History Ages

Alistair Horne is a leading scholar of French history. Here he trains his sights on one of the most compelling figures of the 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte. Far from a mere dictator, Napoleon was a military, political and social visionary whose legacy can still be felt in France and all over the world. Horne examines the one-time emperor at his most human, from his greatest triumphs to his disastrous failures.

Villains of All Nations explores the "Golden Age" of Atlantic piracy (1716-1726) and the infamous generation whose images underlie our modern, romanticized view of pirates.

As 1909 dawned, the greatest jewels of exploration - set at the world's frozen extremes - lay unclaimed: the North and South Poles and the so-called "Third Pole", the pole of altitude, located in unexplored heights of the Himalaya. Before the calendar turned, three expeditions had faced death, mutiny, and the harshest conditions on the planet to plant flags at the furthest edges of the Earth.

The digital environment has radically changed how and what students need and want to learn, but has educational delivery radically changed? Get ready to be challenged to accommodate today’s learners as opposed to allowing default classroom practices. With its touches of humor and choose-your-own-adventure approach, the audiobook encourages listeners to search for interesting, relevant or required material and then jump right in.

Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa’s most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage. Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure his life in days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed only with the courage of his family and a hard-won education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to an American university.

In this book, you'll learn how: data science, driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning, is yielding unprecedented business insights; blockchain has the potential to restructure the economy; drones and driverless vehicles are becoming essential tools; 3-D printing is making new business models possible; augmented reality is transforming retail and manufacturing; smart speakers are redefining the rules of marketing; and humans and machines are working together to reach new levels of productivity.

In the time period between the fall of Rome and the spread of the Renaissance across the European continent, many of today's European nations were formed, the Catholic Church rose to great prominence, some of history's most famous wars occurred, and a social class system was instituted that lasted over 1,000 years.

Imagine a world where your brain can be interrogated to learn your political beliefs, your thoughts can be used as evidence of a crime, and your own feelings can be held against you. A world where people who suffer from epilepsy receive alerts moments before a seizure, and the average person can peer into their own mind to eliminate painful memories or cure addictions.

It was a battle to control an emerging Los Angeles, fought by gangsters, pimps, vice lords, crooked politicians, and cops. As in a war-ravaged city, bodies dotted the town like discarded trash. For five decades, Los Angeles was a city overtaken by greed, ranging from the mayor's office to the gangster's and vice lord's passion for adding to their empires. Standing in their way was LAPD. While some chiefs went for the easy money, others stood their ground and fought back . Fueling the situation was Prohibition, that made criminals out of half the population. Underlying this was the Great ...

The Late Bronze Age Near East (c. 1500-1200 BCE) was a time and place where great kingdoms and empires vied for land and influence, playing high stakes diplomatic games, trading, and occasionally going to war with each other in the process. The Egyptians, Hittites, Babylonians, Assyrians, and several smaller Canaanite kingdoms were all part of this system, which was one of the first true “global” systems in world history and also one of the most materially prosperous eras in antiquity.

An ordinary Utah college student named Reggie Shaw fatally strikes two rocket scientists while texting and driving. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Matt Richtel follows Reggie from the moment of the tragedy, through the police investigation, the state's groundbreaking prosecution, and ultimately, Reggie's wrenching admission of responsibility. Richtel parallels Reggie's journey with leading-edge scientific findings regarding human attention and the impact of technology on our brains.

People are now exposed to more information than ever before, provided both by technology and by increasing access to every level of education. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything and all voices demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.

If you want to discover the captivating history of the Middle Ages, then pay attention...One of the least understood periods of European history occurred between the 6th century and the 14th or 15th century (depending on which historian you ask). Commonly called the Middle Ages, this was a time period of extreme change for Europe, beginning with the fall of the Western Roman Empire. To a continent that had seen a drastic shift in the power structure, the world seemed to be particularly harsh. Rome had been a major player across Europe for well over a millennium. Then it was gone.

A journey through the ideas that shaped the global economy What differentiates mercantilism from physiocracy? How did the theories of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes revolutionize economic thought? And what challenges do artificial intelligence, inequality, and climate change pose to modern economies? In this work, we explore the evolution of economic ideas from Antiquity to the challenges of the 21st century.

In the midst of the devastating Hundred Years’ War between France and England, Jean de Carrouges, a Norman knight, fresh from combat in Scotland finds his wife, Marguerite, accusing squire Jacques Le Gris of brutally raping her. A deadlocked court decrees a “trial by combat” that also leaves Marguerite’s fate in the balance. For if her husband loses the duel, she will be put to death as a false accuser. While enemy troops pillage the land, and rebellion and plague threaten the lives of all, Carrouges and Le Gris meet in full armor on a walled field in Paris.

Belisarius and Antonina were titans in the Roman world some 1,500 years ago. Belisarius was the most well-known general of his age, victor over the Persians, conqueror of the Vandals and the Goths, and as if this were not enough, wealthy beyond imagination. She made a name for herself by traveling with Belisarius on his military campaigns, deposing a pope, and scheming to disgrace important Roman officials. This unadulterated power and wealth did not mean that Belisarius and Antonina were universally successful in all that they undertook.

At the end of the ninth century, a large part of what is now England was controlled by the Vikings. In the early 900s, Edward led a great fight against the Viking armies, assisted by the English rulers of Mercia: Lord Æthelred and his wife Æthelflæd, who was also Edward's sister. Known to history as the Lady of the Mercians, she earned a reputation as a capable general who was feared by her enemies. In this authoritative biography, Tim Clarkson tells her remarkable life story from childhood to her vital role in saving England from the Vikings.

This book examines the struggle to get the novel "Ulysses" by James Joyce published despite efforts to censor the work as being obscene.

In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.

On a chilly November night in 1407, Louis of Orleans was murdered by a band of masked men. The crime stunned and paralyzed France since Louis had often ruled in place of his brother King Charles, who had gone mad. As panic seized Paris, an investigation began. In charge was the Provost of Paris, Guillaume de Tignonville, the city's chief law enforcement officer - and one of history's first detectives. As de Tignonville began to investigate, he realized that his hunt for the truth was much more dangerous than he ever could have imagined.