Illustrated Histories – serie

The Illustrated Histories of Everyday Expressions uncovers the fascinating, humorous, and often unbelievable origin stories behind the English language's most common sayings!Nobody thinks twice about sayings like bite the bullet and the cat's out of the bag. But the strange and wonderful origins of these expressions are far from arbitrary: They are rooted in forgotten history. Within this book, you will discover the origins of idioms like:Why we say an unwell person is under the weather. It goes back to when sickly sailors and seafarers had to rest below deck!How come sitting in the passenger seat of a vehicle is called riding shotgun." In the Wild West, passengers had a crucial job: packing heat and preventing highway robberies!What's up with the phrase, cat got your tongue. Here's a hint: It doesn't have anything to do with cats!With over 100 pieces of original artwork, The Illustrated Histories of Everyday Expressions is as beautiful as it is entertaining and informative. Read up on this fascinating history of the English language's 64 most popular idioms, and you will know what it really means when you say pass with flying colors, bury the hatchet, and rest on your laurels!

At its peak in January 1945, 10,000 people worked at Bletchley Park, reading 4000 messages a day, decrypting German and Japanese communications and helping the Allies to victory. But while we know that Bletchley was the centre of Britain’s World War II code-breaking, how did its efforts actually change the course of the war? Enigma: How Breaking the Code Helped Win World War II tells the story of Bletchley’s role in defeating U-boats in the Atlantic, breaking the Japanese codes, helping the Allies to victory in North Africa, deciphering the German military intelligence code, learning of most German positions in western Europe before the Normandy Landings, defeating the Italian Navy in the Mediterranean, and helping sink the German battleship Scharnhorst off Norway. In tracing these events, the book also delves into the stories of major Bletchley characters, ‘boffins’ such as Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman, and ‘Debs’ such as Joan Clarke and Margaret Rock. An accessible work of military history that ranges across air, land and naval warfare, the book also touches on the story of early computer science. Illustrated with 120 black-&-white and colour photographs, artworks and maps, Enigma: How Breaking the Code Helped Win World War II is an authoritative and novel perspective on WWII history.

Think of the Renaissance and you might only picture the work of fine artists such as Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Van Eyck. Or architecture could spring to mind and you might think of St Peter’s in Rome and the Doge’s Palace in Venice. Or you might consider scientists like Galileo and Copernicus. But then let’s not forget the contribution of thinkers like Machiavelli, Thomas More or Erasmus. Someone else, though, might plump for music or poets and dramatists – after all, there was Dante and Shakespeare. Because when it comes to the Renaissance, there’s an embarrassment of riches to choose from. From art to architecture, music to literature, science to medicine, political thought to religion, The Renaissance expertly guides the reader through the cultural and intellectual flowering that Europe witnessed from the 14th to the 17th centuries. Ranging from the origins of the Renaissance in medieval Florence to the Counter- Reformation, the book explains how a revival in the study in Antiquity was able to flourish across the Italian states, before spreading to Iberia and north across Europe. Nimbly moving from perspective in paintings to Copernicus’s understanding of the Universe, from Martin Luther’s challenge to the Roman Catholic Church to the foundations of modern school education, The Renaissance is a highly accessible and colourful journey along the cultural contours of Europe from the Late Middle Ages to the early modern period.

An Illustrated History of Thailand is divided geographicallyaccording to the sequence of succeeding Thai kingdoms. Each section follows ahistorical chronology, covering accounts of major events during each reign,with an assessment of the character of individual kings and their particularachievements, together with those of other major players. This record of eventsis blended with descriptive passages about monuments surviving today that arerelevant to and help illuminate the history. Political development is thusparalleled by Thailand’s cultural development, especially in relation to thereligious and royal architecture.Thailand’s historical progression has been complex, andalthough the foundations of national identity – religion and monarchy inparticular – were established in the earliest days of statehood dating back tothe 13th century, it is only in comparatively recent times that all elements –social, political, cultural and linguistic – have cohered into what isrecognizable today as Thai and Thailand. By linking the text to existinglandmarks the history provides both an enjoyable read in its own right and afascinating guide to the monuments and buildings that visitors can see on theirtravels around the country.