Murder, street brawls, marital squabbles, infidelity, official corruption, public insults, and rebellion are just a few of the social layers Reuben Zahler investigates as he studies the dramatic shifts in Venezuela as it transformed from a Spanish colony to a modern republic. His book Ambitious Rebels illuminates the enormous changes in honor, law, and political culture that occurred and how ordinary men and women promoted or rejected those changes. In a highly engaging style, Zahler examines gender and class against the backdrop of Venezuelan institutions and culture during the late colonial period through post-independence (known as the “middle period”). His fine-grained analysis shows that liberal ideals permeated the elite and popular classes to a substantial degree while Venezuelan institutions enjoyed impressive levels of success. Showing remarkable ambition, Venezuela’s leaders aspired to transform a colony that adhered to the king, the church, and tradition into a liberal republic with minimal state intervention, a capitalistic economy, freedom of expression and religion, and an elected, representative government. Subtle but surprisingly profound changes of a liberal nature occurred, as evidenced by evolving standards of honor, appropriate gender roles, class and race relations, official conduct, courtroom evidence, press coverage, economic behavior, and church-state relations. This analysis of the philosophy of the elites and the daily lives of common men and women reveals in particular the unwritten, unofficial norms that lacked legal sanction but still greatly affected political structures. Relying on extensive archival resources, Zahler focuses on Venezuela but provides a broader perspective on Latin American history. His examination provides a comprehensive look at intellectual exchange across the Atlantic, comparative conditions throughout the Americas, and the tension between traditional norms and new liberal standards in a postcolonial society.

Following interviews with contemporaries and eyewitnesses, relatives and friends, and access to documents and archives, Knopp offers a view of what went on behind the scenes in the Third Reich.

Looks at how ambition, once considered a vice, became a celebrated virtue that defines American character.

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) is considered one of the most important English prose writers of the early-19th century. This is the second part of a 21-volume set presenting De Quincey's work, also including previously unpublished material.

This book introduces students to drama from the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 to the early 18th Century. Susan Owen offers representative coverage of new forms of drama in this period, and of ways in which old forms are altered. Her study covers heroic drama, comedy, tragedy, tragi-comedy, and Shakespeare adaptations, by focusing on specific 'dramatic highlights' and giving close reading of particular plays.

In this new work, Brian R. Hamnett offers a comprehensive assessment of the independence era in both Spanish America and Brazil by examining the interplay between events in Iberia and in the overseas empires of Spain and Portugal. Most colonists had wanted some form of unity within the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies but European intransigence continually frustrated this aim. Hamnett argues that independence finally came as a result of widespread internal conflict in the two American empires, rather than as a result of a clear separatist ideology or a growing national sentiment. With the collapse of empire, each component territory faced a struggle to survive. The End of Iberian Rule on the American Continent, 1770–1830 is the first book of its kind to give equal consideration to the Spanish and Portuguese dimensions of South America, examining these territories in terms of their divergent component elements.

Roosevelt and Howe is a joint biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt and one of his principal advisors. Louis Howe was not only FDR's first political aide, but the only one who also became an intimate personal friend. Other than Harry Hopkins in the late 1930s, he was the only advisor whom Roosevelt trusted completely to serve his interests without distracting personal ambition or a shadowy private agenda. This book is the story of their separate early lives, of the rare chances which brought them together and of their totally intertwined careers after 1912. It deals with their political strategies, their division of labor in a daily partnership, and their feelings for each other, despite frequent differences about tactics. Louis Howe had a haphazard and fragmented career as an upstate New York newspaperman running a family-owned weekly and filling in for Manhattan papers in Albany during legislative sessions. Struck down by illness, Roosevelt turned to Howe to run his campaign for reelection to the New York Senate in 1912. The story carries them through Roosevelt's World War I career as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a disappointing run for the Vice-Presidency in 1920, various attempts at business and Roosevelt's desperate brush with death from polio. It centers on the hectic twenties as Roosevelt fought to walk again and Louis struggled to make his crippled boss an eager and viable candidate for the Presidency. It follows them through a dynamic term as Governor of New York and the victorious 1932 campaign for the White House. Howe went to the White House with the Roosevelts. He was Secretary to the President but was soon eclipsed by the enormous scope of Roosevelt's affairs and his own quickening illness. He died in 1936, just short of Roosevelt's crucial first campaign for reelection. He could not have imagined how well his protogy would do without him, yet FDR always suffered from the lack of a close, reliable intimate who could say "No" to him. This role was not filled until Harry Hopkins came to share his circle of power.

THIS BOOK EXPLORES the many complex historical connections between the UNited States of America and the Commonwealth of The Bahamas. Beginning with an overview of shared early Spanish colonization, the book is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive study of the impact of the sequential development of the United States on events in the emerging Bahamas, placing the heretofore marginalized history of the island nation firmly into the orbit of Atlantic historiographical literature. Among other things, the books sheds light on the role played by the islands in a series of significant events in the U.S. history. These include the American Revolution, in which four of the initial official military actions of the fledgling U.S. Navy comprised repeated invasions of British-controlled Nassau, capital of the Bahamas; the American Civil War during which Nassau became on of the main bases for supply of vital goods and ammunition to the Confederacy; the intrigues of the Volstead Act, which legislated prohibition but also caused the temporary transformation of Bahama ISlands into major transshipment centers for the smuggling of alcoholic beverages to a multitude of prohibition-defiant and "thirsty" Americans; and the significant role placed by Bahamian migrants in the creation of the city of Miami and other areas of south Florida. The author draws on a wealth of tapped and untapped primary sources and presents a new perspective on the "Bahamian experience" that helped to define the self-proclaimed American credo of "Manifest Destiny."