Pamela Nagami
Madame de Staël
Madame Germaine de Staël (1766-1817) was the daughter of the Swiss banker and statesman, Jacques Necker. Her mother hosted a popular Pa…
Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) famously said, "The great questions of the day will not be settled by speeches or the decisions of the ma…
The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648
Samuel Rawson Gardiner remains a respected source on the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), which began as a civil conflict between Protestant p…
Henry II
Born in 1133, King Henry II of England reigned from 1154 until his death in 1189. Before he was forty, he controlled England, large parts of…
A History of Our Own Times From the Accession of Queen Victoria to the General Election of 1880, Volume III
Volume III of this history of Victorian Britain begins in 1856 with the gunboat diplomacy of the Second Opium War and then moves to the harr…
A History of the Four Georges, and of William IV, Volume 3
In Volume III of this series on the Hanoverian Kings, Justin McCarthy is joined by his son, Justin Hartly McCarthy, a liberal Irish MP like …
The Later Middle Ages: A History of Western Europe 1254-1494
The Scottish historian, Robert Balmain Mowat writes, “When this period opens one of the finest epochs in German history had just closed, and…
Half a Century
In the spring of 1850, while the United States was polarized over the slavery debate and Daniel Webster was negotiating the compromise of th…
The Early Hanoverians
In this short book Edward Ellis Morris writes a vivid account of the reigns of the first two Georges. Scarcely had the fifty-four-year-old k…
Edward III
Edward III reigned for fifty years, from 1327 to 1377. William Warburton writes that "the backbone of the story of his reign and times …
A History of Our Own Times From the Accession of Queen Victoria to the General Election of 1880, Volume IV
The fourth and concluding volume of this history of Victorian Britain opens with the brutal repression in 1865 of a rebellion by ex-slaves i…
Philip Augustus
Philip Augustus (Philip II of France 1165-1223), grandfather of Saint Louis, was one of France's greatest kings. While England's Henry II wa…
Edward the First
Edward I of England (1239-1307) will always be remembered as the "Hammer of the Scots" who condemned William Wallace (Braveheart) …
Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Duke of Orford (1676-1745), is generally regarded as the first prime minister of Great Britain. This is a short biograph…
Pitt
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, liberal prime minister (1894-1895), wrote this short biography of William Pitt, the Younger (1759-…
Women of Versailles: the Court of Louis XIV
Jean de La Bruyère famously characterized Versailles as "that region where joys were visible but false, and vexations hidden but…
Life of Sir Walter Ralegh
Sir Walter Ralegh (c. 1552-1618), English soldier, explorer, courtier, writer, and poet was one of the most notable figures of the Elizabeth…
Milton
John Milton (1608-1674) was an English poet, classicist, and fearless advocate for civil liberty, who served the Commonwealth of England und…
Emily Brontë
Emily Brontë (1818-1848) is best known for her only novel, "Wuthering Heights." She was born in Yorkshire, northern England, …
The Renaissance and the Reformation: A Textbook of European History 1494-1610
Dame Emmeline Tanner writes of the Renaissance that its "special characteristic was the revolt against authority and the rise to import…