.jpg)
Every Sunday Tanzanite highlights books that will be released during the upcoming week. She hopes you will find something you will enjoy!
Once again, I am a day late - blame my long weekend in Charlotte with hubby for the delay...
The dramatic story of Emperor Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Fyodorovna, the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia—A penetrating and deeply personal study that gives profound psychological insight into their marriage and how it shaped the events that engulfed them.
There are few characters in history about whom opinion has been more divided than the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, and his wife the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna. On one hand, they are venerated as saints, innocent victims of Bolshevik assassins, and on the other they are impugned as the unwitting harbingers of revolution and imperial collapse, blamed for all the ills that befell the Russian people in the 20th century. Theirs was also a tragic love story; for whatever else can be said of them, there can be no doubt that Alix and Nicky adored one another. Soon after their engagement, Alix wrote in her fiancé’s diary: “Ever true and ever loving, faithful, pure and strong as death”—words which met their fulfillment twenty-four years later in a blood-spattered cellar in Ekaterinburg.
Through the letters and diaries written by the couple and by those around them, Virginia Rounding presents an intimate, penetrating, and fresh portrayal of these two complex figures and of their passion—their love and their suffering. She explores the nature and possible causes of the Empress’s ill health, and examines in depth the enigmatic triangular relationship between Nicky, Alix and their ‘favourite,’ Ania Vyrubova, protégée of the infamous Rasputin, extracting the meaning from words left unsaid, from hints and innuendoes..
The story of Alix and Nicky, of their four daughters known collectively as ‘OTMA’ and of their hemophiliac little boy Alexei, is endlessly fascinating, and Rounding makes these characters come alive, presenting them in all their human dimensions and expertly leading the reader into their vanished world.
This student-friendly volume brings together English translations of the main narrative sources, and a small number of other relevant documents, for the reign of Roger II, the founder of the kingdom of Sicily. The kingdom created by King Roger was the most centralized and administratively advanced of the time, but its genesis was fraught with difficulty as the king sought to extend his power from the island of Sicily and Calabria into other parts of the south Italian mainland. This struggle, that lasted from 1127 until 1140, is graphically revealed by the two main texts in this book. A number of other texts illuminate key aspects of the reign: the relationship with the papacy, the German invasion of 1137 that came close to toppling the king's rule, the expansion of Sicilian power into the Abruzzi in 1140, and the law and administration of the kingdom, often seen as a model for the growth of effective government in the twelfth century. Despite the great intrinsic interest of the reign of King Roger, these texts have never appeared in English translation before. This will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of medieval Europe.
August 28, 1814. Dressed in black, James Madison mourns the nation's loss. Smoke rises from the ruin of the Capitol before him; a mile away stands the blackened shell of the White House. The British have laid waste to Washington City, and as Mr. Madison gazes at the terrible vista, he ponders the future-his country's defeat or victory-in a war he began over the unanimous objections of his political adversaries. As we approach its bicentennial, the War of 1812 remains the least understood of America's wars. To some it was a conflict that resolved nothing, but to others, it was our second war of independence, settling once and for all that America would never again submit to Britain. At its center was James Madison-our most meditative of presidents, yet the first one to declare war. And at his side was the extraordinary Dolley, who defined the role of first lady for all to follow, and who would prove perhaps her husband's most indispensable ally.
In this powerful new work, drawing on countless primary sources, acclaimed historian Hugh Howard presents a gripping account of the conflict as James and Dolley Madison experienced it. Mr. and Mrs. Madison's War rediscovers a conflict fought on land and sea-from the shores of the Potomac to the Great Lakes-that proved to be a critical turning point in American history.
The acclaimed author of Are We Rome? brings his highly praised blend of deep research, colorful travelogue, and insightful political analysis to a new history of the Inquisition.
We think of the Inquisition as a holy war fought in the Middle Ages. But, as Cullen Murphy shows in this provocative new book, not only did its offices survive into the twentieth century, in the modern world its spirit is more influential than ever. Traveling from freshly opened Vatican archives to the detention camps of Guantánamo to the filing cabinets of the Third Reich, he traces the Inquisition and its legacy.
God’s Jury encompasses the diverse stories of the Knights Templar, Torquemada, Galileo, and Graham Greene. Established by the Catholic Church in 1231, the Inquisition continued in one form or another for almost seven hundred years. Though associated with the persecution of heretics and Jews—and with burning at the stake—its targets were more numerous and its techniques more ambitious. The Inquisition pioneered surveillance and censorship and “scientific” interrogation. As time went on, its methods and mindset spread far beyond the Church to become tools of secular persecution.
With vivid immediacy and authority, Murphy puts a human face on a familiar but little-known piece of our past, and argues that only by understanding the Inquisition can we hope to explain the making of the present.
At the height of the Belle Epoque, François Dubon leads a well-ordered life in the bourgeois quarters of Paris’ eighth arrondissement. When not busy with his prosperous legal practice, he enjoys both a contented marriage to his aristocratic wife, Geneviève, and satisfying afternoon encounters with his mistress, Madeleine. He is never late for those five o’clock appointments nor for family dinner at seven—until a mysterious widow comes to his office with an unusual request.
The lady insists that only Dubon can save her innocent friend, an Army captain named Dreyfus who was convicted of spying and exiled to Devil’s Island two years earlier. Not wishing to disappoint the alluring widow, the gallant Dubon makes some perfunctory inquiries. But when he discovers the existence of a secret military file withheld from the defense during the trial, he embarks on an obsessive pursuit of justice that upends his complacent life.
Donning a borrowed military uniform, Dubon goes undercover into the murky world of counterespionage, where his erratic hours alarm his forbidding wife and make his mistress increasingly aloof. As the layers of deceit and double crosses mount, Dubon’s quixotic quest leads him into the heart of a dark conspiracy—one that endangers his own life and threatens to throw France herself into turmoil.
Based on the infamous Dreyfus Affair and enriched with a generous dose of classic noir, A Man in Uniform is a gripping and seductive mystery set against the gilded years of late nineteenth-century Paris.
The first of two epic novels which tell the story of one of the most charismatic heroes history has ever known - Spartacus, the gladiator slave who took on and nearly defeated the might of Rome, during the years 73-71 BC.
In historical terms we know very little about Spartacus the man - partly because most contemporary Roman historians were keen to obliterate his memory and prevent him from attaining mythic status. This of course is grist to the novelist's mill. Ben Kane's brilliant novel begins in the Thracian village to which Spartacus has returned, after escaping from life as an auxiliary in the Roman army. But here he quickly falls foul of his overlord, the Thracian king, who has set his heart on Dionysian priestess, Ariadne - later to become wife of Spartacus. Betrayed again to the Romans by his jealous king, Spartacus - and with him Ariadne - are taken in captivity to the school of gladiators at Capua. it is here - against the unbelievable brutality of gladiatorial life - that Spartacus and Crixus the Gaul plan the audacious overthrow of their Roman masters, escaping to Vesuvius, where they recruit and train a huge slave army - an army which will keep the might of Rome at bay for two years and create one of the most extraordinary legends in history. SPARTACUS; THE GLADIATOR takes the story up to the moment when the slave army has inflicted its first great defeat on Rome.
1072 AD The Normans have captured England. The Turks have captured a Norman knight. And in order to free him, a Frank warrior named Vallon must capture four rare hawks. In the company of a Sicilian scholar and an English falconer, Vallon sets off a heart-stopping odyssey to the far ends of the earth - from Greenland to Russia to Constantinople, across raging Arctic seas and blood-drenched battlefields. Braving Viking warlords, vengeful Normans, and the unforgiving elements, Vallon and his comrades must track down their quarry one by one in a relentless race against time. Ten years in the making, Hawk Quest is high adventure in the grand tradition of Bernard Cornwell and Robyn Young, an epic story packed with visceral combat, marvellous period detail, and gripping suspense. The scale is huge. The journey is incredible. The history is real. This is Hawk Quest.
In this book Rupert Matthews puts forward his ground breaking new theories on the collapse of the post-Roman order in Britain and the formation of England. Drawing on newly analysed written sources and the growing mass of archaeological finds he presents a very different picture of post-Roman Britain than that usually put forward. In place of the anarchy and mayhem, Rupert suggests that Romanised governmental structures managed to survive the economic collapse of the 5th century and the population collapse of the early sixth century to emerge in new and barbarianised form in the later sixth century. The key figure in this story was Ceawlin, King of Wessex in the 570s. It was he who finally smashed the old order with his ambitious grab for power and who thus opened the way to the creation of the England that we know today with its English culture, English language and English character.
The Spartacus one looks interesting.
January 16, 2012 3:21 PM
I want "A Man in Uniform" ... speaking of the book only ;D
January 17, 2012 7:50 AM