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The Confident Hope of a Miracle: The True Story of the Spanish Armada

1 review
Neil Hanson

Vintage, 2006

Galleons and Arquebuses - Oh My!
On the one hand, this book is a meticulous reconstruction of a now almost apocryphal event: the Defeat of the Spanish Aramada. On the other hand, it is a finely told story of suspense and adventure. And finally, it is a superb tale of the days when Spain was the Master of the World, England was hanging on by its fingernails, and wooden ships were not yet the miracles of technology that they later ...

The Path to Enlightenment

2 reviews
Dalai Lama

Snow Lion Publications, 1994

The Path to Enlightenment
For the last forty years, the Tibetan government has been exiled in India. In 1959 the new Communist Chinese government forced the non-violent Tibetan Buddhist government, lead by the fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, to flee the land in preparation to overtake the Tibetan people. In his years in exile the Dalai Lama has written literature on the Tibetan Buddhist way of life, not only to ...

The Uncrowned Kings of England: The Black History of the Dudleys and the Tudor Throne

3 reviews
Derek Wilson

Basic Books, 2005

The Other Side of the Story
History has been unkind to the Dudley family, laying a multitude of evil actions at their feet and never really giving them a chance to defend themselves. Enter Derek Wilson, Defender of the Underdog? Wilson's biography of this influential family logically and soundly refutes many of history's uglier interpretations of their actions. The book is well researched and includes many notes taken ...

Hobbes and Republican Liberty
Quentin Skinner

Cambridge University Press, 2008

Quentin Skinner is one of the foremost historians in the world, and in Hobbes and Republican Liberty he offers a dazzling comparison of two rival theories about the nature of human liberty. The first originated in classical antiquity, and lay at the heart of the Roman republican tradition of public life. Thomas Hobbes was the most formidable enemy of this pattern of thought, and his successive attempts to discredit it constitute a truly epochal ...

The Virgin's Lover (Boleyn)

164 reviews
Philippa Gregory

Touchstone, 2005

amazing author!!
I was given The Other Boleyn Girl as a gift and devoured it. Since then I have read every other book in the Tudor series. I am patiently awaiting her new book which is to hit the shelves in September. She is one of those authors who makes you not want the book to end. And her talent is consistent in every book. I highly recommend this book to any one who wants history to come alive not just ...

Hobbes: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

5 reviews
Richard Tuck

Oxford University Press, USA, 2002

An introduction to Hobbes written with clarity and grace
When I read British philosophy as an undergraduate, I skimmed over Hobbes and focused primarily on Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. It was not until recently that I realized the importance of Hobbes's political thought. Therefore, I decided to read Hobbes's "Leviathan." Having previously discovered the outstanding little books in the "Past Masters" series published by the Oxford University Press, I ...

Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil

5 reviews
Thomas Hobbes

Touchstone, 2008

The First Modern Political Philosopher
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) wrote "Leviathan" in 1651, it was his most important philosophical work. I think you should know something of Hobbes to understand how his thinking was influenced by his experiences. He was born 2 months prematurely on the day the Spanish Armada approaches the English coast. His mother's fear of invasion caused the premature birth. Hobbes remarked late in life, "his ...

The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol (Heritage of ...
Carl Schmitt

University Of Chicago Press, 2008

One of the most significant political philosophers of the twentieth century, Carl Schmitt is a deeply controversial figure who has been labeled both Nazi sympathizer and modern-day Thomas Hobbes. First published in 1938, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes used the Enlightenment philosopher?s enduring symbol of the protective Leviathan to address the nature of modern statehood. A work that predicted the demise of the Third Reich ...

The Winds of God (Wakefield Dynasty #2)

2 reviews
Gilbert Morris

Tyndale House Publishers, 1994

Gilbert Morris rocks!
Not too long ago, I started reading Gilbert Morris' House of Winslow series and was absolutely enthralled. Once I got through all the books I own from that series, I was delighted to discover the Wakefield Dynasty series. Unlike a lot of other series, the plot always returns to England. In The Winds of God, I was thouroughly impressed at the good transition from Book 1 to Book 2. Continuing ...

Thomas and Percy and the Dragon (Step into Reading)

5 reviews
W. Rev Awdry

Random House Books for Young Readers, 2003

Thomas and Percy and a Dragon!!!!
I love these little books. They are inexpensive and just the right treat for the little Thomas lovers in the household. Ours books were sitting on the steps when we came home. My children (boy and girl--three and five) couldn't wait to open the box and kept bugging me to stop making lunch and read to them, Pleeeaaase! (I mean what more can a Mom want. Children begging to be read to!) ...

Hobbes (The Routledge Philosophers)
A.p Martinich

Routledge, 2005

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was the first great English philosopher and one of the most important theorists of human nature and politics in the history of Western thought. This superlative introduction explains Hobbes's main doctrines and arguments, covering all of Hobbes's philosophy. A.P.Martinich begins with a helpful overview of Hobbes's life and work, setting his ideas against the political and scientific background seventeenth century ...

John Winthrop: America's Forgotten Founding Father

6 reviews
Francis J. Bremer

Oxford University Press, USA, 2003

John Winthrop Remembered
Thanks to an absent minded John Winthrop falling into a foul smelling peat bog and surviving (which he took as a sign that he should emigrate to the colonies) the settlers of the Massachusets Bay Company were blessed with a practical and efficient administrator. Elected Governor many times over, John Winthrop is portrayed as an honest and god fearing a man as any patriotic American would want. ...

John Winthrop, Oliver Cromwell, and the Land of Promise
Marc Aronson

Clarion Books, 2004

This carefully researched and insightful account by Sibert medalist Marc Aronson focuses on the intertwined lives of John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Puritan Commonwealth in England. Set against a broad canvas of the turmoil that engulfed Britain in the 17th century, the book examines the clashes of the monarchy and the church with Parliament, which led these two ...

The Armada (The American Heritage Library)

13 reviews
Garrett Mattingly

Mariner Books, 1974

A classic worthy of the title
Not all "classics" of history age as well as Garrett Mattingly's "The Armada," which was first published in 1959 to coincide with the quadricentennial of Philip II's failed attempt at the so-called "Enterprise of England." His scholarship may be subject to legitimate contemporary scrutiny and reassessment, but his writing is timeless. The naval commander of the Spanish Armada, the duke of ...

The Mayflower Papers: Selected Writings of Colonial New England

1 review
Various

Penguin Classics, 2007

Yet another reason for Thanksgiving!
The ever-wonderful Penguin Classics brings together the distinguished father-son scholars Thomas and Nathaniel Philbrick to edit a small anthology of the earliest documents of American history. Son Nathaniel used these documents to create his National Book Award-winning MAYFLOWER; Dad Thomas no doubt taught the works in his English courses at the University of Pittsburgh. The selections ...

Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics
Philip Pettit

Princeton University Press, 2008

Hobbes's extreme political views have commanded so much attention that they have eclipsed his work on language and mind, and on reasoning, personhood, and group formation. But this work is of immense interest in itself, as Philip Pettit shows in Made with Words , and it critically shapes Hobbes's political philosophy. Pettit argues that it was Hobbes, not later thinkers like Rousseau, who invented the invention of language thesis--the idea ...

Visions of Politics
Quentin Skinner

Cambridge University Press, 2002

The first of three volumes of essays by Quentin Skinner, one of the world's leading intellectual historians. This collection includes some of his most important philosophical and methodological statements written over the past four decades, each carefully revised for publication in this form. In a series of seminal essays Professor Skinner sets forth the intellectual principles that inform his work. Writing as a practising historian, he ...

The Spanish Armada: Revised Edition

3 reviews
Colin Martin, Geoffrey Parker

Manchester University Press, 2002

The Spanish Armada
Colin Martin (underwater archaeologist) and Geoffrey Parker's (historian) The Spanish Armada is an impressive and groundbreaking piece of multi-disciplinary scholarship. The causes and the eventual result of the Armada have never been that open to interpretation but the reasons for the extraordinary failure have been. It is in this field that Colin Martin's excavations contribute vital ...

Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)
Thomas Hobbes, John Bramhall

Cambridge University Press, 1999

Do human beings ever act freely, and if so what does freedom mean? Is everything that happens antecedently caused, and if so how is freedom possible? Is it right, even for God, to punish people for things they cannot help doing? This volume presents the famous seventeenth-century controversy in which Thomas Hobbes and John Bramhall debate these questions and others. The complete texts of their initial contributions to the debate are included, ...

The Queen's Bastard: A Novel

25 reviews
Robin Maxwell

Touchstone, 2000

Intriguing . . . and possible!
I love books that take history and suggest something that is not what the history books tell us, yet is presented in such a plausible manner that you cannot help but think, "What if?" "The Queen's Bastard" is such a book, suggesting as it does that a love child was born to the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I. I found the story fascinating, moving as it does through so many historical settings and ...

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