to return via steamship with suitcases stuffed with French francs, Philippine pesos, or Salvadoran colones. They returned with news of mysterious lands and strange inventions—clocks, trains, and other devices that both befuddled and bewitched the Bethlehemites. With newfound wealth, these merchants built shimmering pink mansions that transformed Bethlehem from a rural village into Palestine's wealthiest and most cosmopolitan town. At the center of these extraordinary occurrences lived Jubrail Dabdoub. The Lives and Deaths of Jubrail Dabdoub tells the story of Jubrail's encounters, offering a version of Palestinian history rarely acknowledged. From his childhood in rural Bethlehem to later voyages across Europe, East Asia, and the Americas, Jubrail's story culminates in a recorded miracle: in 1909, he was brought back from the dead. To tell such a tale is to delve into the realms of the fantastic and improbable. Through the story of Jubrail's life, Jacob Norris explores the porous lines between history and fiction, the normal and the paranormal, the everyday and the extraordinary. Drawing on aspects of magical realism combined with elements of Palestinian folklore, Norris recovers the atmosphere of late nineteenth-century Bethlehem: a mood of excitement, disorientation, and wonder as the town was thrust into a new era. As the book offers an original approach to historical writing, it captures a fantastic story of global encounter and exchange.

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Little Germany takes us back to the nineteenth century, when Bradford, West Yorkshire, was the wool capital of the world. Over the centuries, Germany and Great Britain have been close trading partners. When Bradford became renowned for its rapidly expanding textile trade, prosperous German wool merchants entered the country and many of them settled in Bradford. These men, comparatively few in number but with great determination, influenced Bradford’s markets with their knowledge of commerce and philanthropic culture. They were merchants who left their mark, men who built the palatial warehouses in Little Germany. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and throughout the nineteenth century, cottage industries had given way to industrialisation and factories replaced traditional production. Bradford grew from a country market town into an industrial city, with smoke-blackened buildings and a polluted landscape. It was a city of great wealth against abject poverty and slums. Workers came to Bradford in their thousands, attracted by the prospect of work. German pork butchers from Hohenlohe in south Germany settled in the industrial cities of Great Britain. Their cheap and tasty ‘take-away’ meals were popular with factory workers, who had no time to cook due to long working hours.

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Proud of his skillful transaction in Poroson (with more than a little help from Holo), Lawrence turns his cart toward Ruvinheigen in hopes of swelling his profits. Along the way, Lawrence and Holo meet the shepherdess Norah, whom they engage to 'protect' them along the way. As it turns out, though, it isn't wolves from which Lawrence needs protection, but his own ambition. The threat of a merchant's worst nightmare awaits him in Ruvinheigen - bankruptcy!!

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This book presents two unpublished plays by the English radical, John Thelwall (1764-1834), who, as a leading member of the prorevolutionary London Corresponding Society, was tried and acquitted of high treason in 1794. A close friend of Coleridge, Thelwall was a prolific man of letters who produced novels, poetry, journalism, criticism, scientific and political essays, and autobiography. Both plays, libretti for the London theater, are especially topical today as popular literary forms to polemicize critical issues of race, empire, revolution, and sexuality. Incle and Yarico (1787) comically treats the well-known eighteenth-century love story of Inkle and Yarico, in which an English merchant betrays and sells into slavery an Indian maiden, and innocent 'Noble Savage.' The play may well be the earliest drama penned specifically in the cause of abolition. The Incas (1792) allegorizes the French Revolution and the English suppression of dissent in portraying a confrontation between the Europeans and the New World. Drawing upon and extending the precepts of Enlightenment radicalism, Thelwall undermines the justifications for empire. These manuscript plays, recovered from library archives at Yale University and the British Library, add to the growing canon of an author whose reputation continues to be augmented by new discoveries and fresh insights. In separate introductions and explanatory notes, the editors contextualize each play in terms of the London theater, the slave trade controversy, representations of race, and opposition to empire.

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The legendary tale of a saint and his encounter with a ferocious wolf. How the saint tamed the wolf with kindness resonants for families today in this beautifully illustrated picture book. Saint Francis was born in 1182, the son of a wealthy merchant. After a swashbuckling youth in Assisi, he had a change of faith and decided to live the life that he ascribed to Jesus, one of poverty and abstinence. He gave away everything he owned. His father disowned him. But over the years he drew to himself a substantial following of men and women and died revered and beloved in 1225. Three years later he was canonized as Saint Francis of Assisi by Pope Gregory IX. This lovely retelling of one of the less known of the Saint Francis lessons centers on the legend of the great wolf of Gubbio, a ferocious canine who terrorized the town and was slowly reducing it to penury and starvation. In nearby Assisi, Brother Francis heard of their plight and came to their rescue. Unbelievingly, the villagers watched from the ramparts as Brother Francis called to the wolf, tamed it with his tenderness, and made it pledge that if the people of Gubbio would care for it, he would do them no harm. He took the pledge and lived in harmony with the citizens of the city until his death. A wonderful collaboration between a Newbery-winning author, Jane Langton, and Caldecott-winning illustrator, Ilse Plume, with a timeless lesson.

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From Diana Darke, the acclaimed author of My House in Damascus and The Merchant of Syria, comes the extraordinary true story of a heroic ambulance driver who created a cat sanctuary in the midst of war-torn Aleppo."I'll stay with them no matter what happens. Someone who has mercy in his heart for humans has mercy for every living thing."When war came to Alaa Aljaleel's hometown, he made a remarkable decision to stay behind, caring for the people and animals caught in the crossfire. While thousands were forced to flee, Alaa spent his days carrying out perilous rescue missions in his makeshift ambulance and building a sanctuary for the city's abandoned cats. In turn, he created something unique: a place of tranquility for children living through the bombardment and a glimmer of hope for those watching in horror around the world. As word of Alaa's courage and dedication spread, the kindness of strangers enabled him to feed thousands of local families and save hundreds of animals. But with the city under siege, time was running out for the last sanctuary in Aleppo and Alaa was about to face his biggest challenge yet...This is the first memoir about the war in Syria from a civilian who remains there to this day, providing both a shocking insider account as well as an inspiring tale about how one person's actions can make a difference against all odds.

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When Princeton anthropologist John Borneman arrived in Syria's second-largest city in 2004 as a visiting Fulbright professor, he took up residence in what many consider a "rogue state" on the frontline of a "clash of civilizations" between the Orient and the West. Hoping to understand intimate interactions of religious, political, and familial authority in this secular republic, Borneman spent much time among different men, observing and becoming part of their everyday lives. Syrian Episodes is the striking result. Recounting his experience of living and lecturing in Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city, John Borneman offers deft, first-person stories of the longings and discontents expressed by Syrian sons and fathers, as well as a prescient analysis of the precarious power held by the regime, its relation to domestic authority, and the conditions of its demise. Combining literary imagination and anthropological insight, the book's discrete narratives converge in an unforgettable portrait of contemporary culture in Aleppo. We read of romantic seductions, rumors of spying, the play of light in rooms, the bargaining of tourists in bazaars, and an attack of wild dogs. With unflinching honesty and frequent humor, Borneman describes his encounters with students and teachers, customers and merchants, and women and families, many of whom are as intrigued with the anthropologist as he is with them. Refusing to patronize those he meets or to minimize his differences with them, Borneman provokes his interlocutors, teasing out unexpected confidences, comic responses, and mutual misunderstandings. He engages the curiosity and desire of encounter and the possibility of ethical conduct that is willing to expose cultural differences. Combining literary imagination and anthropological insight, Syrian Episodes offers an unforgettable portrait of contemporary culture in Aleppo.

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Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in The Merchant of Venice who famously demands a pound of flesh as security for a loan to his antisemitic tormentors, is one of Shakespeare’s most complex and idiosyncratic characters. With his unsettling eloquence and his varying voices of protest, play, rage, and refusal, Shylock remains a source of perennial fascination. What explains the strange and enduring force of this character, so unlike that of any other in Shakespeare’s plays? Kenneth Gross posits that the figure of Shylock is so powerful because he is the voice of Shakespeare himself. Marvelously speculative and articulate, Gross’s book argues that Shylock is a breakthrough for Shakespeare the playwright, an early realization of the Bard’s power to create dramatic voices that speak for hidden, unconscious, even inhuman impulses—characters larger than the plays that contain them and ready to escape the author’s control. Shylock is also a mask for Shakespeare’s own need, rage, vulnerability, and generosity, giving form to Shakespeare’s ambition as an author and his uncertain bond with the audience. Gross’s vision of Shylock as Shakespeare’s covert double leads to a probing analysis of the character’s peculiar isolation, ambivalence, opacity, and dark humor. Addressing the broader resonance of Shylock, both historical and artistic, Gross examines the character’s hold on later readers and writers, including Heinrich Heine and Philip Roth, suggesting that Shylock mirrors the ambiguous states of Jewishness in modernity. A bravura critical performance, Shylock Is Shakespeare will fascinate readers with its range of reference, its union of rigor and play, and its conjectural—even fictive—means of coming to terms with the question of Shylock, ultimately taking readers to the very heart of Shakespeare’s humanizing genius.

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