Search results for ""author merchant"

World War II submariners rarely experienced anything as exhilarating or horrifying as the surface gun attack. Between the ocean floor and the rolling whitecaps above, submarines patrolled a dark abyss in a fusion of silence, shadows, and steel, firing around eleven thousand torpedoes, sinking Japanese men-of-war and more than one thousand merchant ships. But the anonymity and simplicity of the stealthy torpedo attack hid the savagery of warfare -- a stark difference from the brutality of the surface gun maneuver. As the submarine shot through the surface of the water, confined sailors scrambled through the hatches armed with large-caliber guns and met the enemy face-to-face. Surface and Destroy: The Submarine Gun War in the Pacific reveals the nature of submarine warfare in the Pacific Ocean during World War II and investigates the challenges of facing the enemy on the surface.The surface battle amplified the realities of war, bringing submariners into close contact with survivors and potential prisoners of war. As Japan's larger ships disappeared from the Pacific theater, American submarines turned their attention to smaller craft such as patrol boats, schooners, sampans, and junks. Some officers refused to attack enemy vessels of questionable value, while others attacked reluctantly and tried to minimize casualties. Michael Sturma focuses on the submariners' reactions and attitudes toward their victims, exploring the sailors' personal standards of morality and their ability to wage total war. Surface and Destroy is a thorough analysis of the submariner experience and the effects of surface attacks on the war in the Pacific, offering a compelling study of the battles that became "intolerably personal."

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In 1823, as the first American missionaries arrived in Hawai'i, the archipelago was experiencing a profound transformation in its rule, as oral law that had been maintained for hundreds of years was in the process of becoming codified anew through the medium of writing. The arrival of sailors in pursuit of the lucrative sandalwood trade obliged the ali'i (chiefs) of the islands to pronounce legal restrictions on foreigners' access to Hawaiian women. Assuming the new missionaries were the source of these rules, sailors attacked two mission stations, fracturing relations between merchants, missionaries, and sailors, while native rulers remained firmly in charge. In The Kingdom and the Republic, Noelani Arista (Kanaka Maoli) uncovers a trove of previously unused Hawaiian language documents to chronicle the story of Hawaiians' experience of encounter and colonialism in the nineteenth century. Through this research, she explores the political deliberations between ali'i over the sale of a Hawaiian woman to a British ship captain in 1825 and the consequences of the attacks on the mission stations. The result is a heretofore untold story of native political formation, the creation of indigenous law, and the extension of chiefly rule over natives and foreigners alike. Relying on what is perhaps the largest archive of written indigenous language materials in North America, Arista argues that Hawaiian deliberations and actions in this period cannot be understood unless one takes into account Hawaiian understandings of the past—and the ways this knowledge of history was mobilized as a means to influence the present and secure a better future. In pursuing this history, The Kingdom and the Republic reconfigures familiar colonial histories of trade, proselytization, and negotiations over law and governance in Hawai'i.

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The United States possesses extraordinary holdings of seventeenth-century Flemish paintings. In this pioneering and richly illustrated volume, twelve scholars and museum curators reveal the origins of these collections by examining the American approach to and interest in the collecting of Flemish art over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Chronicling in lively detail the roles played by individuals in forming private and public collections, the essays in this volume illuminate how and why collectors and museums in the United States embraced the Flemish masters with such enthusiasm. They trace how the taste for specific genres and the appreciation for certain artists, in particular Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, changed over the years, and they explore the historical and cultural motivations behind these trends. In doing so, they consider the effect of the great bequests of Flemish paintings to American museums and examine the private collections of the main tastemakers for Flemish painting, including the Baltimore merchant Robert Gilmor; John Graver Johnson, the leading corporate lawyer of the Gilded Age; and the California oil magnate J. Paul Getty. Gorgeously illustrated with almost one hundred representative pieces, this important contribution to the scholarship on American collecting of Flemish art will interest art lovers and stimulate further research in the fields of art history and museum history.In addition to the editor, the contributors include Ronni Baer, Adam Eaker, Lance Humphries, George S. Keyes, Margaret R. Laster, Alexandra Libby, Louisa Wood Ruby, Dennis P. Weller, Arthur K. Wheelock, Marjorie Wieseman, and Anne T. Woollett.

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The iconic Periodic Table of the Elements is now in its most satisfyingly elegant form. This is because all the 'gaps' corresponding to missing elements in the seventh row, or period, have recently been filled and the elements named. But where do these names come from? For some, usually the most recent, the origins are quite obvious, but in others - even well-known elements such as oxygen or nitrogen - the roots are less clear. Here, Peter Wothers explores the fascinating and often surprising stories behind how the chemical elements received their names. Delving back in time to explore the history and gradual development of chemistry, he sifts through medieval manuscripts for clues to the stories surrounding the discovery of the elements, showing how they were first encountered or created, and how they were used in everyday lives. As he reveals, the oldest-known elements were often associated with astronomical bodies, and connections with the heavens influenced the naming of a number of elements. Following this, a number of elements, including hydrogen and oxygen, were named during the great reform of chemistry, set amidst the French Revolution. While some of the origins of the names were controversial (and indeed incorrect - some saying, for instance, that oxygen might be literally taken to mean 'the son of a vinegar merchant'), they have nonetheless influenced language used around the world to this very day. Throughout, Wothers delights in dusting off the original sources, and bringing to light the astonishing, the unusual, and the downright weird origins behind the names of the elements so familiar to us today.

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Myths and theories of the American melting pot, of assimilation, and of pluralistic society were shattered as racial violence during the 1992 Los Angeles uprising vividly exposed the inadequacy of our prior assumptions. The uprising revealed that radical approaches are needed to address structural issues of economic and political inequality, and issues of race and representation. Los Angeles has emerged as a focal point for social scientists as they develop new ideas about race relations. This volume, based on a special issue of Amerasia Journal, focuses o race and ethnic relations in Los Angeles as they emerged out of the uprising and within the broader national picture. Latino and Asian and African American scholars, journalists, and writers have contributed two dozen essays, commentaries, and literary works. Among the scholarly essays are “Jewish and Korean Merchants in African American Neighborhoods” by Edward Chang, “Communication between African Americans and Korean Americans before and after the Los Angeles Riots” by Ella Stewart, “Asian Americans and Latinos in San Gabriel Valley, California” by Leland T. Saito, “The South Central Los Angeles Eruption: A Latino Perspective” by Armando Navarro, and “Race, Class, Conflict and Empowerment: On Ice Cube’s ‘Black Korea’” by Jeff Chang. Commentaries by Asian and African American writers feature Larry Aubry, Angela E. Oh, Sharon Park, Amy Uyematsu, Erich Nakano, Walter Lew, and Miriam Ching Louie. A selection of literary writings features Mari Sunaida, Ko Won, Wanda Coleman, Mellonee R. Houston, Sae Lee, Nat Jones, Arjuna, Chungmi Kim, and Lynn Manning.

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An inspiring anthology of writings by trailblazing women astronomers from around the globeThe Sky Is for Everyone is an internationally diverse collection of autobiographical essays by women who broke down barriers and changed the face of modern astronomy. Virginia Trimble and David Weintraub vividly describe how, before 1900, a woman who wanted to study the stars had to have a father, brother, or husband to provide entry, and how the considerable intellectual skills of women astronomers were still not enough to enable them to pry open doors of opportunity for much of the twentieth century. After decades of difficult struggles, women are closer to equality in astronomy than ever before. Trimble and Weintraub bring together the stories of the tough and determined women who flung the doors wide open. Taking readers from 1960 to today, this triumphant anthology serves as an inspiration to current and future generations of women scientists while giving voice to the history of a transformative era in astronomy.With contributions by Neta A. Bahcall, Beatriz Barbuy, Ann Merchant Boesgaard, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Catherine Cesarsky, Poonam Chandra, Xuefei Chen, Cathie Clarke, Judith Gamora Cohen, France Anne Córdova, Anne Pyne Cowley, Bożena Czerny, Wendy L. Freedman, Yilen Gómez Maqueo Chew, Gabriela González, Saeko S. Hayashi, Martha P. Haynes, Roberta M. Humphreys, Vicky Kalogera, Gillian Knapp, Shazrene S. Mohamed, Carole Mundell, Priyamvada Natarajan, Dara J. Norman, Hiranya Peiris, Judith Lynn Pipher, Dina Prialnik, Anneila I. Sargent, Sara Seager, Gražina Tautvaišienė, Silvia Torres-Peimbert, Virginia Trimble, Meg Urry, Ewine F. van Dishoeck, Patricia Ann Whitelock, Sidney Wolff, and Rosemary F. G. Wyse.

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Lose yourself in the glorious technicolour of Ankh-Morpork, mapped in meticulous detail for the very first time. A beautiful gift edition, complete with fold-out map and pull-out information booklet, and a fantastic accompaniment to the novels.'Tells you the answers to all the questions you had about Ankh Morpork' -- ***** Reader review'The whole thing is really charming. Every time you look at it, something new is revealed' -- ***** Reader review'A fascinating look into the streets of Terry Pratchett's mind...' -- ***** Reader review**************************************************************************************'THERE'S A SAYING THAT ALL ROADS LEAD TO ANKH-MORPORK. AND IT'S WRONG. ALL ROADS LEAD AWAY FROM ANKH-MORPORK, BUT SOMETIMES PEOPLE JUST WALK ALONG THE WRONG WAY' from Moving PicturesAnkh-Morpork! City of One Thousand Surprises (according to the famous publication by the Guild of Merchants)! All human life is there! Although, if it walks down the wrong alley, often quite briefly!The city celebrated in the bestselling Discworld series by Sir Terry Pratchett has been meticulously mapped for the first time. It's all here - from Unseen University to the Shades, from major landmarks like the Patrician's Palace to little-known, er, nooks like Dwarf Bread Museum in Whirligig Alley.See the famous streets beaten by Sam Vimes and the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, the cobbles along which so many heroes have walked - in some cases quite hurriedly! As leading Ankh-Morpork entrepreneur C.M.O.T. Dibbler would say, a nip at any price - and that's cutting our own throat. Well, close.A deluxe and stunning gift edition with pull-out booklet and fold-out map - the ultimate present for every Discworld fan who has ever dreamed of seeing the world of Sir Terry Pratchett come to life...

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The first anthology ever to present the entire range of ancient Greek and Roman stories--from myths and fairy tales to jokes Captured centaurs and satyrs, talking animals, people who suddenly change sex, men who give birth, the temporarily insane and the permanently thick-witted, delicate sensualists, incompetent seers, a woman who remembers too much, a man who cannot laugh--these are just some of the colorful characters who feature in the unforgettable stories that ancient Greeks and Romans told in their daily lives. Together they created an incredibly rich body of popular oral stories that include, but range well beyond, mythology--from heroic legends, fairy tales, and fables to ghost stories, urban legends, and jokes. This unique anthology presents the largest collection of these tales ever assembled. Featuring nearly four hundred stories in authoritative and highly readable translations, this is the first book to offer a representative selection of the entire range of traditional classical storytelling. Set mostly in the world of humans, not gods, these stories focus on figures such as lovers, tricksters, philosophers, merchants, rulers, athletes, artists, and soldiers. The narratives range from the well-known--for example, Cupid and Psyche, Diogenes and his lantern, and the tortoise and the hare--to lesser-known tales that deserve wider attention. Entertaining and fascinating, they offer a unique window into the fantasies, anxieties, humor, and passions of the people who told them. Complete with beautiful illustrations by Glynnis Fawkes, a comprehensive introduction, notes, and more, this one-of-a-kind anthology will delight general readers as well as students of classics, fairy tales, and folklore.

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Elizabeth I consciously and determinedly provided a Government mediation and arbitration scheme. A wealth of primary sources show that she had a special concern for women, the poor and anyone disadvantaged by the costs and delays of the law. Her Privy Council arranged arbitrations with no fees and with free legal aid for those who needed it. The archives are voluminous, not only in the Acts of the Privy Council but in the National Archives and local collections. Her arbitration scheme dominates this book, but the background was private arbitration, arranged by the parties. In Elizabethan England arbitration was the ordinary way to settle a dispute the parties could not end themselves. Each side chose one or more arbitrators and that even number would try to mediate a settlement. If they failed, they would at least try to get the parties to agree on whom they would appoint to decide for them. The arbitrators include well-known personalities: Cecil and Walsingham, Raleigh and Hawkins, Coke and Bacon. Women are shown participating at all levels, as claimants and defendants, in matters of title to land, commerce and all kinds of family squabbles. They could even act as arbitrator or mediator. Elizabeth I herself did both. Many of the disputes were between foreign merchants and some were submitted to their arbitration. What law there was on arbitration, as the courts developed it over the 45 years of the reign, had little impact on practice. But the most important revelation is the Queen's concern for the poor: 'If the phrases "legal aid" and even "welfare state" had been coined by then, it may be unwise to assume that Elizabeth I's Government would have used them as terms of abuse.'

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Book Two of the Riftwar Legacy Continuing on from Feist’s bestselling Riftwar Saga comes a spellbinding adventure. Now in a brilliant new livery. ‘Feist writes fantasy of epic scope, fast-moving action and vivid – imagination’ Washington Post Fresh back from the front, another foe defeated, Prince Arutha arrives to find all is not well in Krondor. A series of apparently random murders has brought an eerie quiet to the city. Where normally the streets are bustling with merchants and tricksters, good life and night life, now there seems to be a self-imposed curfew at sundown. Mutilated bodies have been turning up in the sewers, the Mocker’ demense. The Thieves’ Guild has been decimated – men, women, children, it matters not. The head of the Mockers is missing, presumed dead. Those few who survived the terrible attacks are lying low. Very low. The Crawler, it seems, is back in town. And he’s being helped by others, more ruthless than he. Can it be the Nighthawks again? The Prince enlists his loyal Squire James to find out. If anyone can unravel what’s happening in the bowels of Krondor, he can. He knows the sewers like the back of his hand. After all, as Jimmy the Hand, he grew up there. Meanwhile, the retinue of the Duke of Olasko has arrived suddenly at the palace, a week ahead of schedule but with no apologies and many demands. They say they are here to hunt. But to hunt what? Pug’s son William, on his first posting as a knight-lieutenant, must escort them into the wilds. It should have been a straightforward mission…

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For three millennia the Mediterranean Sea served as the center of western civilization and the scene of many colossal wars and naval battles. In the early summer of 1940, this ancient body of water again played host to a new and extensive conflict as the Kingdom of Italy challenged Britain for dominance within the region. With France on the verge of collapse and Britain facing the prospect of imminent invasion, the Italians hoped to re-establish control over the Mediterranean. The only thing standing in their way was the heavily outnumbered British Mediterranean Fleet and the equally outnumbered British ground and air forces present in the region. Together, these forces would determine whether the Mediterranean reverted back to Italian control or whether the Allies would prevail and retain supremacy over this great body of water for themselves.This book tells the story of this epic struggle. This was a prolonged and colossal conflict waged at differing times against the combined forces of Italy, Germany and Vichy France over a wide area stretching from the coastal waters of Southern Europe in the north to Madagascar in the south and Africa's Atlantic coast in the west to the Persian Gulf in the east. Utilizing a variety of weapons including surface warships, submarines, and aircraft along with sizable merchant fleets, the British and their subsequent American partners maintained vital seaborne lines of communication, conducted numerous amphibious landings, interdicted Axis supply activities and eventually eliminated all semblances of Axis maritime power within the theatre. In turn, these actions facilitated multiple Allied victories that helped secure the defeat of the European Axis.

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The unique historical relationship between capitalism and the Jews is crucial to understanding modern European and Jewish history. But the subject has been addressed less often by mainstream historians than by anti-Semites or apologists. In this book Jerry Muller, a leading historian of capitalism, separates myth from reality to explain why the Jewish experience with capitalism has been so important and complex--and so ambivalent. Drawing on economic, social, political, and intellectual history from medieval Europe through contemporary America and Israel, Capitalism and the Jews examines the ways in which thinking about capitalism and thinking about the Jews have gone hand in hand in European thought, and why anticapitalism and anti-Semitism have frequently been linked. The book explains why Jews have tended to be disproportionately successful in capitalist societies, but also why Jews have numbered among the fiercest anticapitalists and Communists. The book shows how the ancient idea that money was unproductive led from the stigmatization of usury and the Jews to the stigmatization of finance and, ultimately, in Marxism, the stigmatization of capitalism itself. Finally, the book traces how the traditional status of the Jews as a diasporic merchant minority both encouraged their economic success and made them particularly vulnerable to the ethnic nationalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Providing a fresh look at an important but frequently misunderstood subject, Capitalism and the Jews will interest anyone who wants to understand the Jewish role in the development of capitalism, the role of capitalism in the modern fate of the Jews, or the ways in which the story of capitalism and the Jews has affected the history of Europe and beyond, from the medieval period to our own.

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The greatest shipwreck disaster in the history of the Cayman Islands. The story has been passed through generations for over two centuries. Details vary depending on who is doing the telling, but all refer to this momentous maritime event as the Wreck of the Ten Sail. Sometimes misunderstood as the loss of a single ship, it was in fact the wreck of ten vessels at once, comprising one of the most dramatic maritime disasters in all of Caribbean naval history. Surviving historical documents and the remains of the wrecked ships in the sea confirm that the narrative is more than folklore. It is a legend based on a historical event in which HMS Convert, formerly L'Inconstante, a recent prize from the French, and 9 of her 58-ship merchant convoy sailing from Jamaica to Britain, wrecked on the jagged eastern reefs of Grand Cayman in 1794. The incident has historical significance far beyond the boundaries of the Cayman Islands. It is tied to British and French history during the French Revolution, when these and other European nations were competing for military and commercial dominance around the globe. The Wreck of the Ten Sail attests to the worldwide distribution of European war and trade at the close of the eighteenth century. In Cayman's 1794 Wreck of the Ten Sail: Peace, War, and Peril in the Caribbean, Margaret E. Leshikar-Denton focuses on the ships, the people, and the wreck itself to define their place in Caymanian, Caribbean, and European history. This well-researched volume weaves together rich oral folklore accounts, invaluable supporting documents found in archives in the United Kingdom, Jamaica, and France, and tangible evidence of the disaster from archaeological sites on the reefs of the East End.

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A visual history of the life of Augustus “Gus” Wagner and his work as a hand tattoo artist, exploring a relatively unknown area of American art history from the 1890s to the 1930s. In 1897, Gus embarked on a four-year career as a merchant seaman. While traveling the world, he discovered the art of tattooing, learning to tattoo from tribesmen in Java and Borneo who showed him how to use traditional handmade tools. By 1901, Gus reportedly had 264 tattoos of his own (and over 800 by 1908), allowing him to promote himself as “the most artistically marked-up man in America.” Back home, Gus embarked on a 40-year career as a traveling tattooist, tattooed man, and circus performer. He largely eschewed the new electric tattooing machines that transformed the art form after 1890, and remained faithful to his handheld instruments. With other wandering artists, he carried tattooing inland from coastal ports, making it part of the culture of small-town America in the 20th century. This book includes • more than 100 examples of Gus Wagner’s tattoo flash as well as photos of his life and work, including his handheld tattooing tools; • excerpts from interviews with Gus, telling his story in his own words; and • selected passages from three of Herman Melville’s novels—Typee, White Jacket, and Moby Dick, to illuminate the context of the oral history of Gus Wagner; Melville was an astute observer of hand tattoo artists and their clientele. The tattoo flash in this book is a testimony to the richness of Gus Wagner’s image vocabulary, his life, and his artistic influences. This is the first in a series of three books exploring "the Last of the Hand Tattoo Artists." The next two books will focus on Gus's wife, Maud, and their daughter, Lovetta, renowned hand tattoo artists in their own right.

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What do characters as diverse as Alfred the Great, the architect Sir Christopher Wren, diarist Samuel Pepys and the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins have in common? All had some involvement in shipwrecks: in causing, recording or salvaging them. This book examines a variety of wrecks from logboats, Roman galleys and medieval cogs to East Indiamen, grand ocean liners, fishing boats and warships - all are woven into the history of shipwrecks along the coastline of England and in her territorial waters. Wrecks are not just physically embedded in this marine landscape - they are also an intrinsic part of a domestic cultural landscape with links that go beyond the navy, mercantile marine and fishing trade. Evidence of shipwrecks is widespread: in literature, in domestic architecture and as a major component of industrial archaeology. Shipwrecks also transcend national boundaries, forming tangible monuments to the movement of goods and people between nations in war and peace. In peacetime they link the architecture and monuments of different countries, from shipyards to factories, warehouses to processing plants; in time of war wrecks have formed a landscape scattered across the oceans, linking friend and foe in common heritage. England's Shipwreck Heritage explores the type of evidence we have for shipwrecks and their causes, including the often devastating effects fo the natural environment and human-led disaster. Ships at war, global trade and the movement of people - such as passengers, convict transports and the slave trade - are also investigated. Along the way we meet the white elephant who perished in 1730, the medieval merchant who pursued a claim for compensation for nearly 20 years, the most famous privateer for the American revolutionary wars and the men who held their nerve in the minesweeper trawls of the First World War. Highly illustrated and based on extensive new research, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in England's maritime heritage.

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A comprehensive analysis of the issues involved in planning for and facilitating successful street commerce Street commerce has gained prominence in urban areas, where demographic shifts such as increasing numbers of single people and childless "empty nesters," along with technological innovations enabling greater flexibility of work locations and hours, have changed how people shop and dine out. Contemporary city dwellers are demanding smaller-scale stores located in public spaces that are accessible on foot or by public transit. At the same time, the emergence of online retail undermines both the dominance and viability of big-box discount businesses and drives brick and mortar stores to focus as much on the experience of shopping as on the goods and services sold. Meanwhile, in many developing countries, the bulk of urban retail activity continues to take place on the street, even as new car-oriented shopping centers are on the rise. In light of such trends, street commerce will play an important role in twenty-first-century cities, particularly in producing far-reaching benefits for the environment and local communities. Although street commerce is deeply intertwined with myriad contemporary urban visions and planning goals—walkability, quality of life, inclusion, equity, and economic resilience—it has rarely been the focus of systematic research and informed practice. In Street Commerce, Andres Sevtsuk presents a comprehensive analysis of the issues involved in implementing successful street commerce. Drawing on economic theory, urban design principles, regulatory policies, and merchant organization models, he conceptualizes key problems and offers innovative solutions. He provides a range of examples from around the world to detail how different cities and communities have bolstered and reinvigorated their street commerce. According to Sevtsuk, successful street commerce can only be achieved when the private sector, urban policy makers, planners, and the public are equipped with the relevant knowledge and tools to plan and regulate it.

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'This book convincingly challenges both the extremely short historical memory of most postcolonial work and the all-too-insularly English world still conjured by period specialists. Hogarthian whores and Grub Street hacks, coffee houses and fashionable pastimes, and the burgeoning of print culture all stand revealed as intimately bound to portents of plantation insurgency, agitation for abolition, and the vast fortunes produced by the labouring bodies of the poor, the colonized, and the enslaved. Eighteenth-century studies has never appeared in a more engaged and fascinating light.' Professor Donna Landry, University of Kent In this volume Suvir Kaul addresses the relations between literary culture, English commercial and colonial expansion, and the making of 'Great Britain' in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He argues that literary writing played a crucial role in generating the vocabulary of British nationalism, both in inter-national terms and in attempts to realign political and cultural relations between England, Scotland, and Ireland. The formal innovations and practices characteristic of eighteenth-century English literature were often responses to the worlds brought into view by travel writers, merchants, and colonists. Writers (even those suspicious of mercantile and colonial expansion) worked with a growing sense of a 'national literature' whose achievements would provide the cultural capital adequate to global imperial power, and would distinguish Great Britain for its twin success in 'arms and arts'. The book ranges from Davenant's theatre to Smollet's Roderick Random to Phillis Wheatley's poetry to trace the impact of empire on literary creativity. Key Features *An introduction to the impact of mercantilism and empire on the crafting of eighteenth-century British literature *Encourages students to examine the key formal innovations that define eighteenth-century British literary history as they were produced by writers who redefined their sense of home, nation and the world

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The island nation of Iceland is known for many things majestic landscapes, volcanic eruptions, distinctive seafood but racial diversity is not one of them. So the little-known story of Hans Jonathan, a free black man who lived and raised a family in early nineteenth-century Iceland, is improbable and compelling, the stuff of novels. In The Man Who Stole Himself, Gisli Palsson lays out Jonathan's story in stunning detail. Born into slavery in St. Croix in 1784, Jonathan was brought as a slave to Denmark, where he eventually enlisted in the navy and fought on behalf of the country in the 1801 Battle of Copenhagen. After the war, he declared himself a free man, believing that not only was he due freedom because of his patriotic service, but because while slavery remained legal in the colonies, it was outlawed in Denmark itself. Jonathan was the subject of one of the most notorious slavery cases in European history, which he lost. Then, he ran away never to be heard from in Denmark again, his fate unknown for more than two hundred years. It's now known that Jonathan fled to Iceland, where he became a merchant and peasant farmer, married, and raised two children. Today, he has become something of an Icelandic icon, claimed as a proud and daring ancestor both there and among his descendants in America. The Man Who Stole Himself brilliantly intertwines Jonathan's adventurous travels with a portrait of the Danish slave trade, legal arguments over slavery, and the state of nineteenth-century race relations in the Northern Atlantic world. Throughout the book, Palsson traces themes of imperial dreams, colonialism, human rights, and globalization, which all come together in the life of a single, remarkable man. Jonathan literally led a life like no other. His is the story of a man who had the temerity the courage to steal himself.

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A stimulating, smart book on what it means to live in a brand culture Brands are everywhere. Branding is central to political campaigns and political protest movements; the alchemy of social media and self-branding creates overnight celebrities; the self-proclaimed “greening” of institutions and merchant goods is nearly universal. But while the practice of branding is typically understood as a tool of marketing, a method of attaching social meaning to a commodity as a way to make it more personally resonant with consumers, Sarah Banet-Weiser argues that in the contemporary era, brands are about culture as much as they are about economics. That, in fact, we live in a brand culture. Authentic™ maintains that branding has extended beyond a business model to become both reliant on, and reflective of, our most basic social and cultural relations. Further, these types of brand relationships have become cultural contexts for everyday living, individual identity, and personal relationships—what Banet-Weiser refers to as “brand cultures.” Distinct brand cultures, that at times overlap and compete with each other, are taken up in each chapter: the normalization of a feminized “self-brand” in social media, the brand culture of street art in urban spaces, religious brand cultures such as “New Age Spirituality” and “Prosperity Christianity,”and the culture of green branding and “shopping for change.” In a culture where graffiti artists loan their visions to both subway walls and department stores, buying a cup of “fair-trade” coffee is a political statement, and religion is mass-marketed on t-shirts, Banet-Weiser questions the distinction between what we understand as the “authentic” and branding practices. But brand cultures are also contradictory and potentially rife with unexpected possibilities, leading Authentic™ to articulate a politics of ambivalence, creating a lens through which we can see potential political possibilities within the new consumerism.

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A stimulating, smart book on what it means to live in a brand culture Brands are everywhere. Branding is central to political campaigns and political protest movements; the alchemy of social media and self-branding creates overnight celebrities; the self-proclaimed “greening” of institutions and merchant goods is nearly universal. But while the practice of branding is typically understood as a tool of marketing, a method of attaching social meaning to a commodity as a way to make it more personally resonant with consumers, Sarah Banet-Weiser argues that in the contemporary era, brands are about culture as much as they are about economics. That, in fact, we live in a brand culture. Authentic™ maintains that branding has extended beyond a business model to become both reliant on, and reflective of, our most basic social and cultural relations. Further, these types of brand relationships have become cultural contexts for everyday living, individual identity, and personal relationships—what Banet-Weiser refers to as “brand cultures.” Distinct brand cultures, that at times overlap and compete with each other, are taken up in each chapter: the normalization of a feminized “self-brand” in social media, the brand culture of street art in urban spaces, religious brand cultures such as “New Age Spirituality” and “Prosperity Christianity,”and the culture of green branding and “shopping for change.” In a culture where graffiti artists loan their visions to both subway walls and department stores, buying a cup of “fair-trade” coffee is a political statement, and religion is mass-marketed on t-shirts, Banet-Weiser questions the distinction between what we understand as the “authentic” and branding practices. But brand cultures are also contradictory and potentially rife with unexpected possibilities, leading Authentic™ to articulate a politics of ambivalence, creating a lens through which we can see potential political possibilities within the new consumerism.

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Following diamonds from African mines to the necklines of high society women, this international history shows why Jews were central to the transatlantic gem trade and its growth into a global industry. During the late nineteenth century, tens of thousands of diggers, prospectors, merchants, and dealers extracted and shipped over 50 million carats of diamonds from South Africa to London. The primary supplier to the world, South Africa's diamond fields became one of the formative sites of modern capitalist production. At each stage of the diamond's route through the British empire and beyond-from Cape Town to London, from Amsterdam to New York City-carbon gems were primarily mined, processed, appraised, and sold by Jews. In A Brilliant Commodity, historian Saskia Coenen Snyder traces how once-peripheral Jewish populations became the central architects of a new, global exchange of diamonds that connected African sites of supply, European manufacturing centers, American retailers, and western consumers. Centuries of restrictions had limited Jews to trade and finance, businesses that often heavily relied on internal networks. Jews were well-positioned to become key players in the earliest stage of the diamond trade and its growth into a global industry, a development fueled by technological advancements, a dramatic rise in the demand of luxury goods, and an abundance of rough stones. Relying on mercantile and familial ties across continents, Jews created a highly successful commodity chain that included buyers, brokers, cutters, factory owners, financiers, and retailers. Working within a diasporic ethnic community that bridged city and countryside, metropole and colony, Jews helped build a flourishing diamond industry, notably Hatton Garden in London and the Diamond District of New York City, and a place for themselves in the modern world.

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At the start of World War One the Imperial German Navy had a large number of surface warships deployed around the world. These posed a considerable threat to British mercantile interests, particularly the import of food and fuel supplies. Their elimination was a matter of urgency. This book covers the major actions and includes the following: The escape of the Goeben and Breslau to Turkey, where they became units of the Turkish Navy serving in the Black and Aegean Seas. The remarkable cruise of the Emden. Detached from the German East Asia Squadron she sank a Russian cruiser, a French destroyer, 21 merchant ships and destroyed cargo valued at 3 million. She was cornered and sunk by the Australian cruiser Sydney while raiding the Cocos Islands. The mystery of the Karlsruhe, destroyed by an internal explosion. The German East Asiatic Squadron, consisting of the armoured cruisers Schanhorst and Gneisienau and several light cruisers made passage across the Pacific to the west coast of South America where they encountered and sank two British cruisers, the Monmouth and Good Hope. The Konigsberg operated from Germanys colony of Tanga. After sinking a British cruiser she hid in the upper reaches of the Rufiji River. After a lengthy naval and air campaign by British forces she was finally destroyed by the indirect fire from two RN Monitors. By the middle of 1915 the high seas had been mostly cleared of German surface warships, but two armed German ships dominated Lake Tanganyika. Two British armed motor boats were shipped to the West African coast from England and made their way by river and overland haulage to the lake, a 400 mile journey. The result was the destruction of the German lake boats and the invasion of Tanganyika by British forces. This operation became the inspiration for CS Foresters novel The African Queen and the film that followed.

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Chinese merchants have traded with Southeast Asia for centuries, sojourning and sometimes settling, during their voyages. These ventures have taken place by land and by sea, over mountains and across deserts, linking China with vast stretches of Southeast Asia in a broad, mercantile embrace. Chinese Circulations provides an unprecedented overview of this trade, its scope, diversity, and complexity. This collection of twenty groundbreaking essays foregrounds the commodities that have linked China and Southeast Asia over the centuries, including fish, jade, metal, textiles, cotton, rice, opium, timber, books, and edible birds’ nests. Human labor, the Bible, and the coins used in regional trade are among the more unexpected commodities considered. In addition to focusing on a certain time period or geographic area, each of the essays explores a particular commodity or class of commodities, following its trajectory from production, through exchange and distribution, to consumption. The first four pieces put Chinese mercantile trade with Southeast Asia in broad historical perspective; the other essays appear in chronologically ordered sections covering the precolonial period to the present. Incorporating research conducted in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, Malay, Indonesian, and several Western languages, Chinese Circulations is a major contribution not only to Sino-Southeast Asian studies but also to the analysis of globalization past and present.Contributors. Leonard Blussé, Wen-Chin Chang, Lucille Chia, Bien Chiang, Nola Cooke, Jean DeBernardi, C. Patterson Giersch, Takeshi Hamashita, Kwee Hui Kian, Li Tana, Lin Man-houng, Masuda Erika, Adam McKeown, Anthony Reid , Sun Laichen, Heather Sutherland, Eric Tagliacozzo, Carl A. Trocki, Wang Gungwu, Kevin Woods, Wu Xiao

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Chinese merchants have traded with Southeast Asia for centuries, sojourning and sometimes settling, during their voyages. These ventures have taken place by land and by sea, over mountains and across deserts, linking China with vast stretches of Southeast Asia in a broad, mercantile embrace. Chinese Circulations provides an unprecedented overview of this trade, its scope, diversity, and complexity. This collection of twenty groundbreaking essays foregrounds the commodities that have linked China and Southeast Asia over the centuries, including fish, jade, metal, textiles, cotton, rice, opium, timber, books, and edible birds’ nests. Human labor, the Bible, and the coins used in regional trade are among the more unexpected commodities considered. In addition to focusing on a certain time period or geographic area, each of the essays explores a particular commodity or class of commodities, following its trajectory from production, through exchange and distribution, to consumption. The first four pieces put Chinese mercantile trade with Southeast Asia in broad historical perspective; the other essays appear in chronologically ordered sections covering the precolonial period to the present. Incorporating research conducted in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, Malay, Indonesian, and several Western languages, Chinese Circulations is a major contribution not only to Sino-Southeast Asian studies but also to the analysis of globalization past and present.Contributors. Leonard Blussé, Wen-Chin Chang, Lucille Chia, Bien Chiang, Nola Cooke, Jean DeBernardi, C. Patterson Giersch, Takeshi Hamashita, Kwee Hui Kian, Li Tana, Lin Man-houng, Masuda Erika, Adam McKeown, Anthony Reid , Sun Laichen, Heather Sutherland, Eric Tagliacozzo, Carl A. Trocki, Wang Gungwu, Kevin Woods, Wu Xiao

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First full-scale guide to the origins and development of the early printed book, and the issues associated with it. The history of the book is now recognized as a field of central importance for understanding the cultural changes that swept through Tudor England. This companion aims to provide a comprehensive guide to the issues relevant to theearly printed book, covering the significant cultural, social and technological developments from 1476 (the introduction of printing to England) to 1558 (the death of Mary Tudor). Divided into thematic sections (the printed booktrade; the book as artefact; patrons, purchasers and producers; and the cultural capital of print), it considers the social, historical, and cultural context of the rise of print, with the problems as well as advantages of the transmission from manuscript to print. the printers of the period; the significant Latin trade and its effect on the English market; paper, types, bindings, and woodcuts and other decorative features which create the packaged book; and the main sponsors and consumers of the printed book: merchants, the lay clientele, secular and religious clergy, and the two Universities, as well as secular colleges and chantries. Further topics addressed include humanism, women translators, and the role of censorship and the continuity of Catholic publishing from that time. The book is completed with a chronology and detailed indices. Vincent Gillespie is J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford; Susan Powell held a Chair in Medieval Texts and Culture at the University of Salford, and is currently affiliated to the Universities of London and York. Contributors: Tamara Atkin, Alan Coates, Thomas Betteridge, Julia Boffey, James Clark, A.S.G. Edwards, Martha W. Driver, Mary Erler, Alexandra Gillespie, Vincent Gillespie, Andrew Hope, Brenda Hosington, Susan Powell, Pamela Robinson, AnneF. Sutton, Daniel Wakelin, James Willoughby, Lucy Wooding

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How did Kafka become Kafka? This eagerly anticipated third and final volume of Reiner Stach's definitive biography of the writer answers that question with more facts and insight than ever before, describing the complex personal, political, and cultural circumstances that shaped the young Franz Kafka (1883-1924). It tells the story of the years from his birth in Prague to the beginning of his professional and literary career in 1910, taking the reader up to just before the breakthrough that resulted in his first masterpieces, including "The Metamorphosis." Brimming with vivid and often startling details, Stach's narrative invites readers deep inside this neglected period of Kafka's life. The book's richly atmospheric portrait of his German Jewish merchant family and his education, psychological development, and sexual maturation draws on numerous sources, some still unpublished, including family letters, schoolmates' memoirs, and early diaries of his close friend Max Brod. The biography also provides a colorful panorama of Kafka's wider world, especially the convoluted politics and culture of Prague. Before World War I, Kafka lived in a society at the threshold of modernity but torn by conflict, and Stach provides poignant details of how the adolescent Kafka witnessed violent outbreaks of anti-Semitism and nationalism. The reader also learns how he developed a passionate interest in new technologies, particularly movies and airplanes, and why another interest--his predilection for the back-to-nature movement--stemmed from his "nervous" surroundings rather than personal eccentricity. The crowning volume to a masterly biography, this is an unmatched account of how a boy who grew up in an old Central European monarchy became a writer who helped create modern literature.

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Direct Wines, The Sunday Times Wine Club, Laithwaites or just Wine People. Known by various names over the last 50 years, Laithwaites is now the top wine company in the UK and a leading example of a thriving family business turned empire. In the 1960s young geography student Tony Laithwaite took a job washing wine bottles in Bordeaux and soon fell head-over-heels in love with the wine and the people who make it. After his inspiring time in Bordeaux, he took a van stocked with his favourite French wines back to the UK to share with friends and neighbours at home as part of a small start-up business. He wrote to Harold Evans at the Times to persuade him of the superior quality of his imported wine, and they soon joined forces to set up the hugely successful Sunday Times Wine Club. It wasn't long before hundreds of small wineries around the world were queuing to take part in Tony's venture, which transformed from a tiny operation to a massive business virtually overnight. Today, nearly 50 years on from its foundation in 1969, Laithwaites' parent company Direct Wines is the world's number one home-delivery wine merchant with operations in the UK, US and Australia and New Zealand. Direct: Tony Laithwaite My Story is not just the remarkable story of a wine company, or its wines, but a tale of the people who have created its success. Filled with rich archive imagery and newly commissioned illustrations by David Eldridge, as well as anecdotes of Tony's early years in France, this inspirational memoir is perfect to enjoy with your favourite bottle of wine.

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The fourth volume of The Correspondence of Thomas Hutchinson covers a twenty-month period extending from the acquittal of the soldiers standing trial for the Boston Massacre in November 1770 through the return of the General Court from Cambridge to its traditional meeting place at the Town House in Boston in June 1772. Some historians refer to this interval as the "quiet period" in the events leading up to the Revolution, but one would have had trouble convincing Thomas Hutchinson of the accuracy of that phrase. He continued to butt heads with Samuel Adams. No longer acting governor after March 1771, but governor-in-chief in his own right, Hutchinson was now free to use the patronage at his disposal to reward his political adherents and divide the opposition. Even though John Hancock ultimately declined the offer, Hutchinson attempted to separate him from the political tutelage of Samuel Adams, by dangling the prospect of a socially prestigious seat on the Governor's Council before the young merchant. At the same time, the Hutchinson also sought to sow seeds of suspicion and resentment between the Massachusetts House of Representatives and their new agent, Benjamin Franklin. Adams had long resisted Hutchinson's claim to summon the General Court to meet anywhere he chose, but in the spring of 1772, cooperation with Hancock enabled Hutchinson to end a long-standing impasse and return the Court to Boston without surrendering any his gubernatorial prerogative. Despite this seeming success, Hutchinson could have no idea of the crises that lay ahead in 1773 (the publication of his private letters and Parliament's efforts to aid the financially troubled East India Company) that would effectively end his governorship.Distributed for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts

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The New York Times bestselling historical novelist delivers her biggest, boldest, and most ambitious novel yet—a sweeping, dramatic Victorian epic of lost love, lies, jealousy, and rebellion set in colonial Barbados.1854. From Bristol to Barbados. . . . Emily Dawson has always been the poor cousin in a prosperous merchant clan—merely a vicar’s daughter, and a reform-minded vicar’s daughter, at that. Everyone knows that the family’s lucrative shipping business will go to her cousin, Adam, one day. But when her grandfather dies, Emily receives an unexpected inheiritance: Peverills, a sugar plantation in Barbados—a plantation her grandfather never told anyone he owned. When Emily accompanies her cousin and his new wife to Barbados, she finds Peverills a burnt-out shell, reduced to ruins in 1816, when a rising of enslaved people sent the island up in flames. Rumors swirl around the derelict plantation; people whisper of ghosts.Why would her practical-minded grandfather leave her a property in ruins? Why are the neighboring plantation owners, the Davenants, so eager to acquire Peverills—so eager that they invite Emily and her cousins to stay with them indefinitely? Emily finds herself bewitched by the slightly sinister tropical beauty of the island even as she’s drawn into the personalities and politics of forty years before: a tangled history of clandestine love, heartbreaking betrayal, and a bold bid for freedom.When family secrets begin to unravel and the harsh truth of history becomes more and more plain, Emily must challenge everything she thought she knew about her family, their legacy . . . and herself.

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A highly original and compelling account of individual Jews who resisted Nazi persecution, challenging the traditional portrayal of Jewish passivity during the Holocaust Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, Holocaust category “These are the stories that longtime readers of Holocaust literature have been waiting to read: evidence of small, covert acts of resistance (often by individuals working on their own initiative) against a fanatically coordinated genocidal force.”—Library Journal (starred review) Drawing on twelve years of research in dozens of archives in Austria, Germany, Israel, and the United States, this book tells the story of five Jewish people—a merchant, a homemaker, a real estate broker, and two teenagers—who bravely resisted persecution and defended themselves in Nazi Germany. These stories have not been told until now, and each case is one of many, as Gruner shows by resurfacing similar accounts of Jewish refusal to accept persecution and violence in Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1943, upending the notion of passive Jews and expanding the concept of resistance. Each individual described here represents a category of resistance: written opposition, oral protest, contesting Nazi propaganda, defiance of anti-Jewish laws and measures, and self-defense against physical attacks. Many of these courageous acts resulted in the resisters being prosecuted and put on trial, and often receiving harsh punishments, while some led to acquittal by courts and others to changes in Nazi policies. Taken together, these accounts reframe our understanding of German Jewish attitudes during the Holocaust, while also providing an astonishing examination of the complex Nazi reactions to the many individual acts of Jewish resistance.

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Discover the classic mystery from Dick Francis, one of the greatest thriller writers of all time'A brilliant read with lots of exciting twists and turns. Couldn't put it down' 5***** Reader Review'An excellent thriller that keeps you on the edge. Dick Francis at his best' 5***** Reader Review______Wine merchant Tony Beach will do anything for a quiet life. But when a party to celebrate the end of the racing season ends in eight violent deaths, he is drawn reluctantly into the subsequent investigation. Meanwhile, the police, having evidence of the sale of illicit alcohol at a local club, ask for Tony's help in closing it down. Thanks to his intervention, Tony comes to the attention of the criminal underworld.And that's when he reluctantly realizes that the deaths and the illicit alcohol are connected. Tony doesn't want to be a hero. But if the choice is that or dying . . .Packed with intrigue and hair-raising suspense, Proof is just one of the many blockbuster thrillers from legendary crime writer Dick Francis.Praise for Dick Francis:'As a jockey, Dick Francis was unbeatable when he got into his stride. The same is true of his crime writing' Daily Mirror'The narrative is brisk and gripping and the background researched with care . . . the entire story is a pleasure to relish' Scotsman'Dick Francis's fiction has a secret ingredient - his inimitable knack of grabbing the reader's attention on page one and holding it tight until the very end' Sunday Telegraph'A regular winner . . . as smooth, swift and lean as ever' Sunday Express'The master of suspense and intrigue' Country Life'Francis writing at his best' Evening Standard'Still the master' Racing Post

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The Isles of Scilly, five inhabited islands 24 miles west of Land's End, were of low priority to the War Department when the First World War was declared. With no manufacturing capability, no industry other than flower growing and agriculture, no electricity or gas, no mains water supply, no wireless station, and a population of only 2,000, the islands did have one feature in their favour - their location. Sitting at the cross roads of six major shipping routes, Scilly had been a recognised 'ship-park' since 1300AD, where sailing ships anchored to safetly awaiting a suitable wind, to re-victual, pick up water or effect repairs. The Admiralty sought to make it a harbour for the Channel Fleet in the mid-1800s, and in 1903 spent GBP25,000 defending the islands with 6-inch gun batteries, only to take them away seven years later. When, in 1915, German U-boats moved from the North Sea into the Western Approaches, sinking large numbers of merchant vessels, Scilly was chosen to become a Royal Navy Auxiliary Patrol Station, and over time was sent 20 armed trawlers and drifters as escorts, mine-sweepers, mine-layers or anti-submarine vessels, along with 500 Royal Navy personnel.In 1917 Tresco Island became a Royal Naval Air Station, with 14 flying boats and over 1,000 personnel. The islands were suddenly at the forefront of the submarine war. This book details Scilly's contribution to the war effort, with attention to its civilian population, the heartbreak of losing forty-five of its sons, and the trauma of countless seamen rescued from torpedoed ships.

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In this book from the critically acclaimed, multimillion-copy bestselling Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover the life of Ernest Shackleton, the fearless Antarctic adventurer. When Ernest Shackleton was young, he longed for a life of adventure. After a career in the Merchant Navy, he joined a landmark expedition to try to reach the South Pole for the first time in history. Although he had to go home early, he never gave up. His own expeditions set new records for the closest anyone had ever been to the South Pole, and he is remembered now as a courageous and inspirational leader. This exciting book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical photos and a detailed profile of the intrepid explorer's life. ​Little People, BIG DREAMS is a bestselling biography series for kids that explores the lives of outstanding people, from designers and artists to scientists and activists. All of them achieved incredible things, yet each began life as a child with a dream. This empowering series of books offers inspiring messages to children of all ages, in a range of formats. The board books are told in simple sentences, perfect for reading aloud to babies and toddlers. The hardback and paperback versions present expanded stories for beginning readers. With rewritten text for older children, the treasuries each bring together a multitude of dreamers in a single volume. You can also collect a selection of the books by theme in boxed gift sets. Activity books and a journal provide even more ways to make the lives of these role models accessible to children.Inspire the next generation of outstanding people who will change the world with Little People, BIG DREAMS!

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This is a comprehensive look at how France influenced the American Revolutionary War in a variety of ways; intellectually, financially, and militarily. It raises the crucial question of whether America could have won its independence without the aid of France.The book begins with an overview of the intellectual and ideological contributions of the French Enlightenment thinkers, called the philosophes, to the American and French revolutions. It then moves to cover the many forms of aid provided by France to support America during the Revolutionary War. This ranged from the covert aid France supplied America before her official entry into the war, to the French outfitters and merchants who provided much-needed military supplies to the Americans. When the war began, the colonists thought the French would welcome an opportunity to retaliate and regain their country. France also provided naval assistance, particularly to the American privateers who harassed British shipping and contributed to the increased shipping rates which added to Great Britain's economic hardships. France's military involvement in the war was equally as important.America's First Ally looks at the contributions of individual French officers and troops, arguing that America could not have won without them. Desmarais explores the international nature of a war which some people have called the first world war. When France and Spain entered the conflict, they fought the Crown forces in their respective areas of economic interest. In addition to the engagements in the Atlantic Ocean, along the American and European coasts and in the West Indies, there are accounts of action in India and the East Indies, South America and Africa.Also included are accounts drawn from ships' logs, court and auction records, newspapers, letters, diaries, journals, and pension applications.

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When Samuel de Champlain founded the colony of Quebec in 1608, he established elaborate gardens where he sowed French seeds he had brought with him and experimented with indigenous plants that he found in nearby fields and forests. Following Champlain's example, fellow colonists nurtured similar gardens through the Saint Lawrence Valley and Great Lakes region. In A Not-So-New World, Christopher Parsons observes how it was that French colonists began to learn about Native environments and claimed a mandate to cultivate vegetation that did not differ all that much from that which they had left behind. As Parsons relates, colonists soon discovered that there were limits to what they could accomplish in their gardens. The strangeness of New France became woefully apparent, for example, when colonists found that they could not make French wine out of American grapes. They attributed the differences they discovered to Native American neglect and believed that the French colonial project would rehabilitate and restore the plant life in the region. However, the more colonists experimented with indigenous species and communicated their findings to the wider French Atlantic world, the more foreign New France appeared to French naturalists and even to the colonists themselves. Parsons demonstrates how the French experience of attempting to improve American environments supported not only the acquisition and incorporation of Native American knowledge but also the development of an emerging botanical science that focused on naming new species. Exploring the moment in which settlers, missionaries, merchants, and administrators believed in their ability to shape the environment to better resemble the country they left behind, A Not-So-New World reveals that French colonial ambitions were fueled by a vision of an ecologically sustainable empire.

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'Robin Hobb meets Joe Abercrombie . . . This is fantasy with a totally legendary feel' Fantasy Book Review'The Wolf's Call is everything a fantasy fan could ever wish for' Booknest'Anthony Ryan's best work since the release of his incredible debut . . . fantastic storytelling' Novel Notions'An immensely satisfying, top-notch adventure fantasy' Kirkus Vaelin Al Sorna is a living legend. It was his leadership that overthrew empires and his sacrifice that saved the Unified Realm from destruction. Now he lives a quiet life, his days of warfare behind him.Yet whispers have spread across the sea of an army called the Steel Horde, led by a man who thinks himself a god. When Vaelin learns that Sherin, the woman he lost long ago, has fallen into the Horde's grasp, he resolves to confront this powerful new threat.To this end, he travels to the realms of the Merchant Kings - a strange land ruled by honour and intrigue. And as the drums of war echo across kingdoms riven by conflict, Vaelin learns that there are some battles even he cannot hope to win.The Wolf's Call is the start of an action-packed epic fantasy series from Anthony Ryan, a master storyteller who has taken the fantasy world by storm.Books by Anthony RyanRaven's ShadowBlood SongTower LordQueen of FireRaven's BladeThe Wolf's CallThe Black SongDraconis MemoriaThe Waking FireThe Legion of FlameThe Empire of AshesThe Covenant of SteelThe PariahThe MartyrThe TraitorWriting as A. J. RyanRed River Seven

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Politicians and the media are natural enemies, but in recent times, the relationship has exploded into all-out war. Think about bimbo eruptions, DUI arrests, cocaine parties, National Guard service records, Swift Boat veterans. Think about two generations of Bush presidents up against Dan Rather. Think about who lost. Craig Crawford has seen it all up close and personal, and he is disturbed by what he sees. When politicians turn the public against the media, everyone loses—especially unbiased and courageous news reporting. When veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas is banished from her front-row post, as she has been in the current administration—the American public is denied the chance to consider her pointed questions, even if they go unanswered. Worse, when traditional reporters and media are displaced, the pundits and alternative media take over. Rush Limbaugh, The O'Reilly Factor, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart, and the bloggers have their place in American politics, and the 2004 elections showed the incredible power of the Internet. These media, however, are a different breed, as Crawford points out—they serve a purpose, but at a cost. They become "opinion merchants," bartering outrageous assertions for audience appeal with little attention to the truth. These days, the truth is hard to find. If the press is not believed—or believable—because politicians have turned the public against it, then the press is not free, but under the thumbs of politicians. Without a free press, there is no democracy. That, says Crawford, is where we find ourselves today. If you don't like the news, attack the messenger, and it will go away. Going, going, gone.

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A rollicking portrait of the paradoxical patriot, whose measured pragmatism helped make American independence a reality.Americans are surprisingly more familiar with his famous signature than with the man himself. In this spirited account of John Hancock’s life, Brooke Barbier depicts a patriot of fascinating contradictions—a child of enormous privilege who would nevertheless become a voice of the common folk; a pillar of society uncomfortable with radicalism who yet was crucial to independence. About two-fifths of the American population held neutral or ambivalent views about the Revolution, and Hancock spoke for them and to them, bringing them along.Orphaned young, Hancock was raised by his merchant uncle, whose business and vast wealth he inherited—including household slaves, whom Hancock later freed. By his early thirties, he was one of New England’s most prominent politicians, earning a place on Britain’s most-wanted list and the derisive nickname King Hancock. While he eventually joined the revolution against England, his ever moderate—and moderating—disposition would prove an asset after 1776. Barbier shows Hancock appealing to southerners and northerners, Federalists and Anti-Federalists. He was a famously steadying force as president of the fractious Second Continental Congress. He parlayed with French military officials, strengthening a key alliance with his hospitable diplomacy. As governor of Massachusetts, Hancock convinced its delegates to vote for the federal Constitution and calmed the fallout from the shocking Shays’s Rebellion.An insightful study of leadership in the revolutionary era, King Hancock traces a moment when passion was on the side of compromise and accommodation proved the basis of profound social and political change.

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Sighted Sub, Sank Same examines the United States Naval air campaign against German U-boats prowling for allied merchant shipping traversing the waters of the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Mediterranean; an economic war waged to cut the lifeline of food and armaments sailing across the Atlantic from North America. This battle of the Atlantic evolved into a far-ranging conflict beyond the North Atlantic and the eastern seaboard of the United States. It covered the frigid waters off Iceland down to the warm waters of Florida, through the Caribbean Sea, across the ocean to the Bay of Biscay, the Mediterranean Sea, down to Africa, and across the South Atlantic to Brazil’s southern tip. Nazi Germany’s efforts to deny supplies from reaching Europe came at a high price, losing 783 U-boats and approximately 30,000 men between 1939 and 1945 with land and carrier-based naval air units sinking 83 German submarines of the 159 sunk by American aircraft. German allies saw their submarines targeted as well in the Atlantic with Imperial Japanese submarine I-52 and the Italian Archimede falling victim to American naval aircraft armed with depth bombs or acoustic homing torpedoes.This story of the United States Navy’s use of air power to hunt down and destroy German submarines unfolds in dramatic detail in Sighted Sub, Sank Same. The book contains over 200 colour and black and white photographs allowing for a visual imagery of the campaign while personal interviews, interrogation reports, personal correspondence, and after-action reports weave a fascinating history about the naval air campaign in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Mediterranean Theaters during World War II.

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A groundbreaking history of Russia, from empire to the Soviet era, viewed through the lens of its money. Money seems passive, a silent witness to the deeds and misdeeds of its holders, but through its history intimate dramas and grand historical processes can be told. So argues this sweeping narrative of the ruble's story from the time of Catherine the Great to Lenin. The Russian ruble did not enjoy a particularly reputable place among European currencies. Across two hundred years, long periods of financial turmoil were followed by energetic and pragmatic reforms that invariably ended with another collapse. Why did a country with an industrializing economy, solid private property rights, and (until 1918) a near perfect reputation as a rock-solid repayer of its debts stick for such a prolonged period with an inconvertible currency? Why did the Russian gold standard differ from the European model? In answering these questions, Ekaterina Pravilova argues that politics and culture must be considered alongside economic factors. The history of the Russian ruble offers an opportunity to explore the political reasons behind the preservation of a supposedly backward financial system and to show how politicians used monetary reforms to block or enact political transformations. The Ruble is a history of Russia written in the language of money. It shows how economists, landowners, merchants, and peasants understood, perceived, and used financial mechanisms. In her definitive account, Pravilova interprets the well-known political events of the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries--wars, attempts at constitutional transformations, revolutions--through the ideas and politics of currency reforms and offers a new history of Russia's imperial expansion and collapse.

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In 1888, at the age of eighteen, Mohandas Gandhi sets out from his modest home in India. Shy, timid, and soft-spoken, he embarks on what he believes will be a new life abroad. Twenty-seven years later, at the age of forty-five, he returns--this time fearless, impassioned, and ready to lead his country to freedom. What transformed him? The law. M. K. Gandhi, Attorney at Law is the first biography of the Mahatma's early years as a lawyer. It follows Gandhi as he embarks on a personal journey of self-discovery: from his education in Britain, through the failure of his first law practice in India, to his eventual migration to South Africa. Though he found initial success representing wealthy Indian merchants, events on the ground would come to change him. Relentless attacks by the white colonial establishment on Indian civil rights prompted Gandhi to give up his lucrative business in favor of representing the oppressed in court. Gandhi had originally hoped that the South African legal system could be relied upon for justice. But when the courts failed to respond, he had no choice but to shift tactics, developing what would ultimately become his lasting legacy--the philosophy and practice of nonviolent civil disobedience. As he took on the most powerful governmental, economic, and political forces of his day, Gandhi transformed himself from a modest civil rights lawyer into a tireless freedom fighter. Relying on never-before-seen archival materials, this book provides the reader with a front-row seat to the dramatic events that would alter Gandhi--and history--forever.

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A groundbreaking history of how the US Post made the nineteenth-century American West. There were five times as many post offices in the United States in 1899 than there are McDonald's restaurants today. During an era of supposedly limited federal government, the United States operated the most expansive national postal system in the world. In this cutting-edge interpretation of the late nineteenth-century United States, Cameron Blevins argues that the US Post wove together two of the era's defining projects: western expansion and the growth of state power. Between the 1860s and the early 1900s, the western United States underwent a truly dramatic reorganization of people, land, capital, and resources. It had taken Anglo-Americans the better part of two hundred years to occupy the eastern half of the continent, yet they occupied the West within a single generation. As millions of settlers moved into the region, they relied on letters and newspapers, magazines and pamphlets, petitions and money orders to stay connected to the wider world. Paper Trails maps the spread of the US Post using a dataset of more than 100,000 post offices, revealing a new picture of the federal government in the West. The western postal network bore little resemblance to the civil service bureaucracies typically associated with government institutions. Instead, the US Post grafted public mail service onto private businesses, contracting with stagecoach companies to carry the mail and paying local merchants to distribute letters from their stores. These arrangements allowed the US Post to rapidly spin out a vast and ephemeral web of postal infrastructure to thousands of distant places. The postal network's sprawling geography and localized operations forces a reconsideration of the American state, its history, and the ways in which it exercised power.

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World War I was a catastrophe for the lands that would become Lebanon. With war came famine, and with famine came unspeakable suffering, starvation, and mass death. For nearly four years the deadly crisis reshaped society, killing untold thousands and transforming how people lived, how they interacted, and even how they saw the world around them. Famine Worlds peers out at the famine through their eyes, from the wealthy merchants and the dwindling middle classes, to those perishing in the streets. Tylor Brand draws on memoirs, diaries, and correspondence to explore how people negotiated the famine and its traumas. Many observers depicted society in collapse—the starving poor became wretched victims and the well-fed became villains or heroes for the judgment of their peers. He shows how individual struggles had social effects. The famine altered beliefs and behaviors, and those in turn influenced social relationships, policies, and even the historical memory of generations to come. More than simply a chronicle of the Great Famine, however, Famine Worlds offers a profound meditation on what it means to live through such collective trauma, and how doing so shapes the character of a society. Brand shows that there are consequences to living amid omnipresent suffering and death. A crisis like the Great Famine is transformative in ways we cannot comprehend. It not only reshapes the lives and social worlds of those who suffer, it creates a particular rationality that touches the most fundamental parts of our being, even down to the ways we view and interact with each other. We often assume that if we were thrust into historic calamity that we would continue to behave compassionately. Famine Worlds questions such confidence, providing a lesson that could not be more timely.

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A close reading of postrevolutionary Russian and Yiddish literature and film recasts the Soviet Jew as a novel cultural figure: not just a minority but an ambivalent character navigating between the Jewish past and Bolshevik modernity.The Russian Revolution of 1917 transformed the Jewish community of the former tsarist empire. The Pale of Settlement on the empire's western borderlands, where Jews had been required to live, was abolished several months before the Bolsheviks came to power. Many Jews quickly exited the shtetls, seeking prospects elsewhere. Some left for bigger cities, others for Europe, America, or Palestine. Thousands tried their luck in the newly established Jewish Autonomous Region in the Far East, where urban merchants would become tillers of the soil. For these Jews, Soviet modernity meant freedom, the possibility of the new, and the pressure to discard old ways of life.This ambivalence was embodied in the Soviet Jew—not just a descriptive demographic term but a novel cultural figure. In insightful readings of Yiddish and Russian literature, films, and reportage, Sasha Senderovich finds characters traversing space and history and carrying with them the dislodged practices and archetypes of a lost Jewish world. There is the Siberian settler of Viktor Fink’s Jews in the Taiga, the folkloric trickster of Isaac Babel, and the fragmented, bickering family of Moyshe Kulbak’s The Zelmenyaners, whose insular lives are disrupted by the march of technological, political, and social change. There is the collector of ethnographic tidbits, the pogrom survivor, the émigré who repatriates to the USSR.Senderovich urges us to see the Soviet Jew anew, as not only a minority but also a particular kind of liminal being. How the Soviet Jew Was Made emerges as a profound meditation on culture and identity in a shifting landscape.

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Was it the Titanic of its age? Christened by an optimistic King James I in December 1609, the Trades Increase was the greatest English merchant vessel of the Jacobean era—a magnificent ship embodying the hopes of the nascent East India Company to claim a commanding share of the Eastern trade. But the ship's launch failed when it proved too large to exit from its dock, an ill-fated start to an expedition that would end some three years later, when a dangerously leaking Trades Increase at last reached the shores of Java. While its smaller companion vessel would sail home with handsome profits for investors, the rotting hull of the great ship itself was beyond repair. The Trades Increase and nearly all who sailed it perished wretchedly on the far side of the world. The terrible pattern proven by this voyage, with profits to an elite few in London stained by catastrophic losses in equipment and personnel abroad, ignited rancorous controversy in England over the human, moral, and economic costs of such commerce. In The Loss of the "Trades Increase" Richmond Barbour has written an engrossing account of the tragic expedition and of global capitalism at its hour of emergence. Its sources fragmented among journals, minutes, and letters in the archives of the East India Company, the full story of the Trades Increase is told here for the first time. Earlier writers minimized the loss as a temporary setback and necessary sacrifice on the road to empire. In a work informed by corporate history and postcolonial theory, Barbour sees the saga of the voyage, and all that produced and justified it, differently: as an expression of the structural conflicts, operational risks, and material incapacities that haunted and ultimately unraveled the British Empire—and that destabilize multinational corporations, global markets, and our common biosphere to this day.

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An engaging history of the role that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin played in the origins of public health in America Before the advent of modern antibiotics, one’s life could be abruptly shattered by contagion and death, and debility from infectious diseases and epidemics was commonplace for early Americans, regardless of social status. Concerns over health affected the founding fathers and their families as it did slaves, merchants, immigrants, and everyone else in North America. As both victims of illness and national leaders, the Founders occupied a unique position regarding the development of public health in America. Revolutionary Medicine refocuses the study of the lives of George and Martha Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John and Abigail Adams, and James and Dolley Madison away from the usual lens of politics to the unique perspective of sickness, health, and medicine in their era. For the founders, republican ideals fostered a reciprocal connection between individual health and the “health” of the nation. Studying the encounters of these American founders with illness and disease, as well as their viewpoints about good health, not only provides us with a richer and more nuanced insight into their lives, but also opens a window into the practice of medicine in the eighteenth century, which is at once intimate, personal, and first hand. Perhaps most importantly, today’s American public health initiatives have their roots in the work of America’s founders, for they recognized early on that government had compelling reasons to shoulder some new responsibilities with respect to ensuring the health and well-being of its citizenry. The state of medicine and public healthcare today is still a work in progress, but these founders played a significant role in beginning the conversation that shaped the contours of its development.

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In recent years, large digital platforms have been in the doghouse of antitrust decision-makers worldwide. Antitrust regulators agree, urgent intervention is needed. Interestingly, it is the plight of victimized suppliers—of merchants, app developers, publishers, platform labourers, and the like, who are upstream in the value chain—that has topped the policy agenda, prompting scrutiny of an almost unprecedented intensity. Amid such anxieties, Antitrust and Upstream Platform Power Plays asks a somewhat provocative question: are upstream platform power plays really 'competition problems', and ones for antitrust, at that? The obvious answer—'yes'—is deceptively simple for a number of reasons. First, it contradicts contemporary antitrust's single-minded focus on consumers, which has all but erased supplier exploitation in the brick-and-mortar economy from the policy's radar. Second, the wider antitrust community remains bitterly divided when it comes to judging platform practices. In addition, if any consensus could be had, it would almost certainly confirm the long-standing tenet that antitrust cannot be about supplier welfare, as such. These paradoxes call for a policy introspection—precisely what this book provides. The analysis offered in Antitrust and Upstream Platform Power Plays is altogether normative, theoretical, and practical. Normative because it engages in a supplier-mindful soul-searching exercise, which advances our understanding of antitrust's foundations; theoretical as it sheds multidisciplinary insights on upstream effects in the platform economy and develops new frameworks for rationalizing them; and practical since it takes a deep dive into the complex antitrust machinery while staying attuned to other available levers of public action. Answering a compelling question with an equally compelling answer, this work will appeal to scholars and policymakers worldwide with a particular interest in platform regulation, antitrust, and powerful digital platforms.

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In this book from the critically acclaimed Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover the life of Ernest Shackleton, the fearless Antarctic adventurer. When Ernest Shackleton was young, he longed for a life of adventure. After a career in the Merchant Navy, he joined a landmark expedition to try to reach the South Pole for the first time in history. Although he had to go home early, he never gave up. His own expeditions set new records for the closest anyone had ever been to the South Pole, and he is remembered now as a courageous and inspirational leader. This exciting book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical photos and a detailed profile of the intrepid explorer's life. a Little People, BIG DREAMS is a best-selling series of books and educational games that explore the lives of outstanding people, from designers and artists to scientists and activists. All of them achieved incredible things, yet each began life as a child with a dream. This empowering series offers inspiring messages to children of all ages, in a range of formats. The board books are told in simple sentences, perfect for reading aloud to babies and toddlers. The hardcover versions present expanded stories for beginning readers. Boxed gift sets allow you to collect a selection of the books by theme. Paper dolls, learning cards, matching games, and other fun learning tools provide even more ways to make the lives of these role models accessible to children. Inspire the next generation of outstanding people who will change the world with Little People, BIG DREAMS!

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