Showing results by author "Charles River Editors" in All Categories

Scipio Africanus: The Life and Legacy of the Roman General Who Defeated Hannibal During the Second Punic War chronicles how Scipio rose to prominence, his legendary victory at Zama, and the legacy he had on antiquity.

Mention the 18th century Royal Navy and visions come to mind of swashbuckling sailors swinging from rope to rope while a red-faced captain in an even redder coat and a powdered wig shouts order and pitches fits. Such visions naturally fail to do full justice to a group of men who functioned, with little direction and even less support, on the seas for years at a time. Disney may enjoy portraying them sitting down to sumptuous feasts or cavorting with scantily clad native girls, but the opposite was true.

The Spanish Civil War: The History and Legacy of the Controversial Conflict That Established Francisco Franco’s Dictatorship in Spain examines one of the 20th century’s most important wars and how it affected the world. You will learn about the Spanish Civil War like never before.

Napoleon in Egypt: The History and Legacy of the French Campaign in Egypt and Syria chronicles one of the legendary French leader’s most forgotten campaigns. You will learn about Napoleon’s time in Egypt like never before.

Shortly after Emperor Hadrian came to power in the early second century CE, he decided to seal off Scotland from Roman Britain with an ambitious wall stretching from sea to sea. The sheer scale of Hadrian’s Wall still impresses people today, but as the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century, Hadrian’s Wall was abandoned and Roman control of the area broke down. Little is known of this period of British history, but soon the Anglo-Saxons showed up and began to settle the land, creating a patchwork of little kingdoms and starting a new era of British history.

All Americans are familiar with the “day that will live in infamy”. At 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor, the advanced base of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet, was ablaze. It had been smashed by aircraft launched by the carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. All eight battleships had been sunk or badly damaged, 350 aircraft had been knocked out, and over 2,000 Americans lay dead. Indelible images of the USS Arizona exploding and the USS Oklahoma capsizing and floating upside down have been ingrained in the American conscience ever since.

On August 1, 1945, a month before the formal end of World War II, the British War Office announced the disbanding of a small, eclectic unit, the Long Range Desert Group. Since its founding five years earlier, in June 1940, the LRDG had pioneered and refined the concept and tactics of deep penetration, covert reconnaissance in the North African desert, and later as a more varied special forces operations unit in the Aegean, Italy, and the Balkans.

María Eva Duarte de Perón, known to the world as Evita, stands with Jesus Christ as a highly influential historical figure who lived only 33 years. The similarities do not end there: as Argentine novelist Tomás Eloy Martínez has observed, Evita came to "symbolize certain naïve, but effective, beliefs: the hope for a better world; a life sacrificed on the altar of the disinherited, the humiliated, the poor of the earth...myths which somehow reproduce the image of Christ."

After a brief revival following World War I, during which it successfully defeated a Soviet attempt to invade in an effort to carry "international revolution" into Germany and Central Europe, Poland once again fell victim to its neighbors in 1939. Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and Josef Stalin's USSR collaborated in the conquest and then split Poland between them. The Germans instituted oppressive rule in their portion of Poland, executing some 7,000 people on political grounds and imprisoning thousands of others.

Suleiman the Magnificent: The Life and Legacy of the Ottoman Empire’s Most Famous Sultan chronicles Suleiman’s life and accomplishments and the massive impact he had on his empire and the world around him.

For anyone trying to understand the origins of modern Russia, the search should begin with Tsar Peter I (1672-1725), who titled himself Peter the Great during his lifetime. The moniker is fitting, considering the manner in which Peter brought Russia out of the Middle Ages and into the 18th century.

The KGB is one of the most famous abbreviations of the 20th century, and it has become synonymous with the shadowy and often violent actions of the Soviet Union’s secret police and internal security agencies. Aside from the KGB, the 20th century’s most notorious spy agency was the Stasi, which was instrumental in the history of East Germany. In an era of totalitarian countries dominated by repressive state agencies, the Stasi stood out for its size, and the sheer breadth and depth of its surveillance.

When people think of ancient Italy, the Romans are usually the first and last people that come to mind, but long before Rome was built by Latin-speaking people, the culture of Italy was dominated by the Etruscans. Although the Etruscans may not comprise the core of most histories of the ancient Mediterranean, they exerted a profound influence on the region from the 8th-5th centuries BCE that continued to resonate for centuries after as the Romans carried on many of their traditions.

In 1503, Pope Julius II had succeeded the notorious Alexander VI, and Julius II brought an appreciation for the arts to the papacy. After Michelangelo finished the flurry of works that he had worked on during the previous four years, he was commissioned by Pope Julius II to complete a tomb in the Pope's honor. The project was to be massive in scope, and the tomb was to be placed inside of St. Peter's Basilica, the construction of which was intended to take place while Michelangelo designed the tomb.

There are few characters in the English language more iconic than Robin Hood. Emerging out of the ballads of the High Middle Ages and surviving through numerous permutations to the present day, the green-clad archer has become an icon. This audiobook profiles the historic figures who scholars speculate may be the person Robin Hood was based on, and explains the origins and evolution of Robin Hood.

In 1941, with the dark star of Nazi conquest in the ascendant over Europe, German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler continued seeking fresh ways to expand the Third Reich's domains. Two strategic issues occupied Hitler's immediate attention: dealing with Britain and the Soviet Union. Hitler and Goering disagreed fundamentally on the next steps to be taken, and Hitler's ideas naturally won out over the Reichsmarshal's objections.

Of all the peoples of the ancient Near East, the Phoenicians are among the most recognizable but also perhaps the least understood. The Phoenicians never built an empire like the Egyptians and Assyrians; in fact, the Phoenicians never created a unified Phoenician state. Instead, they existed as independent city-state kingdoms scattered throughout the Mediterranean region.

Towards the 17th century, the Puritan-raised George Fox became increasingly discouraged by the worsening moral conditions of society. George was unable to fill the spiritual void inside of him, until one day, he discovered his inner "Light". Next came the godly visions. George began to preach about the "true" Word of God, and soon, amassed a following - the Religious Society of Friends, later known as the "Quakers".

The Middle Ages in Europe were some of the most precarious centuries in recorded history, bristling with war, excitement, and chaos. The Western Roman Empire had crumbled, territories were rapidly expanding, and heavy ploughs, hourglasses, spectacles, tidal mills, and more pioneering inventions were popping up across the continent. It was also a time of extreme prejudice, when women were treated as second-class citizens. Their only purpose in life was to procreate by the dozen.

Most books and documentaries about the First World War focus on the carnage of the Western Front, where Germany faced off against France, the British Empire, and their allies in a grueling slugfest that wasted millions of lives. The shattered landscape of the trenches has become symbolic of the war as a whole, and it is this experience that everyone associates with World War I, but that front was not the only experience.