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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorColor: A Natural History of the Palette
Victoria Finlay · 448 pages
The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China
Julia Lovell · 458 pages
This title tells a story of drugs, distrust, greed and rebellion. 'On the outside, [the foreigners] seem intractable, but inside they are cowardly...Although there have been a few ups-and-downs, the situation as a whole is under control.' In October 1839, a few months after the Chinese Imperial Commissioner, Lin Zexu, dispatched these confident words to his emperor, a Cabinet meeting in Windsor vo
Kublai Khan: The Mongol King Who Remade China
John Man · 389 pages
The Travels
Marco Polo · 480 pages
"Marco Polo was the most famous traveller of his time. His voyages began in 1271 with a visit to China, after which he served the Kublai Khan on numerous diplomatic missions. On his return to the West he was made a prisoner of war and met Rustichello of Pisa, with whom he collaborated on this book. His account of his travels offers a fascinating glimpse of what he encountered abroad: unfamiliar re
Holy War: How Vasco da Gama's Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations
Nigel Cliff · 547 pages
A new interpretation of Vasco da Gama's revolutionary voyages, which were seen as a turning point in the struggle between Christianity and Islam, explores the tragic collision of cultures resulting from his journeys to the Indies.
The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners that Shook the World in the Summer of 1900
Diana Preston · 436 pages
"The Boxer Rebellion is a panoramic chronicle of the uprising and ensuing two-month siege of the eleven foreign ministries in Peking (now Beijing), and of the foreign community in Tientsin (now Tianjin), during the summer of 1900 - the repercussions of which have echoed throughout the intervening century. It left tens of thousands of Chinese dead, precipitated the end of dynastic rule in China, an
The Chinese Opium Question in British Opinion and Action
Wenzao Wu · 196 pages
The Chinese Opium Wars
Jack Beeching · 376 pages
An enlightening account of a notorious period in nineteenth-century imperialism, when an effort by the Chinese government to stamp out the country's profitable opium trade resulted in a series of conflicts known as the Opium Wars. Index; illustrations and map.
The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom
Simon Winchester · 316 pages
In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman ("Elegant and scrupulous"—New York Times Book Review) and Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"—Time) brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically adva
Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War
Stephen R. Platt · 385 pages
Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe
Laurence Bergreen · 480 pages
Publisher's description: Ferdinand Magellan's daring circumnavigation of the globe in the sixteenth century was a three-year odyssey filled with sex, violence, and amazing adventure. Now in Over the Edge of the World, acclaimed author Laurence Bergreen, interweaving a variety of candid, first-person accounts, some previously unavailable in English, brings to life this groundbreaking and majestic t
To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World
Arthur Herman · 648 pages
Recounts how Britain's Royal Navy allowed one nation to rise to a level of power unprecedented in history. From its beginnings under Henry VIII and adventurers like John Hawkins and Francis Drake, the Royal Navy toppled one world economic system, built by Spain and Portugal after Columbus, and ushered in another--the one in which we still live today. Follows its historiy from the defeat of the Spa
Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival
Peter Stark · 368 pages
In 1810, John Jacob Astor sent out two advanced parties to settle the wild, unclaimed western coast of North America. More than half of his men died violent deaths. The others survived starvation, madness, and greed to shape the destiny of a continent. At a time when the edge of American settlement barely reached beyond the Appalachian Mountains, two visionaries, President Thomas Jefferson and mil
The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down
Colin Woodard · 383 pages
This book gives a thrilling account of a virtually unexplored chapter in the golden age of piracy. Here is the true story of the men who built the Republic of Pirates -- and the man who brought it down. In the early eighteenth century, a number of the great pirate captains joined forces, including Blackbeard, Black Sam Bellamy, and Charles Vane. This infamous "Flying Gang" was more than simply a b
The Last Voyage of Columbus: Being the Epic Tale of the Great Captain's Fourth Expedition, Including Accounts of Mutiny, Shipwreck, and Discovery
Martin Dugard · 294 pages
The Year is 1500. Christopher Columbus, stripped of his title Admiral of the Ocean Seas, waits in chains in a Caribbean prison built under his orders, looking out at the colony that he founded, nurtured, and ruled for eight years. Less than a decade after discovering the New World, he has fallen into disgrace, accused by the royal court of being a liar, a secret Jew, and a foreigner who sought to
Batavia
Peter FitzSimons · 490 pages
The Shipwreck of the Batavia combines the birth of the world's first corporation, the brutality of colonisation, the battle of good vs evil, the derring-do of sea-faring adventure, mutiny, ship-wreck, love, lust, blood-lust, petty fascist dictatorship, criminality, a reign of terror, murders most foul, sexual slavery, natural nobility, survival, retribution, rescue, first contact with native peopl
The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
David Abulafia · 783 pages
The Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary True Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ship and its Cargo of Female Convicts
Sian Rees · 236 pages
"In July 1789, 237 women convicts left England for Sydney Cove in Australia's New South Wales on board a ship called the Lady Julian. The women, most of them petty criminals, were destined to provide the colony's hordes of lonely men with sexual favors as well as progeny. This is the enthralling story of that extraordinary group of women and their voyage halfway around the world.". "Historian Sia
The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic
Peter Linebaugh, Marcus Rediker · 433 pages
"Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. The Many Headed-Hydra recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world."--BOOK JACKET.
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
Jung Chang · 544 pages
"Jung Chang vividly evokes China's sights, sounds, and smells to create what must be one of the grimmest, yet most perceptive accounts of growing up middle-class in the maelstrom that has swept China since the 1920s." - Back cover.