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Samuel Pepys is as much a paragon of literature as Chaucer and Shakespeare. His Diary is one of the principal sources for many aspects of the history of its period. In spite of its significance, all previous editions were inadequately edited and suffered from a number of omissions--until Robert Latham and William Matthews went back to the 300-year-old original manuscript and deciphered each passage and phrase, no matter how obscure or indiscreet. The Diary deals with some of the most dramatic ev...

Continuing from where A Celtic Childhood left off, Scotland Is Not for the Squeamish reflects on the events that transpired through Bill's early twenties and shaped him as a man. After realizing his childhood dream of becoming a wireless operator at seas, Watkins narrates his amazing predicaments. Whether it's a hurricane on a trawler, sinking docked warships, or hunting for gold in the mountains of Scotland, the tales of the ever-vibrant Bill Watkins capture his adventures with glorious effect.

This study of archaeoastronomy looks at more than 2,500 communal tombs and sanctuaries from around the Mediterranean. After a brief discussion of Hoskin's aims and the methodology for his fieldwork, individual chapters focus on evidence from particular regions: Malta, Gozo, the Balearics, Iberia, southern France, Corsica and Sardinia, Sicily and Pantelleria, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. The author concludes that in most of these regions the monuments faced sunrise, or more generally the...

Everyday Life in Traditional Japan paints a vivid portrait of Tokugawa Japan, a time when contact with the outside world was deliberately avoided, and the daily life of the different classes consolidated the traditions that shaped modern Japan. With detailed descriptions and over 100 illustrations, authentic samurai, farmers, craftsmen, merchants, courtiers, priests, entertainers and outcasts come to life in this magnificently illustrated portrait of a colorful society. Most works of Japanese...

A collection of village childhood and journeys by pony and trap, snowbound celebrations, ghost stories, pheasant beating, and wartime Christmases.

On the Authorship Controversy is about how a historical deception has survived as a tradition for nearly 400 years, despite numerous challenges - this is, of course, referring to the `tradition' that the works attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon were actually written by him, despite no evidence of schooling or access to libraries, lack of recognition by other playwrights when he died, and much more. The editors of the definitive decennial edition of his works, together with vi...

How did our modern ideas of physical comfort originate? This study demonstrates that changes in the technology of comfort depended on a fashion-conscious public being made to feel discomfort with surroundings they had previously preceived as functionally adequate.