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The American Revolution was at once a war for independence, a civil war, and a world war, fought by neighbors on American farms and between global powers an ocean or more away. Historian Geoffrey C. Ward ably steers us through the international forces at play, telling the story not from the top down but from the bottom up—and through the eyes of not only our “Founding Fathers” but also those of ordinary soldiers, as well as underrepresented populations, asking who exactly was entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In this dazzling work of restorative history, Dr Anthony Delaney has traced the stories of people daring to challenge society's expectations, unearthing archives and court records to reveal the tragedies and the joys of queer life three centuries ago.

As commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, George Washington developed the strategy that won the Revolutionary War, but while Washington directed some battles, his strategy for the most part was carried out by his subordinates. In the spirit of the best military history and biography, Washington's Lieutenants tells the story of the generals who served under Washington from 1775 to 1781.

The revolutions that raged across Europe and the Americas over seven decades, from 1760 to 1825, created the modern world. Revolutionaries shattered empires, toppled social hierarchies, and birthed a world of republics. But old injustices lingered on and the powerful engines of revolutionary change created new and insidious forms of inequality. In The Age of Revolutions, historian Nathan Perl-Rosenthal offers the first narrative history of this entire era.

The captivating biography of the French aristocrat who balanced the demands of her society with passionate affairs of the heart and a brilliant life of the mind. Although today she is best known for her fifteen-year liaison with Voltaire, Gabrielle Emilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise Du Châtelet (1706-1749) was more than a great man's mistress. After marrying a marquis at the age of eighteen, she proceeded to fulfill the prescribed-and delightfully frivolous-role of a French noblewoman of her time.

The eighteenth century was a time of cultural friction: individuals began to assert greater independence and there was a new emphasis on social equality. In this surprising history, Lynn Hunt examines women's expanding societal roles, such as using tea to facilitate conversation between the sexes in Britain. In France, women also pushed boundaries by becoming artists, and printmakers' satiric takes on the elite gave the lower classes a chance to laugh at the upper classes and imagine the potential of political upheaval.

Born in 1781 in a small impoverished duchy of Germany, Julie's quiet life took a fairy-tale turn when she married into the Russian Imperial Family - the Romanovs. But this world of baroque splendour, of opulent palaces and grandeur, was no happily ever after. Taken to Russia at just fourteen, her marriage was hastily brokered to save the Saxe-Coburg duchy from financial ruin. Her husband, Grand Duke Konstantin, was cruel and abusive, Julie was uprooted from her home, family, language and culture.

One of France's greatest writers, Voltaire was frequently persecuted for his ideas and as a result, spent time in the famed Bastille. He fled his native land for England in 1726, at which time he witnessed the differences between the two countries. His celebrated Letters on England was first published in that nation in 1733 and contained 24 succinct letters on subjects ranging from religion and politics, to trade, the arts, philosophy, and science.

No one present at the Battle of Cape Lopez off the coast of West Africa in 1722 could have known that they were on the edge of history. This obscure yet fierce naval battle would have a monumental impact on British colonies and the future of slavery in America.

The word ‘Independence’ is, quite frankly, a very common word today – celebrated, venerated, and metaphorically worn as a badge by every citizen of a democracy, such as the United States. And it has a deep association with the word ‘Freedom.’ For any American today, these two form the basis of their fundamental rights – you were born with them, and you will die with them. But have you ever thought about the weight that these two words carry? Or the toll they left in their wake within the bloodied pages of the history of the United States?

George Frideric Handel’s Messiah is arguably the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. Adored by millions, it is performed each year by renowned choirs and orchestras, as well as by audiences singing along with the words on their cell phones. But this work of triumphant joy was born in a worried age. Britain in the early Enlightenment was a place of astonishing creativity but also the seat of an empire mired in war, enslavement, and conflicts over everything from the legitimacy of government to the meaning of truth.

Part biography, part memoir, part travelogue, Suchet draws on his own life and career as a foreign correspondent and news anchor to show how Beethoven’s music has accompanied him through the best and worst of times. It was with him as a music-loving and adventurous teenager, as a journalist entering Beirut in the grip of civil war, and as he has continued to explore the old cities of Bonn and Vienna, in search of the man behind the music. In this novel and compelling book, we see Beethoven brought vividly – and sometimes painfully – to life.

Kamehameha the Great became the sovereign monarch during a time of rapid transition for his islands. His rivals were no longer limited to the kings of Hawaii, Maui, Oahu and Kauai. Ambitious men had arrived from America, England, France, Portugal and Spain, either offering their war material and service personnel to the highest bidder or staking a claim of the islands for themselves and their masters.

Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World demonstrates that piracy is key to explaining the surprising longevity of Spain's Asian empire, which survived the Age of Revolutions and endured almost to the end of the nineteenth century. It offers important new insight into piracy's impact on the trajectory of globalization and European imperial expansion in maritime Asia.

Is there such a thing as a timeless classic? More than a decade ago, Rochelle Gurstein set out to explore and establish a solid foundation for the classic in the history of taste. To her surprise, that history instead revealed repeated episodes of soaring and falling reputations, rediscoveries of long-forgotten artists, and radical shifts in the canon, all of which went so completely against common knowledge that it was hard to believe it was true.

We are divided over the history of the United States, and one of the central dividing lines is the frontier. Was it a site of heroism? Or was it where the full force of an all-powerful empire was brought to bear on Native peoples? In this startlingly original work, historian Robert Parkinson presents a new account of ever-shifting encounters between white colonists and Native Americans.

¿Fue la Revolución Francesa el mito fundacional del mundo contemporáneo? ¿Recogía en su espíritu todo lo bueno y noble que habita en el alma humana? ¿Representaba el bien absoluto y cualquier cosa que se alejara de ella era el mal? Pocos acontecimientos históricos son tan conocidos como la Revolución Francesa, y, al mismo tiempo, tan poco entendidos. La historia se aceleró en Francia durante la última década del siglo XVIII y sus consecuencias no tardaron en afectar a todo el mundo gracias a Napoleón Bonaparte, el más ilustre de los hijos de la revolución.

The growth of piracy led to a major surge in attacks in the Caribbean and along North America’s Atlantic seaboard. With the fragile maritime economy of the Americas threatened with collapse, major ports were threatened and trade brought to a standstill, the British government finally declared war on the pirates. The Pirate Menace draws on extensive research, as well as a wide range of first-hand accounts, to produce a new history of the heyday of historical piracy.

Joséphine Bonaparte, future Empress of France; Térézia Tallien, the most beautiful woman in Europe; and Juliette Récamier, muse of intellectuals, had nothing left to lose. After surviving incarceration and forced incestuous marriage during the worst violence of the French Revolution of 1789, they dared sartorial revolt.

Spanning three centuries and eight thousand nautical miles, and compiled by a direct descendant of a sailor who waged war with pirates in the early nineteenth century, The Penguin Book of Pirates takes us behind the eye patches, the peg legs, and the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger and into the no-man’s-land of piracy that is rife with paradoxes and plot twists.