History - Europe - Renaissance

The story of one of the most important--and incendiary--books in Western history When it appeared in 1670, Baruch Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise was denounced as the most dangerous book ever published--"godless," "full of abominations," "a book forged in hell . . . by the devil...

The brilliant and sometimes scandalous lives of twenty-one women who made French history. From Eleanor of Aquitaine to Edith Piaf, Colette to Coco Chanel, discover the lives of 21 women who made French history 'Fascinating, gripping, vividly detailed, this is a wonderful book full...

Bartolomé de Las Casas was the first and fiercest critic of Spanish colonialism in the New World. An early traveller to the Americas who sailed on one of Columbus's voyages, Las Casas was so horrified by the wholesale massacre he witnessed that he dedicated...

Updated with a new foreword by Tom Hanks: acclaimed historian William Manchester A World Lit Only by Fire is a "captivating and marvelously vivid" popular history of the Middle Ages (Publishers Weekly). From tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of the Inquisition and...

The wildly vivid, rare, and revealing journals of a sixteenth-century medical student. In 1552, sixteen-year-old Felix Platter left Basel, Switzerland, and journeyed 370 miles to Montpelier, France to study medicine. His journals chronicle five astonishing years of youth in a time of plague, war,...

The New York Times bestselling, award winning story of the construction of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and the Renaissance genius who reinvented architecture to build it. On August 19, 1418, a competition concerning Florence's magnificent new cathedral, Santa Maria...

Christian Schools and Scholars - or, Sketches of Education from the Christian Era to the Council of TrentThe following pages have been written with the view of presenting a general and connected sketch of the history of Christian Education down to the period of...

A groundbreaking history of the wars of the Ottoman Expansion, a truly global conflagration that crisscrossed three continents and ultimately defined the borders and future of modern Europe. The determined attempt to thwart Ottoman dominance was fought across five theaters from the Balkans to...

An absorbing history of Europe's nine most puzzling texts, including the biggest mystery of all: the Voynich Manuscript Books can change the world. They can influence, entertain, transport, and enlighten. But across the centuries, authors have disguised their work with codes and ciphers, secret...

A sweeping history of The Age of Reason, revealing how--although it was a time of great progress--it was also an era of brutality and intolerance with a very human cost. During the 1600s--between the end of the Renaissance and the start of the Enlightenment--Europe...

In repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world of government censorship and religious authoritarianism comes an ambitious cobbler's son from Canterbury with a daring...

In repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world of government censorship and religious authoritarianism comes an ambitious cobbler's son from Canterbury with a daring...

English Travellers of the RenaissanceAmong the many didactic books which flooded England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were certain essays on travel. Some of these have never been brought to light since their publication more than three hundred years ago, or been mentioned...

A bold new history of Europe, from ancient Greece to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. "A true tour de force." --Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads What do we talk about when we talk about Europe? Is it defined by geography? Or is...

In this sequel to Joseph P. Farrell's Babylon's Banksters, the banksters have moved from Mesopotamia via Rome to Venice. There, they have manipulated popes and bullion prices, clipped coins, sacked Constantinople, destroyed rival Florence, waged war, burned "heretics," and suppressed hidden secrets threatening their...

An award-winning historian reconstructs the life of Francis of Assisi, uncovering the man behind the myths "Refreshing. . . . Complex, multilayered, and ambitious."--Costica Bradatan, Times Literary Supplement One of the most famous figures in Christian history, Francis of Assisi (1181/82-1226) was revered as...

"A stunning five-century study of civilization's cultural retreat." -- William Safire, New York TimesHighly regarded here and abroad for some thirty works of cultural history and criticism, master historian Jacques Barzun has set down in one continuous narrative the sum of his discoveries and...

A definitive biography of the artist who, more than any other, has shaped our image of the Tudor court This landmark scholarly biography of Hans Holbein the Younger (c. 1497-1543), court painter to Henry VIII, is the first in more than a century. From...

The hidden hands behind history's great scholarly works For centuries, many of the world's most influential thinkers routinely relied on helpers who performed tasks such as taking dictation, correcting, indexing, composing, and endless copying. In the Scholar's Workshop introduces readers to these unsung scribes,...

An irreverent new take on the Renaissance, which reveals it as anything but Europe's golden age. From the darkness of a plagued and war-torn Middle Ages, the Renaissance (we're told) heralds the dawning of a new world--a halcyon age of art, prosperity, and rebirth....