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  Holy Roman Empire’s Conflicts...

  Charles River Editors

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  It has been famously pointed out that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, but it was also not an empire in the sense people expect when hearing the term. In theory, the emperor was the highest prince in Christendom, and his dominion extended the length and breadth of Western Europe. The empire had been created by the papacy in 801 when Pope Leo the Third famously crowned the supposedly unwitting Charlemagne in Saint Peter’s Basilica, intending to recreate the Western Roman Empire. In truth, the imperial power did not extend beyond central Europe, which by the beginning of the 16th century included Germany, northern Italy, and the Netherlands. Even in these lands, however, the emperor struggled to command obedience. His dominion over northern Italy was theoretical only, the cities of the Netherlands were deeply conscious of their ancient rights and privileges, and Germany had long ceased to be compliant. The latter had become a collection of principalities, dukedoms and bishoprics which vied with each other and pursued their own agendas. They were, however, united in only one sense: denying the emperor power and resisting attempts to centralize the government.  
  	At the same time, the secular sovereigns frequently butted heads with religious authorities back in Rome, and arguably none of the conflicts were as crucial as the War of the Keys and the Investiture Controversy. The tensions between the Holy Roman Empire and Church over the power to invest bishops with authority led to decades of civil war in Germany on the way to establishing the relationship between Church and state, elevating the status of the papacy and weakening the Holy Roman Empire. What is crucial in understanding the conflicts is to not view them with the benefit of hindsight. Most importantly, no nation as people recognize it today yet existed, as England, France, Germany, and Italy were largely geographical expressions, not national identities.

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  A Sometimes Paradise -...

  Mark E. Miller

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  "Outstanding memoir . . . as well as closely observed, poignant, and wistful." —C. J. Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Three-Inch Teeth 
   
   
   
  A captivating, unfiltered account of growing up on a ranch, where every decision defines character 
   
   
   
  A Sometimes Paradise is a moving personal journey into the rugged beauty and hardscrabble challenges of Wyoming ranch life that shaped Mark Miller as a boy and then as a young man. 
   
   
   
  Against the backdrop of deadly ice storms and punishing droughts in a harsh, unforgiving environment, Mark shares stories of adventures, misadventures, and invaluable lessons he learned along the way. As he adapted to the rugged Wyoming terrain, he forged an unbreakable connection with the land and animals—and discovered the true power of family and friendship. 
   
   
   
  An eloquent account of self-discovery, A Sometimes Paradise paints a vivid portrait of resilience and a steadfast commitment to a vanishing way of life. More than a memoir, it is a testament to the enduring spirit of the American West and the people who call it home.

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  Sirius the Star of the Maltese...

  Lenie Reedijk

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  Sirius, the Star of the Maltese Temples invites the reader to look at the megalithic temples of Malta in an entirely new way. The discovery of the temples’ orientation to Sirius explains with mathematical precision the slight shift in the direction of their axes, caused by the movement of the stars called the Precession of the Equinoxes. The resultant astronomical dating of the temples to the Mesolithic, the period immediately after the last Ice Age, is far older than mainstream archaeology maintains and is on a par with other megalithic sites elsewhere, including Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. These findings turn on its head our conception of the accomplishments of ancient people. Instead of being just primitive cave-dwellers, they were primeval astronomers, whose interest in the sky has left us a legacy we never dreamt existed. 
  From the Foreword by Giovanni Bonello: “This is a disturbing book. The author defines its contents as controversial and its conclusions as surprising. I judge it to be far, but far, more than that. It is disruptive of accepted wisdom and unsettles all we believe we knew of the origin of man in Malta, of the sequences of early civilization and the histories of prehistory – not in Malta alone, but throughout the whole of Europe. I started reading it in awe, at first with a deliberate effort at disbelief. By the time I was approaching the climax of the exposition, I ended as mesmerized as I was perplexed.” 
  (Giovanni Bonello is a human rights lawyer and judge who served at the European Court of Human Rights for 12 years)

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  Moses Maimonides - A Very Short...

  Ross Brann

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  This Very Short Introduction to Moses Maimonides surveys his many intellectual, literary, and professional ventures. Born in Islamic Cordoba, he ultimately settled in Cairo, where he served as jurist and civic leader and a highly esteemed physician with responsibilities at the Fatimid and Ayyubid courts, even as he deepened his philosophical-theological pursuits. He moved seamlessly between specialized, private, and public Jewish and Muslim spheres. 
   
  His written works traverse multiple disciplines, employ several literary genres, and address various elite and popular audiences. This book organizes Maimonides's thinking and writings thematically and puts his works into dialogue with one another. It proposes that the key to engaging Maimonides on his own terms is to understand he applied a rationalist's regimen characteristic of his scientific research and practice of medicine to all of his life's work: he observed and studied a problem, diagnosed it, and then prescribed a remedy for it whether the concern was physical, metaphysical, spiritual, intellectual, or social in nature.His Arabic and Hebrew contributions to each of his fields of inquiry were translated and disseminated far and wide and found a prominent place among religious and scientific intellectuals in the Latin West and throughout the Jewish and Islamic worlds.

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  Angelica - For Love and Country...

  Molly Beer

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  Few women of the American Revolution have come through 250 years of US history with such clarity and color as Angelica Schuyler Church. She was Alexander Hamilton's "saucy" sister-in-law, and the heart of Thomas Jefferson's "charming coterie" of artists and salonnières in Paris. Her transatlantic network of important friends spanned the political spectrum of her time and place, and her astute eye and brilliant letters kept them well informed. 
   
   
   
  A woman of great influence in a time of influential women (Catherine the Great and Marie-Antoinette were contemporaries), Angelica was at the red-hot center of American history at its birth: in Boston, when General Burgoyne surrendered to the revolutionaries; in Newport, receiving French troops under the command of her soon-to-be dear friend Marquis de Lafayette; in Yorktown, just after the decisive battle; in Paris and London, helping to determine the standing of the new nation on the world stage. 
   
   
   
  In this enthralling and revealing woman's-eye view of a revolutionary era, Molly Beer breathes vibrant new life into a period usually dominated by masculine themes and often dulled by familiarity. In telling Angelica's story, she illuminates how American women have always plied influence and networks for political ends, including the making of a new nation.

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  The Eternal Decline and Fall of...

  Edward J. Watts

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  As this book intriguingly explores, for those who would make Rome great again and their victims, ideas of Roman decline and renewal have had a long and violent history. 
   
   
    
  The decline of Rome has been a constant source of discussion for more than 2200 years. Everyone from American journalists in the twenty-first century AD to Roman politicians at the turn of the third century BC have used it as a tool to illustrate the negative consequences of changes in their world. Roman prophets of decline were, ultimately, proven correct—a fact that makes their modern invocations all the more powerful. 
   
   
   
  The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome tells the stories of the people who built their political and literary careers around promises of Roman renewal as well as those of the victims they blamed for causing Rome's decline. The story begins during the Roman Republic just after 200 BC. It proceeds through the empire of Augustus and his successors, traces the Roman loss of much of western Europe in the fifth century AD, and follows Roman history until its fall in 1453. If Rome illustrates the profound danger of the rhetoric of decline, it also demonstrates the rehabilitative potential of a rhetoric that focuses on collaborative restoration, a lesson of great relevance to our world today.

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