Cadbury, Deborah

"An exploration of Queen Victoria's matchmaking exploits details how she used her grandchildren to further the influence of the British Empire, despite their own plans and the turmoil that rocked Europe starting in the nineteenth century."--OCLC.

In 1936, the British monarchy faced the greatest threats to its survival in the modern era. First came the crisis of abdication and then the menace of Nazism. The fate of the country rested in the hands of the late King George V's sons: the stammering King George VI (who became king when his eldest brother, Edward VIII abdicated in December, 1936), the dull-witted Duke of Gloucester, the too-glamorous Duke of Kent, and the Nazi-sympathizer and ex-king, who became known as the Duke of Windsor after his abdication. They were four men, miscast by fate, and one would save the monarchy at great personal cost to himself and his family.

Traces the development of rockets and spaceflight from German experiments before World War II to the manned moon landings, and provides biographies on two scientists, Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolev.

Traces the development of rockets and spaceflight from German experiments before World War II to the manned moon landings, and provides biographies on two scientists, Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolev.

In 1793 when French Queen Marie-Antoinette was beheaded at the guillotine during the Revolution (King Louis XVI died before her), her eight-year old son, Louis-Charles, was imprisoned in the Temple Tower, along with his older sister, Marie-Therese. Both children were imprisoned for two years and while Marie- Therese survived, Louis-Charles, the boy king, did not. Once his parents were dead, no one saw him but those of the revolution who brought his food. This secrecy gave rise to rumors that he had somehow escaped. His death at the age of ten prompted an autopsy. One of the attending doctors removed his heart and secreted it from the prison in his pocket. For two hundred years this heart had many remarkable journeys. As imposters, who claimed they were the boy-king, came and went, the heart survived into the twenty-first century when DNA testing would at last reveal to the world who the real Louis-Charles was.

A world that had changed little from the Middle Ages was altered beyond recognition by the engineering genius of the nineteenth century: rivers tamed, oceans pacified, continents bridged. In Dreams of Iron and Steel, acclaimed historian Deborah Cadbury tells the heroic tale of the visionaries and ordinary workers who brought to life seven wonders of engineering that still have the power to awe and inspire us today. From the London sewers that banished cholera to the Panama Canal that shaved thousands of miles off a dangerous sea passage, from the Hoover Dam that diverted the world's most unpredictable river to give power to over half of the country to the transcontinental railroad that fulfilled the dream of manifest destiny. Dreams of iron and steel reveals the epic struggles and personal fortunes and reputations were lost and won.