J. H. Shennan surveys the reign of Louis XIV in three broad, interrelated sections which consider the character and outlook of the King, his domestic and foreign policy, and the personality cult of the Sun King. Shennan focuses particularly on the King's reactions to the problems of raising finance, religious issues, his creation of a state machine--giving more power to central government then any dynastic ruler had exercised before--and concludes with a lucid analysis of Louis' foreign policy.
Black Ordell Robbie and white Louis Gara have lots in common--time in the same slammer, convictions for grand theft auto, and a plan for a big score. They're going to snatch the wife of a Detroit developer and collect some easy ransom money. They don't figure on a bum of a husband who has a secret mistress and no desire to get his wife back. Or on his crazy, beautiful broad of a housewife who's going to join Ordell and Louis in the slickest, saviest crime of all...
Louis Armstrong. "Satchmo." To millions of fans, he was just a great entertainer. But to jazz aficionados, he was one of the most important musicians of our timesnot only a key figure in the history of jazz but a formative influence on all of 20th-century popular music. Set against the backdrop of New Orleans, Chicago, and New York during the "jazz age", Collier re-creates the saga of an old-fashioned black man making it in a white world. He chronicles Armstrong's rise as a musician, his scrapes with the law, his relationships with four wives, and his frequent feuds with fellow musicians Earl Hines and Zutty Singleton.
The Annales Fuldenses or Annals of Fulda are East Frankish chronicles that cover independently the period from the last years of Louis the Pious (died 840) to shortly after the end of effective Carolingian rule in East Francia with the accession of the child-king, Louis III, in 900. Throughout this period they are a near contemporary record of the events they describe and a primary source for Carolingian historiography. They are usually read as a counterpart to the narrative found in the West Frankish Annales Bertiniani.
Vidocq. The name strikes terror in the Parisian underworld of 1818. As founder and chief of a newly created plainclothes police force, Vidocq has used his mastery of disguise and surveillance to capture some of France's most notorious and elusive criminals. Now he is hot on the trail of a tantalizing mystery - the fate of the young dauphin Louis-Charles, son of Marie-Antoinette and King Louis XVI.
