Search results for ""Author Merchant"

In the spring of 1861, Richmond, Virginia, suddenly became the capital city, military headquarters, and industrial engine of a new nation fighting for its existence. A remarkable drama unfolded in the months that followed. The city's population exploded, its economy was deranged, and its government and citizenry clashed desperately over resources to meet daily needs while a mighty enemy army laid siege. Journalists, officials, and everyday residents recorded these events in great detail, and the Confederacy's foes and friends watched closely from across the continent and around the world. In Rebel Richmond, Stephen V. Ash vividly evokes life in Richmond as war consumed the Confederate capital. He guides readers from the city's alleys, homes, and shops to its churches, factories, and halls of power, uncovering the intimate daily drama of a city transformed and ultimately destroyed by war. Drawing on the stories and experiences of civilians and soldiers, slaves and masters, refugees and prisoners, merchants and laborers, preachers and prostitutes, the sick and the wounded, Ash delivers a captivating new narrative of the Civil War's impact on a city and its people.

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Founded as an ecclesiastical center, trading hub, and intended capital of a feudal state, Riga was Old Livonia's greatest city and its indispensable port. Because the city was situated in what was initially remote and inhospitable territory, surrounded by pagans and coveted by regional powers like Poland, Sweden, and Muscovy, it was also a fortress encased by a wall. The House of Hemp and Butter begins in the twelfth century with the arrival to the eastern Baltic of German priests, traders, and knights, who conquered and converted the indigenous tribes and assumed mastery over their lands. It ends in 1710 with an account of the greatest war Livonia had ever seen, one that was accompanied by mass starvation, a terrible epidemic, and a flood of nearly biblical proportions that devastated the city and left its survivors in misery. Readers will learn about Riga's people—merchants and clerics, craftsmen and builders, porters and day laborers—about its structures and spaces, its internal conflicts and its unrelenting struggle to maintain its independence against outside threats. The House of Hemp and Butter is an indispensable guide to a quintessentially European city located in one of the continent's more remote corners.

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Reluctant Pioneers describes the migration of Chinese to Manchuria, their settlement there, and the incorporation of Manchuria into an expanding China, from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. The expansion of Chinese state and society from the agrarian and urban core of China proper to the territories north and west of the Great Wall doubled the size of the empire, forming the "China" now so prominent on the map of Asia. The movement and settlement of people, clearing and cultivation of land, invasions of soldiers, circulation of merchants, and establishment of government offices extended the boundaries of China at the same time that the American expansion westward and the Russian expansion eastward created the other great landed empires that dominated the twentieth century and persist today. The chief purpose of this book is to describe the Chinese experience and what it tells us about the expansion of states and societies, drawing comparisons with Russia and America, and reflecting on the nature of what scholars since Frederick Jackson Turner have called "frontiers" and what Turner's critics now call "borderlands" or "middle ground." In addition, the book touches on several other issues central to our understanding of modern China, such as the development of the Chinese economy and the nature of Chinese migration.

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The most important rule to follow when you hunt for hat ingredients is this: keep wildness in your wits and magic in your fingertips. In Cordelia’s London, magic is real and is woven into objects created by the five Maker families: the Hatmakers, the Bootmakers, the Watchmakers, the Cloakmakers, and the Glovemakers. Growing up in her father Prospero’s footsteps, eleven-year-old Cordelia Hatmaker has learned the family’s ancient skills and secrets so she can one day make her own enchanted hats. When Prospero and his ship are lost at sea during an important ingredient expedition, her grief-stricken aunt and uncle must turn their attention toward fulfilling a decree to create a Peace Hat for the king. But Cordelia refuses to accept that her father is gone for good and desperately begins making plans to find him. Then, the Peace Hat is stolen—along with the Peace Boots, Watch, Cloak, and Gloves—and Cordelia realizes that there is a more menacing plot against the Makers’ Guild, and that Prospero Hatmaker’s disappearance may be connected. Cordelia must uncover the truth about who is behind the thefts if she is to save the Makers and find out what really happened to her father. Full of magic, surprise, and adventure, Tamzin Merchant’s sparkling debut introduces a captivating heroine and her extraordinary world.

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The Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon continues its final report series with a study of the city destroyed in the campaign of the Babylonian king Nebuchadrezzar in December of 604 B.C. In this era, Ashkelon’s markets linked land routes from the southeast to a web of international Mediterranean merchants, and this volume describes the Iron Age bazaar where shopkeepers sold the goods of Egypt, Greece, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Judah. In addition, in another part of the city, a winery produced a homegrown vintage for distribution abroad.This volume spans more than 800 full-color pages illustrating the range of imported and local artifacts recovered by more than ten years of excavation. The twenty-eight chapters, by more than two dozen contributors, combine to describe Ashkelon’s pivotal role in the economy and politics of the late seventh century B.C. As such, Ashkelon 3: The Seventh Century B.C. is a indispensable resource for those interested in the Iron Age history of the Eastern Mediterranean and the study of trade and economy in the ancient world.

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Susanna Centlivre’s play The Wonder (1714) was one of the most popular works on the eighteenth-century English stage. Set in Lisbon, the plot interweaves two romantic intrigues around one “secret”: the heroine Violante is hiding her best friend, Isabella (who is the sister of her own lover, Don Felix) from Isabella’s father who wishes to marry her off to a rich but decrepit old merchant. Because she is sworn to secrecy, Violante cannot reveal Isabella’s whereabouts, nor can she explain to Felix why Isabella’s new lover, a dashing British soldier, happens to be about the house, prompting Felix’s intense jealousy. Centlivre’s critique on the tyrannical patriarchs in the world of the play is at the same time a veiled critique of similar conditions in Augustan-era Britain.This Broadview edition includes contemporary responses (by Richard Steele and Arthur Bedford), biographical accounts, selections of Centlivre’s poetry, and early nineteenth-century criticism (by Elizabeth Inchbald and William Hazlitt).

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A beautiful, contemporary picture book adaptation of a beloved Canadian classic.If you ask any girl from the parish around What pleases her most from her head to her toes She’ll say I’m not sure that it’s business of yours But I do like to waltz with a log driver Based on the perennially popular Canadian folk song and animated short film of the same name, The Log Driver’s Waltz showcases a spunky, independent young woman whose parents are keen for her to marry. The town’s well-to-do doctors, merchants, and lawyers try to impress her, but it’s the humble log driver—with his style, grace, and joie de vivre—who captures her attention. When she and the log driver finally meet on the dance floor, their joy leaps off the page. With homages to the original film, and celebrating the flora, fauna, and folk art of this great land, The Log Driver’s Waltz brings a hallmark of Canadian childhood to life.

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For hundreds of years, skilled craftspeople in the Syrian centers of Aleppo, Damascus, and Homs produced intricately woven textiles for the royal courts, worldly merchants, and elite Bedouin families of the Ottoman Empire. City dwellers were renowned for wearing brightly colored silk garments that glittered with gold and silver threads. By contrast, nomadic Bedouins wore woolen garments in hues and designs reflecting their desert lifestyle. The allure of these garments stems from the technical virtuosity with which they were woven and the aesthetic beauty of their drape and stylized designs. Dressed with Distinction offers a window onto the history of textile production in the Middle East during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, until political and social changes led to the dominance of Western-style commercially manufactured attire. In addition to articulating the social and seasonal contexts in which the garments were worn, this book examines the styles of dress of women, men, and children in Ottoman Syria, including cloaks (abaya), head coverings (hatta), women’s body coverings (carsaf), and jackets (qumbas).

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“Brave and vivid.”—New York Review of BooksThese enchanting stories from early modern Bengal reveal how Hindu and Muslim traditions converged on timeless themes of human morality, social culture, and survival. The Bengali stories in this collection are first and foremost tales of survival. Each story in Needle at the Bottom of the Sea underscores the need for people to work together—not just to overcome the challenges of living in the Sundarban swamps of Bengal, but also to ease hostilities born of social differences in religion, caste, and economic class. Translated by award-winning scholar of early modern Bengali literature Tony K. Stewart, Needle at the Bottom of the Sea brims with fantasy and excitement. Sufi protagonists travel through a world of wonder where tigers talk and men magically grow into giants, a Hindu princess falls in love with a Muslim holy man, and goddesses rub shoulders with kings and merchants. Across religion, class, and gender, what binds these fabulous stories together is the characters’ pursuit of living honorably and morally in a difficult, corrupt world.

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A feast for the eyes and an entertaining, erudite read, this book opens with an illustrated survey of the 120 doges who led the Venetian Republic before continuing with a detailed survey of the incredible array of sculptures and monuments that memorialize them. Although celebrated for painting and music, Venice has a sculptural tradition that was overshadowed by Florence and Rome. Based on new scholarship, this volume reveals the true magnificence of six centuries of Venetian sculpture. With the oldest works dating to the thirteenth century, these masterpieces fill the city s churches and include pieces by great masters from the Lombardo family to Antonio Rizzo, Jacopo Sansovino, Alessandro Vittoria, and Baldassare Longhena. The sculptural marvels of Venice tell the story of a procession of doges politicians, scholars, conquerors, merchants, and even a saint, Pietro Orseolo over a thousand-year history. Engaging text highlights the adventurous, eventful, and sometimes glorious lives of these legendary figures, while the newly commissioned photography showcases the grandeur and beauty of a neglected aspect of Venice s cultural history.

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This volume sheds light on the pride of the region - the great medieval churches of York Minster, the Minster and St Mary at Beverley, and Holy Trinity, Hull but also on less well known architectural pleasures of town and county. Outstanding Victorian village churches, including masterpieces by Street & Pearson, are as rewarding as the major country houses of Burton Agnes, Burton Constable and Sledmere. The countryside offes a wide range of monuments, from the beautifully sited ruins of Kirkham Priory to the spectacular Humber Bridge. Farmhouses and cottages of the Wolds, picturesque estate villages and chapels, and industrial structures are all brought into focus. A large section is devoted to York and includes a survey of the historic buildings of the city centre from the Roman period onwards. This is complemented by a detailed exploration of York's eighteenth and nineteenth-century suburbs. Equal care has been applied to the descriptions of Beverley, with its attractive townscape, and the port of Hull, where unexpected highlights include seventeenth-century merchant houses, Georgian almshouses, ornate Victorian pubs, and grand Edwardian public buildings.

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Long before there were Jewish communities in the land of the tsars, Jews inhabited a region which they called medinat rusiya, the land of Russia. Prior to its annexation by Russia, the land of Russia was not a center of rabbinic culture. But in 1772, with its annexation by Tsarist Russia, this remote region was severed from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; its 65,000 Jews were thus cut off from the heartland of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Forced into independence, these Jews set about forging a community with its own religious leadership and institutions. The three great intellectual currents in East European Jewry--Hasidism, Rabbinic Mitnagdism, and Haskalah--all converged on Eastern Belorussia, where they clashed and competed. In the course of a generation, the community of Shklov—the most prominent of the towns in the area—witnessed an explosion of intellectual and cultural activity. Focusing on the social and intellectual odysseys of merchants, maskilim, and rabbis, and their varied attempts to combine Judaism and European culture, David Fishman here chronicles the remarkable story of these first modern Jews of Russia.

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Havana, 1950. As the beautiful daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Cuba, Esmeralda knows the importance of marrying well. But when her father takes her on a business trip to London, she falls in love with a young merchant named Christopher. When Christopher visits her father''s sugar farm, Esmeralda knows that they must keep their love affair hidden at all costs. Then the country falls into revolution and Esmeralda is faced with an impossible choice. London, present day. Claudia is rebuilding her life. But when her mother asks for to trace her grandmother''s history, her curiosity is piqued. Her only clue is the Diaz family crest, once one of the wealthiest dynasties in Cuba. Impulsively Claudia books a ticket to Havana, to uncover her family''s true story. Arriving in the vibrant city she meets Mateo, a chef who loves nothing more than to cook his family''s recipes. As they grow closer, Mateo reveals that h

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A fast-paced carnival of setbacks and skullduggery that reminds me of... me! Charming from the first twist to the last.Scott LynchSet in a city of traders and thieves, monsters and murderers, this page-turning epic fantasy debut is a must-read for fans of Nicholas Eames and Joe Abercrombie.Lukan Gardova is a cardsharp, academy dropout, andthanks to a duel that ended badlythe disgraced heir to an ancient noble house. His days consist of cheap wine, rigged card games, and wondering how he might win back the life he threw away.When Lukan discovers that his estranged father has been murdered in strange circumstances, he finds fresh purpose. Deprived of his chance to make amends for his mistakes, he vows to unravel the mystery behind his father''s death.His search for answers leads him to Saphrona, fabled city of merchant princes, where anything can be bought if one has the coin. Lukan only seeks the truth, but instead he finds

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In 1492 Spain is held in firm grip by the inquisition. Per decree an announcement is made that all Jews have to leave the country. A large exodus starts. 15-year-old Yonah is left on his own after his brother and father are killed. Instead of converting to Christianity or fleeing he decides to stand firm by his faith and to fight for himself. Three years later Yonah is keen to settle somewhere. In Granada he finally meets people of his own faith again - the family of the silk merchant Saadi, who still practice Judaism in secrecy. Yonah's love for Ines, the young daughter of the family, however remains unfulfilled. Yonah moves on to Gibraltar where he starts an apprenticeship with Fierro, an armourer. Fierro has to flee from the inquisition himself and asks his young apprentice to accompany him on his journey to the North and when he finally arrives in Saragossa meeting Nuno seals his fate. Yonah immediately senses that medicine is his true calling...

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The North Yorkshire Cook Book Second Helpings is the latest in the `Get Stuck In' series of regional cook books from Meze Publishing. It celebrates the best of the area's food and drink scene with over 40 recipes contributed by a diverse selection of restaurants, bars, cafes and small producers across the region, including a foreword and recipes from Michelin-star holder Tommy Banks, owner of the 2017 Trip Advisor Best Restaurant in the World, The Black Swan at Oldstead. Other recipes come from TV chef Shaun Rankin's restaurant Grantley Hall, plastic-free shop The Bishy Weigh, as well as the first ever Yorkshire whisky distillery, Spirit of Yorkshire. Meanwhile wine pairings from Field and Fawcett wine merchants and deli and fabulous cakes from Jervaulx Abbey Tearooms make for an eclectic mix of recipes that celebrate the best of this famous foodie region. So whether your taste is fine dining, no nonsense hearty food or something altogether more exotic, there's something for everyone.

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Pam Evans' family saga brings post-war London vividly to life as, amid rationing and food shortages, a young girl finds a passion for growing her own vegetables.It is 1945 and April Green and her cousin Heather wonder if the war will ever end. Then tragedy strikes when the local pub in Chiswick takes a direct hit. April and her brother do all they can to help their grieving mother and, by tending her father's allotment, April discovers a passion for growing vegetables.Meanwhile, Winnie Benson is facing the fact that her husband may never walk again and, until their son, George, returns from the Merchant Navy, Winnie must run their greengrocer's on her own. Once the war is over and George is home, things start to improve but rationing remains in force and April's supply of home-grown vegetables couldn't be more welcome. And, before long, George can't help wishing he was the apple of her eye...

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In the sixteenth century, the vast and sophisticated empire of China lay almost entirely unknown to Western travellers. As global trade expanded, this land of reputedly boundless wealth, pale-faced women, and indecipherable tongues began to feed the fantasies of European merchants and adventurers. The Catholic Church, meanwhile, saw in this great people millions of souls who would be damned unless the Christian message could be brought to them. In this book, Mary Laven tells the extraordinary story of the first Jesuit mission to China. Confronting enormous challenges, the Italian priest Matteo Ricci and a tiny handful of learned companions gained permission from the notoriously xenophobic Wanli emperor to settle in the fabled Forbidden City.Living among eunuchs and mandarins, wearing the clothes of Confucian scholars, Ricci and his associates strove to master the language and culture of their hosts. At the same time, they energetically preached the virtues of Western art and science. In Mission to China Mary Laven brings this remote world vividly to life.

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Through the story of a portrait of a woman in a silk dress, historian Zara Anishanslin embarks on a fascinating journey, exploring and refining debates about the cultural history of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. While most scholarship on commodities focuses either on labor and production or on consumption and use, Anishanslin unifies both, examining the worlds of four identifiable people who produced, wore, and represented this object: a London weaver, one of early modern Britain’s few women silk designers, a Philadelphia merchant’s wife, and a New England painter. Blending macro and micro history with nuanced gender analysis, Anishanslin shows how making, buying, and using goods in the British Atlantic created an object-based community that tied its inhabitants together, while also allowing for different views of the Empire. Investigating a range of subjects including self-fashioning, identity, natural history, politics, and trade, Anishanslin makes major contributions both to the study of material culture and to our ongoing conversation about how to write history.

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Understanding the Brahma Kumaris The Brahma Kumaris are a new spiritual tradition. The movement has more than one million adherents worldwide. As with all spiritual traditions, the Brahma Kumaris are different, bewildering and fascinating in their newness and in their complexity. In 1936, in Hyderabad in Sind, an old millionaire diamond merchant named Lekhraj Khubchand began to have visions. These led him to start meetings in his own home which were attended mainly by women. This was the beginning of the Brahma Kumaris. The Brahma Kumaris moved later to Mount Abu in Rajasthan in India and this remains their headquarters. Through phenomenology involves putting one's own world-view aside in order to understand the world-view of others. Applying 'epoche', to avoid bias, and 'empathy', to engage sympathetically, the objective of this study is to understand, as far as is possible for an outsider, this new tradition from within. Frank Whaling is emeritus professor of the study of religion, University of Edinburgh. He has taught and researched in many countries including India, the USA and South Africa.

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Ignorance about Islam runs deep in the West – ignorance of its rites, its beliefs, and above all its prophet.  Who was Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and the man Muslims believe was God’s last prophet on earth? In this concise and colourful account, the acclaimed writer and broadcaster Barnaby Rogerson tells the story of the illiterate orphan who was raised in the desert and trained as a merchant on the camel trade routes that criss-crossed Arabia, before defying his tribe to found a new religion, establish a world language, and create an almost unstoppable force that only 100 years after his death has conquered an empire stretching from the Pyrenees to the Hindu Kush. It was when he was 40 that Muhammad experienced his first revelation on a mountainside outside Mecca, hearing the divine order: 'Recite!'  From then until his flight from Mecca his tale is one of rejection and persecution, but it is also one of puzzling contradictions: why did he order the mur

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A richly illustrated publication that explores the networks of contacts and exchanges spanning Afro-Eurasia from 500 to 1000 ce, highlighting how the movement of people, objects and ideas shaped cultures and histories. The term Silk Road' conjures a range of romantic images. Camel caravans crossing desert dunes. Merchants trading silk and spices. Far-flung commerce between East' and West'. The reality was far richer. Focusing on a defining period between 500 and 1000 CE, this beautifully illustrated book reimagines the Silk Roads as a web of interlocking networks linking Asia, Africa and Europe, from Japan to Ireland, from the Arctic to Madagascar. It tells a remarkable story of people, objects and ideas flowing in all directions, through the traces these journeys left behind including ceramics from Tang China recovered from a shipwreck in the Java Sea, sword-fittings set with Indian garnets buried in England, and a selection of letters and legal texts from a synagogue in Cairo r

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British Models of Art Collecting and the American Response - Reflections Across the Pond presents 14 essays by distinguished art - and cultural - historians. Collectively, they examine points of similarity and difference in the approaches to art collecting practiced in Britain and the United States. Unlike most of their Continental European counterparts, the English and Americans have historically been exceptionally open to collecting the art made by and for other cultures. At the same time, they developed a tradition of opening private collections to a public eager for educational and cultural advancement. Approximately half the essays examine the trends and market forces that dominated the British art collecting scene of the nineteenth century, such as the Orléans sale and the shift away from aristocratic collections to those of the new urban merchant class. The essays that focus on American collectors use biographical sketches of collectors and dealers, as well as case studies of specific transactions to demonstrate how collectors in the United States embraced and embellished on the British model to develop their own, often philanthropic approach to art collecting.

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On a cold day in January 1944, as war raged in Europe, Betty Hussey and Jack Stoate were married. In so doing they brought together two families, whose members fought across the globe to defeat the Axis. In Called to Arms, Edward Lambah-Stoate traces the wartime experiences of nine relatives, including his parents, to present a fascinating account of the impact of conflict on the ordinary people of Britain who gallantly came forward to do their bit. These included a decorated fighter pilot, a Land Girl, a member of the Home Guard, a Royal Marine, an artilleryman, an RAF doctor and a merchant seaman, who between them fought in North Africa and Italy, were captured by the Japanese and worked on the Burma-Siam Railway, and took part in D-Day. Not all of them survived, but their contribution was invaluable – and representative. Using a wealth of previously unpublished material including log books, private correspondence and memoirs and interviews with surviving friends, this book provides a unique insight into one family’s war – and by extension, everybody’s war.

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Albion Fellows BaconIndiana's Municipal HousekeeperRobert G. BarrowsExamines the career of a leading Progressive Era reformer.Born in Evansville, Indiana, in 1865, Albion Fellows was reared in the nearby hamlet of McCutchanville and graduated from Evansville High School. She worked for several years as a secretary and court reporter, toured Europe with her sister, married local merchant Hilary Bacon in 1888, and settled into a seemingly comfortable routine of middle-class domesticity. In 1892, however, she was afflicted with an illness that lasted for several years, an illness that may have resulted from a real or perceived absence of outlets for her intelligence and creativity.Bacon eventually found such outlets in a myriad of voluntary associations and social welfare campaigns. She was best known for her work on behalf of tenement reform and was instrumental in the passage of legislation to improve housing conditions in Indiana. She was also involved in child welfare, city planning and zoning, and a variety of public health efforts. Bacon became Indiana's foremost "municipal houskeeper," a Progressive Era term for women who applied their domestic skills to social problems plaguing their communities.She also found time to write about her social reform efforts and her religious faith in articles and pamphlets. She published one volume of children's stories, and authored several pageants. One subject she did not write about was women's suffrage. While she did not oppose votes for women, suffrage was never her priority. But the reality of her participation in public affairs did advance the cause of women's political equality and provided a role model for future generations.Robert G. Barrows, Associate Professor of History at Indiana University at Indianapolis, was previously an editor at the Indiana Historical Bureau. He has published several journal articles and book chapters dealing with Indiana history and American urban history, and he coedited (with David J. Bodenhamer) the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis (Indiana University Press).ContentsThe Sheltered LifeThe Clutch of the ThornsAmbassador of the PoorThe Homes of IndianaChild WelfareCity Plans and National Housing StandardsProse, Poetry, and PageantsMunicipal Housekeeper and Inadvertent Feminist

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In the late nineteenth century the borderlands between the United States, the British Empire in Canada, and the Asia-Pacific Rim emerged as a crossroads of the Pacific world. In Pacific Connections, Kornel Chang tells the dramatic stories of the laborers, merchants, smugglers, and activists who crossed these borders into the twentieth century, and the American and British empire-builders who countered them by hardening racial and national lines. But even as settler societies attempted to control the processes of imperial integration, their project fractured under its contradictions. Migrant workers and radical activists pursued a transnational politics through the very networks that made empire possible. Charting the U.S.-Canadian borderlands from above and below, Chang reveals the messiness of imperial formation and the struggles it spawned from multiple locations and through different actors across the Pacific world. Pacific Connections is the winner of the Outstanding Book in History award from the Association for Asian American Studies and is a finalist for the John Hope Franklin Book Prize from the American Studies Association.

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A concise introduction to the workings of ancient democracy, The Athenian Citizen has been a bestseller since the original edition was first published almost 60 years ago by Mabel Lang. Using archaeological evidence from excavations at the heart of ancient Athens, this volume shows how tribal identity was central to all aspects of civic life, guiding the reader through the duties of citizenship as soldier in times of war and as juror during the peace. The checks and balances that protected Athenian society from tyrants, such as legal assassination and ostracism, are described. Selected inscriptions are illustrated and discussed, as are ingenious devices such as allotment machines and water clocks, which ensured fairness in the courts. The book ends with some of the lasting products of classical administration: the silver coins accepted around the known world and the standard weights and measures that continue to protect the consumer from unscrupulous merchants. Illustrated entirely in colour, with updates and revisions by the current director of excavations at the Agora, this edition of an acknowledged classic will inform and fascinate visitors and students for many years to come.

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The Silk Road is iconic in world history; but what was it, exactly? It conjures up a hazy image of a caravan of camels laden with silk on a dusty desert track, reaching from China to Rome. The reality was different--and far more interesting. In The Silk Road: A New History with Documents, Valerie Hansen describes the remarkable archeological finds that revolutionized our understanding of these trade routes. Hansen explores eight sites along the road, from Xi'an to Samarkand, where merchants, envoys, pilgrims, and travelers mixed in cosmopolitan communities, tolerant of religions from Buddhism to Zoroastrianism.Designed for use in the classroom and based on the award-winning trade edition (OUP, 2012), The Silk Road: A New History with Documents offers a selection of excerpted primary sources in each chapter. The wide-ranging sources include memoirs of medieval Chinese monks and modern explorers, letters written by women, descriptions of towns, legal contracts, religious hymns, and many others. A new final chapter provides coverage of the Silk Road during the period of Mongol rule.

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Canaan, Land of Israel, the Holy Land, Bibleland—Palestine. Many names for a small speck of earth, no bigger than Wales or Massachusetts. This land has suffered most of the world’s conquerors, from the Babylonians to the British, only to brighten its aura of sanctity for millions of Muslims, Christians, and Jews to the present day. In Weathered by Miracles, Thomas Idinopulos tells the story of that one explosive moment in Palestine’s long history that began with Napoleon’s invasion of the Middle East in 1798 and concluded with the founding of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948. Here was the dramatic confrontation of world empires for possession and profit, the clash of Islam with the Christian West, and the pioneering zeal of explorers and excavators, diplomats, merchants, and missionaries. Here were the last days of Turkish and European imperialisms and the first breaths of Arab and Jewish nationalisms. Concentrating on the fateful ties between politics and religion, Mr. Idinopulos describes the extraordinary transformation of Palestine from wasteland to a dynamic country, and traces the origin of the violence that continues today between Arabs and Jews.

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A reinterpretation of the place and significance of chivalric culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and what it says about contemporary attitudes to the medieval. Chivalry and Romance in Renaissance England offers a reinterpretation of the place and significance of chivalric culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth-century and explores the implications of this reconfigured interpretation for an understanding of the medieval generally. Received wisdom has it that both chivalric culture and the literature of chivalry - romances - were obsolete by the time of the Renaissance, an understanding epitomised by the figure of Don Quixote, the reader of chivalric fictions whose risible literary tastes render him absurd. By way of contrast, this study finds evidence for the continued vitality and relevance of chivalric values at all levels of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century society, from the court entertainments of Elizabeth I to the civic culture of London merchants and artisans. At the same time, it charts the process by which, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the chivalric has been firstly exclusively identified with the medieval and then transformed into a virtual shorthand for 'pastness' generally. ALEX DAVIS is lecturer in English, University of St Andrews.

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Crispin Guest has fallen far from his privileged position as a knight in medieval high society. Accused of treason, abandoned by former friends and allies, he has survived on the gritty streets of London by reinventing himself as "The Tracker," a private investigator for hire who can locate lost objects or uncover the clandestine lives of people. When the secretive, wealthy merchant Nicholas Walcote hires Guest to investigate his alluring young wife Philippa for adultery, he discovers a seedy underworld of covert dealings and violent men of mystery. Philippa is indeed hiding something and she's not the only one. Guest soon learns that Walcote is rumored to be in possession of a mystical holy relic so powerful that some would even kill for it. Guest must contend with his nemesis, Sheriff Simon Wynchcombe in the search for answers to the questions surrounding the mysterious Walcotes. With each new day comes another layer of intrigue and Guest quickly becomes entangled in a strange world of superstition, seduction, and murder.

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Faith Madison is the very picture of a sophisticated New Yorker. Slim, blonde, stylish, married to a successful merchant banker and having raised two daughters, Faith has a life many would envy. But Faith has overcome a childhood marred by tragedy, and has carried within herself a secret she could divulge to no-one.The sudden death of her stepfather sets off a journey of change and revelation. At the funeral, painful memories flood back - and an old friend re-enters Faith's life. Brad, a long lanky boy from her childhood days who had teased, tormented and protected her. Now a busy lawyer in California, Brad re-enters Faith's life just as she makes a decision that plunges her marriage into crisis. As these two childhood friends rediscover each other, Faith is finally ready to face the most painful step of all: of sharing a secret that has long been haunting her, and opening up her heart for the first time in her life.

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Tapas with Liam Tomlin is about the style of food that Liam likes to cook and the way he likes to eat, with lots of different tastes, textures and cooking styles. After so many years in professional kitchens, Liam wanted a departure from the formal structure of restaurants with reservations, stuffy service and fixed menus that are repeated day after day. At Chefs Warehouse, he has moved away from food with too many layers, and components added simply for the sake of adding them. His way of cooking is focused on technique and on extracting as much flavour as possible to create tasty and well-balanced dishes. The tapas recipes are not intimidating, only delicious. As Andy Fenner, owner of Frankie Fenner Meat Merchants says: ‘Liam has the crew do it every day. This book will show you how to do it at home.’ This second edition of Tapas with Liam Tomlin is now available to everyone as the first, self-published edition was only available at Liam’s restaurants.

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Rachel Laudan tells the remarkable story of the rise and fall of the world's great cuisines from the mastery of grain cooking some twenty thousand years ago, to the present in this superbly researched book. Probing beneath the apparent confusion of dozens of cuisines to reveal the underlying simplicity of the culinary family tree, she shows how periodic seismic shifts in culinary philosophy" beliefs about health, the economy, politics, society and the gods prompted the construction of new cuisines, a handful of which, chosen as the cuisines of empires, came to dominate the globe. Cuisine and Empire shows how merchants, missionaries, and the military took cuisines over mountains, oceans, deserts, and across political frontiers. Laudan's innovative narrative treats cuisine, like language, clothing, or architecture, as something constructed by humans. By emphasizing how cooking turns farm products into food and by taking the globe rather than the nation as the stage, she challenges the agrarian, romantic, and nationalistic myths that underlie the contemporary food movement.

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THE TOP 5 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 THE TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR FINALIST FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2020 LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2019 A FINANCIAL TIMES, OBSERVER, DAILY TELEGRAPH, WALL STREET JOURNAL AND TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR ‘Dalrymple is a superb historian with a visceral understanding of India … A book of beauty’ – Gerard DeGroot, The Times In August 1765 the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and forced him to establish a new administration in his richest provinces. Run by English merchants who collected taxes using a ruthless private army, this new regime saw the East India Company transform itself from an international trading corporation into something much more unusual: an aggressive colonial power in the guise of a multinational business. William Dalrymple tells the remarkable story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.

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'Haywood's lucid explanations of the cultures of the Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians are vital to understanding the motivations for their movements' KIRKUS REVIEWS. The violent and predatory society of Dark Age Scandinavia left a unique impact on the history of medieval Europe. From their chill northern fastness, Norse warriors, explorers and merchants raided, traded, and settled across wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic from the late 8th to the mid-11th century. Northmen narrates their story focusing on places where key events were played out, from the sack of Lindisfarne in 793 to the murder in Iceland in 1241 of the saga-writer Snorri Sturluson. Such episodes are fascinating in themselves, but also shed crucial light on the nature of Viking activity – its causes, effects, and the reasons for its decline. In 800 the Scandinavians were barbarians in longships bent on plunder and rapine; by 1200, their homelands were an integral part of Latin Christendom. John Haywood tells, in authoritative but compellingly readable fashion, the extraordinary story of the Viking Age.

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The Second World War was the defining conflict of the twentieth century and it is one of the most popular and fascinating areas for historical research - and for family historians. More records than ever are available to researchers whose relatives served during the war. And this new book by Phil Tomaselli is the perfect guide to how to locate and understand these sources - and get the most out of them. He explains how, and from where, service records can be obtained, using real examples showing what they look like and how to interpret them. He also examines records of the military units relatives might have served in so their careers can be followed in graphic detail. The three armed services are covered, along with the merchant navy, the Home Guard, civilian services, prisoners of war, gallantry and campaign medals, casualties, women's services and obscure wartime organizations. Also included are a glossary of service acronyms, information on useful websites, an introduction to the National Archives and details of other useful sources.

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The Spanish Civil War was won and lost upon the high seas. It was won because the Nationalists had an uninterrupted flow of men and materials while Republican sea lanes were attacked by Fascist warships, submarines, and aircraft the pirates of the title. These attacks also involved dozens of foreign merchantmen and warships, including American, as well as hundreds of men, women, and boys. The worst affected was the British merchant marine, which dominated Spanish trade some owners used rust buckets to maximise profits in a trade, which resulted in the loss of 66 British lives.The naval element of the Spanish Civil War began with a rebellion followed by a mutiny and a massacre. Both the German and Italian navies became involved in the naval war, attacking Spanish ships and then British warships and merchantmen. A blockade in the north led to confrontations between the Royal Navy and Nationalist Navy, the mining of a British liner and tales of daring among determined British master mar

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A concise introduction to the workings of ancient democracy, The Athenian Citizen has been a bestseller since the original edition was first published almost 60 years ago by Mabel Lang. Using archaeological evidence from excavations at the heart of ancient Athens, this volume shows how tribal identity was central to all aspects of civic life, guiding the reader through the duties of citizenship as soldier in times of war and as juror during the peace. The checks and balances that protected Athenian society from tyrants, such as legal assassination and ostracism, are described. Selected inscriptions are illustrated and discussed, as are ingenious devices such as allotment machines and water clocks, which ensured fairness in the courts. The book ends with some of the lasting products of classical administration: the silver coins accepted around the known world and the standard weights and measures that continue to protect the consumer from unscrupulous merchants. Illustrated entirely in colour, with updates and revisions by the current director of excavations at the Agora, this edition of an acknowledged classic will inform and fascinate visitors and students for many years to come. (Greek language edition)

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Dating from the seventeenth century at the height of the Ming Dynasty, the Selden Map of China reveals a country very different from popular conceptions of the time, looking not inward to the Asian landmass but outward to the sea. Painted in multiple colours on three pieces of Mitsumata paper, this beautifully decorative map of China was discovered to be a seafaring chart showing Ming Dynasty trade routes. It is the earliest surviving example of Chinese merchant cartography and is evidence that Ming China was outward-looking, capitalistic and vibrant. Exploring the commercial aims of the Ming Dynasty, the port city of Quanzhou and its connections with the voyages of the early traveller Zheng He, this book describes the historical background of the era in which the map was used. It also includes an analysis of the skills and techniques involved in Chinese map-making and the significance of the compass bearings, scale and ratios found on the map, all of which combine to represent a breakthrough in cartographic techniques. The enthralling story revealed by this extraordinary artefact is central to an understanding of the long history of China’s relationship with the sea and with the wider world.

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The Prophetic Anti-Gallic Letters Adam Thom and the Hidden Roots of The Dominion of Canada by Adam Thom was published in 1836 based on Thom's editorials in Montreal Herald written under the pseudonym "Camillus" in the previous two years. They were never reprinted, despite their importance and above all the people for whom Thom was the public voice, namely the executive committee of the powerful Constitutional Association of Montreal, that included the president George Moffatt as well as Peter McGill and John McCord. Thom was also co-author of the famous Durham Report. More than an anti-French, anti-Republican tract, The Anti-Gallic Letters, though generally ignored by historians, are crucial to understanding how British North America mutated into the Dominion of Canada in 1867. Erroneously characterized as a minor discord between the Melbourne cabinet in London and a select group of merchants, bankers and gentlemen of the Montreal Tory oligarchy, The Anti-Gallic Letters reveal the total disagreement among people of British culture and background in London or in Montreal on how power should be controlled in the colonies of Canada. Westminster, inspired by the 1832 Reform Bill, believed in a gradual and harmonious transfer of British parliamentary values and institutions to a majority group of a different culture, language and background, described as "The great body of people" by Governor Gosford in his 1835 Throne speech read in French. But the Montreal Tory Oligarchy, mobilized by fear and bravado, anticipated the worst, while still espousing the same British imperial world mission as Westminster. Seeing Montreal as the hub of British North America, they brandished the spectre of a British Empire dismembered by a French Republic arising in the St. Lawrence Valley or annexation of Upper and Lower Canada by the powerful American Republic. They thus considered themselves justified to threaten the use lethal force to make Downing Street change its course. Moreover, as François Deschamps shows, they succeeded: first in 1837 with the brutal repression of the Patriotes in Lower Canada and the Reformers in Upper Canada, second with the Durham Report and the Act of Union, and finally with the 1867 BNA Act creating the Dominion of Canada. Now reprinted, the Anti-Gallic Letters with Deschamps's fascinating presentation and notes provide a new but crucial point of view as Canada prepares to mark the 150th anniversary of the Dominion of Canada in 2017. The book includes a comprehensive bibliography.

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The Fair Maid of Perth centres on the merchant classes of Perth in the fourteenth century, and their commitment to the pacific values of trade, in a bloody and brutal era in which no right to life is recognised, and in which the Scottish nobles fight for control of the weak Scottish monarchy, and clans are prepared to extinguish each other to gain supremacy in the central Highlands. It is a remarkable novel, in part because late in his career Scott has a new subject, and in part because he employs a spare narrative style that is without parallel in the rest of his oeuvre. Far too many critics, from his son-in-law J.G. Lockhart to the present day, have written off late Scott, and seen his last works as evidence of failing powers. The readers of this edition of The Fair Maid of Perth will see that these critics are mistaken, for in it we witness a luminous creative intelligence working at high pressure to produce a tightly organised and deeply moving novel.

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Keanu Reeves: actor, musician, dog lover. He's the internet's boyfriend. The poetic petrolhead. The guru on a surfboard. Part samurai, part samaritan. He is, very simply, 'The One'.'James has been my movie guru for years and now he's my spiritual guru too! From now on I'm going to ask myself: 'What would Keanu do?'Jo WhileyIn this hilarious book of pocket philosophy, film critic and Keanu fan James King reveals what makes Mr Reeves so special. He unpacks iconic films from the Bill & Teds to the John Wicks, as well as the star's own free-spirited life, showing us why the great man with the great hair has all the answers.And how everyone can #bemorekeanu.'A handsome, cool, enigmatic Gen X'er who never seems to age, James King is the perfect man to write about Keanu Reeves.'Stephen Merchant

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Rogue Stars is a character-based science fiction skirmish wargame, where players command crews of bounty hunters, space pirates, merchants, prospectors, smugglers, mercenary outfits, planetary police and other such shady factions from the fringes of galactic civilisation. Crews can vary in size, typically from four to six, and the character and crew creation systems allow for practically any concept to be built. Detailed environmental rules that include options for flora, fauna, gravity, dangerous terrain and atmosphere, and scenario design rules that ensure that missions are varied and demand adaptation and cunning on the parts of the combatants, make practically any encounter possible. Run contraband tech to rebel fighters on an ocean world while hunted by an alien kill-team or hunt down a research vessel and fight zero-gravity boarding actions in the cold depths of space – whatever you can imagine, you can do.

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Macbeth is one of the darkest tragedies written by William Shakespeare. The play revolves around a power-hungry Scottish lord, Macbeth, and his lady, who conspire to kill King Duncan. After Duncan’s death, Macbeth ascends the throne, only to be consumed by guilt, panic and paranoia, which ultimately lead him to his doom.Also available as part of a 20 book set, including Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Tragedy of Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Winter’s Tale, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Timon of Athens, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Cymbeline, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, Anthony and Cleopatra and All’s Well That Ends Well. About Sweet Cherry Easy Classics:Sweet Cherry Easy Classics adapts classic literature into stories for children, introducing these timeless tales to a new generation.

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'This is an old and wicked island. An island of Phoenicians and merchants, of bloodsuckers and frauds'Expelled from her convent school for kicking the prioress, and abandoned by her father when her mother dies, rebellious teenager Matia is sent to live with her domineering grandmother on the island of Mallorca. In the hot, oppressive stillness of an adolescent summer, she learns to scheme with her cousin Borja, and finds herself increasingly drawn to the strange outsider Manuel. But civil war has come to Spain, and it will teach Matia about the adult world in ways she could not foresee.This powerful, lyrical coming-of-age novel depicts Mallorca as an enchanted island, a lost Eden and a Never Land combined, where ancient hatreds and present-day passions collide.'brilliant, devastating . . . every character is remarkable and captivating' The Times Literary Supplement'a feverish, dramatic brew . . . the style is intoxicating . . . it offers a unique view of a part of Spain usually overlooked by literature' The Irish Times

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Opium is more than just a drug extracted from poppies. Over the past two centuries it has been a palliative medicine, an addictive substance, a powerful mechanism for concentrating and transferring wealth and power between nations, and the anchor for a now vanished sociocultural world in and around China. Opium Regimes integrates the pioneering research of sixteen scholars to show that the opium trade was not purely a British operation but involved Chinese merchants, Chinese state agents, and Japanese imperialists as well. The book presents a coherent historical arc that moves from British imperialism in the nineteenth century, to Chinese capital formation and state making at the turn of the century, to Japanese imperialism through the 1930s and 1940s, and finally to the apparent resolution of China's opium problem in the early 1950s. Together these essays show that the complex interweaving of commodity trading, addiction, and state intervention in opium's history refigured the historical face of East Asia more profoundly than any other commodity.

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A fascinating life of Sergei Shchukin, the great collector who changed the face of Russia’s art world Sergei Shchukin was a highly successful textiles merchant in the latter half of the nineteenth century, but he also had a great eye for beauty. He was one of the first to appreciate the qualities of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and to acquire works by Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso. A trailblazer in the Russian art world, Shchukin and his collection shocked, provoked, and inspired awe, ridicule, and derision among his contemporaries. This is the first English-language biography of Sergei Shchukin, written by art historian Natalya Semenova and adapted by Shchukin's grandson André Delocque. Featuring personal diary entries, correspondence, interviews, and archival research, it brings to light the life of a man who has hitherto remained in the shadows, and shows how despite his controversial reputation, he opened his collection to the public, inspiring a future generation of artists and changing the face of the Russian art world.

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