Frank McLynn

History would have been different if not for the events of 1759. It was the fourth year of the Seven Years', or the French-and-Indian, War, and crucial victories against the French in the first truly global conflict laid the foundations of British supremacy throughout the world for the next hundred years. The defeat of the French not only paved the way for the global hegemony of the English language but also made the emergence of the United States possible. Guiding us through England's often extremely narrow victories in India, North America, and the Caribbean, McLynn controversially suggests that the birth of the British Empire was more a result of luck than of rigorous planning. McLynn includes anecdotes of the intellectual and cultural leaders of the day--Swedenborg, Hume, Voltaire--and sources ranging from the Vatican archives to oral histories of Native Americans.--From publisher description.

"At once a history of the revolution in Mexico and a dual biography of the two men who shaped it, Villa and Zapata chronicles a decade of turbulent events that involved not only native rebels and corrupt Mexican politicos but also the U.S. government, American oil interests, "Blackjack" Pershing's troops, and German secret agents. Separately - the ruthless Pancho Villa and his mobile army of ex-cowboys and ranchers in the north and Emiliano Zapata with an infantry recruited from the peons on the sugar plantations in the south - the revolutionaries waged a devastating war on two fronts and successfully brought down a string of autocrats in Mexico City."--BOOK JACKET.

Early in Jung's career he was the admirer and protege of Sigmund Freud, the adopted 'Son' to Freud's 'Father'; then, after their famous quarrel, he became his rival and bitter enemy. Controversial for his right-wing views, his alleged anti-Semitism, and his sexual promiscuity, Jung nonetheless seemed to many a more acceptable icon than Freud, not least because he opposed Freud's atheism and stressed the necessary and overwhelming role of religion in the life of the individual. With the discovery of the universal symbols of the collective unconscious; his explorations of the role of dreams in the journey toward psychic wholeness, his speculations about the true nature of God; his passionate and profound interest in myth and in oriental religion, in alchemy and astrology; his theory of synchronicity, he has begun to emerge as this era's favorite philosopher, the hero and guru of the New Age. His theories on alternative modes of thought have already fascinated generations and continue to appeal to new audiences.

Britain has not been successfully invaded since 1066; nor, in nearly 1,000 years, has it known a true revolution -- one that brings radical, systemic and enduring change. The contrast with her European neighbours -- with France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece and Russia -- is dramatic. All have been convulsed by external warfare, revolution and civil war - all have experienced fundamental change to their ruling elites or their social and economic structures. In The Road Not Taken, Frank McLynn investigates the seven occasions when England came closest to revolution: the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, the Jack Cade rising of 1450, the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, the English Civil War of the 1640s, the Jacobite Rising of 1745-6, the Chartist Movement of 1838-50 and the General Strike of 1926. Mixing narrative and analysis, he vividly recreates each episode and provides compelling explanations of why social turbulence stopped short of revolution. McLynn takes issue with those who argue that great events do not have great causes -- that they happen not because of some titanic clash of systems -- the bourgeoisie versus the landed aristocracy or the oligarchy versus the gentry -- but because of accident -- the blunders and miscalculations of individual human beings. As well as suggesting causes for these seismic events and reasons for their ultimate collapse, he examines the underlying currents which have allowed England (and, since 1707, Scotland) to enjoy a continuity and stability unknown in almost every other country. - Publisher.

"Robert Louis Stevenson's extraordinary life had a formal structure like that of a hero in Greek myth. A difficult childhood in the care of a demon-haunted Calvinistic nurse and a battle of wills with his autocratic father were followed by marriage to a difficult woman from California. After valiant struggles with illness (in the form of a lung disease, probably tuberculosis), he returned to Scotland for reconciliation with his father, and on the patriarch's death left his native land forever to die prematurely in the South Seas." "In reasserting Stevenson's claims as a writer of genius and moral seriousness, Mr. McLynn emphasizes the many obstacles that stood in his path: his father, his poor health, the squeamishness of the Victorian reading public, and, most of all, the stresses imposed on him by his wife and stepchildren - stresses that materially contributed to his early death in 1894 at the age of forty-four. Above all, the author's life is a story of courage - not just the bravery to face Pacific hurricanes unblinkingly, but the moral strength required to wrestle with many conflicts simultaneously while daily facing possible death from his weak lungs."--Jacket.

From the Publisher: Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) is one of the great figures of antiquity whose life and words still speak to us today, nearly two thousand years after his death. His Meditations remains one of the most widely read books from the classical world, and his life represents the fulfillment of Plato's famous dictum that mankind will prosper only when philosophers are rulers. Frank McLnn's Marcus Aurelius, based on all available original sources, is the definitive and most vivid biography to date of this monumental historical figure.