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Happy Adventurer: An Autobiography
by Adm. Lord MountevansFirst published in 1951, this is the autobiography of Admiral Lord Mountevans, and it is indeed a tale of high spirits. The writer has a fine sense of adventure, and he revels in the excitement of the incredibly beautiful scenes which were frequently encountered. As he states himself in the opening—“If I had my life over again I certainly wouldn’t change it, because it has been full of excitements, hazards and adventures, in peace as well as in war”—the reader is left with the impression that Admiral Lord Mountevans would certainly do it all again if he could, and knows that he or she is getting an authentic picture of real happenings.
Hard Road: Bernie Guindon and the Reign of the Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club
by Peter EdwardsThe spiritual godfather of Canadian bikers tells the story of his fascinating life.You could call Bernie Guindon the Sonny Barger of Canadian bikers (but not to his face). The founder of Satan's Choice, Guindon led what was in the 1960s the second-largest biker club in the world (after the Hells Angels, which Bernie would join briefly in the early 2000s) to national prominence and international infamy. His life wasn't all bikes and crime. He was also a medalist in boxing for Canada at the Pan Am Games. That tension between the very rough life he was born into and the possibility for success in the straight world (and how aspirations in each fed his success in the other) layer Guindon's story, one of the great untold stories in biker history. Friends from the biker world and Guindon's family have given extensive interviews for Hard Road, including his son, Harley, a convict and outlaw biker himself.From the Hardcover edition.
Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Inspiring Life Story of the Abolition Advocate (Inspiring Stories)
by Brenda HaugenIn the years leading up to the bloody Civil War, the issue of slavery divided the United States. Harriet Beecher Stowe hated slavery and used her gift of writing to fight its injustice. Her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, revealed the cruelties of slavery and further split an already divided country.
Hayim Nahman Bialik: Poet of Hebrew (Jewish Lives)
by Prof. Avner HoltzmanA moving inquiry into the dramatic life, epic success, and ultimate tragedy of the great Hebrew poet By the time he was twenty-eight, Hayim Nahman Bialik was already considered the National Hebrew Poet. He had only published a single collection, but his deeply personal poetry established a profound link between the secular and the traditional that would become paramount to a national Jewish identity in the twentieth century. When he died unexpectedly in 1934, the outpouring of grief was unprecedented, confirming him as a father figure for the Zionist movement in Palestine, and around the world. Using extensive research and elegant readings of Bialik's poems, Avner Holtzman investigates the poet's dramatic life, complex personality, beloved verse, and continued popularity. This clear-eyed and thorough biography explores how Bialik overcame intense personal struggles to become a charismatic literary leader at the core of modern Hebrew culture.
Hazard: A Sister's Flight from Family and a Broken Boy
by Margaret CombsHazard is a poignant, unflinching memoir of the emotional intricacies of growing up with a severely disabled sibling. Margaret Combs shows how her Southern Baptist family coped with lived reality of autism in an era of ignorance and shame, the 1950s through the 1970s, and shares her own tragedy and anguish of being torn between helping her brother and yearning for her own life. Like many siblings of disabled children, young Margaret drives herself to excel in order to make up for her family’s sorrow and ultimately flees her family for what she hopes is a ?normal” life.Hazard is also a story of indelible bonds between siblings: the one between Combs and her sister, and the deep and rueful one she has with her disabled brother; how he and she were buddies; and how fervently she wanted to make him whole. Initially fueled by a wish that her brother had never been born, the author eventually arrives in a deeper place of gratitude for this same brother, whom she loves and who loves her in return.
Hazel Brannon Smith: The Female Crusading Scalawag
by Jeffery B. HowellHazel Brannon Smith (1914-1994) stood out as a prominent white newspaper owner in Mississippi before, during, and after the civil rights movement. As early as the mid-1940s, she earned state and national headlines by fighting bootleggers and corrupt politicians. Her career was marked by a progressive ethic, and she wrote almost fifty years of columns with the goal of promoting the health of her community.In the first half of her career, she strongly supported Jim Crow segregation. Yet, in the 1950s, she refused to back the economic intimidation and covert violence of groups such as the Citizens" Council. The subsequent backlash led her to being deemed a social pariah, and the economic pressure bankrupted her once-flourishing newspaper empire in Holmes County. Rejected by the white establishment, she became an ally of the black struggle for social justice.Smith's biography reveals how many historians have miscast white moderates of this period. Her peers considered her a liberal, but her actions revealed the firm limits of white activism in the rural South during the civil rights era. While historians have shown that the civil rights movement emerged mostly from the grass roots, Smith's trajectory was decidedly different. She never fully escaped her white paternalistic sentiments, yet during the 1950s and 1960s she spoke out consistently against racial extremism. This book complicates the narrative of the white media and business people responding to the movement's challenging call for racial justice.
Hazrat Mohammad Payagambar
by Arunika Manoj Daruહજરત મહંમદ પયગંબર એ નવજીવન દ્વારા પ્રકાશિત સંતવાણી ગ્રંથાવલિનું નવમું પુસ્તક છે. સંતવાણી ગ્રંથાવલિ એ ભારતના મહાનુભાવોના જીવન અને વિચારને વાચક સુધી પહોંચાડવાનો નવજીવન ટ્રસ્ટનો નમ્ર પ્રયાસ છે.
He
by John ConnollyJohn Connolly recreates the Golden Age of Hollywood in this moving, literary portrait of two men who found their true selves in a comedic partnership. When Stan Laurel was paired with Oliver Hardy, affectionately known as Babe, the history of comedy--not to mention their personal and professional lives--would be altered forever.Laurel followed in the wake of Charlie Chaplin, who blazed a trail from the vaudeville stages of England to the dynamic, if often seedy and highly volatile, movie studios of Los Angeles in the early 20th century. Awed like everyone else by Chaplin's genius (and ambition and cruelty), Laurel despaired of ever finding his own path to success--or happiness.But success and happiness did find Laurel, following the inspired decision by impresario Hal Roach to put him and Oliver Hardy together on screen. Initially a calculated marriage of opposites in an era of highly disposable short films, the partnership bloomed into a professional and personal relationship of lifelong depth. Eventually, Laurel became one of the greatest screen comedians the world has ever known: a man who knew both adoration and humiliation; who loved, and was loved in turn; who betrayed, and was betrayed; who never sought to cause pain to anyone else, yet left a trail of affairs and broken marriages in his wake. And whose life was ultimately defined by one relationship of such astonishing tenderness and devotion that only death could sever their profound connection.
Heal Me: In Search of a Cure
by Julia BuckleyJulia Buckley needs a miracle. Like a third of the UK population, she has a chronic pain condition. According to her doctors, it can't be cured. She doesn't believe them. She does believe in miracles, though. It's just a question of tracking one down.Julia's search for a cure takes her on a global quest, exploring the boundaries between science, psychology and faith with practitioners on the fringes of conventional, traditional and alternative medicine. From neuroplastic brain rewiring in San Francisco to medical marijuana in Colorado, Haitian vodou rituals to Brazilian 'spiritual surgery', she's willing to try anything. Can miracles happen? And more importantly, what happens next if they do?Raising vital questions about the modern medical system, this is also a story about identity in a system historically skewed against 'hysterical' female patients, and the struggle to retain a sense of self under the medical gaze. Heal Me explains why modern medicine's current approach to chronic pain is failing patients. It explores the importance of faith, hope and cynicism, and examines our relationships with our doctors, our beliefs and ourselves.
Healing Children: A Surgeon's Stories from the Frontiers of Pediatric Medicine
by Kurt NewmanAn “astounding and miraculous ” (Madeline Levine) medical memoir by one of our nation’s leading pediatric surgeons-- the visionary head of Children’s National Anyone who has seen a child recover from a wound or a broken bone knows that kids are made to heal. Their bodies are more resilient, more adaptive, and far more able to withstand acute stress than adults’. In this inspiring memoir, Dr. Kurt Newman draws from his long experience as a pediatric surgeon working at one of our nation’s top children’s hospitals to make the case that children are more than miniature adults. Through the story of his own career and of the brave kids he has treated over the years—and their equally brave and tenacious parents—he reveals the revolution that is taking place in pediatric medicine. When he decided to become a pediatric surgeon, the field was in its infancy, struggling for esteem. Now, nearly forty years later, it is at the forefront of exhilarating new discoveries in everything from cancer research to mental health care. But few parents know how to access the best care for their children. Far too many find themselves frustrated and afraid. Dr. Newman wrote this book to help guide parents—not just of sick kids but of all kids —and to share his knowledge of what children need to thrive. A deeply human story with a spectacular cast of young heroes and heroines, Healing Children will convince you that we still have a lot to learn from our kids.
Healing Spiritual Wounds: Reconnecting with a Loving God After Experiencing a Hurtful Church
by Carol Howard MerrittAn effective plan to help those suffering from wounds inflicted by the church find spiritual healing and a renewed sense of faith.Raised as a conservative Christian, minister and author Carol Howard Merritt discovered that the traditional institutions she grew up in inflicted great pain and suffering on others. Though she loved the spirituality the church provided, she knew that, because of sexism, homophobia, and manipulative religious politics, established religious institutions weren’t always holy or safe. Instead of offering refuge, these institutions have betrayed people’s hearts and souls. “People have suffered religious abuse,” she writes, “which can be different from physical injury or psychological trauma.”Though participation and affiliation in traditional religious institutions is waning, many people still believe in God. Merritt contends that many leave the church because they have lost trust in the institution, not in God. Healing Spiritual Wounds addresses the church’s dichotomous image—as a safe space and as a dangerous place—and provides a way to restore personal faith and connection to God for those who have been hurt or betrayed by established institutions of faith. Merritt lays out a multistage plan for moving from pain to spiritual rebirth, from recovering theological and emotional shards to recovering communal wholeness. Merritt does not sugarcoat the wrongs institutions long seen as trustworthy have inflicted on many innocent victims. Sympathetic, understanding, and deeply positive, she offers hope and a way to help them heal and reclaim the spiritual joy that can make them whole again.
The Heart of Everything That Is: Young Readers Edition
by Bob Drury Kate Waters Tom ClavinFrom bestselling authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin comes the epic, untold story one of the most powerful Sioux warriors of all time, Red Cloud—now adapted for a younger audience!“I have but a small spot of land left. The Great Spirit told me to keep it.” —Red Cloud This young readers edition of the New York Times bestseller of the same name tells the long forgotten story of the powerful Oglala Lakota chief, Red Cloud. At the height of Red Cloud’s power the Sioux claimed control of vast parts of the west. But as the United States rapidly expanded, the country brutally forced the Indians off their lands. Fighting for the survival of the Sioux way of life, Red Cloud successfully secured the loyalty of thousands of fierce fighters, including Crazy Horse, and is the only American Indian in history to defeat the United States Army in a war. Thanks to the rediscovery of Red Cloud’s long-lost autobiography, and painstaking research by two award-winning authors, and with the help of a world-class adapter, the story of the nineteenth century’s most powerful and successful Indian warrior can finally be told.
Heath and Thatcher in Opposition
by Eric CainesThis book traces how Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher, during their respective years as Conservative Opposition Leaders (1965-70 and 1975-79), managed their Party's attempts to ensure a return to government, each after two electoral defeats. They did so in the context of an emergent New Conservatism, championed by the likes of Enoch Powell, Keith Joseph and Nigel Lawson, which betokened a long-term change from the post-war Butskellite settlement. Against a national background of declining economic status, high inflation, debilitating public sector strikes and internal Conservative Party debates, particularly over industrial relations policy and monetarism, they adopted strikingly different approaches to policy-making in Opposition. The book illustrates how, paradoxically, Heath's technocratic over-prescription failed to save his eventual premiership, while Thatcher's under-committed policy design failed to impede her leading a purposeful and transformative government in the 1980s.
Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs
by Beth Ann Fennelly"Morning: bought a bag of frozen peas to numb my husband’s sore testicles after his vasectomy. Evening: added thawed peas to our carbonara." —from Heating & Cooling, "Married Love, IV" The 52 micro-memoirs in genre-defying Heating & Cooling offer bright glimpses into a richly lived life, combining the compression of poetry with the truth-telling of nonfiction into one heartfelt, celebratory book. Ranging from childhood recollections to quirky cultural observations, these micro-memoirs build on one another to arrive at a portrait of Beth Ann Fennelly as a wife, mother, writer, and deeply original observer of life’s challenges and joys. Some pieces are wistful, some wry, and many reveal the humor buried in our everyday interactions. Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs shapes a life from unexpectedly illuminating moments, and awakens us to these moments as they appear in the margins of our lives.
Heaven's Wind: The Life and Teachings of Nakamura Tempu-A Mind-Body Integration Pioneer
by Stephen EarleFor the first time in English, Stephen Earle tells the epic story of Nakamura Tempu, one of Japan’s most inspirational twentieth-century thinkers and teachers, whose mind-body approach to personal transformation influenced hundreds of thousands, including prominent leaders in government, industry, and the arts. Earle chronicles Tempu’s origins in the samurai tradition, his genius for martial arts, and his work in Manchuria as a spy during the Russo-Japan War of 1904–1905. He relates how, after escaping a Russian firing squad, Tempu contracted tuberculosis; how he embarked on a search for a cure that led to the halls of Columbia University, the salons of Paris, and the foothills of the Himalayas, where he practiced yoga under the tutelage of an Indian guru; and how he not only regained his health but also underwent a spiritual transformation. This transformation laid the groundwork for the secular and practical methodology for self-realization and the cultivation of will that Tempu developed and disseminated to the sick and socially disenfranchised, as well as to princes and prime ministers. Over the course of nine decades, Tempu’s philosophy of mind-body unification has charted a clear and accessible path to mastery over hardship and the ability to meet life’s challenges head-on. Yet, the man, his story, his teachings, and his legacy remain almost unknown outside of Japan—until now. In addition to demonstrating how Tempu’s teachings were significant to Japan’s reconstruction and economic rise following the devastation of World War II, Heaven’s Wind is also an engaging historical narrative, an account of personal transformation, and a clear guide to the practical philosophy of mind-body unity.
Held Hostage: Negotiating Life and Death for the Las Vegas Police Department
by Dennis FlynnThis &“riveting true life account&” goes inside the life-or-death world of a Las Vegas police crisis negotiator: &“a must read" (Gary W. Noesner, Chief, FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit, author of Stalling For Time). What do you say to prevent someone from committing &“suicide-by-cop&”? How do you talk someone down when he&’s pointing a gun at a hostage? What tactics do you use when lives depend on your words? Veteran police negotiator Lieutenant Dennis Flynn spent nearly two decades responding to more than a thousand high-intensity incidents with the Crisis Negotiations Team in Las Vegas, Nevada. He approached every scenario with the same goal: bring everyone out alive. This vivid memoir offers a rare, behind-the-scenes view of the life-and-death situations that police negotiators face on a daily basis. Taking readers through both exhilarating successes and tragic failures, Flynn offers a guided tour of the extreme and potentially deadly side of Sin City.
Hell on Earth
by Avigdor Hameiri Peter C. Appelbaum Avner HoltzmanHell on Earth is the second book written by Avigdor Hameiri (born Feuerstein; 1890–1970) about his experiences as a Russian prisoner of war during the second half of World War I. Translator Peter C. Appelbaum first became interested in Hameiri’s story after learning that one quarter of the Austro-Hungarian army was captured and imprisoned, and that the horrific events that took place at this time throughout Russia and central Asia are rarely discussed in scholarly texts. Available for the first time to an English-speaking audience, this reality-driven novel is comparable to classics like All Quiet on the Western Front and The Gulag Archipelago. The text is deeply tragic, while allowing some humor to shine through in the darkest hour. The reader is introduced to a procession of complex characters with whom Hamieri comes into contact during his imprisonment. The narrator watches his friends die one by one until he is released in 1917 with the help of Russian Zionist colleagues. He then immigrates to Israel in 1921. Hameiri’s perspective on the things surrounding him—the Austro-Hungarian Army, the Russian people and countryside, the geography of Siberia, the nascent Zionist movement, the Russian Revolution and its immediate aftermath—offers a distinct personal view of a moment in time that is often overshadowed by the horrors of the Holocaust. In his preface, Appelbaum argues that World War I was the original sin of the twentieth century—without it, the unthinkable acts of World War II would not have come to fruition. With an introduction by Avner Holtzman, Hell on Earth is a fascinating, albeit gruesome, account of life in prison camps at the end of the First World War. Fans of historical fiction and war memoirs will appreciate the historic value in this piece of literature.
Hemingway at Eighteen: The Pivotal Year That Launched an American Legend
by Paul Hendrickson Steve PaulIn the summer of 1917, Ernest Hemingway was an eighteen-year-old high school graduate unsure of his future. The American entry into the Great War stirred thoughts of joining the army. While many of his friends in Oak Park, Illinois, were heading to college, Hemingway couldn't make up his mind and eventually chose to begin a career in writing and journalism at the Kansas City Star, one of the great newspapers of its day.In six and a half months at the Star, Hemingway experienced a compressed, streetwise alternative to a college education that opened his eyes to urban violence, the power of literature, the hard work of writing, and a constantly swirling stage of human comedy and drama. The Kansas City experience led Hemingway into the Red Cross ambulance service in Italy, where, two weeks before his nineteenth birthday, he was dangerously wounded at the front.Award-winning writer Steve Paul takes a measure of this pivotal year when Hemingway's self-invention and transformation began—from a "modest, rather shy and diffident boy" to a confident writer who aimed to find and record the truth throughout his life. Hemingway at Eighteen provides a fresh perspective on Hemingway's writing, sheds new light on this young man bound for greatness, and introduces anew a legendary American writer at the very beginning of his journey.
Hemingway at War: Ernest Hemingway's Adventures as a World War II Correspondent
by Terry MortFrom Omaha Beach on D-Day and the French Resistance to the tragedy of Huertgen Forest and the Liberation of Paris, this is the story of Ernest Hemingway's adventures in journalism during World War II. In the spring of 1944, Hemingway traveled to London and then to France to cover World War II for Colliers Magazine. Obviously he was a little late in arriving. Why did he go? He had resisted this kind of journalism for much of the early period of the war, but when he finally decided to go, he threw himself into the thick of events and so became a conduit to understanding some of the major events and characters of the war. He flew missions with the RAF (in part to gather material for a novel); he went on a landing craft on Omaha Beach on D-Day; he went on to involve himself in the French Resistance forces in France and famously rode into the still dangerous streets of liberated Paris. And he was at the German Siegfried line for the horrendous killing ground of the Huertgen Forest, in which his favored 22nd Regiment lost nearly man they sent into the fight. After that tragedy, it came to be argued, he was never the same. This invigorating narrative is also, in a parallel fashion, an investigation into Hemingway’s subsequent work—much of it stemming from his wartime experience—which shaped the latter stages of his career in dramatic fashion.
Hemingway's Brain
by Andrew FarahA forensic psychiatrist’s second opinion on the conditions that led to Ernest Hemingway’s suicide, “mixing biography, literature and medical analysis” (The Washington Post).Hemingway’s Brain is an innovative biography and the first forensic psychiatric examination of Nobel Prize–winning author Ernest Hemingway. After seventeen years researching Hemingway’s life and medical history, Andrew Farah, a forensic psychiatrist, has concluded that the writer’s diagnoses were incorrect. Contrary to the commonly accepted diagnoses of bipolar disorder and alcoholism, he provides a comprehensive explanation of the medical conditions that led to Hemingway’s suicide.Hemingway received state-of-the-art psychiatric treatment at one of the nation’s finest medical institutes, but according to Farah it was for the wrong illness, and his death was not the result of medical mismanagement but medical misunderstanding. Farah argues that despite popular mythology Hemingway was not manic-depressive and his alcohol abuse and characteristic narcissism were simply pieces of a much larger puzzle. Through a thorough examination of biographies, letters, memoirs of friends and family, and even Hemingway’s FBI file, combined with recent insights on the effects of trauma on the brain, Farah pieces together this compelling alternative narrative of Hemingway’s illness, one missing from the scholarship for too long.Though Hemingway’s life has been researched extensively and many biographies written, those authors relied on the original diagnoses and turned to psychoanalysis and conjecture regarding Hemingway’s mental state. Farah has sought to understand why Hemingway’s decline accelerated after two courses of electroconvulsive therapy, and in this volume explains which current options might benefit a similar patient today. Hemingway’s Brain provides a full and accurate accounting of this psychiatric diagnosis by exploring the genetic influences, traumatic brain injuries, and neurological and psychological forces that resulted in what many have described as his tortured final years. It aims to eliminate the confusion and define for all future scholarship the specifics of the mental illnesses that shaped legendary literary works and destroyed the life of a master.
Hendrix: The Illustrated Story
by Gillian G. GaarThis definitive, illustrated biography explores the life and career of the rock music legend with photographs, posters, and other ephemera.Every music critic to rank the Greatest Rock Guitarists of All Time agrees on one thing: Jimi Hendrix is number one. Hendrix enjoyed the international limelight for less than four years, but his innovative guitar playing and imaginative interpretations of blues and rock continue to inspire generations of musicians and music lovers.In Hendrix, music journalist Gillian Gaar explores the guitarist's life from his childhood in Seattle to his service as an Army paratrooper, his role as a sideman on the chitlin' circuit, his exile in the United Kingdom, his rise to superstardom, and his untimely death in 1970. The volume is enhanced throughout with rare archival photographs as well as posters, picture sleeves, and other assorted memorabilia.
Henry David Thoreau: A Life (Science And Literature Ser.)
by Laura Dassow Walls“Walden. Yesterday I came here to live.” That entry from the journal of Henry David Thoreau, and the intellectual journey it began, would by themselves be enough to place Thoreau in the American pantheon. His attempt to “live deliberately” in a small woods at the edge of his hometown of Concord has been a touchstone for individualists and seekers since the publication of Walden in 1854. But there was much more to Thoreau than his brief experiment in living at Walden Pond. A member of the vibrant intellectual circle centered on his neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson, he was also an ardent naturalist, a manual laborer and inventor, a radical political activist, and more. Many books have taken up various aspects of Thoreau’s character and achievements, but, as Laura Dassow Walls writes, “Thoreau has never been captured between covers; he was too quixotic, mischievous, many-sided.” Two hundred years after his birth, and two generations after the last full-scale biography, Walls restores Henry David Thoreau to us in all his profound, inspiring complexity. Walls traces the full arc of Thoreau’s life, from his early days in the intellectual hothouse of Concord, when the American experiment still felt fresh and precarious, and “America was a family affair, earned by one generation and about to pass to the next.” By the time he died in 1862, at only forty-four years of age, Thoreau had witnessed the transformation of his world from a community of farmers and artisans into a bustling, interconnected commercial nation. What did that portend for the contemplative individual and abundant, wild nature that Thoreau celebrated? Drawing on Thoreau’s copious writings, published and unpublished, Walls presents a Thoreau vigorously alive in all his quirks and contradictions: the young man shattered by the sudden death of his brother; the ambitious Harvard College student; the ecstatic visionary who closed Walden with an account of the regenerative power of the Cosmos. We meet the man whose belief in human freedom and the value of labor made him an uncompromising abolitionist; the solitary walker who found society in nature, but also found his own nature in the society of which he was a deeply interwoven part. And, running through it all, Thoreau the passionate naturalist, who, long before the age of environmentalism, saw tragedy for future generations in the human heedlessness around him. “The Thoreau I sought was not in any book, so I wrote this one,” says Walls. The result is a Thoreau unlike any seen since he walked the streets of Concord, a Thoreau for our time and all time.
Henry III: The Great King England Never Knew It Had
by Darren Baker‘Henry III is generally classed among the weakest and most incompetent of England’s medieval kings. Darren Baker tells a different story.’- Michael Clanchy, author of England and Its Rulers, 1066–1307 ‘A personal and detailed narrative…bring[s] alive the glamour and personalities of thirteenth-century England.’- Huw Ridgeway, author of ‘Henry III’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ‘Enterprising, original and engaging’ - David Carpenter, author of The Reign of King Henry III Henry III (1207–72) reigned for 56 years, the longest-serving English monarch until the modern era. Although knighted by William Marshal, he was no warrior king like his uncle Richard the Lionheart. He preferred to feed the poor to making war and would rather spend time with his wife and children than dally with mistresses and lord over roundtables. He sought to replace the dull projection of power imported by his Norman predecessors with a more humane and open-hearted monarchy. But his ambition led him to embark on bold foreign policy initiatives to win back the lands and prestige lost by his father King John. This set him at odds with his increasingly insular barons and clergy, now emboldened by the protections of Magna Carta. In one of the great political duels of history, Henry struggled to retain the power and authority of the crown against radical reformers like Simon de Montfort. He emerged victorious, but at a cost both to the kingdom and his reputation among historians. Yet his long rule also saw extraordinary advancements in politics and the arts, from the rise of the parliamentary state and universities to the great cathedrals of the land, including Henry’s own enduring achievement, Westminster Abbey.
Henry III: A Simple and God-Fearing King (Penguin Monarchs)
by Stephen ChurchHenry III was a medieval king whose long reign continues to have a profound impact on us today. He was on the throne for 56 years and during this time England was transformed from being the private play-thing of a French speaking dynasty into a medieval state in which the king answered for his actions to an English parliament, which emerged during Henry's lifetime. Despite Henry's central importance for the birth of parliament and the development of a state recognisably modern in many of its institutions, it is Henry's most vociferous opponent, Simon de Montfort, who is in many ways more famous than the monarch himself. Henry is principally known today as the driving force behind the building of Westminster Abbey, but he deserves to be better understood for many reasons - as Stephen Church's sparkling account makes clear.Part of the Penguin Monarchs series: short, fresh, expert accounts of England's rulers in a highly collectible format
Henry IV: The Righteous King
by Ian MortimerThe real life story of the Plantagenet ruler, by &“the most remarkable medieval historian of our time&” (The Times, London). The talented, confident, and intelligent son of John of Gaunt, Henry IV started his reign as a popular and charismatic king after he dethroned the tyrannical and wildly unpopular Richard II. But six years into his reign, Henry had survived eight assassination and overthrow attempts. Having broken God&’s law of primogeniture by overthrowing the man many people saw as the chosen king, Henry IV left himself vulnerable to challenges from powerful enemies about the validity of his reign. Even so, Henry managed to establish the new Lancastrian dynasty and a new rule of law—in highly turbulent times. In this book, noted historian Ian Mortimer, bestselling author of The Time Traveler&’s Guide to Medieval England and The Time Traveler&’s Guide to Elizabethan England, goes beyond the legend portrayed in Shakespeare&’s history play, and explores the political and social forces that transformed Henry IV from his nation&’s savior to its scourge.