"Reveals the grisly conditions in which the mentally ill were kept . . . [and] harrowing details of the inhumane and gruesome treatment of these patients."— Daily MailIn the first half of the nineteenth century, treatment of the mentally ill in Britain and Ireland underwent radical change. No longer manacled, chained and treated like wild animals, patient care was defined in law and medical understanding, and treatment of insanity developed.Focusin...

Following an assassination attempt on George III in 1800, new legislation significantly altered the way the criminally insane were treated by the judicial system in Britain. This book explores these changes and explains the rationale for purpose-built criminal lunatic asylums in the Victorian era.Specific case studies are used to illustrate and describe some of the earliest patients at Broadmoor Hospital the Criminal Lunatic Asylum for England and Wales and the Criminal Lunatic Department ...

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2014Transnational Tolstoy renews and enhances our understanding of Tolstoy's fiction in the context of "World Literature," a term that he himself used in What is Art? (1897). It offers a fresh perspective on Tolstoy's fiction as it connects with writers and works from outside his Russian context, including Stendhal, Flaubert, Goethe, Proust, Lampedusa and Mahfouz.Foster provides an interlocking series of cross-cultural read...

Despite Vladimir Nabokov's hostility toward literary labels, he clearly recognized his own place in cultural history. In a fresh approach stressing Nabokov's European context, John Foster shows how this writer's art of memory intersects with early twentieth-century modernism. Tracing his interests in temporal perspective and the mnemonic image, in intertextual "reminiscences," and in individuality amid cultural multiplicity, the book begins with such early Russian novels as Mary, ...

In their famous debates, Lincoln and Douglas struggled with how to behave when an ethical conflict like slavery strained democracy’s commitment to rule by both consent and principle. What conscience demands and what it can persuade others to agree to are not always the same. Ultimately, this tragic limitation of liberalism led Lincoln to war.

In the first-ever Seven Seas history of the world's female buccaneers, Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas tells the story of women, both real and legendary, who through the ages sailed alongside—and sometimes in command of—their male counterparts. These women came from all walks of life but had one thing in common: a desire for freedom. History has largely ignored these female swashbucklers, until now. Here are their stories, from an...

The inspiration for the iconic film, this memoir by the father of a prodigy reflects on chess, competition, and childhood.Fred Waitzkin fell in love with chess during the Cold War–era showdown between Russian champion Boris Spassky and young American superstar Bobby Fischer. Twelve years later, Waitzkin's own son, Joshua, discovered chess in Washington Square Park and began displaying the telltale signs of a prodigy. Soon, crowds gathered to watch the six-year-old, ...

‘They didn’t see the house until they were practically on top of it. A single building emerging fromthe dark. It didn’t look welcoming. But the front door was open. The door was wide open.’Irongrove Lodge – a building with history; the very bricks and grounds imbued with the stories of those who have walked these corridors, lived in these rooms. These are the tales of an extraordinary house, a place that straddles our world and whatever lies beyond; a place that so...

In the late fall of 1095 Pope Urban II gave a speech in Clermont, France and set all of Europe into motion. As many as a hundred and fifty thousand people eventually responded to the call, leaving everything they knew behind to undertake what appeared to be a fool’s mission: marching several thousand miles into enemy territory to reconquer Jerusalem for Christendom. Against all odds they succeeded, creating a Christian outpost in the heart of the Islamic world that lasted for the better pa...

A biography of the two gifted Civil War commanders from a New York Times–bestselling author: "A great story . . . History at its best" ( Publishers Weekly).Their names are forever linked in the history of the Civil War, but Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant could not have been more dissimilar. Lee came from a world of Southern gentility and aristocratic privilege while Grant had coarser, more common roots in the Midwest. As a young officer traine...

“Lascelles has achieved the seemingly impossible: a concise and highly readable history of Catholic Popes that manages to be extremely entertaining and informative at the same time.”Gerald Posner, author of God’s Bankers"A brilliant book on a number of different levels. Lascelles has an engaging prose style and an amazing eye for detail and apposite anecdote. Surely only purblind Catholic zelanti will object to this outstanding analysis.”Frank...

A New York Times–bestselling author's account of the devastating military campaign that broke the Confederacy's back in the last months of the Civil War.In November 1864, just days after the reelection of President Abraham Lincoln, Gen. William T. Sherman vowed to "make Georgia howl." The hero of Shiloh and his 65,000 Federal troops destroyed the great city of Atlanta, captured Savannah, and cut a wide swath of destruction through Georgia and the Carolinas ...