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

The United Kingdom is an ancient land steeped in history and tradition, filled with prehistoric ruins, majestic castles, and a countryside sculpted from millennia of human habitation. Its rolling countryside is dotted with prehistoric burial mounds and stone circles. Medieval churches have elaborate stained glass windows and gruesome carvings, reflecting a mixture of hope and darkness. Every hamlet and village has tales that go back centuries, and folk festivals with roots in pagan times. Thus, it is not surprising that many believe the area is filled with ghosts.

Though often remembered today merely for the modern word “epicurean,” which has become associated with luxurious food and refined tastes, the actual philosophy of Epicureanism was far more complex and intellectually ambitious than simple indulgence. At its heart, Epicureanism sought to answer life’s most pressing issues, namely how to achieve happiness and pleasure while avoiding physical pain and mental anguish in a world of uncertainty. To offer answers, Epicurus founded his philosophical school in Athens around 306 B.C. during one of the most turbulent periods in Greek history.

The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in American history, and had the two sides realized it would last four years and inflict over a million casualties, it might not have been fought. Since it was, however, historians and history buffs alike have been studying and analyzing the biggest battles ever since. Americans have long been fascinated by the Civil War, marveling at the size of the battles, the leadership of the generals, and the courage of the soldiers.

Among the figures of early Roman history, few stand out quite like Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a man who to his contemporaries stood as the very image of the Roman Vir Bous (the Good Man). His life, whether viewed through the lens of ancient writers or treated as something of a foundational myth, has shaped Western thought surrounding civic duty and the restraint of power for more than 2,000 years.

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.

Yugoslavia was arguably one of the most unusual geopolitical creations of the 20th century. The Yugoslav state had never existed in any historical sense, and the ties that bound together its constituent peoples were tenuous at best. Although nominally all “Slavs,” the country was an amalgamation of languages, alphabets, cultures, religions, and traditions, which ensured its short existence was littered with splits, conflicts, and shocking violence. In a sense, it’s somewhat surprising that it lasted as long as it did.

The British Army: The History and Legacy of the Army That Helped Establish the World’s Largest Empire examines the various battles and events that the army played such crucial roles in over the centuries. You will learn about the British Army like never before.

The long agony of the “sick man of Europe”, an expression used by the tsar of Russia to depict the falling Ottoman Empire, could almost blind people to its incredible power and history. Preserving its mixed heritage - coming from both its geographic position, rising above the ashes of the Byzantine Empire, and the tradition inherited from the Muslim conquests - the Ottoman Empire lasted more than six centuries.

Any work about the mercurial Aleister Crowley is better off being labeled a “story” than a “biography” thanks to the impossibility of being sure that anything one reads about him is true. The basic recorded facts, including birth date, educational records, and published works, are reliable indicators that can be likened to stars guiding a lost desert traveler if the sky is clear. For the rest, one is wandering in the wilderness.

Modern perceptions of Classical Greece are almost invariably based on Athens and Sparta, but there are perhaps few areas as consistently undervalued as the island of Rhodes. Although solidly part of the Greek world for as long as there has been one, Rhodes, located just off the coast of Asia Minor, was also from its earliest times a port opening to the civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean, and Rhodes was involved in every significant moment in ancient Greek history.

Although the Sumerians continue to get second or even third billing compared to the Babylonians and Assyrians, perhaps because they never built an empire as great as the Assyrians or established a city as enduring and great as Babylon, they were the people who provided the template of civilization that all later Mesopotamians built upon. The Sumerians are credited with being the first people to invent writing, libraries, cities, and schools in, and many would argue that they were the first people to create and do those things anywhere in world.

Most anyone who has received a basic education in world history knows the story of how "in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Most also know that Christopher Columbus made first contact with the Americas while searching for a water route to Asia. However, far fewer people remember that the search for such a route continued for centuries after Columbus' death.

Often called the “Father of Geometry,” Euclid’s influence is so pervasive that his book, The Elements, was the primary math manual for over 2,000 years. It was not a “textbook” in the modern sense, as it did not have problem sets, word problems, or diagrams for practice, but it was a foundational reference and logical guide that students had to read, memorize, and demonstrate. In the Western and Islamic worlds, Euclid’s Elements was the standard geometry text for almost every educated person until the 19th century.

The Dissolution of Yugoslavia: The History of the Yugoslav Wars and the Political Problems that Led to Yugoslavia’s Demise examines how the multicultural nation broke apart in the 1980s and 1990s...you will learn about the Yugoslave Wars like never before.

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.

There is a farm outside La Porte, Indiana, that no longer exists. The buildings burned to the ground on the morning of April 28, 1908, but what the fire left behind was a cellar full of horrors that the people of La Porte and the country at large spent the better part of that spring trying to comprehend. Investigators found the remains of several bodies that had been dismembered, wrapped, and buried with the kind of efficiency that suggested someone had done the work many times before.

John Dee was one of the greatest scientific minds of his time, but also one of the most controversial. He was a learned man in fields as varied as mathematics and astronomy, centuries before they became formalized fields of study, but he is better remembered for performing magic and alchemy. Instead of astronomy, he became renowned across England for astrology, and he was one of the country’s most notorious occult writers during his life.

By the early 19th century, several European nations had banned slavery, but while the United States had banned the international slave trade, slavery was still legal in the country itself. As a result, there was still a strong financial motive for merchants and slave traders to attempt to bring slaves to the Western hemisphere, and a lot of profits to be gained from successfully sneaking slaves into the American South and the Caribbean by way of locations like Havana, Cuba.

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 Napoleonic Wars radically altered the old, established European power dynamics, and in 1795, the British, now emerging as the globe’s naval superpower, assumed control of the Cape as part of the spoils of war. In doing so, they recognized the enormous strategic value of the Cape as global shipping routes were developing and expanding. Possession passed back and forth once or twice, but more or less from that point onward, the British established their presence at the Cape, which they held until the unification of South Africa in 1910.