| The private lives of the Tudors: Uncovering the secrets of Britain's greatest dynasty by Tracy BormanAccording to historian Tracy Borman, the private lives of the Tudors weren't so private -- at least, in the modern sense of "privacy." In this thoroughly researched book, drawing on contemporary journals and correspondence as well as official documents, Borman traces the monarchs' personal lives from Henry VII to Elizabeth I. No royal personage passed a single moment unattended -- even when using the chamber pot. Though the dynasty has been portrayed in reams of nonfiction and fiction, The Private Lives of the Tudors offers the first up-close and personal account of these rulers. For an intriguing and more general depiction of 16th-century English life, try Ian Mortimer's Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England. |
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| The pursuit of power: Europe 1815-1914 by Richard J. EvansBetween 1815 and 1914, Europe saw significant changes in every area: science and the arts, politics and culture, industrialisation, and views on individual liberty. In The Pursuit of Power, award-winning historian Richard Evans explores European developments during the 19th century, finding special significance in the quest for power by individuals in all social classes, by business leaders, and, of course, by governments. This thematically organised, accessible entry in the Penguin History of Europe series will please history buffs, especially those intrigued by the rise of modernism. |
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Gottfried Lindauer's New Zealand: The Māori portraits
by Auckland Art Gallery
From the 1870s to the early twentieth century, the Bohemian immigrant artist Gottfried Lindauer travelled to marae and rural towns around New Zealand and - comissioned by Maori and Pakeha - captured in paint the images of key Maori figures. For Maori then and now, the faces of t?puna are full of mana and life. Now this definitive work collects those portraits for New Zealanders. The book presents 67 major portraits and 8 genre paintings alongside detailed accounts of the subject and work, with essays by leading scholars that takes us inside Lindauer and his world: from his artistic training in Bohemia to his travels around New Zealand as Maori and P?keh? comissioned him to paint portraits; his artistic techniques and deep relationship with photography; Henry Partridge's gallery on Auckland's Queen Street where Maori visited to see their ancestors; and the afterlife of the paintings in marae and memory.
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Age of anger: A history of the present
by Pankaj Mishra
A columnist at Bloomberg View and regular writer for The Guardian explores the rising tide of paranoid hatred in modern times and attributes it to our inability to fulfill the promises of a globalised economy.
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Wonderland: How play made the modern world
by Steven Johnson
A history of popular entertainment explores the world-changing innovations humans have made while keeping themselves entertained and introduces the explorers, proprietors, showmen, and artists who became the innovators of leisure.
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Science: A history in 100 experiments
by John Gribbon
The development of scientific experiments involves some of the most enlightened cultures in history, as well as some great scientists, philosophers and theologians. As the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman said, 'If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong', the simplest summary of what science is all about. And science is nothing without experiments. Everything in the scientific world view is based on experiment, including observations of phenomena predicted by theories and hypotheses, such as the bending of light as it goes past the Sun. From the discovery of microscopic worlds to weighing the Earth, from making electricity to the accelerating Universe and gravitational waves, this stunning book by renowned science writers John and Mary Gribbin tells the fascinating history of science through the stories of 100 groundbreaking experiments.
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The Chibok girls: The Boko Haram kidnappings and Islamist militancy in Nigeria
by Helon Habila
Special investigating the 2014 mass-kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls by the world's deadliest terrorists. On 14th April 2014, 276 girls disappeared from a secondary school in northern Nigeria, kidnapped by the world's deadliest terror group. A tiny number have escaped back to their families but over 200 remain missing. Reporting from inside the traumatised and blockaded community of Chibok, Helon Habila tracks down the survivors and the bereaved. Two years after the attack, he bears witness to their stories and to their grief. And moving from the personal to the political, he presents a comprehensive indictment of Boko Haram, tracing the circumstances of their ascent and the terrible fallout of their ongoing presence in Nigeria.
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A temperate empire: Making climate change in early America
by Anya Zilberstein
Most people assume that climate change is recent news. A Temperate Empire shows that we have been debating the science and politics of climate change for a long time, since before the age of industrialisation. Focusing on attempts to transform New England and Nova Scotia's environment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this book explores the ways that early Americans studied and tried to remake local climates according to their plans for colonial settlement and economic development.
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| How to survive a plague: The inside story of how citizens and science tamed AIDS by David FranceBased on the Oscar-winning documentary of the same name, How to Survive a Plague details the battle to address and finally tame the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and '90s. While governments ignored the devastating effects of the disease, religious leaders blamed its victims, and the death toll mounted, activists refused to wait for public policy to catch up. Organising on several fronts, gay and lesbian people and their supporters pushed their life-saving agenda forward, changing public opinion as they went. Profiling important figures in the movement (both behind the scenes and out front), journalist David France, who directed the documentary film, serves up a gripping historical tale. |
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Family first: Tracing relationships in the past
by Ruth Alexandra Symes
This book is both a social history of the period 1800-1950 and a practical guide on how to set about tracing and better understanding the relationships between members of your own family. What did it mean to be a father in this period, but also, how might you discover the father of an ancestor if his name is not mentioned on the birth certificate? What common ideas were held about the role of wives and mothers, but also, how were multiple births, stillbirths, abortions and infanticides dealt with in the records? What factors might have influenced the size of your ancestor's family, but also why were its children named as they were? Did pecking order in a family matter, but also, was it legal to marry a cousin, or the sister of a deceased wife? How long could people expect to live, but also what records can tell you more about the circumstances of your ancestors' last years? A final chapter considers relationships with neighbours, friends and club associates.
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New Zealand's rivers: An environmental history
by Catherine Heather Knight
Explores the relationship between New Zealanders and our rivers, explaining how we have arrived at a crisis point, where fresh water has become our most contested resource and many rivers are too polluted to swim in. Environmental historian Catherine Knight reveals that the tension between exploitation and enjoyment of rivers is not new. Rivers were treasured by Māori as food baskets and revered as the dwelling places of supernatural creatures. But following European settlement, they became drains for mining, industrial waste and sewage, and were harnessed to generate power and to irrigate farmland. Over time, the utilitarian view of rivers has been increasingly questioned by those who value rivers for recreation as well as for ecological, spiritual and cultural reasons. Today, the sustainable use of rivers is the subject of intense debate.
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| The wars of the Roosevelts: The ruthless rise of America's greatest political family by William J. MannAward-winning author William J. Mann shines his spotlight on the Roosevelt clan, arguing that a few members of this illustrious American family were willing to sacrifice their own close relatives to further their political ambitions. Mann draws on previously unavailable documents to develop revised portraits of Theodore Roosevelt, his niece Eleanor and cousin Franklin Roosevelt, and less well-known family members. While The Wars of the Roosevelts doesn't slight the Roosevelts' impressive achievements nor neglect their flaws, this ultimately sympathetic group portrait offers complexity and nuance, especially highlighting those who didn't conform to the dominant hard-charging, high-achieving pattern. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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