John Curless
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Following his international bestsellers Roma and Empire, Steven Saylor's Dominus continues his saga of the greatest, most storied empire in history from the eternal city at the very center of it all.
A.D. 165: The empire of Rome has reached its pinnacle. Universal peace-the Pax Roma-reigns from Britannia to Egypt, from Gaul to Greece. Marcus Aurelius, as much a philosopher as he is an emperor, oversees a golden age in the city of Rome. The ancient...
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A chronological compilation of twentieth-century world events in one volume-from the acclaimed historian and biographer of Winston Churchill. The twentieth century has been one of the most unique in human history. It has seen the rise of some of humanity's most important advances to date, as well as many of its most violent and terrifying wars. This is a condensed version of renowned historian Martin Gilbert's masterful examination of the century's...
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He was known simply as the Blind Traveler -- a solitary, sightless adventurer who, astonishingly, fought the slave trade in Af-rica, survived a frozen captivity in Siberia, hunted rogue elephants in Ceylon, and helped chart the Australian outback. James Holman (1786-1857) became "one of the greatest wonders of the world he so sagaciously explored," triumphing not only over blindness but crippling pain, poverty, and the interference of well-meaning...
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Wars of the Roses volume 2
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English
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A sequel to Stormbird chronicles Margaret of Anjou's efforts to represent the progressively ill king while the Duke of York extends his influence in ways that upset the balance of power throughout England.
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Wars of the Roses volume 4
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English
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England, 1470. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. The Yorkist king Edward IV is driven out of England, his wife and children forced to seek sanctuary from the House of Lancaster. Yet rage and humiliation prick Edward back to greatness. He lands at Ravenspur, with a half-drowned army and his brother Richard at his side. Though every hand is against them, though every city gate is shut, they have come home. The brothers York will not go...
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Soon to be a major motion picture starring Judi Dench: the heartbreaking true story of an Irishwoman and the secret she kept for 50 years When she became pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to a convent to be looked after as a “fallen woman.” Then the nuns took her baby from her and sold him, like thousands of others, to America for adoption.
Fifty years later, Philomena decided to find him. Meanwhile, on the other...
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Penguin history of Europe volume 8
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English
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"The Penguin History of Europe series reaches the twentieth century with ... Ian Kershaw's long-anticipated analysis of the pivotal years of World War I and World War II. The European catastrophe, the long continuous period from 1914 to 1949, was unprecedented in human history-- an extraordinarily dramatic, often traumatic, and endlessly fascinating period of upheaval and transformation. This new volume in the ... series offers comprehensive coverage...
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The bestselling author of American Mania, eminent neuroscientist Peter C. Whybrow here addresses overconsumption in modern society. Using personal stories and the latest research, Whybrow illuminates the path toward a sustainable market society of responsible and well-tuned individuals.
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Accessible exploration of the noteworthy scientific career of James Smithson, who left his fortune to establish the Smithsonian Institution. James Smithson is best known as the founder of the Smithsonian Institution, but few people know his full and fascinating story. He was a widely respected chemist and mineralogist and a member of the Royal Society, but in 1865, his letters, collection of 10,000 minerals, and more than 200 unpublished papers were...
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“I did not go to Nicaragua intending to write a book, or, indeed, to write at all: but my encounter with the place affected me so deeply that in the end, I had no choice.” So notes Salman Rushdie in his first work of nonfiction, a book as imaginative and meaningful as his acclaimed novels.
In The Jaguar Smile, Rushdie paints a brilliantly sharp and haunting portrait of the people, the politics, the terrain, and the poetry of “a country in which...
32) The Somnambulist
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Meet Edward Moon, an illusionist and detective who operates solely with the aid of his hulking, mute sidekick.
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In this fast-paced epic, best-selling historian and master storyteller Arthur Herman spotlights two giants of the 20th century. Gandhi & Churchill shows how their 40- year rivalry revolutionized India and the British Empire, paving the way for a new era. Gandhi championed India's independence, Churchill the British Empire.
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Jack McColl novels volume 4
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English
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In the fourth and final installment of David Downing's spy series, Jack McColl is sent to Soviet Russia, where the civil war is coming to an end. The Bolsheviks have won but the country is in ruins. With the hopes engendered by the revolution hanging by a thread, plots and betrayals abound. London, 1921: Ex-Secret Service spy Jack McColl is in prison serving time for assaulting a cop. McColl has been embittered by the Great War; he feels betrayed...
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Snowed in at a country manor, former Scotland Yard inspectors John Madden and Angus Sinclair find themselves trapped in the company of a murderer. On a trip into Winchester, former chief inspector Angus Sinclair learns of a tragedy that has taken place in the village he is staying in. Beloved church organist Greta Hartmann has slipped and fallen to her death in a shallow creek, and while investigations conclude it to be an accident, her friend and...
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Keith Jeffery's fascinating and revealing account draws on a wealth of archival materials never before seen by any outsider to unveil the inner workings of the world's first spy agency. Britain's Secret Intelligence Service-or MI6-was born a century ago amid rising fears of foreign military powers, especially Germany. The next 40 years saw MI6 taking an increasingly important-and, until now, largely hidden-role in shaping the history of Europe and...
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Salman Rushdie's “Imaginary Homelands” is an important record of one writer's intellectual and personal oddyssey. The seventy essays collected here, written over the last ten years, cover an astonishing range of subjects, the literature of the received masters and of Rushdie's contemporaries; the politics of colonialism and the ironies of culture; film, politicians, the Labour Party, religious fundamentalism, in America, racial prejudice; and...
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The author of Seven Daughters of Eve returns with a lively account of how all dogs are descended from a mere handful of wolves. How did wolves evolve into dogs? When did this happen, and what role did humans play? Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes used the full array of modern technology to explore the canine genetic journey that likely began when a human child decided to adopt a wolf cub thousands of years ago. In the process, he discovered that only...
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Acclaimed British historian Anthony Everitt delivers a compelling account of the former orphan who became Roman emperor in A.D. 117 after the death of his guardian Trajan. Hadrian strengthened Rome by ending territorial expansion and fortifying existing borders. And-except for the uprising he triggered in Judea-his strength-based diplomacy brought peace to the realm after a century of warfare.
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A History of the Church through its Buildings takes the reader to meet people who lived through momentous religious changes in the very spaces where the story of the Church took shape. Buildings are about people, the people who conceived, designed, financed, and used them. Their stories become embedded in the very fabric itself, and as the fabric is changed through time in response to changing use, relationships, and beliefs, the architecture becomes...