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In 1514 a respected London Merchant, Richard Hunne, was found hanging in Old St Paul’s Cathedral. Whether it was murder or suicide was hotly debated but popular opinion, endorsed more recently by many historians, pointed to foul play by church officials. Around this central mystery, Dale has woven a story of murder, church politics and forbidden texts in turbulent pre-Reformation London. Hunne’s widow, Anne, takes centre stage in this narrative as she attempts to solve and avenge the death of her husband. Her search for the truth will take her to Germany and Martin Luther’s revolt against the authority of the church, and up against powerful figures such as the English Lord Chancellor, Thomas More. She becomes involved in the new illicit trade of printing religious texts, and will suffer both imprisonment and the danger of execution. She is helped by her lover, a German Hansa merchant, and through her adventures she will move closer to, and finally solve, the brutal killing of her husband - a crime that has baffled historians ever since the body was first found hanging in St Paul’s.
For nearly three centuries the spectacular rise and fall of the South Sea Company has gripped the public imagination as the most graphic warning to investors of the dangers of unbridled speculation. Yet history repeats itself and the same elemental forces that drove up the price of South Sea shares to dizzying heights in 1720 have in recent years produced the global crash of 1987, the Japanese stock market bubble of the 1980s/90s, and the international dot.com boom of the 1990s. The First Crash throws light on the current debate about investor rationality by re-examining the story of the South Sea Bubble from the standpoint of investors and commentators during and preceding the fateful Bubbl...
For 400 years, the true story behind Sir Walter Ralegh's downfall, his conviction for high treason and his eventual beheading has been shrouded in mystery. Was he deliberately set up by the brilliant but untrustworthy Sir Robert Cecil? Why did his friend Lord Cobham denounce him at his trial? And how could this towering figure of the Elizabethan age be accused of conspiring with his old enemy Spain to overthrow the king? In Who Killed Sir Walter Ralegh? Richard Dale draws on his legal background to unravel the extraordinary plots and intrigues that marked the last months of Elizabeth's reign and the first weeks of James' succession. In the bitter struggle for position, wealth and royal favour, only the most ruthless and devious could hope to win, but would the dwarfish, hunchbacked Cecil eventually prevail over the swashbuckling Ralegh? And in the eyes of posterity, who was the real victor?
Richard Dale Owen was born in 1810 in Scotland to a wealthy textile manufacturer and philanthropist. The youngest of eight children, Richard grew up at the family estate of Braxfield House, where he received his early education from private tutors. He would later go on to study chemistry, physics, and natural sciences, among other subjects, traveling between Scotland and Switzerland for his schooling. Owen arrived in the United States in 1828 to teach in New Haven, Indiana, where his father was running an experimental utopian community of happiness, enlightenment, and prosperity. He would later go on to be Indiana’s second state geologist before enlisting in the army during both the Mexica...
Whatever their virtues, men are more violent than women. Why do men kill, rape, and wage war, and what can be done about it? Drawing on the latest discoveries about human evolution and about our closest living relatives, the great apes, "Demonic Males" offers some startling new answers to these questions.