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› Find signed collectible books: 'Adam of the Road'
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. Presents the adventures of 11 year-old Adam as he travels the open roads of 13th-century England searching for his missing father, a minstrel, and his stolen red spaniel, Nick. A Newbery Medal winner. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the 14th Century'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Age of Napoleon'
THE AGE OF NAPOLEON is the biography of an enigmatic and legendary personality as well as the portrait of an entire age. J. Christopher Herold tells the fascinating story of the Napoleonic world in all its aspects - political, cultural, military, commercial, and social. Napoleon's rise from common origins to enormous political and military power, as well as his ultimate defeat, influenced our modern age in thousands of ways, from the map of Europe to the metric system, from styles of dress and dictators to new conventions of personal behavior. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Arab Historians of the Crusades'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Around the World in a Hundred Years'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Atlas of the Year 1000'
The title is disingenuously precise. Around the turn of the last millennium, time bore a different complexion; indeed, it was expressed through a variety of calendars. The notion of a millennium would occupy a book in itself (and has: see Stephen Jay Gould's terrific Questioning the Millennium), so rather than box himself in, anthropologist John Man wisely attempts a general appraisal of the late-10th-and-early-11th-century world, and how it hung together.
And it did hang together. Vikings were in Vinland (Canada's Newfoundland today), Basques were roaming the oceans, Polynesians roamed the South Seas, and the Jews were the blood coursing through the new-born community's veins, linking empires with their indomitable trading. Recognizable events included the murder of Malcolm, later to be immortalized in That Scottish Play, the writing of The Tale of Genji, possibly the world's first novel, the Battle of Maldon, and the carving of the Easter Island statues. John Man takes on this developing world methodically, moving across the continents, taking each people in turn and in a couple of pages outlining their status in historical and cultural contexts, past and present. Of course, some are easier to trace than others, with the world dividing into those with a written culture and those without; however, large expanses that were previously a mystery, such as sub-Saharan Africa, are only now starting to turn up illuminative archaeological remains and artifacts. As ever, the past is in the future, and will be for many years to come. There is a lot here to digest. The sweep of this book is refreshingly broad and cosmopolitan--for a more Anglocentric perspective, read Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger's The Year 1000. John Man's brief history of a time is more globally connective, broadsheet rather than tabloid, and while there is inevitably a hint of the textbook about it, liberal use of illustrative maps and photographs breaks up the text at apposite points. In a cluttered field, and at a cluttered time, it delivers an instructive and timely historical bookmark. --David Vincent, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Balkans: A Short History'
Throughout history, the Balkans have been a crossroads, a zone of endless military, cultural and economic mixing and clashing between Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Subject to violent shifts of borders, rulers and belief systems at the hands of the world's great empires--from the Byzantine to the Habsburg and Ottoman--the Balkans are often called Europe's tinderbox and a seething cauldron of ethnic and religious resentments.
Much has been made of the Balkans' deeply rooted enmities. The recent destruction of the former Yugoslavia was widely ascribed to millennial hatreds frozen by the Cold War and unleashed with the fall of communism. In this brilliant account, acclaimed historian Mark Mazower argues that such a view is a dangerously unbalanced fantasy. A landmark reassessment, The Balkans rescues the region's history from the various ideological camps that have held it hostage for their own ends, not least the need to justify nonintervention. The heart of the book deals with events from the emergence of the
nation-state onward. With searing eloquence, Mazower demonstrates that of all the gifts bequeathed to the region by modernity, the most dubious has been the ideological weapon of romantic nationalism that has been used again and again by the power hungry as an acid to dissolve the bonds of centuries of peaceful coexistence. The Balkans is a magnificent depiction of a vitally important region, its history and its prospects. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Banana Diplomacy: The Making of American Policy in Nicaragua 1981-1987'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Battle for Gaul'
Julius Caesar was for a few years the undisputed master of the Roman world -- devoted to expanding Roman supremacy and his own fame. THE BATTLE FOR GAUL contains seven books of Caesar's Commentaries on his campaign in Gaul from 58 to 50 B.C. in their original narrative sequence.
These unparalleled accounts of war in Western Europe in the closing years of the Roman republic are clear and exciting. We feel the immediacy of the moment as we listen to Caesar's dramatic story of his daring expedition into Germany and unprecedented bridging of the Rhine, the decimation of two Roman legions in a forest ambush, and the heroic last defense of 80,000 Gauls in central France. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Caesar: The Gallic War'
Caesar (C. Iulius, 10244 BCE), statesman and soldier, defied the dictator Sulla; served in the Mithridatic wars and in Spain; pushed his way in Roman politics as a 'democrat' against the senatorial government; was the real leader of the coalition with Pompey and Crassus; conquered all Gaul for Rome; attacked Britain twice; was forced into civil war; became master of the Roman world; and achieved wide-reaching reforms until his murder. We have his books of Commentarii (notes): eight on his wars in Gaul, 5852 BC, including the two expeditions to Britain 5554, and three on the civil war of 4948. They are records of his own campaigns (with occasional digressions) in vigorous, direct, clear, unemotional style and in the third person, the account of the civil war being somewhat more impassioned. There is no rhetoric.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Caesar is in three volumes. Volume II is his Civil Wars. The Alexandrian War, the African War, and the Spanish War, commonly ascribed to Caesar by our manuscripts but of uncertain authorship, are collected in Volume III.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Chapman's Homer: The Odyssey'
George Chapman's translations of Homer are among the most famous in the English language. Keats immortalized the work of the Renaissance dramatist and poet in the sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer." Swinburne praised the translations for their "romantic and sometimes barbaric grandeur," their "freshness, strength, and inextinguishable fire." The great critic George Saintsbury (1845-1933) wrote: "For more than two centuries they were the resort of all who, unable to read Greek, wished to know what Greek was. Chapman is far nearer Homer than any modern translator in any modern language." This volume presents the original text of Chapman's translation of the Odyssey (1614-15), making only a small number of modifications to punctuation and wording where they might confuse the modern reader. The editor, Allardyce Nicoll, provides an introduction, textual notes, a glossary, and a commentary. Garry Wills's preface to the Odyssey explores how Chapman's less strained meter lets him achieve more delicate poetic effects as compared to the Iliad. Wills also examines Chapman's "fine touch" in translating "the warm and human sense of comedy" in the Odyssey.
[via]Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.
--John Keats
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cicero: A Turbulent Life'
This is one of those rare books, like I Claudius, that brings ancient Rome alive. The biography of a brilliant orator and writer, and a politician who twice held the reins of power, it is also the spectacular story of the fall of the Roman Republic. Cicero's speeches and ideas have influenced European civilized values for two thousand years. Personally, he is accessible to us in his hundreds of letters, many of them to his dear friend Atticus. We are able to follow his busy life as a lawyer and politician, and the historic events in which he took part from day to day (sometimes from hour to hour) as he nervously prepares a speech to deliver in the Forum or to the Senate, detects the supposedly incorruptible Brutus in a financial scam, puts a stop to a sexual escapade of the young Mark Antony, steadies Rome at a moment of acute vulnerability following Julius Caesar's assassination, vainly tries to prevent civil war...or, at more private moments, entertains dinner parties with his wit or irons out a problem with his wayward nephew. In this account of Cicero's career from his provincial origins - he was never entirely accepted by Rome's ruling class - to his tragic end as the Republic he revered crashed round his ears, Anthony Everitt makes full use of Cicero's own words and those of his contemporaries. The figure that emerges is intensely human - often dithering and uncertain, boastful from inner insecurity, emotional enough, beneath a near-Stoic exterior, to wander through the woods weeping in a way then thought unmanly when his daughter died in childbirth. This biography intimately and convincingly brings to life the man whose name has become emblematic of the last days of Republican Rome. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Citizen Soldiers'
Stephen E. Ambrose combines history and journalism to describe how American GIs battled their way to the Rhineland. He focuses on the combat experiences of ordinary soldiers, as opposed to the generals who led them, and offers a series of compelling vignettes that read like an enterprising reporter's dispatches from the front lines. The book presents just enough contextual material to help readers understand the big picture, and includes memorable accounts of the Battle of the Bulge and other events as seen through the weary eyes of the men who fought in the foxholes. Highly recommended for fans of Ambrose, as well as all readers interested in understanding the life of a 1940s army grunt. A sort of sequel to Ambrose's bestselling 1994 book D-Day, Citizen Soldiers is more than capable of standing on its own. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 to May 7, 1945'
This sequel to D-DAY opens at 00:01 hours, June 7, 1944 on the Normandy Beaches and ends at 02:45 hours, May 7, 1945. In between comes the battles in the hedgerows of Normandy, the breakout of Saint-Lo, the Falaise gap, Patton tearing through France, the liberation of Paris, the attempt to leap the Rhine in operation Market-Garden, the near-miraculous German recovery, the battles around Metz and in the Huertgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge, the capture of the bridge at Remagen and, finally, the overunning of Germany. From the enlisted men and junior officers, Ambrose draws on hundreds of interviews and oral histories from those on both sides of the war. The experience of these citizen soldiers reveals the ordinary sufferings and hardships of war. They overcame their fear and inexperience, the mistakes of their high command and their enemy to win the war. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution'
Instead of the dying Old Regime, Schama presents an ebullient country, vital and inventive, infatuated with novelty and technology--a strikingly fresh view of Louis XVI's France. A New York Times bestseller in hardcover. 200 illustrations. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Coming of the French Revolution'
An in-depth portrait of France during the year 1789, which analyzes the causes, forces and nature of the Revolution. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Communist Manifesto'
Check out ngims Publishing's other illustrated literary classics. The vast majority of our books have original illustrations, free audiobook download link at the end of the book, navigable Table of Contents, and are fully formatted. Browse our library collection by typing in ngims or ngims plus the title you're looking for, e.g. ngims Gulliver's Travels. Free ebooks on the web are not organized for easy reading, littered with text errors and often have missing contents. You will not find another beautifully formatted classic literature ebook that is well-designed with amazing artworks and illustrations and a link to download free audiobook for a very low price like this one. The nominal price of this ebook covers the time and effort in formatting the materials and putting everything together in one place for your convenience. As a reader, you would want everything readily available at your fingertips because you many not have the time, interest or know where to look for your favorite book. The Communist Manifesto, originally titled Manifesto of the Communist Party (German: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei) is a short 1848 book written by the German Marxist political theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It has since been recognized as one of the world's most influential political manuscripts. Commissioned by the Communist League, it laid out the League's purposes and program. It presents an analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and present) and the problems of capitalism, rather than a prediction of communism's potential future forms. The book contains Marx and Engels' Marxist theories about the nature of society and politics, that in their own words, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." It also briefly features their ideas for how the capitalist society of the time would eventually be replaced by socialism, and then eventually communism. FEATURES ? Includes beautiful artworks and illustrations [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Communist Manifesto'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror'
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, many Americans yearned to understand why Muslim extremists felt such passionate animosity toward the Western world, particularly the United States. Since that historic attack there have been many books and discussions about this very question, but few of them offer such a readable and relevant response as this excellent offering by renowned historian Bernard Lewis (What Went Wrong?). For modern Westerners, Islam is an especially foreign religion and culture to understand. For instance, Westerners typically dismiss things as unimportant when using the expression "thats history." But for those raised in Muslim households, historyeven ancient historyis just as important (if not more important) as the present. And to better understand the hostilities rooted in this historyone could start with recognizing the long-standing resentment the Islamic community harbors from having its homelands torn apart and re-packaged into random political states by occupying Europeans (Westerners). Or stretch back in time to the brutality of the Crusades. Or go straight to the U.S. political meddling in the region throughout the latter 20th century.
This is not a pity fest for Muslims. Lewis even-handedly explores the sources of Islamic antagonism toward the West while also explaining how a supposedly peace-worshipping religion could be so distorted by violent extremism. He notes that the American way of lifeespecially that of fulfillment through material gain and sexual freedomis a direct threat to Islamic values (which is why night clubsplaces where men and women publicly touch one anotherare targets of bombings). But it is basic Western democracy that especially threatens Islamic extremists, notes Lewis, because within its own community more and more Muslims are coming to value the freedom that political democracy allows. For anyone wanting an intelligent and accessible primer on the Islamic-Western conflict, this is an excellent place to begin. Gail Hudson [via]More editions of The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror:
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
"It was Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amid the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind," recorded Edward Gibbon with characteristic exactitude. Over a period of some twenty years, the luminous eighteenth-century historian--a precise, dapper, idiosyncratic little gentleman famous for rapping his snuff-box--devoted his considerable genius to writing an epic chronicle of the entire Roman Empire's decline. His single flash of inspiration produced what is arguably the greatest historical work in any language--and surely the most magnificent narrative history ever written in English. "Gibbon is one of those few who hold as high a place in the history of literature as in the roll of great historians," noted Professor J.B. Bury, his most celebrated editor.
This three-volume Modern Library edition of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire--with Gibbon's notes--is edited with a general introduction and index by Bury, along with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel J. Boorstin. The volumes are illustrated with reproductions of etchings by Gian Battista Piranesi.
The first volume contains chapters one through twenty-six of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol. 2 : The History of the Empire from A.D. 395 to 1185'
"Gibbon is a kind of bridge that connects the ancient with the modern ages," noted Thomas Carlyle. "And how gorgeously does it swing across the gloomy and tumultuous chasm of these barbarous centuries." Indeed, Gibbon, the supreme historian of the Enlightenment--the illustrious scholar who envisioned history as a branch of literature--seemed almost predestined to write his monumental account of the Roman Empire's terrible self-destruction. "I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion," wrote the author in the famous epigram that summed up his towering achievement in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
"Gibbon is not merely a master of the pageant and the story; he is also the critic and the historian of the mind," said Virginia Woolf. "Without his satire, his irreverence, his mixture of sedateness and slyness, of majesty and mobility, and above all that belief in reason which pervades the whole book and gives it unity, an implicit if unspoken message, the Decline and Fall would be the work of another man....We seem as we read him raised above the tumult and the chaos into a clear and rational air."
The second volume contains chapters twenty-seven through forty-eight of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Discovering the Global Past'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The End of History And the Last Man'
Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Feeding Your Baby: Breast, Bottle and Baby Foods'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The First World War'
Ninety years have passed since the outbreak of World War I, yet as military historian Hew Strachan argues in this brilliant and authoritative new book, the legacy of the "war to end all wars" is with us still. The First World War was a truly global conflict from the start, with many of the most decisive battles fought in or directly affecting the Balkans, Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. Even more than World War II, the First World War continues to shape the politics and international relations of our world, especially in hot spots like the Middle East and the Balkans.
Strachan has done a masterful job of reexamining the causes, the major campaigns, and the consequences of the First World War, compressing a lifetime of knowledge into a single definitive volume tailored for the general reader. Written in crisp, compelling prose and enlivened with extraordinarily vivid photographs and detailed maps, The First World War re-creates this world-altering conflict both on and off the battlefieldthe clash of ideologies between the colonial powers at the center of the war, the social and economic unrest that swept Europe both before and after, the military strategies employed with stunning success and tragic failure in the various theaters of war, the terms of peace and why it didnt last.
Drawing on material culled from many countries, Strachan offers a fresh, clear-sighted perspective on how the war not only redrew the map of the world but also set in motion the most dangerous conflicts of today. Deeply learned and powerfully written, The First World War will stand as a landmark of contemporary history. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Guns of August'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces'
Originally written by Campbell in the '40s-- in his pre-Bill Moyers days -- and famous as George Lucas' inspiration for "Star Wars," this book will likewise inspire any writer or reader in its well considered assertion that while all stories have already been told, this is *not* a bad thing, since the *retelling* is still necessary. And while our own life's journey must always be ended alone, the travel is undertaken in the company not only of immediate loved ones and primal passion, but of the heroes and heroines -- and myth-cycles -- that have preceded us. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
This edition of Gibbon's classic history returns to manuscript and original sources. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A History of World Societies: Since 1500'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hittites'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Human Record: Sources of Global History'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Iliad and Odyssey Gift Set'
This is a boxed gift edition of Fagles's two widely acclaimed translations of Homer.
The Iliad is typically described as one of the greatest war stories of all time, but to call it a war story does not begin to describe the emotional sweep of its action and characters: Achilles, Helen, Hector, and other heroes of Greek myth and history in the 10th and final year of the Greek siege of Troy. The Odyssey is, quite simply, the story of Odysseus, who wants to go home. But Poseidon, god of oceans, doesn't want him to make it back across the wine-dark sea to his wife, Penelope, son, Telemachus, and their high-roofed home at Ithaca. The story is told in easy-going, beautiful poetry; the characters speak naturally, the action happens briskly. Even the gods come across as real people, despite the divine powers they exercise constantly. Both works have been hailed by scholars and the public for the powerful language that brings clashing, pulsing life to these ancient masterpieces. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Islam: A Short History'
The picture of Islam as a violent, backward, and insular tradition should be laid to rest, says Karen Armstrong, bestselling author of Muhammad and A History of God. Delving deep into Islamic history, Armstrong sketches the arc of a story that begins with the stirring of revelation in an Arab businessman named Muhammad. His concern with the poor who were being left behind in the blush of his society's new prosperity sets the tone for the tale of a culture that values community as a manifestation of God. Muhammad's ideas catch fire, quickly blossoming into a political empire. As the empire expands and the once fractured Arabs subdue and overtake the vast Persian domain, the story of a community becomes a panoramic drama. With great dexterity, Armstrong narrates the Sunni-Shi'ite schism, the rise of Persian influence, the clashes with Western crusaders and Mongolian conquerors, and the spiritual explorations that traced the route to God. Armstrong brings us through the debacle of European colonialism right up to the present day, putting Islamic fundamentalism into context as part of a worldwide phenomenon. Islam: A Short History, like Bruce Lawrence's Shattering the Myth and Mark Huband's Warriors of the Prophet, introduces us to a faith that beckons like a minaret to those who dare to venture beyond the headlines. --Brian Bruya [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War'
Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is one of the great books in the Western tradition, as well as its first true historical narrative. Editor Robert Strassler has annotated this classic text to make it more accessible to modern readers and added dozens of maps for easy reference. A helpful introduction places Thucydides in proper historical context and a series of short appendices focus on particular aspects of life and war during the period. But the bulk of the book itself, where Thucydides chronicles the long struggle between Athens and Sparta, enjoys an unexpected freshness on these pages--partly due to Strassler's magnificent editorial labors, but mostly because it's a great story resonant with heroes, villains, bravery, desperation, and tragedy. Every library should have a copy of Thucydides in it, especially libraries on military history, and The Landmark Thucydides is without question the best version available. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Leaders'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Manifesto of the Communist Party'
Check out ngims Publishing's other illustrated literary classics. The vast majority of our books have original illustrations, free audiobook download link at the end of the book, navigable Table of Contents, and are fully formatted. Browse our library collection by typing in ngims or ngims plus the title you're looking for, e.g. ngims Gulliver's Travels. Free ebooks on the web are not organized for easy reading, littered with text errors and often have missing contents. You will not find another beautifully formatted classic literature ebook that is well-designed with amazing artworks and illustrations and a link to download free audiobook for a very low price like this one. The nominal price of this ebook covers the time and effort in formatting the materials and putting everything together in one place for your convenience. As a reader, you would want everything readily available at your fingertips because you many not have the time, interest or know where to look for your favorite book. The Communist Manifesto, originally titled Manifesto of the Communist Party (German: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei) is a short 1848 book written by the German Marxist political theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It has since been recognized as one of the world's most influential political manuscripts. Commissioned by the Communist League, it laid out the League's purposes and program. It presents an analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and present) and the problems of capitalism, rather than a prediction of communism's potential future forms. The book contains Marx and Engels' Marxist theories about the nature of society and politics, that in their own words, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." It also briefly features their ideas for how the capitalist society of the time would eventually be replaced by socialism, and then eventually communism. FEATURES ? Includes beautiful artworks and illustrations [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'My Traitor's Heart'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny'
Nonzero, from New Republic writer Robert Wright, is a difficult and important book--well worth reading--addressing the controversial question of purpose in evolution. Using language suggesting that natural selection is a designer's tool, Wright inevitably draws the conclusion that evolution is goal-oriented (or at least moves toward inevitable ends independently of environmental or contingent variables).
The underlying reason that non-zero-sum games wind up being played well is the same in biological evolution as in cultural evolution. Whether you are a bunch of genes or a bunch of memes, if you're all in the same boat you'll tend to perish unless you are conducive to productive coordination.... Genetic evolution thus tends to create smoothly integrated organisms, and cultural evolution tends to create smoothly integrated groups of organisms.
Admittedly, it's as hard to think clearly about natural selection as it is to think about God, but that makes it just as important to acknowledge our biases and try to exclude them from our conclusions. It is this that makes Nonzero potentially unsatisfying to the scientifically literate. Time after time we've seen thinkers try to find in biological evolution a "drive toward complexity" that might explain all sorts of other phenomena from economics to spirituality. Some authors, like Teilhard de Chardin, have much to offer the careful reader who takes pains to read metaphorically. Others--legions of cranks--provide nothing but opaque diatribes culminating in often-bizarre assertions proven to nobody but the author. Wright is much closer to de Chardin along this axis; his anthropological scholarship is particularly noteworthy, and his grasp of world history is excellent. Unfortunately, he has the advocate's willingness to blind himself to disagreeable facts and to muddle over concepts whose clarity would be poisonous to his positions: try to pin him down on what he means by complexity, for example. Still, his thesis that human cultures are historically striving for cooperative, nonzero-sum situations is heartening and compelling; even though it's not supported by biology, it's not knocked down, either. If the reader can work around the undefined assumptions, Wright's charm and obvious interest in planetary survival make Nonzero a worthy read. If the first chapter's title--"The Ladder of Cultural Evolution"--makes you cringe, the last one--"You Call This a God?"--will make you smile. --Rob Lightner [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Odyssey'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Odyssey of Homer'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'One Day in a Very Long War: Wednesday 25th October 1944'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Peloponnesian War'
For almost three decades at the end of the fifth century B.C., Athens and Sparta fought a war that changed the Greek world and its civilization forever. A conflict unprecedented in its brutality, the Peloponnesian War brought a collapse in the institutions, beliefs, and customs that were the foundations of society. Today, scholars in fields ranging from international relations and political and military history to political philosophy continue to study the war for its timeless relevance to the history of our own time.
Now Donald Kagan, classical scholar and historian of international relations, ancient and modern, presents a sweeping new narrative of this epic contest that captures all its drama, action, and tragedy. In describing the rise and fall of a great empire he examines the clash between two disparate societies, the interplay of intelligence and chance in human affairs, the role of great human beings in determining the course of events, and the challenge of leadership and the limits in which it must operate. The result is an engrossing, fresh perspective on a key historical event that will be welcomed by general readers and history buffs alike-and anyone seeking a better understanding of the pivotal events that shaped the world as we know it. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Reformation'
Diarmaid MacCulloch wrote what is widely considered to be the authoritative account of the Reformationa critical juncture in the history of Christianity. "It is impossible to understand modern Europe without understanding these sixteenth-century upheavals in Latin Christianity," he writes. "They represented the greatest fault line to appear in Christian culture since the Latin and Greek halves of the Roman Empire went their separate ways a thousand years before; they produced a house divided." The resulting split between the Catholics and Protestants still divides Christians throughout the Western world. It affects interpretations of the Bible, beliefs about baptisms, and event how much authority is given to religious leaders. The division even fuels an ongoing war. What makes MacCulloch's account rise above previous attempts to interpret the Reformation is the breadth of his research. Rather than limit his narrative to the actions of key theologians and leaders of the eraLuther, Zingli, Calvin, Loyola, Cranmer, Henry VIII and numerous popesMacCulloch sweeps his narrative across the culture, politics and lay people of Renaissance Western Europe. This broad brush approach touches upon many fascinating discussions surrounding the Reformation, including his belief that the Latin Church was probably not as "corrupt and ineffective" as Protestants tend to portray it. In fact, he asserts that it "generally satisfied the spiritual needs of the late medieval people." As a historical document, this 750-page narrative has all the key ingredients. MacCulloch, a professor of history as the Church of Oxford University, is an articulate and vibrant writer with a strong guiding intelligence. The structure is sensiblestarting with the main characters who influenced reforms, then spreading out to the regional concerns, and social intellectual themes of the era. He even fast forwards into American Christianityshowing how this historical era influences modern times. MacCulloch is a topnotch historianuncovering material and theories that will seem fresh and inspired to Reformation scholars as well as lay readers. --Gail Hudson [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Reformation : Europe's House Divided 1490-1700'
Diarmaid MacCulloch wrote what is widely considered to be the authoritative account of the Reformationa critical juncture in the history of Christianity. "It is impossible to understand modern Europe without understanding these sixteenth-century upheavals in Latin Christianity," he writes. "They represented the greatest fault line to appear in Christian culture since the Latin and Greek halves of the Roman Empire went their separate ways a thousand years before; they produced a house divided." The resulting split between the Catholics and Protestants still divides Christians throughout the Western world. It affects interpretations of the Bible, beliefs about baptisms, and event how much authority is given to religious leaders. The division even fuels an ongoing war. What makes MacCulloch's account rise above previous attempts to interpret the Reformation is the breadth of his research. Rather than limit his narrative to the actions of key theologians and leaders of the eraLuther, Zingli, Calvin, Loyola, Cranmer, Henry VIII and numerous popesMacCulloch sweeps his narrative across the culture, politics and lay people of Renaissance Western Europe. This broad brush approach touches upon many fascinating discussions surrounding the Reformation, including his belief that the Latin Church was probably not as "corrupt and ineffective" as Protestants tend to portray it. In fact, he asserts that it "generally satisfied the spiritual needs of the late medieval people." As a historical document, this 750-page narrative has all the key ingredients. MacCulloch, a professor of history as the Church of Oxford University, is an articulate and vibrant writer with a strong guiding intelligence. The structure is sensiblestarting with the main characters who influenced reforms, then spreading out to the regional concerns, and social intellectual themes of the era. He even fast forwards into American Christianityshowing how this historical era influences modern times. MacCulloch is a topnotch historianuncovering material and theories that will seem fresh and inspired to Reformation scholars as well as lay readers. --Gail Hudson [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Roman Emperors: A Biographical Guide to the Rulers of Imperial Rome A.D. 31-A.D. 476'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Second World War'
some light tearing of dust jacket [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Speeches That Changed the World'
From Moses' delivery of the Ten Commandments to Nelson Mandela's "Let freedom reign", the world has been transformed by memorable speeches. This unique collection captures the drama of history in the making. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stella/One Woman's True Tale of Evil, Betrayal, and Survival in Hitler's Germany'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Things Fall Apart'
One of Chinua Achebe's many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The son of a charming ne'er-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his father's weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several children. He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy:
Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.And yet Achebe manages to make this cruel man deeply sympathetic. He is fond of his eldest daughter, and also of Ikemefuna, a young boy sent from another village as compensation for the wrongful death of a young woman from Umuofia. He even begins to feel pride in his eldest son, in whom he has too often seen his own father. Unfortunately, a series of tragic events tests the mettle of this strong man, and it is his fear of weakness that ultimately undoes him.
Achebe does not introduce the theme of colonialism until the last 50 pages or so. By then, Okonkwo has lost everything and been driven into exile. And yet, within the traditions of his culture, he still has hope of redemption. The arrival of missionaries in Umuofia, however, followed by representatives of the colonial government, completely disrupts Ibo culture, and in the chasm between old ways and new, Okonkwo is lost forever. Deceptively simple in its prose, Things Fall Apart packs a powerful punch as Achebe holds up the ruin of one proud man to stand for the destruction of an entire culture. --Alix Wilber [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Total War: Causes and Courses of the Second World War'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tulipomania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower & the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused'
For history buffs or gardeners who enjoy more than just digging in the dirt, Tulipomania presents a fascinating look at the tulip frenzy that took place in Holland in the mid-1600s. Beginning as gifts given among the wealthy and educated folk of Europe and Asia, the tulip rapidly became a source of incredible financial gain--similar to today's Internet start-up companies or Beanie Baby collections. Stories of craftsmen discontinuing their trade and focusing on raising tulips for public auction, where they sold for prices comparable to that of a manor house, are astonishing. Poets, moralists, businessmen--it seems everyone was involved at some level.
Lack of regulation and poor quality control were just a couple of the details that led to the abrupt crash in February 1637. Tulipomania was the original market bust--people were ruined, debts went unpaid. It was a disaster similar to the stock-market crash of 1929. A brief resurrection of the mania occurred 65 years later in Istanbul, and while it was not the financial obsession Holland experienced, it led to the creation of standards in flower shape and increased the development of new types. You don't need to be obsessed to enjoy this book--an interest in tulips, history, and the futures market ensures that this will be a remarkable read. --Jill Lightner [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Warrior Queens'
In this panoramic work of history, Lady Antonia Fraser looks at women who led armies and empires: Cleopatra, Isabella of Spain, Jinga Mbandi, Margaret Thatcher, and Indira Gandhi, among others. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wide As the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired'
Benson Bobrick's Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired is a brisk and gripping work of history, religion, and literary criticism. Translation of the King James Bible took centuries to complete, and Bobrick provides colorful descriptions of the distinctive contributions of various translators who took part in the project, particularly John Wyclif in the 15th century and William Tyndale in the 16th century. (Tyndale, he points out, is the second most widely quoted writer, after Shakespeare, in the English language ["eat, drink, and be merry," is Tyndale's phrase; so is "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak"].) Wide as the Waters interprets each translator's work according to its contemporary political context in England. The book's most dramatic passages are found in its account of Henry VIII's showdown with Rome, which resulted in (among other things) Tyndale's execution. Although Bobrick may overstate the singularity of the Bible's influence on the English Revolution (he asserts that the concepts of liberty and free will that guided revolutionaries who overthrew Charles I were primarily derived from the King James Bible), his argument is, at the very least, an effective and engaging reminder of Scripture's liberating power. --Michael Joseph Gross [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wldy Plilos'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'World Atlas of Revolutions'
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Odyssey, The: The World's Great Classics, by Homer; tr. by S.H. Butcher and Andrew Lang [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers'
What is economics? It is the science of how man satisfies his unlimited wants and needs with limited resources. This science has had many great innovators, and this book introduces the lives and ideas of several of them: namely Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter. Written at a level accessible to laymen with a high school reading ability, this makes a great introductory work to the history of economic thought. Largely void of equations and graphs; this is not the book to learn about this curve or that curve. However, this is the book to learn about the development of capitalism, financial markets, socialism, globalization, employment policies, welfare economics, etc... Specifically, the six individuals covered in this book span the 1700s thru the 1900s, and contributed mightily to how governments, businesses, and intellectuals thought about the way people and nations make a living. Each of these economist lived in a different age with unique sets of challenges that faced the prevailing world order at that time. Each would produce works of thought that influenced millions of people. This book shows this relationship between each individual, their times, and their contributions to the body of economic thought. The book is laid out in chronological order, so the reader can see how as history changed, man's view of economics change, and likewise, how each economist's publications in turn changed history. Overall a good book; though somehow incomplete. This book deals solely with six economists of the Anglo-Saxon tradition; Europe and the US from the Industrial Revolution onwards. Other parts of the world such as Asia and the Middle East have contributed just as much to world economics; yet they are fully excluded from this book [via]
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