Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Blood and Bronze
The Benin Bronzes are among the British Museum’s most prized possessions. Celebrated for their great beauty, they embody the history, myth and artistry of the ancient Kingdom of Benin, once West Africa’s most powerful, and today part of Nigeria. But despite the Bronzes’ renown, little has been written about the brutal imperial violence with which they were plundered. Paddy Docherty’s searing new history tells that story: the 1897 British invasion of Benin. Armed with shocking details discovered in the archives, Blood and Bronze sets this assault in its late Victorian context. As British power faced new commercial and strategic pressures elsewhere, it ruthlessly expanded in West Africa. Revealing both the extent of African resistance and previously concealed British outrages, this is a definitive account of the destruction of Benin. Laying bare the Empire’s true motives and violent means, including the official coverup of grotesque sexual crimes, Docherty demolishes any moral argument for Britain retaining the Bronzes, making a passionate case for their immediate repatriation to Nigeria.
The Khyber Pass
Thirty miles long, and in places no more than sixteen meters wide, the Pass is the principal route through the great mountain borderlands between India and Central Asia -- and the path of invasion for generations of conquerors. In this ground-breaking book, Paddy Docherty charts its remarkable story -- one which involves so many of the world's great leaders and civilizations, from the influential Persian kings to Alexander the Great, from the White Huns to Genghis Khan, not to mention the Ancient Greeks and countless tribes of nomads and barbarians. He paints an illuminating picture of mountain warriors and religious visionaries, artists, poets and scientists as well as describing how around...
The Khyber Pass
The story of the Khyber Pass, the narrow mountain route which - more than any other single place on earth - has shaped civilisations. Thirty miles long, and in places no more than sixteen metres wide, the Pass is the only natural cutting through the great mountains of the Hindu Kush - and hence the one feasible route from Central Asia into India. Its story - of the rise and fall of empires - begins with Cyrus and Darius, the great Persian kings. Legendary conquerors soon follow: first Alexander the Great, then, much later, the White Huns (who would bind the heads of their children to make their appearance in battle more frightening) and Genghis Khan. In between are the Ancient Greeks, whose ...
Stalin's Nemesis
Leon Trotsky was the charismatic intellectual of the Russian Revolution, an authoritarian organizer, who might have succeeded Lenin and become the ruler of the Soviet Union. But by the time the Second World War broke out he was in exile, living in Mexico in a villa borrowed from the great artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, guarded only by several naïve young American acolytes. The household was awash with emotional turmoil - tensions grew between Trotsky and Rivera, as questions arose over his relations with Frida Kahlo. His wife was restless and jealous.Outside of the villa, Mexican communists tried to storm the house, the Trotskys' sons were being persecuted and killed in Europe, and in Moscow, Stalin personally ordered his secret police to kill his fiercest left-wing critic - at any cost. By the summer of 1940, they had found a man who could penetrate the tight security around the house in far-away Mexico . . .Bertrand Patenaude's book reconstructs a famous state crime with chilling precision and a page-turning quality. It tells the amazing story of a deadly rivalry, revolutionary fanaticism and tragic violence and loss.
Empires of the Indus
The Indus rises in Tibet, flows west across India, and south through Pakistan. For millennia it has been worshipped as a god; for centuries used as a tool of imperial expansion. Empires of the Indus follows the river upstream and back in time, taking the reader on a voyage through two thousand miles of geography and more than five thousand years of history redolent with contemporary importance.
Afghanistan
Traces the political history of Afghanistan from the sixteenth century to the present, looking at what has united the people as well as the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them.
Stamford Bridge Is Falling Down
In May 1971 Chelsea won the Cup Winners' Cup in Athens, following their FA Cup triumph twelve months earlier. The club, awash with glamour, was ambitious on and off the field. The squad included stars like Peter Osgood, Alan Hudson, David Webb, Peter Bonetti, Charlie Cooke, John Hollins, Ian Hutchinson, Peter Houseman, Eddie McCreadie, Keith Weller, Ron Harris, John Boyle, John Dempsey, John Phillips, Tommy Baldwin and Paddy Mulligan. Dave Sexton was a highly-respected manager, a forward-thinking coach. Everything looked rosy. Four seasons later they were relegated, Osgood, Hudson and Webb had left and Sexton summarily sacked with the club in a financial morass. Why the decline? What went so...
Trekking in Mallorca
A guidebook to trekking the GR221 – also known as the Drystone Route – through the spectacular mountains of Mallorca’s Serra de Tramuntana. Best suited to those with some experience of long-distance walking, the route is mostly on clear paths and tracks, but some of these can be rough underfoot, and occasionally steep, and some sections require careful route-finding. The main route extends 141km (88 miles) from Port d’Andratx to Pollença and is described in 10 detailed stages of between 9 and 20km (5–12 miles). Also included are alternative starts from s’Arracó, es Capdellà and Calvià, and alternative finishes to Cala Tuent, Alaró, Orient, Caimari and Port de Pollença. 1:25,000 Alpina mapping for each stage Extensive information on public transport, accommodation and refreshments, including accommodation listings Optional detours to climb neighbouring peaks Advice on preparation and planning History, plants and wildlife and local points of interest
The Prophet's Heir
The life and legacy of one of Mohammad’s closest confidants and Islam’s patron saint: Ali ibn Abi Talib Ali ibn Abi Talib is arguably the single most important spiritual and intellectual authority in Islam after prophet Mohammad. Through his teachings and leadership as fourth caliph, Ali nourished Islam. But Muslims are divided on whether he was supposed to be Mohammad’s political successor—and he continues to be a polarizing figure in Islamic history. Hassan Abbas provides a nuanced, compelling portrait of this towering yet divisive figure and the origins of sectarian division within Islam. Abbas reveals how, after Mohammad, Ali assumed the spiritual mantle of Islam to spearhead the movement that the prophet had led. While Ali’s teachings about wisdom, justice, and selflessness continue to be cherished by both Shia and Sunni Muslims, his pluralist ideas have been buried under sectarian agendas and power politics. Today, Abbas argues, Ali’s legacy and message stands against that of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and Taliban.
