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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

What do you expect for nothing?

"What do you expect for nothing? Rubber Biscuit?" - Elwood Blues

Content?
How difficult can it be to publish the content of this book?Where is your customer orientation? ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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"Excerpt from the book..."

_Catharine de' Medici, accompanied by her suite, issues
from the gate of the Louvre the morning after the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew_,142
Painting by Ed. Debat-Ponsan.
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Only Volume 10
I ordered this because it claimed to include volumes 1 - 20. This only contained Volume 10. ... Read more

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"Excerpt from the book..."
It was during the period of about one hundred fifty years, extending
from the middle of the twelfth to the close of the thirteenth century,
that the features of our modern civilization began to assume a
recognizable form. The age was characterized by the decline of
feudalism, and by the growth of all the new influences which combined
to create a new state of society.
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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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An Excerpt from the book-


VOL - 1-20

Philip II succeeded his father Charles V on the throne of Spain. The
vast extent of his domains, the absoluteness of his authority, and,
above all, the enormous wealth that poured into his coffers from the
Spanish conquests in America, made him the most powerful monarch of his
time, the central figure of the age. It was largely because of Philip's
personal character that the great religious struggle of the Reformation
entered upon a new phase, became far more sinister, more black and
deadly, extended over all Europe, and bathed the civilized world in
blood. England stood forth as the centre of opposition against Philip,
and under the unwilling leadership of Elizabeth entered on its epic
period of heroism, was stimulated to that remarkable outburst of energy
and intellect and power which we call the Elizabethan age.

Philip, with a tenacity of purpose from which no fortune good or bad
could lure him for a moment, pursued two objects throughout his reign
(1555-1598), the reëstablishment of Catholicism over all Europe, and the
extension so far as might be of his own personal authority. If we
consider his personal ambition, we must count his reign a failure; for
at his death his country had already fallen from its foremost rank in
Europe and started on that process of decay which in later centuries has
become so marked. If, however, we look to Philip's religious purpose, it
is undeniable that during his reign Catholicism revived. Philip II, the
Jesuits, the Council of Trent--these three were the powers by means of
which the Roman Church beat back its foes, saved itself from what for a
time had seemed a threatened extinction, and so far reëstablished its
power that for over a century it appeared not improbable that Philip's
purpose of reuniting Europe might be accomplished.

Before the beginning of this reactionary wave, the North had become
wholly Protestant. It has been estimated that nine-tenths of the people
of Germany were of the new faith; half the population of France had
adopted it; even in Italy protest and disbelief were widespread and
active. Only in Spain did the Inquisition with firmest cruelty trample
down each vestige of revolt.

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The awful, soul-searing tragedy of Europe's great war of 1914 came to
most men unexpectedly. The real progress of the world during the five
years preceding the war had been remarkable. All thinkers saw that the
course of human civilization was being changed deeply, radically; but
the changes were being accomplished so successfully that men hoped that
the old brutal ages of military destruction were at an end, and that we
were to progress henceforth by the peaceful methods of evolution rather
than the hysterical excitements and volcanic upheavals of revolution
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So vast and wonderful a construction was the Roman world, so different
from our own, that we are apt to imagine it as an arrangement far more
deliberately planned, far more mechanically complete, than it appeared
to its own inhabitants
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Our modern civilization is built up on three great corner-stones, three
inestimably valuable heritages from the past. The Graeco-Roman
civilization gave us our arts and our philosophies, the bases of
intellectual power. The Hebrews bequeathed to us the religious idea,
which has saved man from despair, has been the potent stimulus to two
thousand years of endurance and hope.
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THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS is the answer to a problem which
has long been agitating the learned world. How shall real history, the
ablest and profoundest work of the greatest historians, be rescued from
its present oblivion on the dusty shelves of scholars, and made welcome
to the homes of the people?
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A comprehensive and readable account of the world's history, emphasizing the more important events, and presenting these as complete narratives in the master-words of the most eminent historians. ... Read more

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VOLUME II

Earth's upward struggle has been baffled by so many stumbles that
critics have not been lacking to suggest that we do not advance at all,
but only swing in circles, like a squirrel in its cage. Certain it is
that each ancient civilization seemed to bear in itself the seeds of its
own destruction. Yet it may be held with equal truth that each new
power, rising above the ruins of the last, held something nobler, was
borne upward by some truth its rival could not reach.

At no period is this more evident than in the five centuries immediately
preceding the Christian era. Persia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, each in
turn was with some justice proclaimed lord of the world; each in turn
felt the impulse of her glory and advanced rapidly in culture and
knowledge of the arts; and each in turn succumbed to the temptations
that beset unlimited success. They degenerated not only in physical
strength, but in moral honesty.

Let us recognize, however, that the term "world-ruler" as applied to
even the greatest of these nations has but a restricted sense. When the
Persian monarch called himself lord of the sun and moon, he only meant
in a figurative way that he was acquainted with no other king so
powerful as himself; that beyond his own dominions he heard only of
feeble colonies, and beyond those the wilderness. Alexander, when he
sighed for more worlds to conquer, had in reality made himself lord of
less than a quarter of Asia and of about one-sixtieth part of Europe.

No man and no nation has ever yet been intrusted with the government of
the entire globe. None has proved sufficiently fitted for the giant
task. Each empire has been, as it were, but an experiment; and beyond
the border line of seas and deserts which ringed each boastful
conqueror, there were always other races developing along slower, and it
may be surer, lines.

In those old days our world was in truth too big for conquest. Armies
marched on foot. Provisions could not be carried in any quantity, unless
a general clung to the sea-shore and depended on his ships. What
Alexander might with more truth have sighed for, was some modern means
of swift transportation, possessed of which he might still have enjoyed
many interesting, bloody battles in more distant lands.

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Fifty years ago the term "renaissance" had a very definite meaning to
scholars as representing an exact period toward the close of the
fourteenth century when the world suddenly reawoke to the beauty of the
arts of Greece and Rome, to the charm of their gayer life, the splendor
of their intellect. We know now that there was no such sudden
reawakening
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VOLUME IV

Our modern civilization is built up on three great corner-stones, three
inestimably valuable heritages from the past. The Græco-Roman
civilization gave us our arts and our philosophies, the bases of
intellectual power. The Hebrews bequeathed to us the religious idea,
which has saved man from despair, has been the potent stimulus to two
thousand years of endurance and hope. The Teutons gave us a healthy,
sturdy, uncontaminated physique, honest bodies and clean minds, the lack
of which had made further progress impossible to the ancient world.

This last is what made necessary the barbarian overthrow of Rome, if the
world was still to advance. The slowly progressing knowledge of the arts
and handicrafts which we have seen passed down from Egypt to Babylonia,
to Persia, Greece, and Rome, had not been acquired without heavy loss.
The system of slavery which allowed the few to think, while the many
were constrained to toil as beasts, had eaten like a canker into the
heart of society. The Roman world was repeating the oft-told tale of the
past, and sinking into the lifeless formalism of which Egypt was the
type. Man had become wise, but worthless.

As though on purpose to prove to future generations how utterly
worthless, the Roman civilization was allowed to continue uninterrupted
in one unneeded corner of its former domains. For over a thousand years
the successors of Theodosius and of Constantine held unbroken sway in
the capital which the latter had founded. They only succeeded in
emphasizing how futile their culture had become.

The entire ten centuries that followed the overthrow of Rome have long
been spoken of as the "Dark Ages," but, considering how infinitely
darker those same ages must have become without the intervention of the
Teutons, present criticism begins to protest against the term. All that
was lost with the ancient world was something of intellectual keenness,
something of artistic culture, quickly regained when man was once more
ripe for them. What the Teutons had to offer of infinitely greater
worth, what they had developed in their cold, northern forests, was
their sense of liberty and equality, their love of honesty, their
respect for womankind. It is not too much to say that, without these,
any higher progress was, and always will be, impossible.

In short, the Roman and Grecian races had become impotent and decrepit.
The high destiny of man lay not with them, but with the younger race,
for whom all earlier civilizations had but prepared the way.

Who were these Teutons? Rome knew them only vaguely as wild tribes
dwelling in the gloom of the great forest wilderness. In reality they
were but the vanguard of vast races of human beings who through ages had
been slowly populating all Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. Beyond the
Teutons were other Aryans, the Slavs. Beyond these were vague non-Aryan
races like the Huns, content to direct their careers of slaughter
against one another, and only occasionally and for a moment flaring with
red-fire beacons of ruin along the edge of the Aryan world.

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An Outline Narrative of the Great Events CHARLES F. HORNE The United States House of Governors (A.D. 1910) WILLIAM S. JORDAN THE GOVERNORS Union of South Africa (A.D. 1910) PROF. STEPHEN LEACOCK Portugal Becomes a Republic (A.D. 1910) WILLIAM ARCHER The Crushing of Finland (A.D. 1910) JOHN JACKOL BARON SERGIUS WITTE BARON VON PLEHVE J.H. REUTER Man's Fastest Mile (A.D. 1911) ... Read more

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The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 08. The Later Renaissance: from Gutenberg to the Reformation. please visit www.valdebooks.com for a full list of titles ... Read more

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An Excerpt from the book-


VOLUME V

The three centuries which follow the downfall of the empire of
Charlemagne laid the foundations of modern Europe, and made of it a
world wholly different, politically, socially, and religiously, from
that which had preceded it. In the careers of Greece and Rome we saw
exemplified the results of two sharply opposing tendencies of the Aryan
mind, the one toward individualism and separation, the other toward
self-subordination and union.

In the time of Charlemagne's splendid successes it appeared settled that
the second of these tendencies was to guide the Teutonic Aryans, that
the Europe of the future was to be a single empire, ever pushing out its
borders as Rome had done, ever subduing its weaker neighbors, until the
"Teutonic peace" should be substituted for the shattered "Roman peace,"
soldiers should be needed only for the duties of police, and a whole
civilized world again obey the rule of a single man.

Instead of this, the race has since followed a destiny of separation.
Europe is divided into many countries, each of them a vast camp
bristling with armies and arsenals. Civilization has continued
hag-ridden by war even to our own day, and, during at least seven
hundred of the years that followed Charlemagne, mankind made no greater
progress in the arts and sciences than the ancients had sometimes
achieved in a single century. We do indeed believe that at last we have
entered on an age of rapid advance, that individualism has justified
itself. The wider personal liberty of to-day is worth all that the race
has suffered for it. Yet the retardation of wellnigh a thousand years
has surely been a giant price to pay.


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