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Smallpox! Rabies! Black Death! Throughout history humankind has been plagued by . . . well, by plagues. The symptoms of these diseases were gruesome-but the remedies were even worse. Get to know the ickiest illnesses that have infected humans and affected civilizations through the ages. Each chapter explores the story of a disease, including the scary symptoms, kooky cures, and brilliant breakthroughs that it spawned. Medical historian and bestselling author Lindsey Fitzharris lays out the facts with her trademark wit, and Adrian Teal adds humor with cartoons and caricatures drawn in pitch black and blood red. Diseases covered in this book include bubonic plague, smallpox, rabies, tuberculosis, cholera, and scurvy. Thanks to centuries of sickness and a host of history's most determined plague-busters, this riveting book features everything you've ever wanted to know about the world's deadliest diseases.
Many of us think of the ill-behaved celebrity and the tabloid splash as modern inventions, but the antics of footballers and soap stars are as nothing when set alongside the hell-raising of the 18th century celebs. The Gin Lane Gazette is stuffed with true stories of boozy MPs who settled their political differences with duels in Hyde Park; peers of the realm who sat the unburied corpses of their cherished mistresses at their dinner tables; entertainers who rode horses standing upright in the saddle, while wearing a mask of bees; and famous courtesans who ate 1,000-guinea banknotes stuffed into sandwiches, simply to make a point. Before it was dashed from their lips by the Victorian party-poopers, our Georgian forebears drank deep from the cup of life.
The Truth About the Mutiny on HMAV BOUNTY – and the Fate of Fletcher Christian brings this famed South Pacific saga into the 21st century. By combining unprecedented research into Fletcher Christian and his fate with deep knowledge of Bounty’s Polynesian women, Glynn Christian presents a fresh and comprehensive telling of a powerful maritime adventure that still captivates after 230 years. Of over 3000 books and major articles on the mutiny, or the five feature films starring such as Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, Marlon Brando and Mel Gibson, none has told the true story as until 1982, no author knew the real Fletcher Christian, or could understand his relationship with William Bligh, h...
This collection reveals the wide-ranging impact of the Stage Licensing Act of 1737 on literary and theatrical culture in Georgian Britain. Demonstrating the differing motivations of the state in censoring public performances of plays after the Stage Licensing Act of 1737 and until the Theatres Act 1843, chapters cover a wide variety of theatrical genres across a century and show how the mechanisms of formal censorship operated under the Lord Chamberlain's Examiner of Plays. They also explore the effects of informal censorship, whereby playwrights, audiences and managers internalized the censorship regime. As such, the volume moves beyond a narrow focus on erasures and emendations visible on manuscripts to elucidate censorship's wide-ranging significance across the long eighteenth century. Demonstrating theatre archives' potency as a resource for historical research, this volume is of exceptional value for researchers interested in the evolving complexities of Georgian society, its politics and mores.
The cat belonging to supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld is angry--so angry, in fact, that he's scribbled down his miserable musings in this humorous book Featuring drawing by critically acclaimed cartoonist Adrian Teal, this book--ideal for all lovers of tyrannical felines--is a collection of miserable musings from the angriest and most dangerous cat in the the world. Belonging to an international supervillain and arch-nemesis of the British Secret Service, Blofeld's cat has witnessed first hand his owner's despotic appetite for world domination--and it's rather made an impression on him. Offering his own provocative thoughts on life's trivialities, such as social media, celebrity culture, reality television, and online dating, as well as more controversial views on murder, politics, and law enforcement, Blofeld's cat's opinions will shock, offend, outrage, and most importantly, amuse.
This is probably the most concise English history book ever published. Tony Boullemier has vividly summed up all 42 rulers of England since 1066. Each reign is condensed into five key bullet points and illustrated by a clever cartoon that sticks in the memory. It sorts out all those Edwards, Henrys and Georges – their major battles, the rebellions they faced and the bizarre ways many of them died. For younger readers, aged 10 upwards, The Little Book of Monarchs will provide a chronological narrative, giving a firm foundation for future history studies. For students and older readers, it will be an indispensable reference book – a short and snappy aide memoire to our bloody and glorious past. For everyone, it’s history with a smile on its face! Tony wrote this book as a response to the falling standards of history teaching in schools – he feels that less and less time is devoted to the subject and that children are often offered only two or three significant periods to study. He feels they are simply not getting a proper perspective, and hopes to address this by taking the reader chronologically through the ages.
Most of the women who ever lived left no trace of their existence on the record of history. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women of the middling and lower levels of society left no letters or diaries in which they expressed what they felt or thought. Criminal courts and magistrates kept few records of their testimonies, and no ecclesiastical court records are known to survive for the French Roman Catholic Church between 1540 and 1667. For the most part, we cannot hear the voices of ordinary French women - but this study allows us to do so. Based on the evidence of 1,200 cases brought before the consistories - or moral courts - of the Huguenot church of Languedoc between 1561 and 1615, Th...
For more than four decades, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror readers crave. Now, with the sixteenth volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. Encompassed in the pages of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as: Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Stephen Graham Jones, Joyce Carol Oates, Laird Barron, Mira Grant, and many others.
DAILY MAIL, GUARDIAN AND OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 Winner of the 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Shortlisted for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize and the 2018 Wolfson History Prize The story of a visionary British surgeon whose quest to unite science and medicine delivered us into the modern world - the safest time to be alive in human history In The Butchering Art, historian Lindsey Fitzharris recreates a critical turning point in the history of medicine, when Joseph Lister transformed surgery from a brutal, harrowing practice to the safe, vaunted profession we know today. Victorian operating theatres were known as 'gateways of death', Fitzharris reminds us, since ...
Fitzwilliam Darcy's universally acknowledged primer for single men in possession of a good fortune, should they be in want of a wife. Perfect for fans of Bridgerton and the high society lifestyle of the Regency period. Mr Darcy's Guide to Courtship is no ordinary Regency courtship manual, composed as it is by a Fitzwilliam Darcy as yet unmellowed by contact with Elizabeth Bennet. Full of entirely justified pride and meticulously cultivated prejudice, Jane Austen's most famous (and most fancied) hero here reveals the secrets of his success with the opposite sex, offering hints to both ladies and gentlemen on the rules of courtship, including making oneself agreeable, identifying an appropriate partner and how to escape the unwanted attentions of rogues and fortune-hunters. *Also includes: beauty tips from Caroline Bingley, thoughts on the improper courtship techniques of Messrs Wickham and Collins, reflections on spinsterhood by Miss Emma Woodhouse, and Darcy's advice to his many illustrious correspondents including Lord Byron, the Duke of Wellington and Mr Willoughby of Combe Magna.*