A manual of religion and of the history of the Christian church .. Bretschneider Karl Gottlieb Книга по Требованию

A master of many literary genres, Arthur Conan Doyle excelled particularly in the short-story form, and was acclaimed in his day as much for his detective stories as for his thrilling tales of mystery and the supernatural. While the adventures of Sherlock Holmes have become part of our collective imagination, these stories - concerned with ghosts, obscure scientific experiments and other unexplained phenomena - are now unjustly neglected

The third volume of Steven Runciman's classic, hugely influential trilogy on the history of the Crusades • 'The whole tale is one of faith and folly, courage and greed, hope and disillusion' • Steven Runciman's triumphant three-volume A History of the Crusades remains an unsurpassed account of the events that changed the world and continue to resonate today. This final volume of the trilogy begins with the glamorous Third Crusade and ends with the ruinous collapse of the crusader states and the degeneration of their ideals, which reached its nadir in the tragic destruction of Byzantium

The second volume of Steven Runciman's classic, hugely influential trilogy on the history of the Crusades • 'There was magic about. Saladin himself was troubled by terrible dreams...' • Steven Runciman's unrivalled history of the Crusades is a classic of learning and vivid, compelling storytelling, which brilliantly brings to life the personalities, battles, massacres, triumphs and follies of these epochal events. In this second volume of his trilogy Runciman tells the story of the foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the disastrous, bloody Second Crusade and the inexorable rise of the crusaders' nemesis, Saladin

The remarkable story of Bess of Hardwick, her ascent through Elizabethan society and the houses she built that shaped British architectural history • Born in 1521, Bess of Hardwick, businesswoman, money-lender and property tycoon, lived an astonishing eighty-seven years. Through canny choices, four husbands and a will of steel she rose from country squire's daughter to Dowager Countess, establishing herself as one of the richest and most powerful women in England, second only to Queen Elizabeth • Bess forged her way not merely by judicious marriage, but by shrewd exploitation of whatever assets each marriage brought. Wealth took concrete form in her passion for building and she oversaw every stage of the construction of her four houses including Hardwick New Hall, her sole surviving building, which stands as a celebration of one woman's triumphant progress through Elizabethan England

The United States asserts the right to use military force against ‘failed states’ around the globe. But as Noam Chomsky argues in this devastating analysis, America shares features with many of the regimes it insists are failing and constitute a danger to their neighbours • Offering a comprehensive and radical examination of America past and present, Chomsky shows how this lone superpower – which topples foreign governments, invades states that threaten its interests and imposes sanctions on regimes it opposes – has stretched its own democratic institutions to breaking point. And how an America in crisis places the world ever closer to the brink of nuclear and environmental disaster

In the years just before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, people from across the political spectrum in Europe and America celebrated a great achievement, felt a common purpose and, very often, forged personal friendships. Yet over the following decades the euphoria evaporated, the common purpose and centre ground gradually disappeared, extremism rose once more and eventually - as this book compellingly relates - the relationships soured too • Anne Applebaum traces this history in an unfamiliar way, looking at the trajectories of individuals caught up in the public events of the last three decades. When politics becomes polarized, which side do you back? If you are a journalist, an intellectual, a civic leader, how do you deal with the re-emergence of authoritarian or nationalist ideas in your country? When your leaders appropriate history, or pedal conspiracies, or eviscerate the media and the judiciary, do you go along with it? • Twilight of Democracy is an essay that combines the personal and the political in an original way and brings a fresh understanding to the dynamics of public life in Europe and America, both now and in the recent past

Scruton argues that the tragedies and disasters of the history of the European continent have been the consequences of a false optimism and the fallacies that derive from it. In place of these fallacies, Scruton mounts a passionate defence of both civil society and freedom. He shows that the true legacy of European civilisation is not the false idealisms that have almost destroyed it – in the shapes of Nazism, fascism and communism – but the culture of forgiveness and irony which we must now protect from those whom it offends. The Uses of Pessimism is a passionate plea for reason and responsibility, written at a time of profound change

From the author of You Are Awesome: Find Your Confidence and Dare to be Brilliant at (Almost) Anything • Essential reading for an astounding summer of sport; If you’ve ever wondered what makes a champion, Bounce has the answer • What are the real secrets of sporting success, and what lessons do they offer about life? Why doesn’t Tiger Woods “choke”? Why are the best figure skaters those that have fallen over the most and why has one small street in Reading produced more top table tennis players than the rest of the country put together • Two-time Olympian and sports writer and broadcaster Matthew Syed draws on the latest in neuroscience and psychology to uncover the secrets of our top athletes and introduces us to an extraordinary cast of characters, including the East German athlete who became a man, and her husband – and the three Hungarian sisters who are all chess grandmasters

Легко упустить из виду, что в большинстве случаев войны не происходит. По всему миру существуют миллионы враждебных соперничеств, но лишь незначительная их часть выливается в насилие. Используя нелогичный подход, в своей книге "Почему мы сражаемся. Корни войны и пути к миру" Блаттман напоминает нам, что большинство соперников спокойно ненавидят друг друга. Это потому, что война обходится слишком дорого. Враги почти всегда считают, что лучше разделить пирог пополам, чем портить его или бороться за тонкие ломтики. Итак, в тех редких случаях, когда завязывалась борьба, что удерживало соперников от компромисса? • Книга на английском языке • Based on two decades of research, the five causes of wars and four ways to stop them • It's easy to overlook that most of the time, war doesn't happen

Following on from his epic ‘1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow’, bestselling author Adam Zamoyski has written the dramatic story of the Congress of Vienna • In the wake of his disastrous Russian campaign of 1812, Napoleon's imperious grip on Europe began to weaken, raising the question of how the Continent was to be reconstructed after his defeat. There were many who dreamed of a peace to end all wars, in which the interests of peoples as well as those of rulers would be taken into account. But what followed was an unseemly and at times brutal scramble for territory by the most powerful states, in which countries were traded as if they had been private and their inhabitants counted like cattle • The results, fixed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, not only laid the foundations of the European world we know; it put in place a social order and a security system that lie at the root of many of the problems which dog the world today