Other books that might interest you

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  Europe's Babylon - The Rise and...

  Michael Pye

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  Before Amsterdam, there was a dazzling North Sea port at the hub of the known world: the city of Antwerp. 
   
   
   
  In the Age of Exploration, Antwerp was sensational like nineteenth-century Paris or twentieth-century New York. It was somewhere anything could happen or at least be believed: killer bankers, easy kisses, a market in secrets and every kind of heresy. For half the sixteenth century, it was the place for breaking rules—religious, sexual, intellectual. 
   
   
   
  And it was a place of change. Thomas More opened Utopia there, Erasmus puzzled over money and exchanges, William Tyndale sheltered there and smuggled out his Bible in English until he was killed. 
   
   
   
  But when Antwerp rebelled with the Dutch against the Spanish and lost, all that glory was buried and its true history rewritten. Mutinous troops burned the city records, trying to erase its true history. 
   
   
   
  In Europe's Babylon, Michael Pye sets out to rediscover the city that was lost and bring its wilder days to life using every kind of clue: novels, paintings, songs, schoolbooks, letters, and the archives of Venice, London, and the Medici.

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  The French Revolution's Famine -...

  Sarah Willards

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  The late 18th century in France was marked by a series of economic struggles that would lay the foundation for the famine that contributed significantly to the outbreak of the French Revolution. One of the most crucial factors was the growing economic strain on both the peasantry and the urban poor. France's agrarian economy, which was heavily reliant on consistent harvests, faced major setbacks in the years leading up to the Revolution. Bad harvests in 1787 and 1788, exacerbated by poor weather conditions, decimated crops across the nation, causing widespread food shortages. 
  The economic problems were further compounded by rising bread prices. Bread, being a staple food for the French population, became more expensive as the grain harvests failed. With less grain available for baking, the cost of bread surged, and the poor, particularly in urban areas, found it increasingly difficult to afford enough food to survive. For many, bread was their primary source of sustenance, and its scarcity sparked anger and frustration across the nation. 
  This economic hardship revealed the inefficiency of the French monarchy in dealing with the crisis. King Louis XVI’s government, already deeply in debt from wars and lavish spending, was unable to provide effective solutions. The inability of the monarchy to alleviate the suffering of the common people, particularly in the face of rising food prices, further eroded public trust in the regime. The discontent simmered beneath the surface, particularly in cities like Paris, where the urban poor were most vulnerable to food shortages.

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  Steamy - A Menopause Symptomology

  Susan Holbrook

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  Menopause: so many symptoms, so few remedies, so many years, so few heads-ups.  
  In Steamy, you’ll find forty-five of the ever-expanding list of things people can encounter when going through The Change, including challenges (such as #4 Night Sweats and #21 Anxiety) and boons (such as #41 Individuation and #45 Fewer Shits). In this raucous memoir, Susan Holbrook opens up an experience still constrained by cultural silences and myths. Steamy is honest, vulnerable, gross, and might just be the funniest book you’ve ever read about menopause, or anything else (see #37 Bloating). If, at a certain stage of life, you find yourself sucker-punched by a sweaty fistful of symptoms you can’t believe no one told you about, Steamy is for you – and for all the other hot-and-bothereds out there.

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  Life After Capitalism - The...

  George Gilder

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  For over two-hundred years, capitalist systems have overtaken the global economy, spreading near-universal growth and opening the floodgates for limitless human potential. 
   
   
   
  Yet something is going terribly wrong in the world economy. 
   
   
   
  Creativity and faith in the future have been traded for a slippery slope of cautionary paranoia, popular despair, and political overreach by leaders who promise to hold back the tides, control the weather, and print prosperity with little clue as to what is actually going on. 
   
   
   
  This divergence did not begin with the Obama administration, the Trump presidency, the Gates Foundation, or George Soros, says leading futurist George Gilder. The cognitive dissonance and its harvest of confusion and despair reflects a deep misunderstanding at the heart of capitalism itself. 
   
   
   
  In Life After Capitalism, national bestselling author George Gilder explains how economics is not an incentive system but an information system. Redefining capitalism for the modern age, he reveals how free enterprise is a mind driven system, material resources are essentially as infinite as atoms, and what governs economic growth is human creativity—not merely a Marxist class struggle for power.

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  Servile Wars The: The History...

  Editors Charles River

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  Spartacus is the world’s most famous slave, and one of the most notorious figures of ancient Rome. A slave enamored of freedom and willing to fight and die for it, he became especially popular in the years following the Enlightenment, after which he was widely viewed as a poignant champion of liberty in the 18th and 19th centuries. As a result, he became a symbol during struggles like the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the American Civil War, and the struggle for emancipation. To this day, his dual life as a gladiator and a “freedom fighter” fascinates audiences around the world. His tale, a blend of violent spectacle and civil rights, has been adapted for film (Stanley Kubrick’s memorable Spartacus), television (Starz’s popular television series), and in literature (appearing in everything from historical novels to comics). To this day, Spartacus is a popular first name in central and southern Italy, and his name has been adopted by sports teams like FC Spartak Moscow and FC Spartak Plovdiv. The Soviet Union’s internal version of the Olympics, the Spartakiad, also derived its name from Spartacus. 
  	The reasons for Spartacus’s enduring appeal are obvious, but his uprising has overshadowed the fact that his was actually the third such uprising against the Roman Republic in a short span. Preceding this, the First and Second Servile Wars had already demonstrated that revolts against Rome and the whole institution of slavery could gain momentum, and these earlier uprisings provided a blueprint for the larger attempt by Spartacus to win freedom. All three of these revolts came about because of the Roman practice of enslavement, and as such, any analysis of the Servile Wars requires an understanding of what was involved in the institution of slavery within the Roman system. 

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  Hérnan Cortés: A short biography...

  5 Minutes, 5 Minute Biographies,...

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  Hérnan Cortés, Spanish explorer and conqueror: Life and work in a short biography! Everything you need to know, brief and concise. Infotainment, education and entertainment at its best!

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