"In his brief, focused chapters, Jack Wills also shows us ordinary life in the world of 1688. We join the great caravans of Muslims on their annual pilgrimage from Damascus and Cairo to Mecca, witness the suicidal exaltation of Russian Old Believers, and walk the pungent streets of Amsterdam. There we enter the Rasp House, where vagrants, beggars, and petty criminals labored to produce powdered brazilwood for the local dyeworks. And we meet hitherto unnoticed but unforgettable characters: Constantine Phaulkon, a Greek adventurer whose efforts to advance French interests as well as his own with the court of Siam ended in betrayal and a grisly death; and Dona Teresa, a beauty at fifteen, whose chaste loves stirred local legend in the wild mining town of Potosi.". "Told with verve, color, and insight, Wills's book captures an historical moment in which the world seems both strange and familiar, when the global connections of power, money, and belief were ushering in the modern age."--BOOK JACKET.
"The text covers seven major themes: the pre modern world, the effects of epidemic disease on history, the rise of the great trading empire during early modern times, the establishment of western global domination during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and resistance to that domination, the causes and effects of modern revolutions, discussions of the United States and its role in the world during the twentieth century, and finally the process of globalization" -- Page x.
Former President Bush and his national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, tell the story of tumultuous years. Here are behind-the-scenes accounts of critical meetings in the White House and of summit conferences in Europe and the United States, interspersed with excerpts from Mr. Bush's diary. We are given fresh and intriguing views of world leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, and Francois Mitterrand - and witness the importance of personal relationships in diplomacy. There is the dramatic description of how President Bush put together the alliance against Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. There are the intensive diplomatic exchanges with Beijing following the events of Tiananmen Square, and the intricate negotiations leading up to German reunification. And there is the sometimes poignant, sometimes grim portrayal of Gorbachev's final years in power.
Michael Seggie was a young boy when he first watched the gothic ABC-TV soap opera, "Dark Shadows," in 1967. An unusual daytime soap, it was filled with ghosts, witches, warlocks, werewolves, and a 175-year old vampire, Barnabas Collins. In 1970, he discovered that the brooding mansion used as the exterior for "Collinwood," was located in nearby Newport, R.I. Named "Seaview Terrace," it was the home for two private boarding schools. With his first visit to Newport, and the mansion, his research on the house and the original owners, began. So much has been written about the famous Gilded Age mansions of Newport, such as "The Breakers," "Marble House," "The Elms," and "Belcourt Castle," but of "Seaview Terrace," its history was unknown. Michael Seggie is the only one to uncover its fascinating history. "In the Shadows of a Newport Mansion" is also about Michael's lifelong interest in Newport, and his time as a tour guide at "Belcourt Castle," and his humorous 12 years as a tour guide with the mansions of the Preservation Society of Newport County. Michael writes of Gloria Vanderbilt, and the movie star, Joan Crawford. And, too, there is the former First lady, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the most famous Newporter. He writes too, of the infamous Claus von Bulow, the socialite acquitted of trying to murder his rich wife, to marry his mistress, the star of "Dark Shadows." Old Crow Whiskey, A beloved Chaplain of the USMA, West Point, Newport's Queen of Wit, A tragic Newport Fireman, A Society beauty who lost her mind, A Mansion of Broken Dreams ... All, "In the Shadows of a Newport Mansion."--Amazon.
This book argues for the existence of a distinctive Indian Ocean world constituted by trade links and commercial networks established over several centuries. Professor McPherson shows that for millennia the Indian Ocean had a profound influence on the lives of the people who lived on its shores. Fishermen, sailors and merchants travelled its waters, linking the world's earliest civilizations from Africa to East Asia in a complex web of relationships. Trade underpinned these relationships but the Ocean was also a highway for the exchange of religious cultures and technologies, giving the Indian Ocean region an identity as a largely self-contained 'world'. The expansion of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam helped define the boundaries of this 'world' which, by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was one of the most prosperous and culturally complex regions on earth. By the sixteenth century Europeans were part of this world as partners in trade with the indigenous peoples, but from the eighteenth century this economic relationship changed as the economies of the Indian Ocean world integrated with the capitalist economies of the West. The change from commercialism to capitalism ended the insularity of the Indian Ocean world and began its integration, as a region, into the global economy and its territorial division amongst various European powers. This transition altered the ancient web of regional relationships and, with the arrival of European settlers and rulers, added yet another layer to the palimpsest of cultures which flourished on the shores of the Ocean. By the twentieth century the Ocean was no longer a major force binding the peoples on its shores in a selfconscious entity, but the legacy of the past is still evident in their common religious, cultural and historical experience. This is an important new text which synthesizes a huge chronological and historiographical range into its compact frame.
