europe

Discusses a number of the predators of Europe and Africa.

Recounts the disorder in Europe after World War II, describing the brutal acts against Germans and collaborators, the anti-Semitic beliefs that reemerged and the Allied-tolerated expulsions of citizens from their ancestral homelands.

"Between 1347 and 1350 a horrifying disease spread by fleas and rats emerged in Asia and raged eastward. Encircling Europe in a deadly noose, the most lethal pandemic in world history killed untold millions of people. Bubonic Plague and the Black Death explores the causes, the spread, the effects on people's lives, as well as efforts to treat the disease and halt its spread"--Provided by publisher.

"From windmills to wheelbarrows, medieval innovators helped develop or improve some important manufacturing technology we use today. The Middle Ages were crucial for the improvement of the spinning wheel, loom, printing press, and more! Discover how our stuff is still made like it's the medieval times"--Provided by publisher.

Everyone knows Benjamin Franklin--the thrifty inventor-statesman of the Revolutionary era--but not about his love life. Poor Richard's Women reveals the long-neglected voices of the women Ben loved and lost during his lifelong struggle between passion and prudence. The most prominent among them was Deborah Read Franklin, his common-law wife and partner for forty-four years. Long dismissed by historians, she was an independent, politically savvy woman and devoted wife who raised their children, managed his finances, and fought off angry mobs at gunpoint while he traipsed about England. Weaving detailed historical research with emotional intensity and personal testimony, Nancy Rubin Stuart traces Deborah's life and those of Ben's other romantic attachments through their personal correspondence. We are introduced to Margaret Stevenson, the widowed landlady who managed Ben's life in London; Catherine Ray, the twenty-three-year-old New Englander with whom he traveled overnight and later exchanged passionate letters; Madame Brillon, the beautiful French musician who flirted shamelessly with him, and the witty Madame Helvetius, who befriended the philosophes of pre-Revolutionary France and brought Ben to his knees. What emerges from Stuart's pen is a colorful and poignant portrait of women in the age of revolution. Set two centuries before the rise of feminism, Poor Richard's Women depicts the feisty, often-forgotten women dear to Ben's heart who, despite obstacles, achieved an independence rarely enjoyed by their peers in that era.

"In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas-and a new unrest-begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumors of his sect's secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs. The story of Frank-a real historical figure around whom mystery and controversy swirl to this day-is the perfect canvas for the genius and unparalleled reach of Olga Tokarczuk. Narrated through the perspectives of his contemporaries-those who revere him, those who revile him, the friend who betrays him, the lone woman who sees him for what he is-The Books of Jacob captures a world on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence"--.

"An account by an armed-conflict mediator searching for a missing person in Syria over twenty tense days--at the end of which he will either find 'proof of life' or not"--Provided by publisher.

"The Black Death is the name most commonly given to the pandemic of bubonic plague that ravaged the medieval world in the late 1340s. From Central Asia, the plague swept through Europe, leaving millions of dead in its wake. Between a quarter and a third of Europe's population died, and in England the population fell from nearly six million to just over three million"--Provided by publisher.

"The . . . story of a group of German Jews desperately seeking American visas to escape the Nazis, and an illuminating account of America's struggle with the refugee crisis caused by the rise of Hitler"--Provided by publisher.

Presents a comprehensive history of World War II from the invasion of Poland in 1939 to Germany's surrender in 1945; and focuses on the roles that each nation played in defeating Nazi Germany.