History of spain Books 69 results

Paul Preston

UPDATED EDITIONA rousing and full-blooded account of the Spanish Civil War and the rise to prominence of General Franco. No modern conflict has inflamed the passions of both civilians and intellectuals as much as the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. Burned into our collective historical consciousness, it not only prefigured the imminent Second World War but also ushered in a new ...

Ruth Mackay

Since the early modern era, historians and observers of Spain, both within the country and beyond it, have identified a peculiarly Spanish disdain for work, especially manual labor, and have seen it as a primary explanation for that nation's alleged failure to develop like the rest of Europe. In "Lazy, Improvident People," the historian Ruth MacKay examines the origins of this ...

Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. Unless you read Spanish, you've never read Don Quixote. ...

Simon Barton / Richard Fletcher / Rosemary Horrox / Simon Maclean

Makes available, for the first time in English translation, four of the principal narrative sources for the history of the Spanish kingdom of León-Castile during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Three chronicles focus primarily upon the activities of the kings of León-Castile as leaders of the Reconquest of Spain from the forces of Islam, and especially upon Fernando I (1037...

Roger Collins

This book, now available in paperback, is a challenging and controversial account of the history of Spain in the eighth century. In it Roger Collins assesses the political and cultural impact on Spain of the first hundred years of Arab rule, focusing upon aspects of continuity and discontinuity with Visigoth Spain. ...

Noah Gordon

In the year 1492, the Inquisition has all of Spain in its grip. After centuries of pogrom-like riots encouraged by the Church, the Jews - who have been an important part of Spanish life since the days of the Romans - are expelled from the country by royal edict. Many who wish to remain are intimidated by Church and Crown and become Catholics, but several hundred thousand choose...

Christopher Columbus

'The Admiral was quite certain that they were near land ... He promised to give a silk doublet to the first sailor who should report it'No gamble in history has been more momentous than the landfall of Columbus's ship the Santa Maria in the Americas in 1492 - an event that paved the way for the conquest of a 'New World'. The accounts collected here provide a vivid narrative of ...

Joseph F. O'callaghan

This book is a comprehensive narrative history based on an impressively wide reading in the sources and secondary literature. It should prove useful to teachers, students, and general readers in European history.... Soundly traditional in its organization, it gives primacy to political events without neglecting institutional, social, and cultural matters.-American Historical Re...

Leonard R. Heinz

In July 1936 a military revolt brought civil war to Spain; it erupted into a bitter political contest and a brutal land war which have been well covered by historians - a less appreciated dimension of the conflict was the crucial role played by the navies of both sides. This new book describes and explores the naval operations that played out over thirty-eight months and spread...

Panzram / Paulo Pachá

How did the breakdown of Roman rule in the Iberian Peninsula eventually result in the formation of a Visigothic kingdom with authority centralised in Toledo? This collection of essays challenges the view that local powers were straightforwardly subjugated to the expanding central power of the monarchy. Rather than interpret countervailing events as mere 'delays' in this inevita...

Simon R. Doubleday

An illuminating biography of Alfonso X, the 13th-century philosopher-king whose affinity for Islamic culture left an indelible mark on Western civilization"If I had been present at the Creation," the thirteenth-century Spanish philosopher-king Alfonso X is said to have stated, "Many faults in the universe would have been avoided." Known as El Sabio, "the Wise," Alfonso was reno...

George Orwell

Kurlansky, Mark

Hugh Thomas

Jason Webster

Esmond Romilly / John Cornford / George Nichols

Esmond Romilly (1918-1941) was Winston Churchill's nephew and even rumoured to be his illegitimate son. Already notorious as a teenage runaway from Wellington College, Romilly was among the first British volunteers to join the International Brigade in Spain, cycling across France to fight on the side of the Spanish Republic against Franco's insurrection. He saw intensive front ...

Richard Fletcher

Written in the same tradition as John Julius Norwich's engrossing accounts of Venice and Byzantium, Richard Fletcher's Moorish Spain aims to entertain even as it enlightens. He tells the story of a vital period in Spanish history which transformed the culture and society, not only of Spain, but of the rest of Europe as well. Moorish influence transformed the architecture, art, ...

Adrian Shubert / José Álvarez Junco

Ana Maria Laguna

Tremlett, Giles

Maria Rosa Menocal

Heather R. Darsie

On 4 November 1501, a fifteen-year-old girl arrived in England to marry the fifteen-year-old prince of that kingdom. Their parents, especially the boy's, hoped that the marriage would secure the future of their family on the throne. Much excitement surrounded the safe arrival of Katharine of Aragon from Spain to England. She and her husband-to-be, Arthur Tudor, were engaged yea...

Helen Crisp / Jules Stewart

This is the tale of Western Europe's oldest continuously inhabited city, a 3,000-year history of war and seafaring, culture and commerce, liberalism and resistance. Helen Crisp and Jules Stewart offer a vibrant account of Cádiz past and present, from its ancient founding myths to its reinvention as a trendy tourist destination. They illuminate Cádiz's experiences under Roman an...

Nora Berend

"Rodrigo Diaz lived a violently colourful life in eleventh-century Spain. An ambitious military leader, exile and brutal mercenary, he served Christian kings, fought against Christian princes in service of Muslim rulers, raided and killed Muslims and eventually struck out on his own, carving out an independent principality. While Rodrigo the man is long dead, El Cid lives on: a...

Mir Bahmanyar

The first dedicated, illustrated study of the events of the Second Punic War in Iberia, which served as a launch pad for the Carthaginian invasion of Rome.Iberia was one of three crucial theatres of the Second Punic War between Carthage and Rome. Hannibal of Carthage's siege of Saguntum in 219 BC triggered a conflict that led to immense human and material losses on both sides, ...

Jean-Pierre Claris De Florian

An objective and compelling overview of the Moorish occupation of Spain, from the time of their first landings in Iberia to their final expulsion in 1492, written by one of France's greatest authors. This work became one of the standard histories of the era of Moorish rule in Spain and covered not just the military campaigns but also the cultural achievements of that time.Divid...

James Falkner

The War of the Spanish Succession, fought between 1701 and 1714 to decide who should inherit the Spanish throne, was a conflict on an unprecedented scale, stretching across most of western Europe, the high seas and the Americas. Yet this major subject is not well known and is little understood. That is why the publication of James Falkner's absorbing new study is so timely and ...

James Harris

EL CID is the oldest Spanish epic poem preserved.? It is based on the true story of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, known as El Cid, and it takes place during the Spanish Reconquest.? This is the story of a brave man who took on the challenge of recovering his home country after it had been beseiged.? This poem has been completely reworked and carefully adapted in Modern English to allo...

Vicente Huidobro

In 1928, shortly after his marriage to Ximena Amunátegui, and after meeting the actor Douglas Fairbanks, who expressed interest in the possibility of a new swashbuckler, Huidobro began writing his version of the Cid legend as a novel. The result is a highly readable, if slightly arch, version of the story, that casts aside the style of romantic 19th-century historical fiction i...

Michael Eaude