The overwhelming victory of Henry V's English army at Agincourt in October 1415 has passed into myth as one of the defining events of the Hundred Years War against France, as a feat of arms outshining the previous famous English victories at Crcy and Poitiers, and as a milestone in English medieval history. This epic story of how an exhausted, outnumbered army, commanded by an inspirational leader, crushed a huge French force on French soil has given rise to legends and misconceptions that...

This historical study examines the life and military accomplishments of the medieval knight who inspired one of Shakespeare's most beloved characters.One of the most famous English knights of the Hundred Years War, Sir John Fastolf is widely thought to be a model for Shakespeare's immortal character, Sir John Falstaff. In The Real Falstaff, historian Stephen Cooper examines the link in full, shedding light on his story as well as the declining English fortu...

It was the home of a knight, a baron, a viscount, two marquises and nine earls. The family had estates not only in South Yorkshire, but also in North Yorkshire, the Midlands and Ireland, at their greatest extent covering nearly 120,000 acres. One head of household was beheaded. Another saw one of the last wolves in the British Isles. One owner built the Palladian mansion at Wentworth, which has the longest frontage of any country mansion in Britain, and was one of the earliest growers of p...

In Florence cathedral hangs a remarkable portrait by Uccello of Sir John Hawkwood, the English soldier of fortune who commanded the Florentine army at the age of 70 and earned a formidable reputation as one of the foremost mercenaries of the late middle ages. His life is an amazing story. He rose from modest beginnings in an Essex village, fought through the French campaigns of Edward III, went to Italy when he was 40 and played a leading role in ceaseless strife of the city-states that do...

Lieutenant Nowell Oxland, killed at Gallipoli in 1915 aged just 24, wrote poems and stories deeply rooted in place. He is unknown bar one poem Farewell, published anonymously in The Times nine days after his death. A native of Cumberland, he wrote it on the way to war, his heart longing for home:'There's a pool for which I'm grieving,Near the water-ouzel's home....And the curlews faintly crying,'Mid the wastes...

Psychiatry by Ten Teachers follows the highly-praised and successful ‘Ten Teachers’ tradition of providing the key information in a chosen specialty as required by the medical undergraduate, junior doctor and trainee GP, written by ten respected experts in the field. With medical students closely involved in the text’s development from the outset the text focuses on what the medical student and junior really need to know, with a clear rationale for the inclusion of every topic dis...

This volume assembles for the first time a staggering multiplicity of reflections and readings of John Fante’s 1939 classic, Ask the Dust, a true testament to the work’s present and future impact.The contributors to this work—writers, critics, fans, scholars, screenwriters, directors, and others—analyze the provocative set of diaspora tensions informing Fante’s masterpiece that distinguish it from those accounts of earlier East Coast migrations and minglings. A must-read f...

How does a bacterial cell grow during the division cycle? This question is answered by the codeveloper of the Cooper-Helmstetter model of DNA replication. In a unique analysis of the bacterial division cycle, Cooper considers the major cell categories (cytoplasm, DNA, and cell surface) and presents a lucid description of bacterial growth during the division cycle. The concepts of bacterial physiology from Ole Maaløe's Copenhagen school are presented throughout the book and are applied to s...

"Fante was my god." -Charles BukowskiIt's not every day that a writer, almost unheard of in his lifetime, emerges twenty years after his death as a voice of his generation. But then again, there aren't many writers with such irrepressible genius as John Fante.The John Fante Reader is the important next step in the reintroduction of this influential author to modern audiences. Combining excerpts from his novels and stories, as well as his never-befo...

To date, there are only a couple dozen or so books specifically about the Presidency of George W. Bush. Political operatives, members of the media, and former administration officials have written most of the volumes. Additionally, the early books on the Bush presidency focus on the various aspects and dimensions of the “War on Terror.” In essence, these studies challenge the justification of our deployment, the “Bush doctrine” and the assumptions of nation building. Few volumes focus on h...

In June 1916, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener set sail from Orkney on a secret mission to bolster the Russian war effort. Just a mile off land and in the teeth of a force 9 gale, HMS Hampshire suffered a huge explosion, sinking in little more than fifteen minutes. Crew and passengers numbered 749; only twelve survived. Kitchener's body was never found.Remembered today as the face of the famous First World War recruitment drive, at the height of his career Kitchener was fêted as Britai...

This "taut narrative" of the fourteenth-century conflict between England and France offers "a detailed, climactic account of a legendary battle" ( Publishers Weekly).The epic fourteenth-century Battle of Poitiers marked a major turn in the Hundred Years' War between England and France. Prince Edward, known to all as the Black Prince, not only won a surprising victory in his first campaign as commander, but managed the nearly impossible feat of taking the F...