France and the Grand Tour

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Harriet Martineau

"This new abridgement of the original 1838 edition offers a view of Jacksonian America. Here are Martineau's condemnation of slavery and her championship of abolition and women's rights; her incisive portraits of Jackson, Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Garrison, Emerson, and the Beechers; her observations of American schools, asylums, colleges, and prisons; and her eyewitness accounts of a presidential assassination attempt, a lynch mob, a slave auction, a Quaker wedding, and a Harvard commencement. Historian Daniel Feller, author of The Jacksonian Promise, introduces the narrative, identifies the major characters, and provides an index for easy use."--BOOK JACKET.

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William Murray

The Last Italian introduces us to some of the country's most intriguing familes and most extraordinary personalities. Since his childhood in Italy, William Murray has had a love affair with the country and its people. Here is his tribute to the Italy he so loves--a provocative, candid portrait that takes us off the beaten path and reveals an Italy not covered in any guidebook.

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Samuel Bawlf

"In The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, Samuel Bawlf masterfully recounts the drama of this historic expedition, offering intriguing insight into life at sea in the sixteenth century - from the dangers of mutiny and the lack of knowledge about wind and current to the arduous physical challenges faced every day by Drake's men. But it is Bawlf's asertion of Drake's whereabouts in the summer of 1579 that gives this book even greater originality. From an intensive study of maps of the period, Bawlf shows with certainty that Drake sailed all the way to Alaska - much farther than anyone has heretofore imagined - thereby rewriting the history of exploration in North America. He was, Bawlf claims, in search of the western entrance to the fabled Northwest Passage, at which he planned to found England's first colony, which could wrest control of the Pacific, and the wealth of the East Indies, from Spain. Drake's voyage was so far ahead of its time that another 200 years would pass before the eighteenth-century explorers of record reached the northwest coast of North America."--BOOK JACKET.

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Pat Rogers

This is the first full-length analysis of A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-26), long recognized as a key book for understanding the eighteenth century and as one of Daniel Defoe's most characteristic works. A principle aim of this book is to describe the elements that went into the making of the Tour. A substantial introduction sets out a conceptual framework for the chapters that follow, putting the Tour into the historical context of travel writing and the development of a literature of tourism. This work also reflects the concerns and methods of Defoe's oeuvre as a whole. Other aspects of the Tour's ideology are reviewed, notably its political bearings and its treatment of the South Sea Bubble of 1720, a national disaster that has strong personal overtones for Defoe. Finally, an attempt is made to illuminate the design of the work and the ways in which its formal structure supports Defoe's intellectual attitudes.