This book focuses on the gradual deterioration of the British-American relationship that led to the American Revolution.Starting in 1721, the author explores how the relationship between Britain and America changed from one of reciprocal trust to one of mutual misunderstanding and suspicion. It analyses the impact of Britain’s changing relationship with the other great powers of Europe and discusses such matters as British concern about the national debt and French unease about Ang...

The Seven Years' War (1754–1763) was a pivotal event in the history of the Atlantic world. Perspectives on the significance of the war and its aftermath varied considerably from different cultural vantage points. Northern and western Indians, European imperial authorities, and their colonial counterparts understood and experienced the war (known in the United States as the French and Indian War) in various ways. In many instances the progress of the conflict was charted by cultural differe...

The inventor, the ladies’ man, the affable diplomat, and the purveyor of pithy homespun wisdom: we all know the charming, resourceful Benjamin Franklin. What is less appreciated is the importance of Franklin’s part in the American Revolution: except for Washington he was its most irreplaceable leader. Although aged and in ill health, Franklin served the cause with unsurpassed zeal and dedication. Jonathan R. Dull, whose decades of work on The Papers of Benjamin Franklin have given...

‘Captures the illogical romance of the sport’ NEW STATESMANEver wondered what it would be like to run your local football club?On the second oldest football pitch in the world, Jonathan Sayer stands atop a beer crate to address the assembled fans. As his initial optimism begins to slip through his fingers, the new chairman of Ashton United starts to realize the scale of the challenge ahead.With a fan-led mutiny on his hands, a star striker ...

Brought to you by Penguin.On the second oldest football pitch in the world, Jonathan Sayer stands atop a beer crate to address the assembled fans of Ashton United FC. As his initial optimism and disillusionment begin to slip through his fingers, the new co-chairman and co-owner (alongside his dad) starts to realise the scale of the challenge ahead.Battling to keep the club afloat, a record number of games without a win sees hope turn to despair as Jonathan ...

Although American independence was no miracle, the timing of the country’s independence and its huge scope, both political and territorial, do seem miraculous. In The Miracle of American Independence Jonathan R. Dull reconstructs significant events before, during, and after the Revolutionary War that had dramatic consequences for the future as the colonies sought independence from Great Britain. Without these surprising and unexpected results, Dull maintains, the country would hav...

The "acclaimed naval historian . . . takes the reader through the intricacies of warship design and construction in both French and British navies." — Historical Novel SocietyIn the series of wars that raged between France and Britain from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, seapower was of absolute vital importance. Not only was each nation's navy a key to victory, but was a prerequisite for imperial dominance. These ongoing struggles for overseas...

Imagine an impossible, far-away, parallel world where people always act on their most animalistic sexual urges. Now imagine that this is not just acceptable, but the basic norm for the whole of human society. It's a world where asking for fellatio is as common and uneventful as asking for the time. Where sleeping with your boss and coworkers is not a big deal. Where going out to eat usually involves eating out someone across the table, and where concerts routinely end in m...

In "Polite Conversation in Three Dialogues," Jonathan Swift explores the intricacies of social discourse through a series of witty and satirical exchanges between his characters. The book employs a theatrical format, allowing Swift to dissect the norms of polite society in the early 18th century with a keen eye for humor and an adeptness at irony. The dialogues reflect the era's emerging interest in civility, as they dissect the artificiality of polite conversation while simultaneously rev...

It had been hundreds of years since humanity and their Witch allies had been forced to retreat to the fortress cities after the disastrous war to eliminate the Magi Clans.Nuclear weapons had burned the skies, and Grand Magic pulled entire continents beneath the seas before the end, but the victory was secured, no Magi was left alive in their slowly recovering world.Or so they thought.Wolfe Noxus was born on the lower levels of a fortress city run by the Morgana Cove...

A devastating shipwreck, a prisoner of miniature empires, and a hilarious, biting mirror held up to human folly.Washed ashore after a violent storm, the ambitious surgeon Lemuel Gulliver awakens on the strange island of Lilliput—only to find himself bound to the earth by thousands of microscopic threads. His captors are a civilization of humans barely six inches tall, yet possessed of massive ambitions, petty rivalries, and deeply absurd political schisms. From med...

This first volume of Sermons by Jonathan Edwards on the Matthean Parables contains a previously unpublished series by Edwards on Jesus' Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, as found in Matthew 25. Edwards preached these sermons in 1737-38, in the lull between the Connecticut Valley Revival of 1734-35 and the Great Awakening, which started in Massachusetts in late 1740. Not only does this series have significance for its place in the Protestant evangelical awakening of the eighteenth ce...