Histories of China usually start in 221 BCE with the establishment of Imperial China under the Qin dynasty, but the author of this readable book believes that those days are too remote for us to enter with understanding and chooses to commence with the occupation of the Mongol Chinggis (Genghis) Khan, followed by the rule of Khubilai Khan. The concept of the Great State, a military power that potentially encompasses the whole world, dates from this time and permeates the Ming dynasty from 1368 and the Qing from 1635, finally giving way to the People's State, or Republic, in 1912. The story of Chinese history from the Mongols to the present is told in 13 chapters, each with a focus on a particular event or person. Khubilai Khan's fabled palace, which he did not initially dare call Xanadu (Supreme Capital) in case it suggested aggression towards his brothers, was legitimised by a decision to elect him supreme ruler of the Mongol world. Times were tough with the onset of a mini-ice-age, but the era saw the international travels of Marco Polo after accompanying the Blue Princess to Persia, an incredible story confirmed by official documents showing that his planned route along the Silk Road had become impassable. The century was ravaged by the Black Death, but writing the history of China into the Black Death is problematic because few people are known definitely to have died there. The author investigates using modern genomic technology. The Ming dynasty saw the notorious and possibly apocryphal attempt by Zheng He to obtain the holiest relic of the time, the Buddha's tooth, from Hong Kong. Khubilai Khan had made the attempt earlier and was fobbed off with fakes, but avoided humiliation by pretending they were the real thing. Other Ming incidents cover the riots on Java and the chequered career of the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci. In the modern era the Manchu dynasty saw a slowly unfolding relationship with the west, concluding with the Japanese occupation of China in World War II and the post-war establishment of the People's Republic. 442pp, colour photos, maps.

From the voyages of Christopher Columbus into the unchartered dark blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean to the daring exploration of the Louisiana Purchase by Meriwether Lewis, the book brings to life the epic stories of 14 adventurers in the New World. Struggle alongside the conquistadors as they conquer new lands for Spain, and journey down the Mississippi River with French explorers. Learn about the work of Vitus Bering whose discovery of Alaska established Russia's claim to the region, and Alexander Mackenzie's 107 day trek across Western Canada that opened the frontier to settlement, commerce and development of its natural resources. Read about Henry Hudson's sea voyages in search of the Northwest Passage which led to the colonisation of New York, the exploration of the Hudson Bay in Canada, and Hernan Cortes whose victorious battles against the Aztecs conquered Mexico for Spain. Other names include John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Hernando de Soto, Francisco Coronado, Samuel de Champlain, Captain John Smith, Governor of the Jamestown colony and explorer of the American coastline, Robert Cavelier de La Salle, explorer of the Great Lakes, and Daniel Boone, pioneer of the Ohio Valley. With maps, 303pp.

The American Civil War raged for four years before it culminated in the peace treaty made in the village of Appomattox Court House by the dapper, well-dressed Confederate General Robert E. Lee and the shabby, rough-looking Ulysses S. Grant, who went on to become the 18th president of the United States. The confederates in the South were fighting to hang on to a traditional way of life in which the agricultural economy was kept going by the work of millions of slaves. Society had moved on in the urban centres, outlawing slavery and beginning the long process of integrating former slaves into the community. The battle between north and south was not fought by two single armies, but between a number of independent armies that espoused each cause, for instance the Army of the Potomac on the Union side, commanded by legendary General Meade, while Lee himself was commander of the Army of Northern Virginia before being given overall Confederate command. When the Confederates were close to defeat, Grant sent Robert E. Lee the first of a series of notes inviting him to surrender, concluding "Let us stop all this senseless killing". Lee was calculating his chances of getting through to a new source of supplies in the Shenandoah Valley, but as the Union armies closed in he realised he had no options left. The book includes many interesting features, such as the story of the Union XXV Corps, consisting of freed slaves including a woman, Cathay Williams, disguised as a man. 150pp, softback pocket volume, numerous archive photos. A classic from the 1950s.

The sailing of the Mayflower, the ship that took the Pilgrim Fathers to the New World, is a fundamental event in American history, but it began as an English story that pioneered the idea of religious freedom. The illegal underground movement of Protestant separatists from Elizabeth I's Church of England is a story of subterfuge and danger, arrests and interrogations, prison and executions. It starts with Queen Mary's attempts to burn Protestantism out of England which created a Protestant underground. Later, when her reformation didn't go far enough, radicals recreated that underground, meeting illegally, facing prison and death for their crimes. They went into exile in the Netherlands where they lived in poverty and made their plans for the New World. Historian Stephen Tomkins tells this fascinating story, one that is rarely told as an important piece of English as well as American history that is full of contemporary relevance - religious violence, the threat to national security, freedom of religion, and the tolerance of dangerous opinions. The book is hair raising, sometimes hilarious and often tragic in telling the stories of the men and women who suffered or survived it. Tomkins has a PhD in Church History from the London School of Theology. 372pp, paperback.

The American-British historian who specialises in the medieval world of the Mediterranean and the Middle East holds MA degrees from Oxford and University College London and here tells the untold story of the trailblazing dynasty of royal women who dared to rule the Middle East. In 1187, Saladin's armies besieged the Holy City of Jerusalem. He had previously annihilated Jerusalem's army at the Battle of Hattin, and behind the city's high walls, a last-ditch defence was being led by an unlikely trio including Sibylla, Queen of Jerusalem. They could not resist Saladin, but if they were lucky they could negotiate terms that would save the lives of the city's inhabitants. Queen Sibylla was the last of a line of formidable female rulers in the Crusader States of Outremer. Yet for all the books written about the Crusades, one aspect is conspicuously absent - the stories of women. Queens and princesses tend to be presented as passive transmitters of land and royal blood but in reality women ruled, conducted diplomatic negotiations, made military decisions, forged allegiances, rebelled and undertook architectural projects. Sibylla's grandmother Queen Melisende was the first queen to seize upon real political agency in Jerusalem and rule in her own right. She outmanoeuvred both her husband and son to seize real power in her kingdom, and was a force to be reckoned with in the politics of the medieval Middle East. The lives of her Armenian mother, her three sisters and their daughters and granddaughters were no less intriguing. This is a rich and fresh history and an impressive feat of research into Crusader history. 250pp, maps and illus., chapters include Morphia and the Four Princesses, Alice, the Rebel Princess of Antioch, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Constance of Antioch and Agnes and Sibylla. 2022 publication.

In 1509 King Henry VII died and his son succeeded to the throne as Henry VIII. The year stands as a crossroads between two very different kings and between equally different worlds, sitting in the long 16th century of the Tudor age with its Protestants, playwrights and printing presses, it seems comfortably settled between the bloodshed and chaos of the Wars of the Roses, and the bloated tyranny of Henry VIII's later reign. These early years of his reign have been overlooked by historians. When he came to the throne, the country was Catholic, part of the 'universal' Church of Rome. By the end of his reign England had cut itself adrift and Henry had made himself Supreme Head of the Church in England allowing no Pope to serve as intermediary between himself and God. In 1509, translating the Bible into English was heresy, a crime against God, but by 1547 when Henry VIII died, there was an English Bible in every church, by Royal Command. The political players who dominated the scene in 1509 may not be as famous as Thomas Cromwell, Anne Boleyn and Thomas More, but they are every bit as fascinating and complex and deserve equal attention. We meet Thomasine Percyvale, a Cornish servant who had risen to become a London gentlewoman and tailor keeping servants in her own right; the coroner John Rastell who fled Coventry to establish himself in the perilous trade of printing to spread his ideals of education and justice; William Green who wanted more that his father's Lincolnshire drudgery of labour and whose love of learning was already evident in grammar school, and immigrants like Katalina of Motril and John Blanke. Through the eyes of those who lived through it, we can experience the wealth of the London streets that were vibrant, vivid and exciting and which fluttered with cloth-of-gold to welcome a new king, the shrines of Canterbury Cathedral groaning under the weight of precious stones, and vast pageants playing out the ideals and fears of communities across the country, a world of peace and danger, prosperity and plague, soon to be swept away during the reign of its new young king. It is still more than two decades away from the English Reformation, and ancient traditions persist - boy bishops, pilgrimages, Corpus Christi pageants. Lauren Johnson connects everyday life with the thrust of great political events in this excellent history. 330pp, paperback, eight pages of colour plates.

The Pilgrim Fathers are often hailed as the founders of the American nation, although the Virginia Company had created a colony a few years earlier and the whole continent was already peopled by native Americans. This comprehensive guide to the voyage of the Mayflower in 1620 puts the Pilgrim Fathers in the context of earlier exploration, for instance Leif Eriksson around the year 1000, Christopher Columbus in 1492 and the French expedition of 1521. Britain's John Cabot and Sir Francis Drake were early transatlantic adventurers, while Sir Walter Raleigh's ill-fated attempt to create an American colony notoriously ended in disaster. The Mayflower Pilgrims were religious exiles voyaging from Leiden in the Netherlands, Separatists who felt the Church of England had retained too many elements of Roman Catholicism at the Reformation. The author describes in detail the 66-day voyage for its 102 migrants and 30 crew, with diagrams of the ship's structure, lists of their dried food and provisions, photos of 17th century navigational instruments and cartography, and details of the huts and wooden-framed houses they built on arrival. The settlers were fortunate that the leader of the Wampanoag Indians, Samoset, was an English speaker who was prepared to co-operate peacefully with them. In 1630, ten years after the Pilgrims' foundation of the Plymouth community, a fleet of 11 ships delivered 800 English Puritan colonists to the Massachusetts Bay colony of Salem and Boston under its governor John Winthrop, and these highly devout settlers spread throughout what we now call New England. The final chapter describes the creation of the Mayflower II, the brainchild of journalist Warwick Charlton, which made the voyage in 1957. 156pp, numerous colour and archive photos, maps.

Immortalised in the novel of the same name by Alexander Dumas, the real Man In The Iron Mask became a prisoner on the orders of Louis XIV and remained in custody for the remaining 34 years of his life, being closely guarded by a single gaoler, Saint-Mars, first at Pignerol on the Italian border and finally in Paris. Countless books and films have speculated about his identity and the reason for the mask, which was probably made of velvet rather than iron. The story starts in 1669 when Louvois, Louis XIV's minister of state for war, wrote to Saint-Mars, the governor of Pignerol gaol, to expect a high-security prisoner. Such was the secrecy involved that it was not until a week later that orders were given for the arrest of Eustache Dauger or Danger in Dunkirk. Saint-Mars was a musketeer who had served under the comte d'Artagnan, a historical figure whom Dumas would use in this novel The Three Musketeers. Saint-Mars's sister was a great beauty who became the mistress of his boss Louvois, through whom a steady stream of instructions from the king percolated. A fellow-prisoner was Nicholas Fouquet, who had harboured ambitions to run the country on behalf of the pleasure-loving young Louis XIV, and in time Eustache was allowed to join Fouquet's service as a valet or gentleman's gentleman, which was his profession. Other prisoners included the "Mad Jacobin" monk Lapierre and the former court favourite Lauzun. The author examines a range of theories about the mask, including the possibility that the Dauger was a royal bastard and the mask was to hide the prisoner's uncanny likeness to the king himself. A different possible explanation for his imprisonment relates to King Charles II of England's plan to convert to Catholicism. 280pp, colour reproductions.

Sex and mutiny is the first chapter which begins "To botanists, the coconut palm is the Cocos nucifera, a member of the Aceraceae or Palm family." Writings in Sanskrit refer to coconut oil as being used in a medicine 3500 years ago. Coconuts appear again in the Hindu epic story the Ramayana 1000 years later and the Arabic folk tales of 1001 Nights include the seven voyages of Sinbad the sailor whose crew threw stones at monkeys who retaliated by throwing down coconuts, which the sailors probably sold to finance their next voyage! In the Song of Solomon, the last section of the Hebrew Bible likened the woman's body to the coconut palm. Seafaring Arab traders likely carried coconuts from India to East Africa as long as 2000 years ago. The rarity value of the coconut was soon to pass. Today supermarket shelves, health food shops and beauty salons are crowded with coconut products, but we look here beyond the oils and healthy drinks to uncover the unexpected and often surprising vital roles that the coconut palm has played. They have been used as part of the charcoal filters in First World War gas masks and it was coconuts that triggered the mutiny on the Bounty and coconuts that saved the life of the man who went on to become the 35th President of the United States. The coconut has long been the unseen player in the endeavours of industrialists and bomb makers, physicians and silversmiths, smugglers and snake charmers. 224 pages, illustrations and colour plates.

Sub-titled 'A Guide for Knaves, Fools, Harlots, Cuckolds, Drunkards, Liars, Thieves and Braggarts' we enter a rowdy street gang scouring a tavern. Gentlewomen hold insolent eye contact. Drunkards wag dirty fingers at the dinner table. Every age and social strata has its rule-breakers and nose-thumbers, but Elizabethan England perhaps had more than its fair share. Ruth Goodman takes us into raucous troublemaking times illuminating the Elizabethan era. She cheerfully embraces the naughty bits of the 16th and 17th centuries, having researched advice manuals, court cases and sermons offering a veritable how-to guide for both the cheeky and the downright cunning. Find out why nose-blowing was disgusting while spitting was acceptable, while curses hurled at women were almost always about sex. This was a time that a new 'brand of religion and non-religion' was born - democracy was evolving in areas such as voting, representation and taxation, and a linguistic evolution spread through the streets and on the page. Here is the nitty gritty of daily life for merchants, street sellers and others, 1550-1660 Stuart and Tudor England, including offensive speech and gestures, the perverse delights of mockery and ridicule, the ripostes of physical violence, and a gallery of repellent habits and repulsive displays of bodily functions like 'a turd in your teeth'. Please be aware that we have in stock the American edition of a book first published in Britain under the title 'How to Behave Badly in Renaissance Britain.' 314pp, charming woodcut illus. Remainder mark.