Titres dans XIXe siècle

In 1787, Lucia, the beautiful 16-year-old daughter of a prominent Venetian statesman, is married off to Alvise Mocenigo, scion of one of the most powerful Venetian families. But their life as a golden couple will be suddenly transformed when Venice falls to Bonaparte.

D'Ajaccio à Sainte-Hélène, en passant par le Grand-Saint-Bernard, Austerlitz, Moscou, Waterloo, l'île d'Elbe, André Castelot a mis ses pas dans ceux de Napoléon Bonaparte pour respirer et restituer le décor de son prodigieux destin. Exploitant et mettant en valeur, avec son art célèbre du récit qui visualise les événements, les lieux et les personnages, une immense masse d'archives, de mémoires et de correspondance parfois inédits ou oubliés, il a écrit cette monumentale biographie si vivante, si colorée, si passionnante que depuis trente ans, son public se renouvelle sans cesse.

With Musket and Tomahawk is a vivid account of the American and British struggles in the sprawling wilderness region of the northeast during the Revolutionary War. Combining strategic, tactical, and personal detail, this book describes how the patriots of the recently organized Northern Army defeated England's massive onslaught of 1777, thereby all but ensuring America's independence.

In 1815 deposed emperor Napoleon returned to France and threatened the already devastated and exhausted continent with yet another war. Near the small Belgian municipality of Waterloo, two large, hastily mobilized armies faced each other to decide the future of Europe--Napoleon's forces on one side, and the Duke of Wellington's on the other.

From award-winning author Tim Jeal comes a vivid examination of the six larger-than-life men and one extraordinary woman who set out to find the source of the White Nile in the 19th century.

The Underground Railroad was the passage to freedom for many slaves, but it was rife with dangers. There were dedicated conductors and safe houses, but also arduous nights in the mountains and days in threatening towns. For those who made it to Midnight (the code name given to Detroit), the Detroit River became a River Jordan and Canada became their land of Canaan - the Promised Land where they could live freely in black settlements under the protection of British law.

The fascinating true story of how a group of visionary attorneys helped make American business synonymous with big business and Wall Street the center of the financial world.

Avec "Le Duel", Frédéric Mitterrand nous fait vivre le terrible affrontement qui opposa deux géants de l'histoire : Napoléon III et Victor Hugo. Un récit écrit à hauteur d'homme, vivant, tendu, marqué par la passion et la violence, sur les convulsions de la haine en politique et le rapport de fascination entre hommes de pouvoir et écrivains. Le 2 décembre 1851, le président de la République Louis Napoléon Bonaparte viole la Constitution et s'empare de tous les pouvoirs avant de se faire proclamer empereur.

On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor. Although there was no evidence that the Spanish were responsible, yellow newspapers such as William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal whipped Americans into frenzy by claiming that Spain's "secret infernal machine" had destroyed the battleship. Soon after, the blandly handsome and easily influenced President McKinley declared war, sending troops not only to Cuba but also to the Philippines.

Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) was an American economist and sociologist. His most famous work, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899), is a treatise on economics and a social critique of consumption and of consumerism, based on the social stratification of people and the division of labor. This work is in the tradition of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and is rightly considered a classic of economic theory and social history.

“There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate,” he wrote. “When he can’t afford it and when he can.” The publishing company Twain owned was failing; his investment in a typesetting device was bleeding red ink. After losing hundreds of thousands of dollars back when a beer cost a nickel, he found himself neck-deep in debt. His heiress wife, Livy, took the setback hard. “I have a perfect horror and heart-sickness over it,” she wrote. “I cannot get away from the feeling that business failure means disgrace.”

La biographie de référence d’un homme singulier, haï par la droite puis par la gauche, incarnation d’une "certaine idée de la France" "Georges Clemenceau fut l’homme aux quatre visages : le Tigre qui fait tomber les ministères, le dreyfusard qui mène pendant neuf ans le combat du droit et de la justice, le premier flic de France qui, trois ans durant, dirige d’une main de fer le ministère de l’Intérieur, enfin le Père la Victoire qui conduit le pays à l’armistice avec l’Allemagne."

In the last 50 years, life has been simplified by the awe-inspiring advancements that have been achieved in the world of computer science and technology. In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak unveiled the Apple I, the first-ever computer that operated on a single-circuit board, just five years after a team of IBM engineers introduced the “floppy disk,” which revolutionized data-sharing.

London Labour and the London Poor is a rare and fascinating insight into the lives and struggles of the 19th-century poor. Written by journalist and reformer Henry Mayhew, a founder and editor of the satirical magazine Punch, it collects hundreds of testimonials from the lower strata of Victorian society. We encounter street entertainers, 'pure finders', cabinetmakers, gingerbread sellers, 'screeve-fakers', swindlers, and burglars. We hear accounts from toshers finding items in sewers, people attempting to train pigs to dance, and witness the sale of everything from gilt watches and chickweed to needles, dog collars, and eel soup.

On December 4th, 1872, a 100-foot brigantine was discovered drifting through the North Atlantic without a soul on board. Not a sign of struggle, not a shred of damage, no ransacked cargo-and not a trace of the captain, his wife and daughter, or the crew. What happened on board the ghost ship Mary Celeste has baffled and tantalized the world for 130 years. Brian Hicks plumbs the depths of this fabled nautical mystery and uncovers the truth.

On June 14, 1863, US Major General John Adams Dix received the following directive from General-in-Chief Henry Halleck: "All your available force should be concentrated to threaten Richmond, by seizing and destroying their railroad bridges over the South and North Anna Rivers, and do them all the damage possible." With General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia marching toward Gettysburg and only a limited Confederate force guarding Richmond, Halleck sensed a rare opportunity for the Union cause.

How did "the West" come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? Was the idea handed down from the ancient Greeks, or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists? Neither, writes Georgios Varouxakis in The West, his ambitious and fascinating genealogy of the idea. "The West" was not used by Plato, Cicero, Locke, Mill, or other canonized figures of what we today call the Western tradition. It was not first wielded by empire-builders.

The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a traditional life much like her mother’s. But after three divorces - and a temperament much too strong-willed for her family’s approval - she ran away to make a life for herself in one of the largest cities in the world: Edo, a bustling metropolis at its peak. With Tsuneno as our guide, we experience the drama and excitement of Edo just prior to the arrival of American Commodore Perry’s fleet, which transformed Japan.

Commanded by Captain Howes Norris, the Sharon headed for the whaling grounds of the northwestern Pacific. At Pohnpei Island, 12 men from the Sharon deserted the ship, leaving her critically shorthanded. After steering for New Zealand to recruit more crew, the men on lookout raised a school of sperm whales. Two boats gave chase, each with a crew of six. Five men were left on board the Sharon: Norris, three pacific Islanders, and a Portuguese boy named Manuel.

By the winter of 1811, the armies of Napoleon had overrun most of Spain, and Joseph Bonaparte sat on the throne in Madrid. But the Spanish government had found refuge in the fortress-port of Cadiz, and the Spaniards refused to admit that they had been conquered. With a British army under Sir Thomas Graham helping to defend Cadiz, the Spanish cause seemed certain to prevail. But then the Spaniards wanted to throw Graham’s force into a reckless battle against the French. If the battle was won, the siege of Cadiz would be lifted; if the battle was lost, Cadiz would be rendered defenseless.