Showing titles in 19th Century

In the early 19th century, a series of murders took place in and around London that shocked the whole of England. The appalling nature of the crimes - a brutal slaying in the gambling netherworld, the slaughter of two entire households, and the first of the modern lust-murders - was magnified not only by the lurid atmosphere of an age in which candlelight gave way to gaslight but also by the efforts of some of the keenest minds of the period to uncover the most gruesome details of the killings.

In 1865 a broken Admiral Robert FitzRoy locked himself in his dressing room and cut his throat. His grand meteorological project had failed. Yet only a decade later, FitzRoy’s storm-warning system and ‘forecasts’ would return, the model for what we use today. In an age when a storm at sea was evidence of God’s great wrath, 19th-century meteorologists had to fight against convention and religious dogma.

On Every Tide is a wide-ranging and challenging reassessment of the Irish diaspora. Drawing on the latest groundbreaking research, and his own career-long engagement with the complexities of Irish identity, Sean Connolly reveals the forces that compelled millions of Irish men and women to abandon their homeland, and explores their new lives in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

Beginning with the birth of the nation, slavery divided and caused conflict for the United States of America, worsening during the country's early decades as the practice became more economically vital. Finally, in 1861, the American Civil War erupted after the election of President Abraham Lincoln. Never acknowledging the South’s right to secede, Lincoln and the North fought the South through four long, bloody, destructive years; much longer than anyone thought the war would last.

On January 22, 1879, the British Army in South Africa was swept aside by the seemingly unstoppable Zulu warriors at the Battle of Isandlwana. Nearby, at a remote outpost on the Buffalo River, a single company of the 24th Regiment and a few dozen recuperating hospital patients were passing a hot, monotonous day. It seemed certain that the Rorke's Drift detachment would share the same fate. And yet, against incredible odds, the British managed to defend their station.

From the beginnings of big-city police work to the rise of the Mafia, Rogues' Gallery is a colorful and captivating history of crime and punishment in the bustling streets of Old New York.

To get a sense of the kind of prestige that Claude Monet enjoys within the art world, one need only learn that his Le Bassin Aux Nympheás (1919) - from his series of paintings featuring water lilies - sold for the equivalent of more than $70 million. This is a staggering price, especially considering that early in his life, Monet had been so poor and debt-ridden that some of his paintings were taken from him by creditors.

Situated about 25 miles off the Tanzanian coast, Zanzibar, with its sultans and spices, merchants and mosques, dhows and doorways of richly carved timber, has captured the imagination of travelers and writers for hundreds of years. It has long evoked a romantic mystique, calling up images of an island paradise in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Its gleaming Muslim Swahili town, built of white coralline limestone, can trace approximately 1,000 years of maritime trading.

America in the 1920s was a place of drama, tension and hedonism. It glittered and seduced: jazz, flappers, the birth of Hollywood, and a glamorous gangster- led crime scene flourishing under prohibition. But it was also punctuated by momentous events such as the political show trials and the huge Ku Klux Klan march. But it also produced a splendid array of writers, musicians and film stars, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Bessie Smith and Charlie Chaplin.

This audiobook presents a fundamental reinterpretation of changes to crime control in the age of the new police. It breaks new ground by providing a highly detailed, empirical analysis of everyday crime control in Victorian provincial cities - revealing the tremendous activity that ordinary people displayed in responding to crime - alongside a rich survey of police organization and policing in practice. 

Perhaps the most famous and most destructive eruption in modern history was the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. Even without the instantaneous forms of communication that are now available, the world watched in wonder for new updates about a tiny South Pacific island. And though few of them would ever go there, Krakatoa remained a source of fascination for the much of the world for the next 50 years.

The story of Catholic Emancipation begins with the Anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in 1780, fuelled by a reduction in Penal Laws against Catholics harking back to the 16th century. Fifty years later, the passing of the Emancipation Bill was hailed as a 'bloodless revolution'. Yet, had the Irish Catholics been a 'millstone', or were they the prime movers?

J. E. B. Stuart: The Soldier and the Man is the first thoroughly scrutinized study of the life and service of the Civil War's most famous cavalryman. James Ewell Brown Stuart led the Army of Northern Virginia's cavalry to the all-but-complete satisfaction of his superiors. Being human, Stuart occasionally underperformed.

In this concluding volume of the Savarkar series, exploring a vast range of original archival documents from across India and outside it, in English and several Indian languages, historian Vikram Sampath brings to light the life and works of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, one of the most contentious political thinkers and leaders of the twentieth century. 

In 1799, a French Army officer was rebuilding the defenses of a fort on the banks of the Nile when he discovered an ancient stele fragment bearing a decree inscribed in three different scripts. So begins one of the most familiar tales in Egyptology - that of the Rosetta Stone and the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. This book draws on fresh archival evidence to provide a major new account of how the English polymath Thomas Young and the French philologist Jean-François Champollion vied to be the first to solve the riddle of the Rosetta.

In this widely praised book, Annik LaFarge presents a very different Frédéric Chopin from the melancholy, sickly, Romantic figure that has predominated for so long. The artist she discovered is, instead, a purely independent - and endlessly relevant - spirit: an innovator who created a new musical language; an autodidact who became a spiritually generous, trailblazing teacher; a stalwart patriot during a time of revolution, pandemic, and exile.

D'Ajaccio à Sainte-Hélène, en passant par le Grand-Saint-Bernard, Austerlitz, Moscou, Waterloo, l'île d'Elbe, André Castelot a mis ses pas dans ceux de Napoléon Bonaparte pour respirer et restituer le décor de son prodigieux destin. Exploitant et mettant en valeur, avec son art célèbre du récit qui visualise les événements, les lieux et les personnages, une immense masse d'archives, de mémoires et de correspondance parfois inédits ou oubliés, il a écrit cette monumentale biographie si vivante, si colorée, si passionnante que depuis trente ans, son public se renouvelle sans cesse.

From the best-selling author of Natasha's Dance, The Europeans is a richly enthralling, panoramic cultural history of 19th-century Europe, told through the intertwined lives of three remarkable people: a great singer, Pauline Viardot, a great writer, Ivan Turgenev, and a great connoisseur, Pauline's husband, Louis. Their passionate, ambitious lives were bound up with an array of writers, composers and painters all trying to make their way through the exciting, prosperous and pan-European culture that came about as a result of huge economic and technological change.

Join narrator Charles King in this fantastic guide to one of the most important periods in European history, as he talks us through more than 100 amazing facts about the Napoleonic Wars. With individual chapters covering subjects such as an overview of the conflict, military commanders and notable figures, weaponry used and developed during the time and many more, this is a perfect audiobook to add to any military historian’s collection.

"Lee Is Trapped, and Must Be Taken": Eleven Fateful Days After Gettysburg: July 4 to July 14, 1863 focuses on the immediate aftermath of the battle of Gettysburg and addresses how Maj. Gen. George G. Meade organized and motivated his Army of the Potomac in response to President Abraham Lincoln's mandate to bring about the "literal or substantial destruction" of Gen. Robert E. Lee's retreating Army of Northern Virginia.