zamoyski adam rites of peace the fall of napoleon and the congress of vienna
Zamoyski Adam Rites of Peace. The Fall Of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna
Following on from his epic '1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow', bestselling author Adam Zamoyski has written the dramatic story of the Congress of Vienna. In the wake of his disastrous Russian campaign of 1812, Napoleon's imperious grip on Europe began to weaken, raising the question of how the Continent was to be reconstructed after his defeat. There were many who dreamed of a peace to end all wars, in which the interests of peoples as well as those of rulers would be taken into account. But what followed was an unseemly and at times brutal scramble for territory by the most powerful states, in which countries were traded as if they had been private and their inhabitants counted like cattle. The results, fixed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, not only laid the foundations of the European world we know; it put in place a social order and a security system that lie at the root of many of the problems which dog the world today. Although the defining moments took place in Vienna, and the principle players included Tsar Alexander I of Russia, the Austrian Chancellor Metternich, the Duke of Wellington and the French master of diplomacy Talleyrand, as well as Napoleon himself, the accepted view of the gathering of statesmen reordering the Continent in elegant salons is a false one. Many of the crucial questions were decided on the battlefield or in squalid roadside cottages amid the vagaries of war. And the proceedings in Vienna itself were not as decorous as is usually represented. Drawing on a wide range of first-hand sources in six languages, which include not only official documents, private letters, diaries and first-hand accounts, but also the reports of police spies and informers, Adam Zamoyski gets below the thin veneer of courtliness and reveals that the new Europe was forged by men in thrall to fear, greed and lust, in an atmosphere of moral depravity in which sexual favours were traded as readily as provinces and the 'souls' who inhabited them. He has created a chilling account, full of menace as well as frivolity.
2622 Руб.
Zamoyski Adam Napoleon. The Man Behind the Myth
A landmark new biography that presents the man behind the many myths. The first writer in English to go back to the original European sources, Adam Zamoyski’s portrait of Napoleon is historical biography at its finest. Napoleon inspires passionately held and often conflicting visions. Was he a god-like genius, Romantic avatar, megalomaniac monster, compulsive warmonger or just a nasty little dictator? While he displayed elements of these traits at certain times, Napoleon was none of these things. He was a man and, as Adam Zamoyski presents him in this landmark biography, a rather ordinary one at that. He exhibited some extraordinary qualities during some phases of his life but it is hard to credit genius to a general who presided over the worst (and self-inflicted) disaster in military history and who single-handedly destroyed the great enterprise he and others had toiled so hard to construct. A brilliant tactician, he was no strategist. But nor was Napoleon an evil monster. He could be selfish and violent but there is no evidence of him wishing to inflict suffering gratuitously. His motives were mostly praiseworthy and his ambition no greater than that of contemporaries such as Alexander I of Russia, Wellington, Nelson and many more. What made his ambition exceptional was the scope it was accorded by circumstance. Adam Zamoyski strips away the lacquer of prejudice and places Napoleon the man within the context of his times. In the 1790s, a young Napoleon entered a world at war, a bitter struggle for supremacy and survival with leaders motivated by a quest for power and by self-interest. He did not start this war but it dominated his life and continued, with one brief interruption, until his final defeat in 1815. Based on primary sources in many European languages, and beautifully illustrated with portraits done only from life, this magnificent book examines how Napoleone Buonaparte, the boy from Corsica, became ‘Napoleon’; how he achieved what he did, and how it came about that he undid it. It does not justify or condemn but seeks instead to understand Napoleon’s extraordinary trajectory.
3275 Руб.
Tolstoy Leo War and Peace
'If you've never read it, now is the moment. This translation will show that you don't read War and Peace, you live it' The Times Tolstoy's enthralling epic depicts Russia's war with Napoleon and its effects on the lives of those caught up in the conflict. He creates some of the most vital and involving characters in literature as he follows the rise and fall of families in St Petersburg and Moscow who are linked by their personal and political relationships. His heroes are the thoughtful yet impulsive Pierre Bezukhov, his ambitious friend, Prince Andrei, and the woman who becomes indispensable to both of them, the enchanting Natasha Rostov.
4093 Руб.
Zamoyski Adam Chopin. Prince of the Romantics
A new edition of Adam Zamoyski's definitive biography of Chopin, first published in 1979 and unavailable in English for many years. Few composers elicit such strong emotions as Chopin. Few have been more revered and cherished. And few have had so much sentimental nonsense written about them. Published to coincide with the bicentenary of Chopin's birth, Adam Zamoyski's compelling new biography cuts through the mass of anecdote and myth that has sprung up around the composer's life and the ebullient and striking personalities of Romantic Paris among whom he lived, including Liszt, Berlioz, Victor Hugo and George Sand, in search of the real Chopin. Zamoyski brings to the subject an unrivalled knowledge of the historical, social and cultural background of the composer's native Poland as well as of the France in which he spent most of his creative life. He has scoured the archives of Warsaw, Krakow, Paris and London in his quest for the truth, and has based his account exclusively on primary sources and contemporary accounts. The result is a biography of authority, perception and wit. Chopin emerges from the sugary romantic mist in which he has been shrouded as a real, palpable personality, a man of intelligence and humour; in music an innovator of genius; in business a feckless spendthrift; in love hesitant and tender; in friendship passionately loyal but often intolerably exacting. Through a close reading of his letters and the use of everyday detail, Zamoyski draws the reader into the private world of this most complicated and reticent of men - 'a man made for intimacy', as the poet Heinrich Heine called him - and reveals the real passions, suffering and ultimate tragedy of his life.
2218 Руб.
Steinbeck John East of Eden
'There is only one book to a man' Steinbeck wrote of East of Eden. Set in the rich farmland of the Salinas Valley, California, this powerful, often brutal novel, follows the interwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations hopelessly re-enact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Here Steinbeck created some of his most memorable characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of indentity; the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence.
2958 Руб.
Steinbeck J. East of Eden
'There is only one book to a man' Steinbeck wrote of East of Eden. Set in the rich farmland of the Salinas Valley, California, this powerful, often brutal novel, follows the interwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations hopelessly re-enact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Here Steinbeck created some of his most memorable characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of indentity; the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence.
862 Руб.
Steinbeck John East of Eden
'There is only one book to a man,' Steinbeck wrote of East of Eden, his most ambitious novel. Set in the rich farmland of the Salinas Valley, California, this powerful, often brutal novel, follows the intertwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations hopelessly re-enact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Here Steinbeck created some of his most memorable characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity; the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence.
3620 Руб.
Steinbeck J. East of Eden
'There is only one book to a man' Steinbeck wrote of East of Eden. Set in the rich farmland of the Salinas Valley, California, this powerful, often brutal novel, follows the interwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations hopelessly re-enact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Here Steinbeck created some of his most memorable characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of indentity; the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence.
862 Руб.
James, P. D. Cover Her Face
Adam Dalgliesh. Ive heard of him - ruthless, unorthodox, and working always against time. When the body of Sally Jupp is discovered in her bedroom - the door bolted from the inside - the occupants of Martingale house are sure that the blame for this unthinkable crime will fall on an unknown intruder. But each of them is hiding something. And theres only one man who can sift through the layers of deceit and pretence to unmask the true murderer: Detective Chief-Inspector Adam Dalgleish.
1016 Руб.
James, P. D. Cover Her Face
Adam Dalgliesh. Ive heard of him - ruthless, unorthodox, and working always against time. When the body of Sally Jupp is discovered in her bedroom - the door bolted from the inside - the occupants of Martingale house are sure that the blame for this unthinkable crime will fall on an unknown intruder. But each of them is hiding something. And theres only one man who can sift through the layers of deceit and pretence to unmask the true murderer: Detective Chief-Inspector Adam Dalgleish.
1016 Руб.
Marquez Gabriel Garcia One Hundred Years Of Solitude
One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death and the tragic comedy of man. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdry story of the Buendia family one sees all mankind, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo one sees all of Latin America. Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility-the variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth-these, the universal themes, dominate the novel.
1371 Руб.
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost (1667) an epic poem written in blank verse, is considered to be Milton's major work. It certainly helped solidify his reputation as one of the greatest English poets of his time. The poem concerns the Biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, was to "justify the ways of God to men".
99 Руб.
Milton John Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost (1667) an epic poem written in blank verse, is considered to be Milton's major work. It certainly helped solidify his reputation as one of the greatest English poets of his time. The poem concerns the Biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, was to "justify the ways of God to men".
672 Руб.
Steinbeck John East of Eden
California's fertile Salinas Valley is home to two families whose destinies are fruitfully, and fatally, intertwined. Over the generations, between the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of the First World War, the Trasks and the Hamiltons will helplessly replay the fall of Adam and Eve and the murderous rivalry of Cain and Abel. East of Eden was considered by Steinbeck to be his magnum opus, and its epic scope and memorable characters, exploring universal themes of love and identity, ensure it remains one of America's most enduring novels. This edition features a stunning new cover by renowned artist Bijou Karman.
2851 Руб.
Milton J. Paradise Lost = Потерянный рай: роман на англ.яз
Paradise Lost (1667) an epic poem written in blank verse, is considered to be Milton's major work. It certainly helped solidify his reputation as one of the greatest English poets of his time.The poem concerns the Biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, was to "justify the ways of God to men".
495 Руб.
Milton J. Paradise Lost = Потерянный рай: роман на англ.яз
Paradise Lost (1667) an epic poem written in blank verse, is considered to be Milton's major work. It certainly helped solidify his reputation as one of the greatest English poets of his time.The poem concerns the Biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, was to "justify the ways of God to men".
495 Руб.