"Camilla Townsend's new book differs from all previous biographies of Pocahontas in capturing how similar seventeenth-century Native Americans were - in the way they saw, understood, and struggled to control their world - not only to the invading English, but also to ourselves." "Neither naive nor innocent, Indians like Pocahontas and her father, the powerful king Powhatan, confronted the vast might of the English with sophistication, diplomacy, and violence. Indeed, Pocahontas's life is a testament to the subtle intelligence that Native Americans, always aware of their material disadvantages, brought against the military power of the colonizing English. Resistance, espionage, collaboration, deception: Pocahontas's life is shown here as a road map of Native American strategies of defiance exercised in the face of overwhelming odds and in the hope of a semblance of independence worth the name." "Townsend's Pocahontas emerges - as a young child on the banks of the Chesapeake, an influential noblewoman visiting a struggling Jamestown, an English gentlewoman in London - for the first time in three dimensions, allowing us to see and sympathize with her people as never before."--BOOK JACKET.
Setting / LocationLondon & UK
Story EraModern Era
Protagonist / CorePocahontas and the Powhatan dilemma Lead Character
"Thomas Cromwell, chief architect of the English Reformation, served as minister of Henry VIII from 1531 to 1540, a period that saw more political and religious reform than any other time in Henry's thirty-seven-year reign. Thus the momentous events of the 1530s are generally (but not universally) attributed to Cromwell's agency. In this classroom biography, the first in a generation and the only one now in print, that judgment is largely accepted, though it is combined with earlier and more critical assessments that view Cromwell as a disciple of Machiavelli. One distinguishing feature of this study is its overview of Machiavellian thought, along with its overview of Marsilian thought. Marsilius of Padua, fourteenth-century political philosopher and author of Defensor Pacis, is widely recognized as the source of Cromwell's reformation ideas; but nowhere is Marsilius explicated. Thus, while this book is a biography, its focus is broader and its uses are more varied."--BOOK JACKET.
V.1: "The first volume of Richard Gwyn's definitive biography of John A. Macdonald follows his life from his birth in Scotland in 1815 to his emigration with his family to Kingston, Ontario, to his days as a young, rising lawyer, to his tragedy-ridden first marriage, to the birth of his political ambitions, to his commitment to the all-but-impossible challenge of achieving Confederation, to his presiding, with his second wife Agnes, over the first Canada Day of the new Dominion in 1867. Colourful, intensely human and with a full measure of human frailties, Macdonald was beyond question Canada's most important prime minister. This volume describes how Macdonald developed Canada's first true national political party, encompassing French and English and occupying the centre of the political spectrum. To perpetuate this party, Macdonald made systematic use of patronage to recruit talent and to bond supporters, a system of politics that continues to this day. Gwyn judges that Macdonald, if operating on a small stage, possessed political skills--of manipulation and deception as well as an extraordinary grasp of human nature--of the same calibre as the greats of his time, such as Disraeli and Lincoln. Confederation is the centerpiece here, and Gywn's commentary on Macdonald's pivotal role is original and provocative. But his most striking analysis is that the greatest accomplishment of nineteenth-century Canadians was not Confederation, but rather to decide not to become Americans. Macdonald saw Confederation as a means to an end, its purpose being to serve as a loud and clear demonstration of the existence of a national will to survive. The two threats Macdonald had to contend with were those of annexation by the United States, perhaps by force, perhaps by osmosis, and equally that Britain just might let that annexation happen to avoid a conflict with the continent's new and unbeatable power."--Publisher description. V.2: "John A. Macdonald, Canada's first and most important prime minister, is the man who made Confederation happen, who built this country over the next quarter century, and who shaped what it is today. From Confederation Day in 1867, where this volume picks up, Macdonald finessed a reluctant union of four provinces in central and eastern Canada into a strong nation, despite indifference from Britain and annexationist sentiment in the United States. But it wasn't easy. The wily Macdonald faced constant crises throughout these years, from Louis Riel's two rebellions through to the Pacific Scandal that almost undid his government and his quest to find the spine of the nation: the railroad that would link east to west. Gwyn paints a superb portrait of Canada and its leaders through these formative years and also delves deep to show us Macdonald the man, as he marries for the second time, deals with the birth of a disabled child, and the assassination of his close friend Darcy McGee, and wrestles with whether Riel should hang. Indelibly, Gwyn shows us Macdonald's love of this country and his ability to joust with forces who would have been just as happy to see the end of Canada before it had really begun, creating a must-read for all Canadians."--Publisher description.
"H. H. Asquith, Prime Minister during the first World War, famously said that the job of Prime Minister "is what its holder chooses and is able to make of it." Peter Hennessy's new book uses Asquith's remark to weigh the personalities and achievements of Britain's eleven post-war premiers, showing how each resident of 10 Downing Street has made the job his or her own.". "Hennessy analyses the special chemistry of life in Number 10, scrutinizing what the Prime Minister actually does and the way that Cabinet government is run, to build up a picture of the generally hidden nexus of influence and patronage surrounding the office. Hennessy has had access to many of the leading politicians themselves, as well as the key civil servants and journalists of each period, and draws extensively on a mass of recently declassified and sometimes electrifying archival material. He illuminates, often for the first time, precise Prime Ministerial attitudes toward, and authority over, nuclear weapons policy, the planning and waging of war, and the secret services, as well as dealing with governmental overload, the Suez crisis, and the "Soviet threat." He concludes with a controversial assessment of the relative performance of each Prime Minister since 1945 and a new specification for the premiership as it meets its fourth century."--BOOK JACKET.
"This is the first detailed study of the political significance of the seventeenth century's most notorious and sensational court scandal, the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. The book rejects earlier approaches to the history of court scandal, assuming neither that scandal inevitably undermined royal authority nor that courtiers' salacious behaviour was politically irrelevant. Instead, the book adopts a multilayered, interdisciplinary approach to the Overbury affair and its complex political meanings. It explores the factional politics that made and destroyed Overbury and his murderers, reconstructs the news culture through which information about the scandal circulated, analyses the creation and composition of the early Stuart 'public', and decodes the representations of the affair that were produced and consumed during 1615-16 and in subsequent decades. By situating the Overbury case in both short- and long-term political contexts, the book suggests that court scandal deserves a place among the cultural origins of the English revolution."--BOOK JACKET.
Pocahontas and the Powhatan dilemma by Camilla Townsend | Literally Just Books
