Download or read book The Woman Who Defied Kings written by Andrée Aelion Brooks and published by Paragon House Publishers. This book was released on 2002-06-15 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The biography of the one of the most remarkable Jewish women of all time, who saved thousands of Jews from the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition.
Download or read book The woman who defied kings written by Andrée Aelion Brooks and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DVD. JHSLFC Sunday Program, Feb. 14, 2010, Temple Sinai. Ms. Brooks traces the history and culture of the Sephardic Jews. The Sephardim ... helped develop and rule the Spanish peninsula until Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella expelled them in 1492. This year, 2010, marks the 500th aniversary of Don~a Gracia Nasi's birth, a Jewish woman who used her fortune to help her fellow Jews escape for Portugal.
Download or read book Russian Dance written by Andrée Aelion Brooks and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2004-05-24 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of Helene Rubinoff, a Russian refugee in Jazz Age New York who forsook her comfortable life with her impresario husband and his celebrity salons, and her beloved daughter, to follow her lover back to an uncertain fate in 1930s Russia.
Download or read book The Woman Who Would Be King written by Kara Cooney and published by Crown. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engrossing biography of the longest-reigning female pharaoh in Ancient Egypt and the story of her audacious rise to power. Hatshepsut—the daughter of a general who usurped Egypt's throne—was expected to bear the sons who would legitimize the reign of her father’s family. Her failure to produce a male heir, however, paved the way for her improbable rule as a cross-dressing king. At just over twenty, Hatshepsut out-maneuvered the mother of Thutmose III, the infant king, for a seat on the throne, and ascended to the rank of pharaoh. Shrewdly operating the levers of power to emerge as Egypt's second female pharaoh, Hatshepsut was a master strategist, cloaking her political power plays in the veil of piety and sexual reinvention. She successfully negotiated a path from the royal nursery to the very pinnacle of authority, and her reign saw one of Ancient Egypt’s most prolific building periods. Constructing a rich narrative history using the artifacts that remain, noted Egyptologist Kara Cooney offers a remarkable interpretation of how Hatshepsut rapidly but methodically consolidated power—and why she fell from public favor just as quickly. The Woman Who Would Be King traces the unconventional life of an almost-forgotten pharaoh and explores our complicated reactions to women in power.
Download or read book Defy Defy Trilogy Book 1 written by Sara B. Larson and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lush and gorgeously written debut, packed with action, intrigue, and heart-racing romance. Alexa Hollen is a fighter. Forced to disguise herself as a boy and serve in the king's army, Alex uses her quick wit and fierce sword-fighting skills to earn a spot on the elite prince's guard. But when a powerful sorcerer sneaks into the palace in the dead of night, even Alex, who is virtually unbeatable, can't prevent him from abducting her, her fellow guard and friend Rylan, and Prince Damian, taking them through the treacherous wilds of the jungle and deep into enemy territory.The longer Alex is held captive with both Rylan and the prince, the more she realizes that she is not the only one who has been keeping dangerous secrets. And suddenly, after her own secret is revealed, Alex finds herself confronted with two men vying for her heart: the safe and steady Rylan, who has always cared for her, and the dark, intriguing Damian. With hidden foes lurking around every corner, is Alex strong enough to save herself and the kingdom she's sworn to protect?
Download or read book The Kings Mistresses written by Elizabeth C Goldsmith and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2012-04-03 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mancini Sisters, Marie and Hortense, were born in Rome, brought to the court of Louis XIV of France, and strategically married off by their uncle, Cardinal Mazarin, to secure his political power base. Such was the life of many young women of the age: they had no independent status under the law and were entirely a part of their husband's property once married. Marie and Hortense, however, had other ambitions in mind altogether. Miserable in their marriages and determined to live independently, they abandoned their husbands in secret and began lives of extraordinary daring on the run and in the public eye. The beguiling sisters quickly won the affections of noblemen and kings alike. Their flight became popular fodder for salon conversation and tabloids, and was closely followed by seventeenth-century European society. The Countess of Grignan remarked that they were traveling "like two heroines out of a novel." Others gossiped that they "were roaming the countryside in pursuit of wandering lovers. "Their scandalous behavior -- disguising themselves as men, gambling, and publicly disputing with their husbands -- served as more than just entertainment. It sparked discussions across Europe concerning the legal rights of husbands over their wives. Elizabeth Goldsmith's vibrant biography of the Mancini sisters -- drawn from personal papers of the players involved and the tabloids of the time -- illuminates the lives of two pioneering free spirits who were feminists long before the word existed.
Download or read book Ladies of the Field written by Amanda Adams and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2010 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adams chronicles the contributions that women have made to the science of archaeology, by focusing on seven women-- some famous, some overlooked.
Download or read book She Wolves written by Helen Castor and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-02-22 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Helen Castor has an exhilarating narrative gift. . . . Readers will love this book, finding it wholly absorbing and rewarding.” —Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall In the tradition of Antonia Fraser, David Starkey, and Alison Weir, prize-winning historian Helen Castor delivers a compelling, eye-opening examination of women and power in England, witnessed through the lives of six women who exercised power against all odds—and one who never got the chance. With the death of Edward VI in 1553, England, for the first time, would have a reigning queen. The question was: Who? Four women stood upon the crest of history: Katherine of Aragon’s daughter, Mary; Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Elizabeth; Mary, Queen of Scots; and Lady Jane Grey. But over the centuries, other exceptional women had struggled to push the boundaries of their authority and influence—and been vilified as “she-wolves” for their ambitions. Revealed in vivid detail, the stories of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, Margaret of Anjou, and the Empress Matilda expose the paradox that England’s next female leaders would confront as the Tudor throne lay before them—man ruled woman, but these women sought to rule a nation.
Download or read book The Last Kings of Shanghai written by Jonathan Kaufman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In vivid detail... examines the little-known history of two extraordinary dynasties."--The Boston Globe "Not just a brilliant, well-researched, and highly readable book about China's past, it also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China's modern history."--LA Review of Books An epic, multigenerational story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist The Sassoons and the Kadoories stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than one hundred seventy-five years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and nearly losing everything as the Communists swept into power. Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable history of how these families ignited an economic boom and opened China to the world, but remained blind to the country's deep inequality and to the political turmoil on their doorsteps. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival.
Download or read book Defy the Night written by Brigid Kemmerer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Instant New York Times Bestseller! From New York Times bestselling author Brigid Kemmerer comes an electrifying fantasy romance, perfect for fans of Holly Black and Victoria Aveyard. A desperate prince. A daring outlaw. A dangerous flirtation. In the Wilds of Kandala, apothecary apprentice Tessa Cade has been watching people suffer for too long. A mysterious sickness is ravaging the land and the cure, Moonflower Elixir, is only available for the wealthy. So every night, she defies the royal edicts and sneaks out, stealing Moonflower petals and leaving the elixir for those in need. In the palace of Kandala, Prince Corrick serves as the King's Justice, meting out vicious punishments and striking fear into the hearts of agitators and outlaws. Corrick knows he must play this role convincingly--with a shortage of elixir and threats of rebellion looming ever closer, the King's grip on power is tenuous at best, and Corrick knows his brother is the kingdom's best hope for survival. But when an act of unspeakable cruelty brings the royal and the outlaw face to face, the natural enemies are faced with an impossible choice--and a surprising spark. Will they follow their instincts to destroy each other? Or will they save the kingdom together . . . and let that spark ignite?
Download or read book When Women Ruled the World Making the Renaissance in Europe written by Maureen Quilligan and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this game-changing revisionist history, a leading scholar of the Renaissance shows how four powerful women redefined the culture of European monarchy in the glorious sixteenth century. The sixteenth century in Europe was a time of chronic destabilization in which institutions of traditional authority were challenged and religious wars seemed unending. Yet it also witnessed the remarkable flowering of a pacifist culture, cultivated by a cohort of extraordinary women rulers—most notably, Mary Tudor; Elizabeth I; Mary, Queen of Scots; and Catherine de’ Medici—whose lives were intertwined not only by blood and marriage, but by a shared recognition that their premier places in the world of just a few dozen European monarchs required them to bond together, as women, against the forces seeking to destroy them, if not the foundations of monarchy itself. Recasting the complex relationships among these four queens, Maureen Quilligan, a leading scholar of the Renaissance, rewrites centuries of historical analysis that sought to depict their governments as riven by personal jealousies and petty revenges. Instead, When Women Ruled the World shows how these regents carefully engendered a culture of mutual respect, focusing on the gift-giving by which they aimed to ensure ties of friendship and alliance. As Quilligan demonstrates, gifts were no mere signals of affection, but inalienable possessions, often handed down through generations, that served as agents in the creation of a steep social hierarchy that allowed women to assume political authority beyond the confines of their gender. “With brilliant panache” (Amanda Foreman), Quilligan reveals how eleven-year-old Elizabeth I’s gift of a handmade book to her stepmother, Katherine Parr, helped facilitate peace within the tumultuous Tudor dynasty, and how Catherine de’ Medici’s gift of the Valois tapestries to her granddaughter, the soon-to-be Grand Duchess of Tuscany, both solidified and enhanced the Medici family’s prestige. Quilligan even uncovers a book of poetry given to Elizabeth I by Catherine de’ Medici as a warning against the concerted attack launched by her closest counselor, William Cecil, on the divine right of kings—an attack that ultimately resulted in the execution of her sister, Mary, Queen of Scots. Beyond gifts, When Women Ruled the World delves into the connections the regents created among themselves, connections that historians have long considered beneath notice. “Like fellow soldiers in a sororal troop,” Quilligan writes, these women protected and aided each other. Aware of the leveling patriarchal power of the Reformation, they consolidated forces, governing as “sisters” within a royal family that exercised power by virtue of inherited right—the very right that Protestantism rejected as a basis for rule. Vibrantly chronicling the artistic creativity and political ingenuity that flourished in the pockets of peace created by these four queens, Quilligan’s lavishly illustrated work offers a new perspective on the glorious sixteenth century and, crucially, the women who helped create it.
Download or read book Scandalous Women written by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history women have caused wars, defied the rules, and brought men to their knees. The famous and the infamous, queens, divorcées, actresses, and outlaws have created a ruckus during their lifetimes-turning heads while making waves. Scandalous Women tells the stories of the risk takers who have flouted convention, beaten the odds, and determined the course of world events. *When Cleopatra (69 BC-30 BC) wasn't bathing in asses' milk, the last pharaoh of the Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt and forged an important political alliance with Rome against her enemies-until her dalliance with Marc Antony turned the empire against her. *Emilie du Châtelet (1706-1748), a mathematician, physicist, author, and paramour of one of the greatest minds in France, Voltaire, shocked society with her unorthodox lifestyle and intellectual prowess-and became a leader in the study of theoretical physics in France at a time when the sciences were ruled by men. *Long before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1928) fought to end discrimination and the terrible crime of lynching and helped found the NAACP, but became known as a difficult woman for her refusal to compromise and was largely lost in the annals of history. *Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) had a passion for archaeology and languages, and left her privileged world behind to become one of the foremost chroniclers of British imperialism in the Middle East, and one of the architects of the modern nation of Iraq.
Download or read book The Poison King written by Adrienne Mayor and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-27 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new account of one of Rome's most relentless but least understood foes. Claiming Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia as ancestors, Mithradates inherited a wealthy Black Sea kingdom at age fourteen after his mother poisoned his father. He fled into exile and returned in triumph to become a ruler of superb intelligence and fierce ambition. Hailed as a savior by his followers and feared as a second Hannibal by his enemies, he envisioned a grand Eastern empire to rival Rome. After massacring eighty thousand Roman citizens in 88 BC, he seized Greece and modern-day Turkey. Fighting some of the most spectacular battles in ancient history, he dragged Rome into a long round of wars and threatened to invade Italy itself. His uncanny ability to elude capture and surge back after devastating losses unnerved the Romans, while his mastery of poisons allowed him to foil assassination attempts and eliminate rivals.--From publisher description.
Download or read book Harriet Tubman written by Catherine Clinton and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2004-02-02 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive biography of one of the most courageous women in American history "reveals Harriet Tubman to be even more remarkable than her legend" (Newsday). Celebrated for her exploits as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman has entered history as one of nineteenth-century America's most enduring and important figures. But just who was this remarkable woman? To John Brown, leader of the Harper's Ferry slave uprising, she was General Tubman. For the many slaves she led north to freedom, she was Moses. To the slaveholders who sought her capture, she was a thief and a trickster. To abolitionists, she was a prophet. Now, in a biography widely praised for its impeccable research and its compelling narrative, Harriet Tubman is revealed for the first time as a singular and complex character, a woman who defied simple categorization. "A thrilling reading experience. It expands outward from Tubman's individual story to give a sweeping, historical vision of slavery." --NPR's Fresh Air
Download or read book Game of Queens written by India Edghill and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For fans of The Red Tent and The Dovekeepers, India Edghill breathes new life into the biblical story of Vashti and Esther with her signature historical richness, epic scope, and sweeping romance. You may know part of the story already, but you only know what history has passed along. The story of how Vashti, Queen of Queens, the most beautiful woman in all the empire, defied the king her husband and so lost her crown. The story of how Ahasuerus, King of Kings, commanded that the most beautiful maidens be sent to his court so he might choose a new queen. And you may know how he set the queen's crown upon the head of the virtuous and beautiful Esther, and how Queen Esther herself defied both king and law to save her people from a treacherous fate. What India Edghill brings us in Game of Queens is the story of power and treachery, blood and deception, bravery and romance that surrounds the court of Ahasuerus and brings to life two of the most celebrated female heroines in all of history.
Download or read book The Viper written by Monica McCarty and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2011-10-18 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war for Scotland’s sovereignty rages on—as Robert the Bruce is crowned king and the Highland Guard, his elite fighting force of legendary warriors, battle for land . . . and love. Prized for his snakelike stealth and deadly strikes, Lachlan “Viper” MacRuairi is a warrior to enlist but not to trust. His only loyalty is to his purse, his indifference sealed by bitter betrayal. All that changes when Lachlan is tasked to protect and deliver Bella MacDuff to the king’s coronation—and the proud, lushly sensual countess unwittingly challenges him to his greatest battle yet: to love again. Passionate and devoted, Bella has defied Britain’s king and her own husband to place the crown on Bruce’s head, and for this she pays a terrible price: Losing her daughter and her freedom to her husband’s vengeance. Imprisoned with barbaric cruelty, she vows to reclaim her child, even if it means selling her soul—and her body—to a dark, lethal warrior whose eyes glint like steel, but who makes her skin tingle and her breath race. Together they embark on a rogue mission with sinister twists and turns that threatens not only Bella’s gamble to save her daughter—but also her heart.
Download or read book Uppity Women of Medieval Times written by Vicki León and published by Conari Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This guide to the feisty women of medieval times profiles 200 of these fair and unfair damsels from around the world. There's English rose Hilda of Whitby, Viking leader Aud the Deep-Minded and Wu Zhao of China, who chose to concubine, connive, murder and machiavelli her way to a 50 year reign.
