Chronicles the history of fourteen lost European kingdoms and what their stories can teach the modern world, providing narrative accounts of the rise and fall of nations ranging from Tolosa to the Soviet Union.

From Ireland to Italy, Portugal to Poland, Germany to Greece, and everywhere in between, explore your ancestors' European homelands through more than 200 gorgeous reproductions of 18th-century maps, 19th-century and early 20th-century maps. These full-color period maps--covering the peak years of European immigration to America--will help you understand changing boundaries in ancestral countries, and inform your search for genealogical records.

Located in the often-contentious center of the European continent, German territory has regularly served as a primary tool through which to understand and study Germany's economic, cultural, and political development. Many German geographers throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries became deeply invested in geopolitical determinism-the idea that a nation's territorial holdings (or losses) dictate every other aspect of its existence....

In the nineteenth century the 'America Ground' played a key role in the expansion of Hastings. Appearing to to be lie outside the town boundary, residents and businesses there had no taxes to pay. The freedom from local authority rules created a libertarian atmosphere, and one of the names the Ground acquired was 'America', after the newly independent state across the Atlantic. However, the Ground's almost-lawless autonomy meant there was repeated...

Parce que pour connaître les peuples, il faut d'abord les comprendre La Crète est bien plus qu'une île. Elle s'est longtemps rêvée centre du monde. L'Antiquité en fit l'un de ses épicentres. Le Minotaure a, dans le labyrinthe de ses montagnes, forgé un mythe que nous avons tous croisé. Les Crétois sont les enfants de Zeus, battus par les vents marins, modelés par une terre âpre mais nourricière. Puis le tourisme nous a ouvert les portes...

This fascinating biography of one of the world's most famous cities was originally published in the early 20th Century. It chronicles the life of London from its days as an early settlement through to more modern times. Including over 60 images, photographs, engravings and drawings, this excellent book is a must-have for those who live in the city, have visited - or plan to visit - at some point, or those who want to know the story of England's capital....

Parce que pour connaître les peuples, il faut d'abord les comprendre. Le roman d'une ville est d'abord celui de son relief et de ses habitants. Celui de Grenoble est celui des Alpes qui l'entourent et des talents qui l'ont toujours accompagnée. Ville-nature pour tous ceux que la montagne fascine. Ville-modèle pour ceux qui, dans les années 1970, en firent le laboratoire d'une France moderne, ouverte sur la science et le monde. Ville-musée, que...

Extrait : "Ce que contient le livre [...] c'est Notre France, non dans son unité actuelle qui a effacé toute trace des divisions et subdivisions de la vieille France féodale, mais s'exprimant, au contraire, par la forte personnalité de chaque province séparée encore du centre monarchique et vivant de sa vie indépendante."

The most admired travel writer of our time—author of Shadow of the Silk Road and To a Mountain in Tibet—recounts an eye-opening, often perilous journey along a little known Far East Asian river that for over a thousand miles forms the highly contested border between Russia and China. The Amur River is almost unknown. Yet it is the tenth longest river in the world, rising in the Mongolian mountains and flowing through Siberia to the Pacific. For...

On le verra,...