During the twenty years before the American Revolution, thirty-seven men acted as paid agent or lobbyists for the American colonies in England. The most famous among them were Benjamin Franklin, who represented four different colonies and served for seventeen years as agenet for Pennsylvania, and Edmund Burke, who accepted the position to further his own career. Yet the other thirty-five were also a colorful and heterogenous group. This detailed study, by a Pulitzer-prize-winning historian, of their activities and of the gradual breakdown of communications between the colonies and the mother country, until the link between the two become only "a rope of sand," is, in the words of the Richmond News Leader, "a new and invigorating approach to the American fight for independence." "Soundly documented, well organized and highly readable." - The New York Historical Society Quarterly "A challenging book about an important historical institution." - The Historian "A substantial contribution to our understanding of Anglo-American history during the eighteenth century." - The New England Quarterly "Both in concept and execution, A Rope of Sand is impressive." - The Journal of American History

The Lake of Menteith is Scotland's only lake. Its environs include a wealth of historical and mythical evidence. When William Graham, Earl of Menteith, opens an old, red, leather book which he finds in the grounds of Inchtalla Castle, he has no idea of what he is about to unleash. Zander and his crew of goblins are desperate to work for the Earl but will their natural gift for mischief prevent them from retaining their freedom?

A “stinging indictment” of US foreign policy and covert operations in the Middle East from a former military attaché and CIA operative (The Christian Science Monitor). After the close of World War II, former army intelligence agent Wilbur Crane Eveland trained as a military attaché, specializing in the new focal point of global concern: the Middle East. In the decades that followed, he personally witnessed the evolution and many blunders of American Middle East policy from embassies of Arab states, inside the Pentagon and the White House, and as a principal CIA representative in the region. Finally, as a petroleum-engineering consultant, he lived with the results of America’s errors. In Ropes of Sand, Eveland delivers a richly detailed assessment of the mistakes, miscalculations, and outright failures he observed. The governments the United States armed to defend the Middle East against Russia ended in collapse. American support of the Shah of Iran led to disastrous results. Many of the major crises the US faced, from the energy shortage to the border issues of Israel, had been forecast decades earlier. Eveland explains the country’s failure to understand these problems and shows why every proposed solution, from the United Nations Partition Resolution for Palestine to the Camp David Accords, only added fuel to the fire. His insider critique is essential for understanding the Arab Spring, the threat of ISIS, and the ongoing conflicts we face in the region today. First released in 1980, this memoir was initially blocked from publication by the CIA for its revealing and critical discussion of numerous covert operations, some of which Eveland engaged in himself.

p.B. J. Whiting savors proverbial expressions and has devoted much of his lifetime to studying and collecting them; no one knows more about British and American proverbs than he. The present volume, based upon writings in British North America from the earliest settlements to approximately 1820, complements his and Archer Taylor's Dictionary of American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, 1820-1880. It differs from that work and from other standard collections, however, in that its sources are primarily not "literary" but instead workaday writings - letters, diaries, histories, travel books, political pamphlets, and the like. The authors represent a wide cross-section of the populace, from scholars and statesmen to farmers, shopkeepers, sailors, and hunters. Mr. Whiting has combed all the obvious sources and hundreds of out-of-the-way publications of local journals and historical societies. This body of material, "because it covers territory that has not been extracted and compiled in a scholarly way before, can justly be said to be the most valuable of all those that Whiting has brought together," according to Albert B. Friedman. "What makes the work important is Whiting's authority: a proverb or proverbial phrase is what BJW thinks is a proverb or proverbial phrase. There is no objective operative definition of any value, no divining rod; his tact, 'feel, ' experience, determine what's the real thing and what is spurious."

‘An addictive mix of suspense, romance, and the supernatural.’ Janey Fraser, Guilty. ‘A triumph of storytelling.’ Eric Delve, To Boldly Go In the third installment of The Secret of the Journal series, Christmas approaches and the relationship between British historian, Emma D'Eresby and American surgeon, Matthew Lynes deepens as she readies herself to meet his family in rural Maine. But tensions are simmering beneath the surface. What does sinister Maggie have against her, and what might she be prepared to do to keep Matthew and Emma apart? Emma has discovered Matthew's origins, but that is only the beginning; in order to prepare for the future, she must also understand his past.

Thirteen new stories by the celebrated writer, including two which he considers his greatest achievements to date, artfully blend elements from many literary geares.

Includes the stories The Congress, Undr, The Mirror and the Mask, August 25, 1983, Blue Tigers, The Rose of Paracelsus and Shakespeare's Memory.

"Ariadne's Thread is a mini-encyclopedia of more than a hundred such international oral tales, all present in the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. It takes into account writings, including early Jewish and Christian literature, recorded in or translated into Greek or Latin by writers of any nationality. As a result, this book will be invaluable not only to classicists and folklorists but also to a wide range of other readers who are interested in stories and storytelling."--BOOK JACKET.