As nicolson proceeds through the familiar stages of grief—denial, anger and acceptance—she gives you a deeper understanding of not only this brief period, but also how war’s sacrifices don’t end after the fighting stops. The seattle times “It may make you cry. The boston Globe. The great silence depicts a nation fighting the forces that threaten to tear it apart and discovering the common bonds that hold it together.

Grief and shock overwhelmed the psyche of the British people—but from their despair, new life would slowly emerge. Lawrence, the real-life Lawrence of Arabia. Women win the vote, skirt hems leap, and Brits forget their troubles at packed dance halls. This account of british life in the wake of World War I is “social history at its very best .

. . Insightful and utterly absorbing” Minneapolis Star-Tribune. E. And two years later, the remains of a nameless combatant would be laid to rest in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Westminster Abbey, as “The Great Silence, ” observed in memory of the countless dead, halted citizens in silent reverence.

As the euphoria of armistice day in 1918 quickly subsided, there was no denying the carnage that the Great War had left in its wake. A pearl of anecdotal history, the Great Silence is a satisfying companion to major studies of World War I and its aftermath .

The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm

Cracks in the social fabric were showing. As page turning as a novel. Joanna Trollope. The perfect summer chronicles a glorious English summer just over a century ago, when the world was on the cusp of irrevocable change. Drawing on material from intimate and rarely seen sources and narrated from the viewpoints of a series of exceptional individuals—among them a debutante, a politician, a butler, a choirboy, a trade unionist, and the queen—The Perfect Summer is a vividly rendered glimpse of a bygone time and place.

Where nicolson is especially good, however, entertainments, whose country estates, is with the royals and the aristocracy, salons, and affairs—discreet and indiscreet—she describes with accuracy and humor. The providence journal “A hugely interesting portrait of a society teetering on a precipice both nationally and internationally .

. . A “sparkling social history” that brings the twilight of the Edwardian era to life Entertainment Weekly. But perfection was not for all. Brimming with delectable information and little-known facts . . . The country was brought to a standstill by industrial strikes.

God and the Wedding Dress: A Novel

Mompesson’s greatest daily challenge is for the souls of his parishoners, as paganism and the famous dissenter Thomas Stanley vie for the attention of the people. A fascinating story. She reads Novels. But he soon faces a great test as the Plague comes to town, possibly in the crate with his sister-in-law’s wedding dress from London.

As his parishioners die one after another, Mompesson is witness to unbelievable horrors that test his faith in God—and inspirational acts of heroism and sacrifice. He is young, handsome, and has a lovely family. In a remote derbyshire village, over three hundred years ago, a man tried to serve his God to the best of his belief .

. . William mompesson is the new rector of Eyam. The prolific author of a knight in Spain presents a gripping work of historical fiction set during the Great Plague of London. But at a terrible cost to himself and others. Life is too easy in the countryside, as his wife and children enjoy his generous income and the apathetic locals do not require much spiritual guidance.

A quieter, more reflective novel, as much about a man’s inner struggles as it is about the history surrounding him . .

A House Full of Daughters: A Memoir of Seven Generations

In the nineteenth-century slums of Malaga, the salons of fin-de-siecle Washington D. C. The knife-edge that was new york city in the 1980s, these women emerge for Juliet as people in their own right, an English boarding school during the Second World War, Chelsea in the 1960s, but also as part of who she is and where she has come from.

A house full of daughters is one woman’s investigation into the nature of family, memory, and the past. A house full of Daughters takes us through seven generations of women. But then juliet, a distinguished historian, started to question. As she did so, she sifted fact from fiction, uncovering details and secrets long held just out of sight.

. For many years juliet nicolson accepted hers--the dangerous beauty of her flamenco dancing great-great-grandmother Pepita, the infamous eccentricity of her grandmother Vita Sackville-West, the flirty manipulation of her great-grandmother Victoria, her mother’s Tory-conventional background. A family memoir that traces the myths, legends, and secrets of seven generations of remarkable womenAll families have their myths and legends.

As juliet finds uncomfortable patterns reflected in these distant and more recent versions of herself, she realizes her challenge is to embrace the good and reject the hazards that have trapped past generations.

Tide of War: The Impact of Weather on Warfare

From massive rainstorms to the outbreak of disease to the appearance of Halley’s Comet, Petriello digs into the past to reveal what might happen in the future. The revelator. Over the past four thousand years, weather and nature have both hindered and helped various campaigns and battles, occasionally even altering the course of history in the process.

Halley’s comet helped to announce the fall of the shang dynasty in china, wind and disease conspired to wreck the spanish armada, snow served to prevent the American capture of Quebec in 1775 and confined the Revolution to the Thirteen Colonies, fog secured the throne of England for Edward IV at Barnet in 1471, a solar eclipse frightened the Macedonian army enough at Pydna in 168 BC to ensure victory for the Romans, a massive rain storm turned the field of Agincourt to mud in 1415 and gave Henry V his legendary victory, and an earthquake helped to spark the Peloponnesian War.

The growing concern over climate change has only heightened the need to study and understand this subject. Today elements of nature still affect the planning and waging of war, even as we have tried to mitigate its impact. Tide of war is the first book to comprehensively tackle this topic and traces some of the most notable intersections between nature and war since ancient times.

The first comprehensive look at nature’s role on military history from the author of A Pestilence on Pennsylvania Avenue. But this is only a small sampling of the many instances where nature has tipped the balance in combat.

A Secret Life: The Sex, Lies, and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland

A worthwhile read for those addicted to presidential history. New york journal of Books. A secret life also finally reveals what happened to Grover Cleveland’s son. The story of how the man who held the nation’s highest office eventually came to take responsibility for his son is a thrilling one that reads like a sordid romance novel—including allegations of rape, physical violence, and prostitution.

The stunning lengths that cleveland undertook to conceal what really happened the evening of his son’s conception are truly astonishing—including forcing the unwed mother, Maria Halpin, into an insane asylum. Delves deeply into the affair . . . It was a boy, a distinguished name was given to this newborn: Oscar Folsom Cleveland, and though he entered the world in a state of illegitimacy, the son of the future president of the United States—Grover Cleveland.

In this gripping historical narrative, Charles Lachman sets the scandal-plagued record straight with a tightly-coiled plot that provides for narrative history at its best. Lachman rips the lid off the sex scandals—and coverups—of the man who became the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms” New York Post.

Some historians have suggested that he became an alcoholic and died a young man—but Lachman definitively establishes his fate here for the first time. The child was born on september 14, 1874, at the only hospital in Buffalo, New York, that offered maternity services for unwed mothers. In florid cinematic detail.

Queens of Georgian Britain

Yet what of the remarkable women who were crowned alongside them? From the forgotten princess locked in a tower to an illustrious regent, the queens of Georgian Britain lived lives of scandal, romance, and a notorious party girl, a devoted consort, and turbulent drama. Once upon a time there were four kings called George who, thanks to a quirk of fate, ruled Great Britain for over a century.

Whether dipping into politics or carousing on the shores of Italy, Caroline of Ansbach, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and Caroline of Brunswick refused to fade into the background. A lively deep dive into the lives of four women regularly overshadowed by their husbands. . . Hailing from germany, bad, these occasionally mad, and infamous sovereigns presided over a land in turmoil.

From lonely childhoods to glittering palaces, and plenty of scheming, strapping soldiers, via family feuds, smallpox, these are the queens who shaped an era. An extraordinary read from beginning to end” Midwest Book Review. Queens of georgian britain offers a chance to step back in time and meet the women who ruled alongside the Georgian monarchs, not forgetting Sophia Dorothea of Celle, the passionate princess who never made it as far as the throne.

Curzon is a captivating writer and this book is an impressive addition to her existing Georgian books. The lazy historian “Curzon has a breezy, colloquial style.

The Good Years: From 1900 to the First World War

This new york times bestseller by the author of A Night to Remember explores America in the years between the Gilded Age and the beginning of the Great War. From the assassination of president mckinley to the hot and lazy “last summer” before the outbreak of war, Lord writes with insight and humor about the uniquely American energy and enthusiasm of those years before the Great War would forever change the world.

In the good years, bringing to vivid life the events of 1900 to 1914, Walter Lord remedies this neglect, when industrialization made staggering advances, and the Wright brothers captured the world’s imagination. Lord writes of newport and Fifth Avenue, where the rich lived gaily and without much worry beyond the occasional economic panic.

He also delves into the sweatshops of the second industrial revolution, where impoverished laborers and children suffered under unimaginable conditions. From the #1 new york times–bestselling author of incredible Victory and Day of Infamy, this is an “informative and entertaining” journey through an often-overlooked period of history at the beginning of the twentieth century The New York Times.

. Though remarkable in their own right, the first fifteen years of the 1900s had the misfortune of being sandwiched between—and overshadowed by—the Gilded Age and the First World War.

Singled Out: How Two Million British Women Survived Without Men After the First World War

Drawing upon a wealth of moving memoirs, singled out tells the inspiring stories of these women: the student weeping for a lost world as the Armistice bells pealed, deprived of their traditional roles, the socialite who dedicated her life to resurrecting the ancient past after her soldier love was killed, the Bradford mill girl whose campaign to better the lot of the "War spinsters" was to make her a public figure--and many others who, reinvented themselves into something better.

From the mill-girl turned activist to the debutante turned archeologist, by four of the bloodiest years in human history, from the first woman stockbroker to the "business girls" and the Miss Jean Brodies, this book memorializes a generation of young women who were forced, to stop depending on men for their income, their identity, and their future happiness.

Tracing their fates, nicholson shows that these women did indeed harbor secret sadness, and many of them yearned for the comforts forever denied them--physical intimacy, the closeness of a loving relationship, and children. Indeed, singled out pays homage to this remarkable generation of women who, changed by war, in turn would change society.

Almost three-quarters of a million british soldiers lost their lives during the First World War, leaving behind a generation of women who, raised to see marriage as "the crown and joy of woman's life, and many more were incapacitated by their wounds, " suddenly discovered that they were left without an escort to life's great feast.

. Some just endured, fought the system, but others challenged the conventions, and found fulfillment outside of marriage.

Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age

Rites of spring is a rare and remarkable work, a cultural history that redefines the way we look at our past—and toward our future. The urge to create and the urge to destroy had changed places. In this “bold and fertile book” the atlantic monthly, and such events as lindbergh’s transatlantic flight and the publication of the first modern bestseller, through the lives and words of ordinary people, Eksteins goes on to chart the seismic shifts in human consciousness brought about by this great cataclysm, works of literature, All Quiet on the Western Front.

. The great war, ” as modris Eksteins writes, “was the psychological turning point . . . For modernism as a whole. This award-winning cultural history reveals how the Great War changed humanity. This sweeping volume probes the origins, the impact, and the aftermath of World War I—from the premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913 to the death of Hitler in 1945.

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Meadowlands

August, lady adelaide, and his wife, 1914: the silver wedding celebrations of Sir George Barsham, MP, have been overshadowed by the declaration of war with Germany. Meanwhile, millie’s sister finds fulfilment in helping the local wives and children left destitute while their husbands are away fighting.

To lady adelaide’s dismay, Millie, her younger daughter, learns to drive an ambulance: a most unladylike skill. Over the following months, the barsham family’s comfortable, as the male estate workers head for the front and the maids disappear to work in the newly opened munitions factory, aristocratic lifestyle is set to change forever.

They will encounter hardship, and wonderfully sharp attention to detail” Booklist, danger, realistic situations, heartache—and unexpected love—in a saga filled with “compelling characters, interesting historical facts, starred review. Fans of downton abbey and upstairs, downstairs will be captivated” by this novel of an aristocratic family at the dawn of the First World War Booklist, starred review.

Determined to do his bit for king and country, leaving Lady Adelaide’s maid, Polly, James Barsham enlists as an officer and heads for Flanders, devastated. During the course of the war, as devastating losses mount, the strength of character of the four Barsham siblings will be tested as never before.

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