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Literary places by Sarah BaxterTravel journalist Sarah Baxter provides comprehensive and atmospheric outlines of the history and culture of 25 literary places around the globe, as well as how they intersect with the lives of the authors and the works that make them significant. Full-page colour illustrations instantly transport you to each location. You’ll find that these places are not just backdrops to the tales told, but characters in their own right.
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Nature's mutiny: How the little Ice Age transformed the West and shaped the present by Philipp BlomPhilipp Blom chronicles the great climate crisis of the 1600s, a crisis that would transform the entire social and political fabric of Europe. By the end of the sixteenth century the temperature plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbours were covered with ice, birds literally dropped out of the sky, and ‘frost fairs’ were erected on a frozen Thames. Philipp Blom provides a sweeping examination of this ' Little Ice Age' and how a society responds to profound and unexpected change. This book will transform the way we think about climate change in the twenty-first century and beyond.
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The savage frontier: The Pyrenees in history and the imagination by Matthew CarrThis book traces the roots over the mountains taken by monks, soldiers, poets, pilgrims and refugees, examining the lives and events that have shaped the Pyrenees across the centuries. Its cast of characters includes Napoleon, Hannibal, Charlemagne, the eccentric British climber Lord Henry Russell and Francisco Sabaté Llopart, the Catalan anarchist who waged a lone war across the Pyrenees against Franco for years after the Spanish Civil war.
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Under red skies: Three generations of life, loss, and hope in China by Karoline KanUsing stories of her own family’s history, a former New York Times author offers a personal look at how China is trying to reconcile its impoverished and troubled past with its new role as a world superpower. An engaging eyewitness account and Kan's quest to understand the rapidly evolving, shifting sands of China. It is the first English-language memoir from a Chinese millennial to be published in America, and a fascinating portrait of an otherwise-hidden world, written from the perspective of those who live there.
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This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned as a vital source of shared cultural identity over the millennia.
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Dreams of leaving and remaining by James MeekSince Britain's 2016 referendum on EU membership, the nation has been profoundly split: one side fantasizing that the referendum will never be acted upon, the other entrenched in questionable assumptions about reclaimed sovereignty and independence.
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Days out underground: 50 subterranean adventures beneath Britain by Peter NaldrettThis is the definitive guide to the best days out underground. From caves to nuclear bunkers, sewers to secret railways, as well as abandoned mines, ancient crypts and labyrinthine tunnels, these unique tourist attractions are a journey through Britain's hidden history going back thousands of years. Travel writer Peter Naldrett explores each location with evocative, light-hearted text that reveals the fascinating history of why it came to be constructed, or how it was first discovered.
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Estonia: A modern history by Neil TaylorNeil Taylor charts Estonia's long, arduous journey to its present-day prosperity, through a thousand years of occupation by Danes, Swedes, Germans and Russians. In the wake of the First World War, out of the heat of a national awakening and the collapse of the Russian and German empires, Estonia was recognized as an independent nation in 1920. This was not to last--the country was tossed between the Soviets and Nazis during the Second World War, then fully integrated into the USSR, bringing on more than half a century of renewed occupation and misery. But hopes of true independence never dimmed and, in 1991, the Republic of Estonia was restored.
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| An enthralling work of popular history that vividly resurrects the web of everyday Germans who resisted Nazi rule. Some passed industrial secrets to Allied spies. Some forged passports to help Jews escape the Reich. For others, resistance was as simple as writing a letter denouncing the rigidity of Nazi law. This book follows the underground network of Germans who believed standing against the Fuhrer to be more important than their own survival.
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Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the era of assassination by Lisa TraynorThe shot that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand; long considered the catalyst for the outbreak of the First World War, is often described as the `shot heard around the world'. Far less widely known is the fact that the Archduke may have owned, but on that fateful day did not wear, a silk bulletproof vest created by Polish priest-turned-inventor Casimir Zeglen. Traynor poses the haunting question: if Franz Ferdinand had worn body armour on the day of his assassination, would it have saved his life? This fascinating book breaks new ground in our understanding of arms and armour technology on the eve of the First World War.
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Lotharingia: A personal history of Europe's lost country by Simon WinderLotharingia is a history of in-between Europe. It is the story of a place between places. In this beguiling, hilarious and compelling book, Simon Winder retraces the various powers that have tried to overtake the land that stretches from the mouth of the Rhine to the Alps and the might of the peoples who have lived there for centuries.
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Last boat out of Shanghai: The epic story of the Chinese who fled Mao's revolution by Helen ZiaA rare English-language account traces the dramatic true stories of four young people caught up in the mass exodus of Shanghai in the wake of China's 1949 Communist Revolution. Seventy years later, the last generation to fully recall this massive exodus have opened the story to Chinese American journalist Helen Zia.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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