Archive for March 2013
The Baburnama : An Emperor Tells His Own Story
Zahir-u-din Muhammad Babur was the first Mughal ruler of India–one of history’s great empire builders by any standard. Born in 1483 in the Central Asian kingdom of Ferghana (part of modern Uzbekistan), Babur was descended from two great conquerors: Genghis Khan and Timur (known in the west as Tamurlane). After being edged out of his…
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The Year Without Summer: “Eighteen hundred and froze to death”
Historian William K. Klingaman and meteorologist Nicholas P. Klingaman combine forces in The Year Without Summer: 1816 And The Volcano That Darkened The World And Changed History. Working in a vein similar to Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map, the Klingamans weave together modern scientific explanations, nineteenth-century scientific (and religious) speculations, and historical events into a…
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What Did the Old Pretender Pretend?
The story of England’s Glorious Revolution is generally summarized as follows: In 1688, the Protestant nobility of England, outraged by attacks on their constitution, rose up against the man usually described as the last Stuart king, James II, and offered his throne to his daughter and son-in-law, William and Mary of Orange.* James fled to…
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