Coronation: A History of the British Monarchy

The Pastons Pastons: A Family in the Wars of the Roses a Family in the Wars of the Roses

Within three generations (1426 to 1485), and through the dark anddangerous years of the Wars of the Roses, the Pastons establishedthemselves as a family of consequence, both in their native Norfolk andwithin court circles. Ambitious and highly mobile -- womenfolk as wellas men -- they kept in touch by correspondence, usually but notinvariably through the medium of a clerk. These letters, a raresurvival, break upon us across the centuries with the urgency, andsometimes the violence, of their preoccupations: defending property, fighting court cases, making the right alliances, and, on the domesticside, managing their estates, conducting their courtships, stockingtheir cupboards. Selected and presented here with Richard Barber'sinvaluable linking narrative, they bring the middle ages triumphantlyto life.

Caroline Winterer

The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910

Debates continue to rage over whether American university students should be required to master a common core of knowledge. In The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910, Caroline Winterer traces the emergence of the classical model that became standard in the American curriculum in the nineteenth century and now lies at the core of contemporary controversies. By closely examining university curricula and the writings of classical scholars, Winterer demonstrates how classics was transformed from a narrow, language-based subject to a broader study of civilization, persuasively arguing that we cannot understand both the rise of the American university and modern notions of selfhood and knowledge without an appreciation for the role of classicism in their creation.

Martin Booth

Golden Boy: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood

At seven years old, Martin Booth found himself with all of Hong Kong at his feet when his father was posted there in 1952. This is his memoir of that youth, a time when he had access to corners of the colony normally closed to a gweilo, a "pale fellow" like him. From the plink plonk man with his dancing monkey to Nagasaki Jim, and from a drunken child molester to the Queen of Kowloon (the crazed tramp who may have been a Romanov), Martin saw it all--but his memoir illustrates a deeper challenge in his warring parents. This is an intimate and powerful memory of a place and time now past.