Alice Sutcliffe was married in 1624 (her birth and death dates are not known, nor her exact marriage date) to John Sutcliffe who was Esquire to the Body of James I. He later became Groom of His Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Chamber at the Court of Charles I and it is suggested by some of her writings that Alice also had a role at Court. Meditations of Man’s Mortalitie consists of six prose meditations followed by a long poem of eighty-eight six-line stanzas on ’our losse by Adam, and our...

The only reliable clues available about Anne Wheathill’s life are those contained in her work, published in 1584. She describes herself as a gentlewoman, unmarried and a Protestant. She also refers to herself as poor and it has been suggested that she was one of a handful of women in Elizabeth I’s reign who attempted to earn money by writing. A handfull of holesome (though homelie) hearbs is an example of the English Reformer’s efforts to revise the Roman Catholic primers and Books of Hour...

This book examines the evolution, function, problems and prospects of private security companies in the maritime sector.The private security industry continues to evolve after its renaissance over the past few decades, first in Africa, and later in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite this, little academic work has been done to date on the role of private security in the maritime environment. This lacuna has become more pronounced as the threat of piracy, terrorism, and other acts of mari...

Loosely based on sensational press reports of a Moscow student’s murder by fellow revolutionists, The Possessed depicts the destructive chaos caused by outside agitators who move into a provincial town. The enigmatic and ideological Stavrogin dominates the novel, his magnetic personality influencing his tutor, the liberal intellectual poseur Stepan Verhovensky, and the teacher’s revolutionary son Pyotr, as well as other radicals. Stavrogin is portrayed as a man of strength without...

Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Curie, Einstein: all of these geniuses had one thing in common. They had not only the imagination to conceive great ideas but also the integrity and determination to pursue and defend their science whatever the obstacles.In spite of resistance and sometimes persecution by societies reluctant to let go of old views, these scientists persevered in their research and fought for the truths they discovered. While giving birth to the modern scientific...

From the moment he took office as governor in 1928 to the day an assassin’s bullet cut him down in 1935, Huey Long wielded all but dictatorial control over the state of Louisiana. A man of shameless ambition and ruthless vindictiveness, Long orchestrated elections, hired and fired thousands at will, and deployed the state militia as his personal police force. And yet, paradoxically, as governor and later as senator, Long did more good for the state’s poor and uneducated than any politician...

His books have sold millions, including classics like Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Yet C. S. Lewis was not always a literary giant of Christian faith. How did he evolve from staunch atheism to become one of the most beloved and renowned Christian authors of our time?Unlike most biographies of Lewis, which tend to focus on his childhood and dramatic conversion to Christianity, this book discusses the largely o...

Thirty years ago, the bestselling “letter to the government” Work in America was published to national acclaim, including front-page coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. It sounded an alarm about worker dissatisfaction and the effects on the nation as a whole.Now, based on thirty years of research, this new book sheds light on what has changed since then—and what hasn’t. This groundbreaking work will illuminate the new...

Reflections on America and the American experience as he has lived and observed it by the bestselling author of The Greatest Generation, whose iconic career in journalism has spanned more than fifty yearsFrom his parents’ life in the Thirties, on to his boyhood along the Missouri River and on the prairies of South Dakota in the Forties, into his early journalism career in the Fifties and the tumultuous Sixties, up to the present, this personal story is a r...

James M. McPherson, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom, and arguably the finest Civil War historian in the world, walks us through the site of the bloodiest and perhaps most consequential battle ever fought by Americans: the Battle of Gettysburg.The events that occurred at Gettysburg are etched into our collective memory, as they served to change the course of the Civil War and with it the course of history. More than any other plac...

In Breaking van Gogh, James Grundvig investigates the history and authenticity of van Gogh’s iconic Wheat Field with Cypresses, currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Relying on a vast array of techniques from the study of the painter’s biography and personal correspondence to the examination of the painting’s style and technical characteristics, Grundvig proves that the “most expensive purchase” housed in the Met is a fake.The Whe...

A "highly entertaining history [of] global hustling, cola wars and the marketing savvy that carved a niche for Coke in the American social psyche" (Publishers Weekly).Secret Formula follows the colorful characters who turned a relic from the patent medicine era into a company worth $80 billion. Award-winning reporter Frederick Allen's engaging account begins with Asa Candler, a nineteenth-century pharmacist in Atlanta who secured the rights to the...