February 2017

Out of the division and strife of the Middle Ages, Spain emerged from behind the massive Pyrenees to straddle the stage of European
politics like some new colossus. Discoverer of a New World, it became the greatest power on earth and created a Golden Age of culture
quite breathtaking in the quality of its achievement. Within 150 years, Spain was in a state of decay and fast being left behind by more
progressive European nations.
Here, from award-winning historian Malveena McKendrick, is the dramatic story of the rise and fall of the Spanish empire.

When William Shakespeare was about twenty, his life changed forever. He left Stratford and walked to London, where, in time, he became
the world's greatest playwright.
Here is Shakespeare's little-told story, presented against the colorful tapestry of his England, the kingdom under Elizabeth I and James I. In
the reigns of those monarchs, the nation was emerging from centuries of medieval turmoil. The small island that had changed so little
since the Norman Conquest of 1066 suddenly became a center of international adventure, political experimentation, and artistic
development.
Young Shakespeare was fortunate to be in England. The first professional theater opened in London in 1576; he arrived, stage-struck and
in search of a job, around 1587. He retired to Stratford a wealthy gentleman in 1611, only a generation before the theaters of England
were closed by the Puritans. During Shakespeare's London years, England seethed with plots and intrigue and throbbed with pageantry;
everywhere a writer looked was a scene to fire his imagination. Like Sir Walter Raleigh and other daring contemporaries, William

When William Shakespeare was about twenty, his life changed forever. He left Stratford and walked to London, where, in time, he became
the world's greatest playwright.
Here is Shakespeare's little-told story, presented against the colorful tapestry of his England, the kingdom under Elizabeth I and James I. In
the reigns of those monarchs, the nation was emerging from centuries of medieval turmoil. The small island that had changed so little
since the Norman Conquest of 1066 suddenly became a center of international adventure, political experimentation, and artistic
development.
Young Shakespeare was fortunate to be in England. The first professional theater opened in London in 1576; he arrived, stage-struck and
in search of a job, around 1587. He retired to Stratford a wealthy gentleman in 1611, only a generation before the theaters of England
were closed by the Puritans. During Shakespeare's London years, England seethed with plots and intrigue and throbbed with pageantry;
everywhere a writer looked was a scene to fire his imagination. Like Sir Walter Raleigh and other daring contemporaries, William

The turbulent events that overtook Russia in 1917 are often called one of history's great turning points. In March of that year, a corrupt,
outdated, careworn autocracy - the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty - was overthrown by a spontaneous uprising of Russia's long-
oppressed masses.
During the next few months, Alexander Kerensky and other liberals in the provisional government attempted to adopt reforms. But the
continuing hardships of World War I and the pressure of Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks proved too much for them. In the relatively bloodless
coup d'état of November 7, Lenin and his associates seized control of the state.
Here, from the eminent historian E. M. Halliday, is the dramatic story of the Russian Revolution.

The history of Russia is an epic of unending struggle.
Here, from award-winning historian Ian Grey, is its dramatic story - from the establishment of the first ruling dynasty by a Viking prince to
the invasions of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan to the rise of the tsars, whose domination of their country stretched nearly four
centuries until the violent overthrow of Nicholas II in 1918.

No decade in American history has roared as loudly as the 1920s. For two centuries, the United States had lived in happy isolation from
international issues. Then it was drawn into World War I.
Although America was still fundamentally a provincial society, by the end of the war and the opening of the new decade, most Americans
understood that a new era lay before the country.
Despite Prohibition, it was an intoxicating decade, populated with characters as varied as Clarence Darrow, Henry Ford, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Charles Lindbergh, Woodrow Wilson - and flappers. It was a time when ideas about love, public decorum, dress, and speech were
changing. It was a time of cultivation of the new, shocking, and sometimes, according to the standards of the previous decade, vulgar: the
stocking rolled below the knee, four-letter words in the mouths of debutantes, and speakeasies. All of these details, along with the
economic collapse that ended the decade and sparked the Great Depression, are captured in this vivid chronicle by noted historian
Edmund O. Stillman.

By 1400, the foundation of the Italian Renaissance had been laid. There was burgeoning trade and industry, newly wealthy individuals and
cities, and a new political freedom and energy throughout the land.
The prevailing mood was one of change and improvement; old moral restraints and medieval dogmas were crumbling, and in their place
was a zeal for building on the classics of ancient Greece and Rome to create a better civilization. And finally, there was rivalry: between
cities, merchant princes, artists, all vying to do better than anyone else, whether they were planning an ideal state, building a church, or
striking a medal. It was the wealthiest and most menacing age Europe had ever known; Italy possessed the greatest concentration of
gifted individuals that Western civilization had seen for 1,000 years, and the conjunction of genius and the times produced an explosion of
energy as powerful as an erupting volcano.
Here, from the eminent British Historian Sir J. H. Plumb, is the story of the Renaissance.

Renaissance Venice lived by its ships. They brought riches, power, and security to a city more cosmopolitan than any other in Europe.
Here, in this short-form book by noted historian Sir J. H. Plumb, is the story of Venice's early years.

In the fifteenth century, Rome was reborn - not spiritually, for Renaissance popes were not men of the spirit, but physically, artistically,
and politically. St. Peter's, the Vatican, the churches, the tombs, the squares, the palaces and gardens of Rome, which enchant the eye and
delight the heart, encouraged the pursuit of beauty that the stern moralities of the Counter Reformation could not stop. For more than
200 years, the splendor of Rome became the pride of the papacy. The pilgrims, supplicants, and merchants returned to the city, as did the
financial lifeblood of Rome - the papal tax that was harvested from Europe's peasantry. And so the Roman soil was fertilized again, for
without wealth, no rebirth was possible.
Here, in a short-form book from eminent British historian Sir J. H. Plumb, is the story of Renaissance Rome.

Here, in a short-form book, is the story of Renaissance Milan, written by the eminent British historian Sir J. H. Plumb, as reflected in the
lives of its three greatest dukes: Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Francesco Sforza, and Ludovico Il Moro.