18th Century Books

The Great Upheaval CD: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800

Jay Winik

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 47 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

It is an era that redefined history. As the 1790s began, a fragile America teetered on the brink of oblivion, Russia towered as a vast imperial power, and France plunged into monumental revolution. But none of these remarkable events occurred in isolation. In The Great Upheaval, acclaimed historian Jay Winik masterfully illuminates how their fates combined in one extraordinary moment to change the course of civilization.

Winik brings his vast, meticulous research and narrative genius to the cold, dark battlefields and deadly clashes of ideologies that defined this age. Here is a savage world war, the toppling of a great dynasty, and an America struggling to survive at home and abroad. Here, too, is the first modern Holy War between Islam and a resurgent Christian empire. And here is the richest cast of characters ever to walk upon the world stage: Washington and Jefferson, Louis XVI and Robespierre, Catherine the Great, Adams, Napoleon, and Selim III. Exquisitely written and utterly compelling, The Great Upheaval vividly depicts an arc of revolutionary fervor stretching from Philadelphia and Paris to St. Petersburg and Cairo—with fateful results. A landmark in historical literature, Winik's gripping, epic portrait of this tumultuous decade will forever transform the way we see America's beginnings and our world.

The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815 (Penguin History of Europe)

Tim Blanning

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Subjects -> History -> Historical Study -> Revolutionary

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The new volume in the acclaimed Penguin History of Europe series takes on the greater eighteenth century in all its revolutionary glory

Here is an enormously entertaining, rich, and provocative account of a vivid and magnificent era in Europe’s history. Tim Blanning has for many years been one of the foremost writers on the eighteenth century. The culmination of many years’ work, The Pursuit of Glory is an accessible and enjoyable account of Europe from the end of the Thirty Years’ War to the Battle of Waterloo—an era of immense change and cultural, political, and technological ferment. Spanning the years 1648–1815, The Pursuit of Glory takes us from the Enlightenment through the French Revolution and Napoleonic era. As interested in the art and music of the period as in the great dynastic and revolutionary wars, as concerned with the lives of ordinary people as with the great rulers on horseback, The Pursuit of Glory turns a compelling spotlight on one of history’s most unique and fascinating eras.

The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down

Colin Woodard

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Subjects -> History -> World -> 18th Century

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Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Welcome to the Pirate Republic—the early-eighteenth-century home to some of the great pirate captains, including Blackbeard, "Black Sam" Bellamy, and Charles Vane. Along with their fellow pirates—former sailors, indentured servants, and runaway slaves—this "Flying Gang" established a crude but distinctive democracy in the Bahamas, carving out their own zone of freedom in which servants were free, blacks could be equal citizens, and leaders were chosen or deposed by a vote.

For a brief, glorious period the Pirate Republic was enormously successful. It cut off trade routes, sacked slave ships, and severed Europe from its New World empires. Imperial authorities and wealthy shipowners denounced its residents as the enemies of mankind, but common people saw them as heroes. Colin Woodard tells the dramatic untold story of the Pirate Republic that shook the very foundations of the British and Spanish Empires and fanned the democratic sentiments that would one day drive the American Revolution.

The Fatal Shore

Robert Hughes

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Total reviews: 56 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Cultural Amnesia 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding


By Robert Hughes

Australia is one of those faraway places you read about in National Geographic or watch on Discovery. Remote, exotic, modern yet solidly based in its history, it's a chamber of commerce promotion writer's dream. T he only country to occupy an entire continent... spanning from the Pacific to the Indian Oceans; sophisticated and modern along the coast with Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane; forbidding and undeveloped in The Outback; boasting symphonies, opera, and architecture; an outdoorsman's paradise.
Robert Hughes, the Art Critic for TIME magazine, has done an outstanding service in chronicling the rich history of his homeland.
The Australian writer has delved deeply into primary sources including diaries of those unfortunates who fell victim to the System of Transportation: the official euphemism for the forced removal of mostly minor criminals from England and (particularly) Ireland to the distant and fatal shores of the new continent.
In researching "diasporas," I've discovered artificial "homelands" for Esquimos in Canada, "Little Cubas' in Miami; the relocated Acadian ("Cajun") culture of the Mississippi delta, and new asian cultures in the American Midwest.

But Australia really qualifies: the indigenous population, the Aboriginals, like our Native Americans were run off their land, deprived of their rights, and forced to give up their culture. The rest came in rusty "Hellships" -overcrowded, prone to disease, starvation, physical and sexual abuse, it's amazing so many arrived alive.
And when they did get there they found the horrendous penal colonies of Norfolk Island and Van Diemen's Land, where they worked as indentured servants until winning freedom.
For years, Hughes tells us, Australia underwent a collective cultural amnesia about its past, sweeping the darker side of The System under the rug. But gradually they came to terms with "The convict Stain," accepting their beginnings, and in the process developing a great nation. Those who have seen the Mel Gibson movie "Gallipoli" will understand how Australia's sense of identity was forged on the hellish trenches and beaches of the First World War. As I write, Australia is celebrating "Australia Day"...not colonial day, or Queensland Day, or something else from Europe.
The Fatal Shore is first-rate history and first-rate writing. (We're lucky to have Hughes still among us: he was seriously injured and almost died after a car accident in Australia)

*****

Editorial Review:

In 1787, the twenty-eighth year of the reign of King George III, the British Government sent a fleet to colonize Australia...An epic description of the brutal transportation of men, women and children out of Georgian Britain into a horrific penal system which was to be the precursor to the Gulag and was the origin of Australia. The Fatal Shore is the prize-winning, scholarly, brilliantly entertaining narrative that has given its true history to Australia.

Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War

Edwin Burrows

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Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> New York

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent Work on an Overlooked and Forgotten Subject 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is a book displaying the best in American historical scholarship! Frankly I have been put off lately by political tomes revising American history to support some agenda -- usually Marxist -- and "proving" that the United States is not the shining light among nations that so many of us believe it is. Yes, our history is studded with evil acts and misguided policies, but eventually the will of a free and democratic people re-asserts itself time and time again in the face of specious propaganda, feckless politicians, and unbridled greed. But I digress.... (I read another book touted by Eric Foner this week.)

Author Burrows deserves the highest praise for this book. Most often the Revolutionary War is dismissed as one with relatively few casualties since the "official" killed in action number is only 4,435, a number that woefully understates the sacrifice in the war. Burrows gives 6,824 based on recent scholarship, but that number still misses the some forty percent of the wounded that later died from their wounds. The official number for wounded is 6,188, but since the wounded to killed ratio was likely around five to one, the wounded was more likely 20,000 of whom probably 8,000 died of their wounds and were permanently lost to the Continental Army and patriot cause.

The author estimates that up to 32,000 American prisoners were held around New York at some point during the war of which up to 18,000 died in captivity. But those released or exchanged were greatly enfeebled and often died within a few months after release. Combining these estimates with those deaths in captivity elsewhere by the British and adding the deaths from sickness while in service estimated at 10,000, and one arrives at deaths from all causes to be over 40,000. Out of a white male population over sixteen estimated at 551,000 of which somewhat more than a third were patriots (say 200,000), then approximately one in five patriots gave his life for his country. Wow, and double wow!

If those numbers seem high, then read Burrow's book. In any case, rebellion was truly a serious business. Most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were improverished or worse as a result of their actions and the war, and the ordinary patriots also paid a very high price for independence. (I need not even think about the willingness of Americans today to make such sacrifices.) In my Great-great-great-grandfather's company that went with Arnold to Quebec in 1775, only 37% returned, and some of those were enfeebled for life (notably John Joseph Henry.)

Getting into the meat of the author's work, he focuses on the imprisonment of thousands of patriots in and around New York City, in the Sugar House on Manhattan, and in the prison hulks of the Royal Navy. He makes supurb use of contemporaneous sources and accounts, mostly highly credible and descriptive. These accounts have been submerged on purpose by politicians who sought a rapprochement with Great Britain and academic historians attempting to downplay the revolution and the sacrifice of patriots lest such knowledge enhance patriotism in a population they wish to move into a global community governed in a large part by foreigners and foreign interests.

Author Burrows makes use of many ancedotal accounts to illustrate the horrors of British captivity. The activities of David Sproat as commissary for naval prisoners comes in for particular condemnation, and although he favored treating prisoners especially brutally, most of the deaths under his watch were due to simple indifference to their plight. He did not even ease up on the prisoners after Yorktown.

The patriot efforts to bring relief to the captives were ineffective, too little and too late. In 1782, long after Yorktown, the British captured 57 men from the American privateer, "The Chance", and within weeks, "seventeen lay dead and three others were dying..." Of the twenty-five eventually released, one died immediately, and three others could not walk unaided. Even for the survivors, they faced a long and uncertain path to normalcy.

There is so much good in this book that I could write volumes just to make sure that everyone knows what seminal accounts are there. The author even refutes "Cunningham's Confession", proves the best rations the captives were alloted would reduce them to skeletons over time, and discusses events in the 20th century to downplay this story for political purposes. One is struck by the comparison between the Jersey or Good Hope and Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay. Our wartime prisons today are accommodations in the Ritz Carleton in comparison with those experienced in the Revolutionary War yet ignite storms of protests and anti-American feeling. Obviously, we have short memories. They are jolted extremely well by author Burrows, and New York City should be ashamed of itself for forgetting its history.

Purchase and read this book!

Editorial Review:

The Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of Gotham tells the forgotten story of New York's British prison camps---and the nearly 20,000 patriots who lost their lives there.

Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before

Tony Horwitz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 93 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Bad Day at Black Rock 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

In my research for Wai-nani, High Chiefess of Hawaii, I read a dozen accounts of Captain James Cook's deadly encounter with the natives of Hawaii in 1779. This included not only the Captains' journal, but that of seaman, John Ledyard, and that of first mate, Lt. King. When Tony Horwitz declared that in Blue Latitudes he would take us boldly where Captain Cook had gone before, I didn't expect to learn anything new. What I found was the most informative, well-researched, fun account of the famous explorer to date. Horwitz likens Cook's three voyages of discovery throughout Polynesia and the Northwest to that of the Startrek's explorations into deep space. His journalistic style and breezy sense of humor keep historical events fresh. I stuck closely to Horwitz account of the events in Kealakekua Bay in the telling of Wai-nani's story. Her first person narrative allows the reader to know what was happening in the Hawaiian culture on the fateful day the navigator lost his life. Controversy over the actual events that took place that week and why rages on, but Horwitz provides an even-handed,thoughtful point of view.

LindaBallouAuthor.com
Wai-nani, High Chiefess of Hawai'i-Her Epic Journey

Editorial Review:

Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone BeforeTwo centuries after James Cook's epic voyages of discovery, Tony Horwitz takes readers on a wild ride across hemispheres and centuries to recapture the Captain’s adventures and explore his embattled legacy in today’s Pacific. Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of Confederates in the Attic, works as a sailor aboard a replica of Cook’s ship, meets island kings and beauty queens, and carouses the South Seas with a hilarious and disgraceful travel companion, an Aussie named Roger. He also creates a brilliant portrait of Cook: an impoverished farmboy who became the greatest navigator in British history and forever changed the lands he touched. Poignant, probing, antic, and exhilarating, Blue Latitudes brings to life a man who helped create the global village we inhabit today.

The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn

Eric Ives

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Royalty -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

EXCELLENT BIOGRAPHY 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This is a must-read for any Anne Boleyn fan, who wants to learn more about her life. This book lists many intricate details about Anne's life at court, which I found fascinating!

great book!! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

i loved this book, very accurate and insightful, great read for all anne boleyn fans.

Editorial Review:

This definitive biography of Anne Boleyn establishes her as a figure of considerable importance and influence in her own right.

• A full biography of Anne Boleyn, based on the latest scholarly research.
  
• Focuses on Anne’s life and legacy and establishes Anne as a figure of considerable importance and influence in her own right.
  
• Adulteress or innocent victim? Looks afresh at the issues at the heart of Anne's downfall.
  
• Pays attention to her importance as a patron of the arts, particularly in relation to Hans Holbein.
  
• Presents evidence about Anne’s spirituality and her interest in the intellectual debates of the period.
  
• Takes account of significant advances in knowledge in recent years.

The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd

Richard Zacks

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 69 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Overwritten pseudo-history 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Overwritten pseudo-history that purports to prove that Caption Kidd was a privateer with royal and business-leader credentials and not a rogue pirate.

Zacks buries sections of what might have been a decent 250-page book in 410 pages full of unprovable assertions and God-like first-person statements, which calls into question all of his supposed historical statements.

Editorial Review:

A literary treasure, The Pirate Hunter is a masterpiece of historical detective work, and a rare, authentic pirate story for grown-ups.

Captain Kidd has gone down in history as America's most ruthless buccaneer, fabulously rich, burying dozens of treasure chests up and down the eastern seaboard. But it turns out that most everyone, even many respected scholars, have the story all wrong. Captain William Kidd was no career cut-throat; he was a tough, successful New York sea captain who was hired to chase pirates. His three-year odyssey aboard the aptly named Adventure galley pitted him against arrogant Royal Navy commanders, jealous East India Company captains, storms, starvation, angry natives, and, above all, flesh-and-blood pirates. Superbly written and impeccably researched, The Pirate Hunter is one ripping good yarn.

The Princes in the Tower

Alison Weir

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Subjects -> History -> Europe -> England -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 96 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"A SURPRISINGLY FRESH AND TREMENDOUSLY THOROUGH CONTRIBUTION to the debate...Weir's book is, no doubt, not the last on this subject, but it might be the best....[She] constructs a devastating case...[and] brilliantly illuminates the nature of late-medieval political power."
--The Boston Globe
Despite five centuries of investigation by historians, the sinister deaths of the boy king Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, remain two of the most fascinating murder mysteries in English history. Did Richard III really kill "the Princes in the Tower," as is commonly believed, or was the murderer someone else entirely? Carefully examining every shred of contemporary evidence as well as dozens of modern accounts, English historian Alison Weir reconstructs the entire chain of events leading to the double murder. We are witnesses to the rivalry, ambition, intrigue, and struggle for power that culminated in the imprisonment of the prince and the hushed-up murders that secured Richard's claim to the throne as Richard III. A masterpiece of historical research and a riveting story of conspiracy and deception, The Princes in the Tower at last provides a solution to this age-old puzzle.
"Weir takes on this delicious mystery with a fearsome vengeance. The result is a fascinating and completely credible account."
--Milwaukee Journal
"Did Richard III do in his nephews or didn't he? How much of the evil-uncle legend was later Tudor propaganda and how much was true?...This is exciting reading."
--The Denver Post
"A fascinating historical whodunit in which truth is more sordid than fiction."
--Kirkus Reviews
A MAIN SELECTION OF
THE BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB

The Mountain Men: The Dramatic History and Lore of the First Frontiersmen

George Laycock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Real Men 4 out of 5 stars.
29 of 29 people found this review helpful.

If you love stories of the old West, this book is a must read!George Laycock does a nice job of giving us a good overview of this time period in our Western History. The book tells much about those days of trapping and exploring when the West was an unknown and unmapped area. In addition to telling the stories of several individual characters like John Colter, Jim Bridger, Hugh Glass, Jeidiah Smith and others, the author takes time to explain the fur trapping business. There are several sections in the book explaining weapons, traps, boats, clothing, tools, etc. The result is that the reader gets a good insight into what these men did and how they did it. The one drawback might be that some of the character studies are a bit short, often leaving the reader wanting more information. However, for a general overview of an important time in our early history, this is a wonderful book. I'd like to see this as required reading in our schools.

Editorial Review:

To know how the West was really won, start with the exploits of these unsung mountain mend who, like the legendary Jeremiah Johnson, were real buckskin heroes. Preceded only by Lewis and Clark, beaver fur trappers roamed the river valleys and mountain ranges of the West, surviving on fish and game, fighting or trading with the Native Americans-forever heading toward the untamed wilderness.

In this story of rough, heroic men and their worlds, Laycock weaves historical facts with profiles of individual trappers, including harrowing escapes, feats of supreme courage and endurance, and sometimes violent encounters with grizzley bears and Native Americans.