Louis XIV is one of history's most notorious rulers. Ruling for three quarters of a century, the King of France had the longest reign in European history, and the effects of his rule would create the conditions that would lead to the French Revolution. Written by an authority on 17th century Europe, Pierre Goubert not only outlines the life the famous "Sun King." but the millions of subjects under his rule, and the effects his choices had on the them.
Praise for Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchman " . . . It is safe to recommend the work as the best book available on the subject for the educated layman."--Kirkus Reviews"This masterful work . . . should serve a generation of student and general readers as the essential introduction to the France of Louis XIV."--The American Historical Review "In this field M. Goubert is a past master, and his subtle portrayal of the great social trends of the age deserves to be widely read."--Times Literary Supplement
Schiller's 1795 essay on the educative function of art is one of the most important contributions to the history of ideas in modern times. This English-German parallel text edition includes a long analytical introduction and extensive notes.
In January 1917, the war in Europe was, at best, a tragic standoff. Britain knew that all was lost unless the United States joined the war, but President Wilson was unshakable in his neutrality. At just this moment, a crack team of British decoders in a quiet office known as Room 40 intercepted a document that would change history. The Zimmermann telegram was a top-secret message to the president of Mexico, inviting him to join Germany and Japan in an invasion of the United States. How Britain managed to inform the American government without revealing that the German codes had been broken makes for an incredible story of espionage and intrigue as only Barbara W. Tuchman could tell it. Praise for The Zimmermann Telegram "A true, lucid thriller . . . a tremendous tale of hushed and unhushed uproars in the linked fields of war and diplomacy . . . Tuchman makes the most of it with a creative writer's sense of drama and a scholar's obeisance to the evidence."--The New York Times
"The tale has most of the ingredients of an Eric Ambler spy thriller."--Saturday Review
The religious revival that flourished in the early nineteenth century and changed American life found its most spectacular expression in Rochester, New York. The revival, in Rochester and elsewhere, made the United States the most militantly Protestant nation on earth and had an enormous influence on many Northern antebellum reform movements, including abolition and temperance. But although many historians have discussed its profound and wide-ranging effects, we know very little about its causes. "A Shopkeeper's Millennium" not only explores the interconnections between these vitally important economic, social, political, and religious changes but presents an evocative picture of a rapidly growing frontier city.
Two hundred years ago, herds of elk and antelope dotted the hills of the San Francisco-Monterey Bay area. Grizzly bears lumbered down to the creeks to fish for silver salmon and steelhead trout. From vast marshlands geese, ducks, and other birds rose in thick clouds "with a sound like that of a hurricane." This land of "inexpressible fertility," as one early explorer described it, supported one of the densest Indian populations in all of North America.
One of the most ground-breaking and highly-acclaimed titles that Heyday has published, The Ohlone Way describes the culture of the Indian people who inhabited Bay Area prior to the arrival of Europeans. Recently included in the San Francisco Chronicle's Top 100 Western Non-Fiction list, The Ohlone Way has been described by critic Pat Holt as a "mini-classic."
Rousseau's ideas have influenced almost every major political development of the last two hundred years, and are crucial to an understanding of phenomena as diverse as the French Revolution, modern educational theory, and the contemporary environmental movement. This is reason enough to draw attention to his startlingly alive autobiography. But the Confessions is also among the greatest self-portraits in world literature -which suggests, even more than the impact of Rousseau's thought, the extent to which the very high opinion he had of himself was ultimately justified.
(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Drawing on a comprehensive array of examples, from Montezuma's senseless surrender of his empire in 1520 to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Barbara W. Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit by government of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives. In brilliant detail, Tuchman illuminates four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain's George III, and the United States' own persistent mistakes in Vietnam. Throughout The March of Folly, Tuchman's incomparable talent for animating the people, places, and events of history is on spectacular display. Praise for The March of Folly "A glittering narrative . . . a moral book] on the crimes and follies of governments and the misfortunes the governed suffer in consequence."--The New York Times Book Review
"An admirable survey . . . I haven't read a more relevant book in years."--John Kenneth Galbraith, The Boston Sunday Globe
"A superb chronicle . . . a masterly examination."--Chicago Sun-Times
A history of the Balkan Peninsula explores the region's political, social, religious, and economic past in order to understand the nature of the recently rekindled, centuries-old blood feuds.
