In book two of the Broken Empire trilogy, the boy who would be king has gained the throne-but the crown is a heavy weight to bear... At age nine, Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath vowed to avenge his slaughtered mother and brother-and to punish his father for not doing so. At fifteen, he began to fulfill that vow. Now, at eighteen, he must fight for what he has taken by torture and treachery. Haunted by the pain of his past, and plagued by nightmares of the atrocities he has committed, King Jorg is filled with rage. And even as his need for revenge continues to consume him, an overwhelming enemy force marches on his castle. Jorg knows that he cannot win a fair fight. But he has found a long-hidden cache of ancient artifacts. Some might call them magic. Jorg is not certain-all he knows is that their secrets can be put to terrible use in the coming battle...

The sequel to the #BookTok hit The Witch Collector The night the Prince of the East razed her village, Raina Bloodgood's life changed forever. Forced into someone else’s war-and into the arms of the Witch Collector, Alexus Thibault—Raina discovered that everything she believed was wrong, and that she was capable of far more than anyone imagined. Now, the Prince of the East has taken the Frost King as a pawn in his war against the Summerlands, causing Alexus’s life to hang in the balance. To thwart the prince’s endgame and prevent the Tiressian empire from returning to an age of gods, Raina, Alexus, and a band of Northlanders race against the sands of time to reach a mystical desert land where merciless assassins lurk around every corner. In the midst of tragedy, Raina and Alexus fight to stay together and alive, all while a nefarious presence follows them straight to the jeweled gates of the Summerland queen’s citadel—the City of Ruin. With much to fear, it’s the terror of a past she shouldn't remember that Raina cannot cast from her dreams. A past that's determined to find her. One way or another. City of Ruin is book two in a thrilling romantic fantasy series, perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas, Naomi Novik, and Jennifer L. Armentrout.

The sequel to the #BookTok hit The Witch Collector The night the Prince of the East razed her village, Raina Bloodgood's life changed forever. Forced into someone else’s war-and into the arms of the Witch Collector, Alexus Thibault—Raina discovered that everything she believed was wrong, and that she was capable of far more than anyone imagined. Now, the Prince of the East has taken the Frost King as a pawn in his war against the Summerlands, causing Alexus’s life to hang in the balance. To thwart the prince’s endgame and prevent the Tiressian empire from returning to an age of gods, Raina, Alexus, and a band of Northlanders race against the sands of time to reach a mystical desert land where merciless assassins lurk around every corner. In the midst of tragedy, Raina and Alexus fight to stay together and alive, all while a nefarious presence follows them straight to the jeweled gates of the Summerland queen’s citadel—the City of Ruin. With much to fear, it’s the terror of a past she shouldn't remember that Raina cannot cast from her dreams. A past that's determined to find her. One way or another. City of Ruin is book two in a thrilling romantic fantasy series, perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas, Naomi Novik, and Jennifer L. Armentrout.

A monumental tale of American ambition, told by Pulitzer Prize–winning author and master historian David McCullough. This gripping saga of the creation of the Brooklyn Bridge, one of the country’s boldest engineering achievements, reveals not only the politics and personalities behind "America’s Eiffel Tower," but charts New York’s ascent as a thriving metropolis. Around 1870, during the Age of Optimism—a time when Americans believed anything was possible—the ambitious idea of constructing an unprecedented bridge across the East River to connect Manhattan and Brooklyn took root. This monumental project demanded a vision and determination on par with the efforts that built the great cathedrals of history. Spearheaded by the Roebling family, the project faced staggering odds throughout its fourteen years of construction. Bodies were crushed, lives were lost, political empires fell, and waves of public emotion constantly threatened its progress. The Roeblings, too, were not immune to personal tragedies. Yet, Emily Roebling rose above these challenges to become the pivotal force behind the Brooklyn Bridge’s completion, shattering all societal expectations of her era. This is not just the story of an engineering miracle; it is a sweeping narrative of the social climate of the time and the heroes and rascals who either built or exploited this groundbreaking enterprise.

The night the Prince of the East razed her village, Raina Bloodgood's life changed forever. Forced into someone else's war-and into the arms of the Witch Collector, Alexus Thibault-Raina discovered that everything she believed was wrong, and that she was capable of far more than anyone imagined. Now, the Prince of the East has taken the Frost King as a pawn in his war against the Summerlands, causing Alexus's life to hang in the balance. To thwart the prince's endgame and prevent the Tiressian empire from returning to an age of gods, Raina, Alexus, and a band of Northlanders race against the sands of time to reach a mystical desert land where merciless assassins lurk around every corner. In the midst of tragedy, Raina and Alexus fight to stay together and alive, all while a nefarious presence follows them straight to the jeweled gates of the Summerland queen's citadel-the City of Ruin. With much to fear, it's the terror of a past she shouldn't remember that Raina cannot cast from her dreams. A past that's determined to find her. One way or another. City of Ruin is book two in a thrilling romantic fantasy series, perfect for fans of Naomi Novik, Sarah J. Maas, and Jennifer L. Armentrout.

As AI takes hold across the planet and wealthy nations seek to position themselves as global leaders of this new technology, the gap is widening between those who benefit from it and those who are subjugated by it. As Rachel Adams shows in this hard-hitting book, growing inequality is the single biggest threat to the transformative potential of AI. Not only is AI built on an unequal global system of power, it stands poised to entrench existing inequities, further consolidating a new age of empire. AI's impact on inequality will not be experienced in poorer countries only: it will be felt everywhere. The effects will be seen in an intensification of international migration, as opportunities increasingly concentrate in the hands of wealthier nations; in heightened political instability and populist politics; and in climate-related disasters caused by an industry that is blind to its environmental impact across supply chains. We need to act now to address these issues. Only if the current inequitable trajectory of AI is halted, the incentives changed, and the production and use of AI decentralized and decoupled from wealthier nations will AI be able to deliver on its promise to build a better world for all. Also available as an audiobook

In The Gift of Battle, Thor meets his greatest and final challenge as he quests deeper into the Land of Blood to attempt to rescue Guwayne. Encountering foes more powerful than he ever imagined, Thor soon realizes he is up against an army of darkness, one for which his powers are no match. When he learns a sacred object may give him the powers he needs - an object which has been kept secret for ages - he must embark on a final quest to retrieve it before it is too late, with the fate of the Ring hanging in the balance. Gwendolyn keeps her vow to the King of the Ridge, entering the tower and confronting the cult leader to learn what secret he is hiding. The revelation sends her to Argon, and ultimately to Argon's master - where she learns the greatest secret of all, one which may alter the destiny of her people. When the Ridge is discovered by the Empire, the invasion begins and, under attack by the greatest army known to man, it falls on Gwendolyn to defend, and to lead her people on one final, mass exodus. Thor's Legion brothers, on their own, face unimaginable risks, as Angel is dying from her leprosy. Darius fights for his life beside his father in the Empire capital, until a surprise twist prods him, with nothing left to lose, to finally tap his own powers. Erec and Alistair reach Volusia, battling their way upriver, and they continue on their quest for Gwendolyn and the exiles, as they face unexpected battles. And Godfrey realizes that he must ultimately make a decision to be the man he wants to be. Volusia, surrounded by all the power of the Knights of the Seven, must put herself to the test as goddess and discover if she alone has the power to crush men and rule the Empire. While Argon, faced with his end of days, realizes the time has come to sacrifice himself. As good and evil hang in the balance, one final, epic battle - the greatest battle of all - will determine the outcome of the Ring for all time. With its sophisticated world-building and characterization, The Gift of Battle is an epic tale of friends and lovers, of rivals and suitors, of knights and dragons, of intrigues and political machinations, of coming of age, of broken hearts, of deception, ambition, and betrayal. It is a tale of honor and courage, of fate and destiny, of sorcery. It is a fantasy that brings us into a world we will never forget, and which will appeal to all ages and genders.

Age of Entanglement explores the patterns of connection linking German and Indian intellectuals from the nineteenth century to the years after the Second World War. Kris Manjapra traces the intersecting ideas and careers of philologists, physicists, poets, economists, and others who shared ideas, formed networks, and studied one another's worlds. Moving beyond well-rehearsed critiques of colonialism, this study recasts modern intellectual history in terms of the knotted intellectual itineraries of seeming strangers. Collaborations in the sciences, arts, and humanities produced extraordinary meetings of German and Indian minds. Meghnad Saha met Albert Einstein, Stella Kramrisch brought the Bauhaus to Calcutta, and Girindrasekhar Bose began a correspondence with Sigmund Freud. Rabindranath Tagore traveled to Germany to recruit scholars for a new university, and Himanshu Rai worked with Franz Osten to establish movie studios in Bombay. These interactions, Manjapra argues, evinced shared responses to the hegemony of the British empire. Germans and Indians hoped to find in one another the tools needed to disrupt an Anglocentric world order. As Manjapra demonstrates, transnational encounters are not inherently progressive. From Orientalism to Aryanism to scientism, German-Indian entanglements were neither necessarily liberal nor conventionally cosmopolitan, often characterized as much by manipulation as by genuine cooperation.

Accompanying the British Library's exhibit, the first ever exhibition on the storytelling around Alexander the Great, the King of Macedon, this book charts the evolution of a legend that continues to captivate audiences today. Alexander the Great acceded to the throne at the age of 20, as king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. By his death in 323 BC, he had created one of the largest empires in the world--but myth proved more powerful than historical truth, and Alexander's life remains lost in legend. These stories permeate western and eastern cultures and religions, and have endured for more than 2,000 years. Even now, Alexander continues to appeal to new generations and his image persists today in film, theatre, literature, and even video games. This book explores the stories that began shortly after Alexander's mysterious death, and that by the Middle Ages had developed into a narrative of Alexander as the all-conquering hero who fought mythical beasts and explored the unknown using submarines and flying chariots. The incredible legends of Alexander the Great are brought to life here with exquisite original illustrations in books and manuscripts from around the globe.

The Sea-Witch; Or, The African Quadroon is a brisk antebellum romance that fuses nautical adventure, sentimental melodrama, and the racial anxieties of nineteenth-century Atlantic fiction. Set amid ships, ports, and the shadowed commerce of empire, the novel turns on disguise, captivity, desire, and moral testing, while its title figure evokes both exoticized fascination and the era's troubled imagination of race. Ballou's prose is direct, episodic, and highly pictorial, shaped by the conventions of popular magazine fiction and the sea tale after Cooper, yet charged with the sensational energy of urban and abolition-era romance. Maturin M. Ballou was a Boston journalist, editor, publisher, and prolific author whose career was rooted in the expanding print culture of mid-nineteenth-century America. Associated with illustrated newspapers and popular periodicals, he understood the appetite for swift plots, vivid scenes, and socially resonant themes. His later reputation as a travel writer also reflects the cosmopolitan curiosity evident in this maritime narrative. Readers interested in early American popular fiction, sea literature, or the cultural history of race and romance will find this novel revealing and compelling. It is best approached as both entertainment and historical document: a dramatic tale that exposes the fantasies, prejudices, and moral tensions of its age.

The Conan the Barbarian Collection gathers Robert E. Howard's foundational tales of the Cimmerian adventurer, set in the invented Hyborian Age, a prehistory poised between vanished civilizations and barbaric vitality. Blending sword-and-sorcery action with gothic menace, historical romance, and cosmic horror, these stories move with a hard, incantatory prose: violent, vivid, and often surprisingly philosophical in their reflections on empire, decadence, freedom, and survival. First appearing largely in the pulp milieu of Weird Tales in the 1930s, they helped define a modern heroic-fantasy tradition. Howard, born in rural Texas in 1906, brought to Conan a distinctive fusion of frontier imagination, antiquarian curiosity, and fascination with physical courage. His interests in boxing, Celtic legend, ancient history, and the rise and collapse of civilizations shaped both the hero's ferocity and the world's bleak grandeur. Writing within the pressures of the pulp market, Howard nevertheless created a mythic figure of unusual durability. This collection is essential for readers seeking the origins of sword and sorcery, but it also rewards anyone interested in energetic narrative craft, dark romanticism, and the literature of imagined antiquity. Conan remains compelling not merely as a warrior, but as Howard's challenge to civilized complacency.

Age of Entanglement explores the patterns of connection linking German and Indian intellectuals from the nineteenth century to the years after the Second World War. Kris Manjapra traces the intersecting ideas and careers of philologists, physicists, poets, economists, and others who shared ideas, formed networks, and studied one another's worlds. Moving beyond well-rehearsed critiques of colonialism, this study recasts modern intellectual history in terms of the knotted intellectual itineraries of seeming strangers. Collaborations in the sciences, arts, and humanities produced extraordinary meetings of German and Indian minds. Meghnad Saha met Albert Einstein, Stella Kramrisch brought the Bauhaus to Calcutta, and Girindrasekhar Bose began a correspondence with Sigmund Freud. Rabindranath Tagore traveled to Germany to recruit scholars for a new university, and Himanshu Rai worked with Franz Osten to establish movie studios in Bombay. These interactions, Manjapra argues, evinced shared responses to the hegemony of the British empire. Germans and Indians hoped to find in one another the tools needed to disrupt an Anglocentric world order. As Manjapra demonstrates, transnational encounters are not inherently progressive. From Orientalism to Aryanism to scientism, German-Indian entanglements were neither necessarily liberal nor conventionally cosmopolitan, often characterized as much by manipulation as by genuine cooperation.

Accompanying the British Library's exhibit, the first ever exhibition on the storytelling around Alexander the Great, the King of Macedon, this book charts the evolution of a legend that continues to captivate audiences today. Alexander the Great acceded to the throne at the age of 20, as king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. By his death in 323 BC, he had created one of the largest empires in the world--but myth proved more powerful than historical truth, and Alexander's life remains lost in legend. These stories permeate western and eastern cultures and religions, and have endured for more than 2,000 years. Even now, Alexander continues to appeal to new generations and his image persists today in film, theatre, literature, and even video games. This book explores the stories that began shortly after Alexander's mysterious death, and that by the Middle Ages had developed into a narrative of Alexander as the all-conquering hero who fought mythical beasts and explored the unknown using submarines and flying chariots. The incredible legends of Alexander the Great are brought to life here with exquisite original illustrations in books and manuscripts from around the globe.

In 1951 the Festival of Britain marks a new golden age of hope and prosperity for the country. Things are certainly looking up for the criminal elite who run the East End. For Jack, a draft-dodger with aspirations to be a champion boxer, there's easy money to be made for providing a bit of muscle. Meanwhile his sister Kath must keep secret the fact that she killed their father to protect her son, Brian, from the abuse she experienced as a child. Brian is so traumatised by witnessing this event that the complex union of violence and sexuality will shape his character for life. As the years go by and disillusion sets in, successive Labour and Tory governments aren't able to stop the rot. Younger, nastier criminals like the Kray twins and the Richardson brothers begin to carve out their own criminal empires and crush all resistance. Brutalised and embittered by years of failure and imprisonment, Jack decides to make a stand. The stage is set for one big war.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The bestselling author of Morning Star returns to the Red Rising universe with the thrilling sequel to Iron Gold. “Brown’s plots are like a depth charge of nitromethane dropped in a bucket of gasoline. His pacing is 100% him standing over it all with a lit match and a smile, waiting for us to dare him to drop it.”—NPR (Best Books of the Year) He broke the chains. Then he broke the world…. A decade ago Darrow led a revolution, and laid the foundations for a new world. Now he’s an outlaw. Cast out of the very Republic he founded, with half his fleet destroyed, he wages a rogue war on Mercury. Outnumbered and outgunned, is he still the hero who broke the chains? Or will he become the very evil he fought to destroy? In his darkening shadow, a new hero rises. Lysander au Lune, the displaced heir to the old empire, has returned to bridge the divide between the Golds of the Rim and Core. If united, their combined might may prove fatal to the fledgling Republic. On Luna, the embattled Sovereign of the Republic, Virginia au Augustus, fights to preserve her precious demokracy and her exiled husband. But one may cost her the other, and her son is not yet returned. Abducted by enemy agents, Pax au Augustus must trust in a Gray thief, Ephraim, for his salvation. Far across the void, Lyria, a Red refugee accused of treason, makes a desperate bid for freedom with the help of two unlikely new allies. Fear dims the hopes of the Rising, and as power is seized, lost, and reclaimed, the worlds spin on and on toward a new Dark Age. Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING GOLDEN SON MORNING STAR IRON GOLD DARK AGE LIGHT BRINGER

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The bestselling author of Morning Star returns to the Red Rising universe with the thrilling sequel to Iron Gold. "Brown's plots are like a depth charge of nitromethane dropped in a bucket of gasoline. His pacing is 100% him standing over it all with a lit match and a smile, waiting for us to dare him to drop it."-NPR (Best Books of the Year) He broke the chains. Then he broke the world…. A decade ago Darrow led a revolution, and laid the foundations for a new world. Now he's an outlaw. Cast out of the very Republic he founded, with half his fleet destroyed, he wages a rogue war on Mercury. Outnumbered and outgunned, is he still the hero who broke the chains? Or will he become the very evil he fought to destroy? In his darkening shadow, a new hero rises. Lysander au Lune, the displaced heir to the old empire, has returned to bridge the divide between the Golds of the Rim and Core. If united, their combined might may prove fatal to the fledgling Republic. On Luna, the embattled Sovereign of the Republic, Virginia au Augustus, fights to preserve her precious demokracy and her exiled husband. But one may cost her the other, and her son is not yet returned. Abducted by enemy agents, Pax au Augustus must trust in a Gray thief, Ephraim, for his salvation. Far across the void, Lyria, a Red refugee accused of treason, makes a desperate bid for freedom with the help of two unlikely new allies. Fear dims the hopes of the Rising, and as power is seized, lost, and reclaimed, the worlds spin on and on toward a new Dark Age. Don't miss any of Pierce Brown's Red Rising Saga: RED RISING GOLDEN SON MORNING STAR IRON GOLD DARK AGE LIGHT BRINGER

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2009 in the subject Theology - Historic Theology, Ecclesiastical History, grade: A-, Prairie Bible Institute, course: History of the Growth of Christianity, language: English, abstract: Muhammad ibn Abdullah, the last prophet and founder of Islam, is one of the most influential people who walked on this earth. By the time of the prophet¿s death at the age of sixty-two he had brought into existence a dynamic movement that would carry Islam through the centuries and across the continents, birthing empires, transforming the sciences, and challenging economic, cultural, and political systems. Considering the religion of Islam, one may wonder who this Muhammad, the last prophet, was and how his instructions were shaped by the cultural, economical, social and religious environment in which he lived. The other questions that may rise are how this small movement could become within centuries the dominant religion of the Mediterranean, and why Christianity was not able to stop it. This essay will propose that it was due to the lack of unity among Christians on the one hand and on the other hand to Muhammad`s attractive instructions about brotherhood and solidarity among his followers, fervour, faith, simplicity of Islam, moral values, and the use of the sword that Islam augmented so rapidly and displaced Christianity.

Held Fast for England dramatizes the Great Siege of Gibraltar, when Spanish and French forces sought to wrest the fortress from Britain during the American Revolutionary era. Through the adventures of the young Bob Repton, Henty combines military episode, seafaring peril, and patriotic endurance with careful attention to tactics, fortification, bombardment, and the famous floating batteries. Written in the vigorous, lucid style of late Victorian juvenile historical fiction, the novel places personal courage within a broader imperial and naval context. G. A. Henty was one of the most prolific historical novelists for boys in nineteenth-century Britain, and his career as a war correspondent deeply shaped his fiction. Having observed conflict firsthand in Europe, Africa, and Asia, he brought to his narratives a journalist's relish for campaign detail and a moralist's concern with discipline, loyalty, and self-command. His Gibraltar tale reflects both his historical curiosity and his confidence in British resolve under pressure. This book is recommended to readers interested in classic adventure fiction, military history, and the cultural imagination of empire. Though marked by the assumptions of its age, it remains a spirited introduction to one of Britain's most celebrated sieges.

The definitive history of the supernatural in Nazi Germany--the occult ideas, esoteric sciences, and pagan religions touted by the Third Reich in the service of power "[Kurlander] shows how swiftly irrational ideas can take hold, even in an age before social media."--Michael Dirda, The Washington Post "A careful, clear-headed, and exhaustive examination of a subject so lurid that it has probably scared away some of the serious research it merits."-- National Review The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler's personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion. In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander reveals how the Third Reich's relationship to the supernatural was far from straightforward. Even as popular occultism and superstition were intermittently rooted out, suppressed, and outlawed, the Nazis drew upon a wide variety of occult practices and esoteric sciences to gain power, shape propaganda and policy, and pursue their dreams of racial utopia and empire.

Professor Challenger - Complete SF Collection gathers Conan Doyle's exuberant scientific romances featuring the volcanic, brilliant, and magnificently irascible Professor George Edward Challenger. From the prehistoric plateau of The Lost World to apocalyptic speculation in The Poison Belt and later explorations of spiritual and cosmic possibility, these tales combine adventure narrative, satirical characterization, and Edwardian scientific curiosity. Written in a vigorous, journalistic style, they stand within the tradition of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne while retaining Doyle's distinctive gift for pace, dialogue, and dramatic revelation. Arthur Conan Doyle, best known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was also a physician, public intellectual, imperial traveler, and restless investigator of the unseen. His medical training and fascination with contemporary science inform Challenger's authority, while his later interest in spiritualism and metaphysics shapes the collection's more speculative dimensions. Challenger is in many ways Doyle's counterweight to Holmes: less analytical elegance than intellectual force, but equally memorable. This collection is recommended to readers interested in early science fiction, adventure literature, and the history of speculative thought. It offers not only thrilling inventions and lost worlds, but also a revealing portrait of an age negotiating science, empire, skepticism, and wonder.