William Shakespeare, Histories - Modern Critical Views

Shakespeare's vibrant history plays, including "Richard II"; "Richard III"; "Henry IV", Parts I and II; and "Henry V", spring to life with all the drama of the feuds, rivalries, and epic battles on which they were based. Aware of the historical past and a keen observer of his own times, Shakespeare's true genius lies in the timeless universality he lends to the lives of these legendary royals and the schemers and dreamers who made up their worlds. This new edition of critical essays covering the Bard's history plays also includes a chronology, bibliography, index and introductory essay by renowned Shakespearean scholar Harold Bloom.

Ireland

BBC reporter Delaney's fictionalized history of his native country, an Irish bestseller, is a sprawling, riveting read, a book of stories melding into a novel wrapped up in an Irish history text. In 1951, when Ronan O'Mara is nine, he meets the aging itinerant Storyteller, who emerges out a "silver veil" of Irish mist, hoping to trade a yarn for a hot meal. Welcomed inside, the Storyteller lights his pipe and begins, telling of the architect of Newgrange, who built "a marvelous, immortal structure... before Stonehenge in England, before the pyramids of Egypt," and the dentally challenged King Conor of Ulster, who tried, and failed, to outsmart his wife.

Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conqueror

Curry serves up a delectable history of Indian cuisine, ranging from the imperial kitchen of the Mughal invader Babur to the smoky cookhouse of the British Raj.  In this fascinating volume, the first authoritative history of Indian food, Lizzie Collingham reveals that almost every well-known Indian dish is the product of a long history of invasion and the fusion of different food traditions. We see how, with the arrival of Portuguese explorers and the Mughal horde, the cooking styles and ingredients of central Asia, Persia and Europe came to the subcontinent, where over the next four centuries they mixed with traditional Indian food to produce the popular cuisine that we know today.

The Right Hand of Sleep

This extraordinary debut novel from Whiting Writers’ Award winner John Wray is a poetic portrait of a life redeemed at one of the darkest moments in world history.
 

We Are Everywhere - The Irresistible Rise of Global Anticapitalism

We are everywhere is a whirlwind collection of writings, images and ideas for direct action by people on the frontlines of the global anticapitalist movement.
This is a movement of untold stories, because those from below are not those who get to write history, even though we are the ones making it. We are everywhere wrenches our history from the grasp of the powerful and returns it to the streets, fields and neighbourhoods where it was made.