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  10 Biggest Battles of the Civil...

  Editors Charles River

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  The names of history’s most famous battles still ring in our ears today, their influence immediately understood by all. Marathon lent its name to the world’s most famous race, but it also preserved Western civilization during the First Persian War. Saratoga, won by one of the colonists’ most renowned war heroes before he became his nation’s most vile traitor. Hastings ensured the Normans’ success in England and changed the course of British history. Waterloo, which marked the reshaping of the European continent and Napoleon’s doom, has now become part of the English lexicon.  
  Americans have long been fascinated by the Civil War and its biggest battles, and this audiobook explains the campaigns and events that brought about decisive battles like Gettysburg, Second Bull Run, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga, Antietam, Murfreesboro, and more, along with what went right and wrong on both sides and the aftermath of the battles. Accounts of the battles by important leaders like Sherman and Grant are cited, along with analysis of the generals and fighting. 

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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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  Karl Marx on Society and Social...

  Karl Marx

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  This volume presents those writings of Marx that best reveal his contribution to sociology, particularly to the theory of society and social change. The editor, Neil J. Smelser, has divided these selections into three topical sections and has also included works by Friedrich Engels. 
   
  In his comprehensive Introduction to the selections, Professor Smelser provides a biography of Marx, identifies the various intellectual traditions which formed the background for Marx’s writings, and discusses the selections which follow. The editor describes Marx’s conception of society as a social system, the differences between functionalism and Marx’s theories, and the dynamics of economic and political change as analyzed by Marx.

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  All the Living and the Dead -...

  Hayley Campbell

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  "Journalist Hayley Campbell explores the often hidden world of those who work closely with death, finding compassion in unexpected settings. Campbell’s British accent and matter-of-fact delivery take the listener on a tour of mortuaries, postmortem experimentation, death-mask artistry, crime-scene cleaning, and executions, among others. Her morbid fascination is evident in her tone as she sheds light on curiosities surrounding a subject that is foreign to many people. Ultimately, Campbell calls for a closer relationship to death, less mystery surrounding this universal passage, and a reduction of fear through greater understanding."- AudioFile on All the Living and the Dead"Campbell is a probing investigator whose tone is always even, quietly emphasizing that death is the most natural thing in the world."- BookpageThis audiobook is read by the author.A deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people—morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners—who work in it and what led them there.We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we’re so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.Through Campbell’s incisive and candid interviews with these people who see death every day, she asks: Why would someone choose this kind of life? Does it change you as a person? And are we missing something vital by letting death remain hidden? A dazzling work of cultural criticism, All the Living and the Dead weaves together reportage with memoir, history, and philosophy, to offer listeners a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press.

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  Hans-Ulrich Rudel: The Life and...

  Editors Charles River

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  Few people personified the advancements, abilities, and tactical adeptness of the Luftwaffe like Hans-Ulrich Rudel, the most successful dive bomber in the history of warfare. Like hundreds of millions of others born in the early 20th century, his life was shaped by the Second World War, which started when he was just 23. He was born into and shaped by one of the most brutal and infamous regimes in history, and once indoctrinated, he fought determinedly and with real commitment in support of that regime. He flew over 2,500 combat missions, reportedly destroying over 500 Soviet tanks, 170 artillery pieces, 800 other vehicles, and a battleship on the way to becoming the highest-decorated Nazi soldier of World War II, receiving the Knight’s Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds. He was shot down, or crash landed, multiple times, and even after having reportedly been told by Hitler to stop flying on several occasions, he insisted on returning to the front to fight with his comrades. He lost a leg to gunfire in early 1945 but carried on with his combat missions despite the pain and the practical difficulties of flying with one leg. There is no denying his bravery, however unpleasant the cause for which he fought. 
  Hans-Ulrich Rudel is therefore a challenging character to analyze. His autobiography, Stuka Pilot, was originally entitled Trotzdem (“In spite of everything”), pointing strongly to his continuing support, post-war, for the Nazi ideology. But his book remains a detailed, fascinating, largely credible (and mostly ideology-free) account of his wartime experiences, even as his final pages include references to his proud insistence on performing the Nazi salute in front of the American soldiers who had taken him prisoner and who were providing medical care to his amputated stump.

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  Conduct of Life volume 2

  Moses Almosnino, Walter Hilliger

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  The major work of Rabbi Moses Almosnino (1515-1580), “Conduct of Life,” remains to this day an essential reference in classical Judeo-Spanish literature, now finally available in English in its first translation. First published in Ladino in 1564 as, Sefer Hanhagat ha-hayim and in 1729 as “Regimiento de la vida”, this three-volume edition is part of the prestigious collection Veritas è terra orietur. The work aims to disseminate the timeless teachings of ethics, in the words of the author: “In all that has been said, my intention is only to make you understand how the one who follows the path of virtue and customs of practising good and pure knowledge since childhood, lives a happy and fulfilled life (Volume 1, chapter 2)” This second volume addresses the confusion of indeterminism with free will (Volume 2, chapter 1) and how virtues arise from free will to surpass the force of destiny chapter 2), their conditions (chapter 3); the three types of strength or courage, which is the first virtue (chapter 4), its five properties and eleven conditions (chapter 5); as well as the ten ethical virtues, temperance (chapter 6), the sixteen properties of liberality chapters 7-8), magnificence (chapter 9), magnanimity and its fifty properties (chapter 10-12), modesty (chapter 13), meekness (chapters 14-16), affability (chapter 17), honesty or truth (chapters 18-19), and courtesy (chapter 20); following the order and numbering of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.“Conduct of Life” draws heavily from the Nicomachean Ethics but transcends this source by situating itself at the universal intersection of several traditions: Greco-Arabic philosophy, Judeo-Christian scholasticism, classical Sephardic Judaism, and medieval Jewish thought. Thus, this work contributes to peace and intercultural understanding among peoples.

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