Mills Mansions and Mergers

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John Guy

This book is a dramatic reinterpretation of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots. Crowned Queen of Scotland at nine months of age, and Queen of France at 16, at 18 Mary ascended the throne that was her birthright and began ruling one of the most fractious courts in Europe, riven by religious conflict and personal lust for power. She rode out at the head of an army in both victory and defeat; saw her second husband assassinated, and married his murderer. She was a woman so magnetic, so brilliant in conversation that her cousin, Elizabeth I, refused to meet her in the course of their lifetimes for fear of being overshadowed or outwitted. At 25 she entered captivity at the hands of her rival queen, from which only death would release her. The life of Mary Stuart is one of unparalleled drama and conflict. From the labyrinthine plots laid by the Scottish lords to wrest power for themselves, to the efforts made by Elizabeth's ministers to invalidate Mary's legitimate claim to the English throne, John Guy returns to the archives to explode the myths and correct the inaccuracies that surround this most fascinating monarch. He also explains a central mystery: why Mary would have consented to marry - only three months after the death of her second husband, Lord Darnley - the man who was said to be his killer, the Earl of Bothwell. He also solves, through careful re-examination of the Casket Letters, the secret behind Darnley's spectacular assassination at Kirk o'Field. With great pathos, Guy illuminates how the imprisoned Mary's despair led to a reckless plot against Elizabeth - and thus to her own execution. The portrait that emerges is not of a political pawn or a manipulative siren, but of a shrewd and charismatic young ruler who relished power and, for a time, managed to hold together a fatally unstable country. The book is a work of historical scholarship that offers radical new interpretations of an ancient story. - Publisher.

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Edward P. Kohn

The 1896 New York heat wave that killed almost 1,500 people in ten oppressively hot days coincided with a pitched presidential contest between William McKinley and the upstart Democrat William Jennings Bryan, who arrived in New York City at the height of the catastrophe. As historian Edward P. Kohn shows, Bryan's hopes for the presidency began to flag amidst the abhorrent heat just as a bright young police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt was scrambling to mitigate the dangerously high temperatures.

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[by] Elizabeth Longford

Capaciously documented, this first volume of a two-volume life of the Duke of Wellington places its author, Lady Longford (author also of Queen Victoria) in the front ranks of 20th century military and political biographers. Through family connections with Wellington's inadequate wife, Kitty Pakenham, she has had access to hitherto untapped family records: her knowledge of his campaigns has enabled her to write knowledgeably of his defeats, victories and frustrations, his brutal discipline and his concern for the welfare of men who called him ""Nosey"" and followed him with grudging confidence. Three months older than Napoleon, Arthur Wesley or Wellesley was born in Ireland in 1769, the second--and awkward--son of a noble family. Poor and without apparent talents, he joined the army and in an appallingly mismanaged winter campaign in 1794 against the French learned how not to run an army or fight a war. Ordered to India in 1796, Arthur made money and enemies and achieved fame, now often forgotten, by defeating Tipoo, Sultan of Mysore, and the ""tumultous"" Mahrattas. Returning to England in 1806, he became involved with the notorious Hariette Wilson and made the mistake of marrying his former Irish sweetheart, Kitty Pakenham. Seat to Spain in 1808 when Napoleon prepared his own downfall by putting his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne, Arthur, after six heartbreaking years drove tile French from the Peninsula, for which he was made Duke of Wellington. On Napoleon's escape from exile in Elba in 1815 he was appointed commander of the allied armies in Belgium, meeting and defeating his old enemy at Waterloo on June 16: the author's account of this battle is one of the best parts of tin amazing book. It is at once stirring biography and stimulating social history, dispassionate and sympathetic, and even it' Wellington hasn't quite the instantaneously identifiable appeal of Victoria, still it will he read widely, Implemented by its selection for April by the Book-of-the-Month Club.

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S.D. Smith

"The eponymous hero of this book is an old man, who lived in a small provincial town, remote from fashionable centres of polite society. Yet the letters of Joseph Symson provide a rare glimpse into the public and private life of an inland merchant who was also a member of England's urban elite. The volume reveals how Symson organised his trade and attempted to organise his family. It details his responses to the political, economic, and religious uncertainties of the early years of the eighteenth century." "Joseph Symson's letter book inhabits two worlds. The first is an insular, closely-knit society of prominent north west mercantile and ecclesiastical families - a world of connection, regional affiliation and kinship. From his home in Kendal, Symson documents aspects of Lakeland society before the advent of tourism and Wordsworth." "The volume provides a detailed account of the Symson family, and an appendix profiles some 200 correspondents, including many north west families."--BOOK JACKET.