Nicholson Books

This small, but powerful book reinforces the necessity of balance, shakti, chi, grace: the life-giving, life-sustaining energy contained in the feminine principle in a world of duality. A call for balance and harmony, this series of "Letters from the Mother" of all is a wonderful compendium of brief, yet potent meditations for women who seek balance and empowerment through increased spiritual awareness.

To read Matri is to begin a journey toward reaffirming and regaining our lives and contributing to a refreshed world without dissembling or rationalization. Step by step, we are led through a daily practice of clarity and renewal, beginning with the interior self. As daughters, we are reminded to occupy our personal space respectfully, enjoy harmonious unions based on the renewal of spiritual energy and respond appropriately to the needs of the world we inhabit.

Like the soothing rhythm of the ocean breaking upon the shore, the key to a balanced and fruitful life lies in the most subtle nuances, the calm voice of the Mother urging us to our better selves that we might begin to infuse the world with peace. Listen carefully, not for answers, but understanding. Luan Gaines/2003.

Matri, Letters from the Mother, is a beautifully written little book that takes the reader into the world of the feminine aspect of God. Profound, yet easy to read with its elegant and simple writing style, it is a book which brings forth quiet knowledge, inspiration, and stillness in the reader. A beautiful book that can be carried with you, to be read, reread, and reflected upon as you go through the activities of the day. This book will be inspiring for both men and women who work to bring clarity, compassion, and balance into their hearts and lives.

Timeless wisdom. Zoe breathes a beautiful life into the words of the Mother. There is something for everyone in this beautiful little book. I particularly love the section on meditation. It is always wonderful to hear timeless truths spoken in a fresh new voice.

For women who have been inspired by "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz, this concise work provides a blueprint that is soothing and empowering. Zoe Nicholson has written a poetic piece that speaks from the heart to help all women find their spirtual center.

I found "Matri" to be a gentle but profound and poetic guide for women and men on a spiritual path. Zoe Ann Nicholson draws upon the wisdom of saints and seekers from many cultures, many times, and suggests a practice by which today's women and men might weave a new and unique tapestry of harmony and balance from today's chaotic and fragmented energies.

"Matri" points out that we need look no further than our own heart to courageously participate with all of creation in sourcing a harmonious world. I highly recommend this little book. It is indeed inspired.

Native Treasure This is a beautiful illistrated book dedicated to the Appaloosa horse. The pictures are gorgeous and capture the Appaloosa as he is....natural, colorful and beautiful! This is a book for Appaloosa lovers, owners and breeders. A must have if you love this breed.

A really lovely collection of photos. No Appaloosa information or stories, but a nice book to put on the coffee table.

This is a beautiful book to browse through while enjoying the photographs and inspirational verses. Though it features Appaloosas, it is enjoyable for anyone that loves horses. It is great for those quiet times when you just want to relax and reflect.

The book is not as good as I would have liked it to be; the photos are mediocre and the quotes are ofter inane or sophomoric.

The book is much more than a just an attractive addition to our coffee table. Our entire family loves the rich photos and eloquent verse. Many thanks to Ms. Nicholson and Mr. Wilson for their extraordinary work in documenting and preserving an important part of American history.

A compendium of English mystical verse that can enrich one's literary and devotional experience. I consider it a one of the basic books in my Christian library and refer to it often.

The editors tell you right off, "that this anthology makes no claim to be representative even of any poet whose work is included, since the great mass of writing by which he or she is commonly known may fall without our limits, and some little known poem or poems may have seemed to answer our requirements." (the introduction)

So there is some wonderful work in this volume by many well-known poets, including selections less often anthologized. Among the poets included are Southwell, Donne, Marvell, Traherne, Blake, Wordsworth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, both Brownings, Poe, Tennyson, Emily Bronte, Walt Whitman, Francis Thompson, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, and many more, some of whom I never heard of (but then, I avoided literature courses like the plague). Milton is, however, conspicuously absent.

For a book originally published in 1917, the volume's scope is pretty wide. There are lots of women poets. Selections are mostly Christian, but not exclusively: Sarojini Nayadu contributes "To a Buddha Seated on a Lotus," and two others. And who knows what to make of Aleister Crowley?

It's beautifully printed and bound, with a nice ribbon marker. There's a lot in this book to truly move you, when the world is too much with you.

This book contains a few gems I had not read before, so I would like to give it a higher rating. However, the literary quality of most of the last half of the book is extremely low, full of tired rhymes and cliches. Much of the "mysticism" is of the misty variety, the sort the great mystics are constantly warning against. I would like to have seen the seventeenth century better represented (only two poems by Francis Quarles!). Also, fewer poems than I expected demonstrated a definite religious commitment, Christian or otherwise. I was, however, glad for the token representations of Jewish, Islamic, Hindu & Buddhist perspectives, little as they were.

The fiery passion of mystical experience in all of its varieties is in every poem!

I am thrilled to know that this book is back in print. I read it back in the early 70s. It was a library copy and already out of print, so I hand-copied all the poems I could. I've missed the rest ever since. Getting this new copy is like meeting an old friend--no, more than a friend, a mentor on my spiritual path. Don't miss this: it's the real thing.

This book will leave you with a different impression depending on your purpose in reading it.

If you want to begin a serious scholarly inquiry on the subject, you will be disappointed.

There are plenty of footnotes and citations, but I don't think I found any that cited primary sources.
Most were references to various biographies of Wagner--many of which undoubtedly begin with the phrase "Richard Wagner was born..." This author reserves this phrase for the beginning of the third chapter.

Even easy to find primary sources were not researched or cited.
Nicholson quotes an English translation from "Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland" by Heinrich Heine, however he cites "Newman, Life of Richard Wagner, vol.2, 261" for the quote.

The book almost reads like something Novosti Press might have published in English during the Cold War. Here is an example:
"Did Heine know that his own works would be...thrown on the great fires...when the nation threw its soul at the devil?"
This is typical of the writing style of the entire work.

There are also statements I wish had a footnote; e.g. "Hitler's fear arose from specters of those he had killed, visiting him--principally his erstwhile comrade-at-arms and lover Ernst Rölm..." This statement had no source or footnote, not even something like: "Patton, George C, On Hitler and his relationship with Rölm, Speech given to the US Third Army, Oppenheim, March 22, 1945."--except Nicholson would have cited "Wallace, The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People". Wallace in turn might have gotten the information from Patton's speech. In all fairness, Nicholson cites Machtan, "Hidden Hitler" for most of his innuendo that Hitler was a closet homosexual.

In fact, huge portions of the book are devoted to Nietzsche, Ludwig II Siegfried Wagner, Hitler, and Richard Wagner's trysts, perversions, or sexual liaisons. While these would be necessary in a biography, I didn't see how they help answer the question asked in the title.

HOWEVER

If you are looking for an overview of Wagner's life and anti-Semitism written in easy to understand language without having to read seventeen different biographies of Wagner written in Universitese with long quotes in French or German this will probably fit the bill nicely.

It does a good job of describing the roots of Wagner's anti-Semitism in his own personal life, his anti-Semitic essays and innuendo in his operas, his relationship with Nietzsche, Chamberlain, etc.

It reads like a History Channel special- and does have a lot of good information. I never knew about the Spear of Longinus before reading this book, and found it fascinating!

I found the last chapter, "Wagner in Israel," very interesting and definitely worth reading.

The binding, paper type, printing and typeset are excellent.

I hope this review has been helpful to both types of readers

Richard and Adolf
By
Christopher Nicholson

A Review
By
Colin J. Edwards

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel". (Samuel Johnson 1775)

Patriotism seems a rather pedestrian word to use when considering the activities of Richard Wagner and Adolf Hitler in Germany during the first half of the 20th century. It was extreme patriotism, amplified by mental instability that created these monsters. They were not alone of course; Japan demonstrated similar traits in the same period.

Christopher Nicholson's book, `Richard and Adolf', records in the minutest detail the manifestations of Wagner's and Hitler's obsessions, and the impact they had on European Jewry. He postulates that Wagners anti-Semitism as demonstrated in his major musical works provided the launch pad for Hitler's excesses.

The book is beautifully produced. It is well bound and the pages are fine quality paper that will accommodate many readings.

The work is catalogued as a Holocaust book, but it is more than that. It is a detailed expose of how two disturbed people are hypnotized by an 800 year old poem, and use that as a justification for the calculated murder of 5 million innocent people. That is not to mention the millions that died as a result of their dementia.

Nicholson's book is a scholarly tome. All facts are annotated, and his bibliography runs to 7 pages.

However, Mr. Nicholson is a lawyer - a High Court Judge in fact, and his book reads rather like a brief. That does not in any way detract from the value of this work, but I did have the feeling that `Richard and Adolf' read like 2 briefs presented to condemn these individuals. That is not to suggest that these indefensible lunatics shouldn't be condemned, but I didn't think the numerous abusive after-thoughts at the end of paragraphs was appropriate. Facts alone are sufficient to condemn Wagner and Hitler, and personal evaluations serve little purpose.


I heartily recommend this book to anyone who wants a greater understanding of why someone would want to legislate to harass, hound and murder innocent families. But be prepared for the realization that Hitler didn't do it alone - indeed, he didn't do it at all. Nicholson doesn't site one incident of any resistance movement in Germany or anywhere else against Germany's attempt to exterminate European Jews.

This is an important work particularly for a generation to whom World War II was something someone mentioned during a history lesson. `Richard and Adolf', describes how a population with exaggerated patriotic zeal, can be manipulated by one individual to destroy their own people, the people in the continent around them and ultimately themselves.

Everyone should read this book to remind themselves of the cataclysmic dangers of Nationalism.

This great master work deserves to be greatly admired and applauded. Rarely had I read a book which was so thoroughly researched as this was. Rarely have I read such wonderful English. And rarely has an author produced such a powerful, incontrovertible case.
How I hope those who have insisted on playing Wagner's music will read your book from start to finish.

This is a very valuable book. Music lovers have long argued about the merits of Wagner's operas, their artistic versus contextual values and liabilities. Many have stated that the fact, that Hitler liked this composer's music and that they actually played them in the death camps, should not be used as an argument against Wagner, long dead at the time, or his music. Mr. Nicholson rightly points out the uglier sides of Richard Wagner's psyche, and the fact that he actually developed many of the theories about the "final solution of the Jewish question", namely mass murder. Adolf Hitler enthusiastically put his theories into practice. The book should be a compulsory read for musicologists.

It has long been known that Richard Wagner's operas were influential in Nazi ideology and thus the name Wagner has become controversial to this day. However it has been some time since the philosophies and ideologies underpinning Nazism have been explored in depth, especially in relation to Hitler and Wagner. This thoroughly enlightening and well researched text fills a gap in this literature and provides a number of important and interesting contributions and insights into the history of Nazi ideology and its Wagnerian influence.

Wagner lived from 1813 to 1883 while Hitler was born in 1889 and died in his bunker in 1945. What is truly fascinating about this book is the way in which it paints a picture of a family tree of hate for Nazi ideology stretching back to Wagner, explaining in detail the power that Wagner's operas and racial manifestos cast over a generation or more. The cast of characters is grand, from Thomas Mann to Renoir and Nietzsche. The period 1850-1950 is one of the most fascinating in showing the underpinnings of modernity and modern philosophy and this author is brilliantly familiar with the period.

Wagner toyed with ideas of Nordic mythology and he weaved Jewish-like characters into many of his works, from the dwarfs in `The Ring of the Nibelungs' to the `Flying Dutchman'. The mythology of Barbaroosa and the return to an Aryan paganism were found in Wagner. In addition the mythology surrounding the Spear that was reputed to have pierced the side of Christ was woven into this story. Amazingly we are told of how Nietzsche called Wagner a `disease' and condemned in later in life. The text moves from a biography of Wagner and his works to an examination of his anti-Semitism, his Beyrouth festival and then Hitler's own connection to Wagner and his motif's. Amazingly we see that Wagner's own family had connections with Henry Ford who was a rabid anti-Semite.

The only thing that detracts from this study is a preoccupation with the rumored `sexual depravity' of Hitler and Wagner with allegations that Hitler was both involved in incest and homosexuality. This detracts from an overall fascinating book and takes away from the central theme of the development of anti-Semitism in Germany and the ethos of Wagner.

Seth J. Frantzman

This book speaks for itself. GET IT GET IT GET IT!!!!!!!!!!! It was recommended to me by a friend when I was going through a difficult time. It is absolutely one of the best books I've ever read.

When I first picked it up I thought, "Oh great, another book that is going to offer complete perfection in my life, and actually just leave me feeling guilty". This was not the case at all. The first chapters were really slow, but then it just got phenomenal.

Get a little notebook to keep with the book as you read it, and do the exercises she assigns. You will walk away with a new outlook on yourself and on those around you.

I was disappointed in the content. I had purchased 6 sets hoping to give the books as gifts at Christmas. After reading the Velveteen Prinicples, I returned 5 sets.

This is a quick and easy read on complex subjects that leaves the reader with a compass for continued thought and development. The table of contents speaks for itself. Life has little meaning without values.

I found this book almost by mistake, and when it arrived I began reading immediately. It is one of the first books in a long time that I was compelled to read in one sitting. Author Toni Raiten-D'Antonio's writing is clear, compassionate, accessible and stimulating. It didn't hurt that the text was crafted around the children's story, 'The Velveteen Rabbit', one of the stories from my childhood that I loved dearly. I recall both the book and the film, and being moved to tears each time, both with the rabbit's becoming real, and the realisation that this reality came with a heavy cost.

'The Velveteen Rabbit' is a short children's story written in 1922 by Margery Williams. Simple in plot and idea, it nonetheless contains wisdom beyond its seeming simplicity. The issues brought up are those that concern children and adults in many ways, and Toni Raiten-D'Antonio taps into the key issue - living a life that is real, not fake or phony. Some authors in the area of vocational discernment and personal fulfillment talk about living an authentic life; this is another term for what is here meant to as being real.

What does being real mean? For the Velveteen Rabbit, being real was a goal to strive for, not in a material sense (the rabbit did exist), but in a spiritual and emotional sense. The rabbit was one of many toys in the boy's room, many of which were flashier, more complex, brighter, shinier, or just 'more' in some way than the seemingly cheaply constructed Velveteen Rabbit. Yet the wise old horse, the Skin Horse, loved so much that his fur had rubbed off, inspired the rabbit by his acceptance, sense of self, and grace he extended, even sometimes to other toys that did not seem to deserve it.

One of the key concepts in the story that Raiten-D'Antonio highlights is that 'real' isn't a product, but rather a process. 'It doesn't happen all at once,' the Skin Horse tells the rabbit. It is a process that can be slow, it can be painful, and it can lead where one doesn't expect. But the first concept is that being real is possible - Raiten-D'Antonio states that from the moment the rabbit realised that `real' was a possibility, the rabbit was on the road to becoming real.

For us as human beings, becoming real is not something we're likely to find in a self-help video or encounter workshop, going in as one thing and coming out as another. There is no `eight-minute abs' variant for becoming real. Nor is being real always pretty. Again, according to the Skin Horse, 'It doesn't happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.' However, these are things that matter only to those who don't understand (which, unfortunately, is much of our society). Raiten-D'Antonio coins the term 'United States of Generica' (U.S. of G., for short) for the kind of plastic, flashy society that runs on media-hyped images of what good and desirable should be.

Raiten-D'Antonio is a therapist, having left the more glitzy world of television behind - once a mover on the corporate ladder (even if the intention was to produce PBS/educational 'worthwhile' television), she found herself in a place personally and vocationally that was inauthentic, and worried that by the time she would be permitted to do what she wanted to do, she might not be herself any longer. The culture in which we live has misplaced values (she highlights the fact that we pay more attention to models than to Nobel Prize winners; even the term 'model' has implications beyond what in fact they are), and it is a struggle, a process, to become real - real to oneself and real to what is truly important in life.

One of the tasks toward becoming real, according to Raiten-D'Antonio, is to learn empathy, and in particular self-empathy. The Skin Horse had great powers of empathy. The rabbit grew in this during the course of the story. Empathy and self-empathy an important principle, as are all twelve principles gleaned from the story. Being real is meaningful, as Raiten-D'Antonio describes in her epilogue, and leaves a legacy more lasting and real than stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. 'If you become more Real in your own life and bring that to your relationships, you are practically guaranteed to leave behind an inspiring example for others.'

The transformation of the rabbit from toy to real is dramatic and poignant, and has lessons that can help transform our lives, too. This is a remarkable book, one that will stay with me for a long time to come, long after the whiskers have faded, the tail has become unsewn, and the fur has been loved off.

This wonderful book, paired with the original 'Velveteen Rabbit', makes a wonderful gift for oneself as well as a special someone.

I first came upon Toni's book one day by accident. Intrigued after looking through the chapter content, I purchased the book and found myself deeply effected by the author's observations. I have to confess, I wasn't really familiar with the story of the "Velveteen Rabbit", as I never had that story introduced to me as a child. I wish I had, as there is some real power behind the story's message. Toni Raiten-D'Antonio does a great job in the book illustrating how this children's classic has a great message for children and adults alike. I highly recommend this book.

The book itself is great. It's probably the best in its subject area. But the Kindle version is extremely difficult to navigate. The mythological characters are listed in alphabetical order with no efficient way of finding the character you want. There is no click-able list of A-Z to access the section you want, nor is there a list of just each character's name or any kind of index to get you to the person you want. So if you want to find the entry for, say, Zeus, you can't just click on "Z" or find a list and click on "Zeus." You can search for his name, but it results in 680 results in the book, or over 114 "pages" of search results. You could try randomly typing in location areas trying to find the "Z" section, but that's not easy either. Even a lesser-known character search brings up several hits and it's not easy from the little blurbs to determine which one is the entry you want, so it takes several tries to find exactly what you're looking for.

Also, many of the genealogy charts are impossible to read because they have been shrunken down too much to fit the screen. There is no way to change the font size on the charts. It's a minor thing, but there you go.

This isn't a problem with just this Kindle edition book, but it's a big problem. The book itself I'd give 5 stars, but the Kindle edition only 2 because of its major flaws.

Who's Who is an excellent resource, but it is not meant for those who wish to sit down and read Greek myths. The book is set up in an encyclopedic fashion. References to specific Greek mythological figures are easy to locate. However if you are looking for Greek myths in story form, this is not the text for you.

I bought this book as preparation for a Mediterranean study-cruise. It is a sort of encyclopedia of Greek and Roman mythology. Any classical mythological name can be found here with a synopsis of their major stories Just be warned: each character's story tends to be so interesting as to lead you to look up all the other characters that appear, and you will find yourself reading for hours.

This book is one of the best i've ever read on Greek/Roman myth, and i've read many in my life. This book contains entries on characters rarely found anywhere else such as Nox, the Greek personification of night. As such i often use this book as a measuring stick against other books in this area.

Grant and Hazel have provided a finely grained and authoritative dictionary-style reference that is quite handy for identification of any figure from classical mythology. The book will prove useful for keeping at one's side when reading Homer, Hesiod, Sophocles, Euripides and company. Very helpful appendices include genealogical trees, alphabetical list of classical authors referred to, and clear and informative maps.

About 300 pages long with 2-3 articles per page. It is probably not useful for highly knowledgeable Egyptologists (for example, the stunning site of Abu Simbal gets about half a page - whereas a book could be written on it) but is a very compact resource for those who know a little and want to find out about particular topics. Or you can just flick through it and read about particular topics as they catch your eye - the maps, illustrations and photos are well selected and quite attractive. Also, since it is written by Englishmen it is mercifully quite free of the tedious P.C. stuff that is so prevalent in the academy today.
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About 300 pages long with 2-3 articles per page. It is probably not useful for highly knowledgeable Egyptologists (for example, the stunning site of Abu Simbal gets about half a page - whereas a book could be written on it) but is a very compact resource for those who know a little and want to find out about particular topics. Or you can just flick through it and read about particular topics as they catch your eye - the maps, illustrations and photos are well selected and quite attractive. Also, since it is written by Englishmen it is mercifully quite free of the tedious P.C. stuff that is so prevalent in the academy today.

This is a fantastic book! It helped my kids with their projects about Egypt. I reccomend this book to everyone!

A well thought out and comprehensive dictionary. Includes a wealth of information and photographs and should be on the bookshelf of anyone interested in Ancient Egypt

This is another good book from Scholastic. It deals with the many animals one might find on a farm. Cows, ducks, pigs, chickens, horses, geese, sheep and more, are all here and presented with eye pleasing photos.

We see babies with their mothers, and have a chance to see what types of food they eat. (Baby animals nurse, of course.) We also get to see what a sheep looks like before, during, and after it is shorn.

That said, there is no way that this is a book for just beginning readers. First there are too many words on some of the pages and some of the vocabulary is a bit sophisticated. Words like : orange, goslings, milking, through, webbed, oily, and noise.

Three Stars. Good book with attractive pictures of farm animals. Should be of interest to older babies thru 1st Graders. I wouldn't purchase it as a beginning reader though

Small children are fascinated by farm animals and this book has beautiful pictures of these animals along with very nice text for when they are older. Our one year old loves it now and "reads" it to herself.

a must have for your classroom if you are studying farms! my students chose to read this book over and over again during SSR. You will be impressed - buy it today!

i grew up on a farm, and this book brought back a lot of those childhood memories for me. i really thought this book had some great content, and i enjoyed it thouroughly.

The author certainly gives you a descriptive idea of what life was like during the Elizabethan period. It is well documented, and I am finding it easy and enjoyable reading.

I stumbled on Liza Picard's books quite by chance. After looking at the publishing date in some of the books it is apparent some of them have been around for several years. I am now recommending them to anyone and everyone and I am so glad I stumbled across this one on a bookshop shelf. I have now read them all, but this one was the first.

As soon as you start to read the book it becomes apparent that the author is passionate about the subject and wants the reader to enjoy the experience as much as she has in the writing of it. How apt that the author starts the book with the life blood of the great City of London. Meandering like a great artery through the heart of the City. It moves on to the streets, houses and gardens; cooking, housework and shopping; clothes, jewellery and make-up; health and medicine; sex and food; education, etiquette and hobbies; religion, law and crime.

Liza Picard was born in 1927. She read law and qualified as a barrister but did not practice. Quite where she gleaned all this information from I am not sure. That it was a labour of love is obvious to anyone who reads her books and I for one am grateful.

This book is unique in that it doesn't deal with the great sweep of history and its players so much as dwell on day to day life. In particular, the daily life of ordinary people who, in their own way, were not players on the larger stage. Rather, these people were those folk just going about their life.

Any moderately well read student of the 16th century would be familiar with the world of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, Shakespeare, Francis Drake and the Spanish Armada. Yet how many of these students would be familiar with the gardens, religious beliefs, medicine, fashions and diets of the era? Yes, many would have a smattering of knowledge but Liza Picard has done a fine job in providing many of these details of life plus a host of others. Who, for example, would be familiar with such amusements as bull, bear or even lion baiting? Imagine the spectacle of setting a lion in a pit with a team of dogs for a fight to the finish; unthinkable today but of the greatest sport during Elizabeth's time.

Liza Picard's book is an unusual work of history. She has chosen to deconstruct a different world to that of most historians. Her focus has been upon the ordinary rather than the glamorous. Ms Picard has chosen a different road to travel but one that is very fulfilling for the reader. Elizabeth I was, in my opinion, the most important woman to ever live. This book goes some of the way to providing background to an extraordinary woman living in an extraordinary age.

This book does a very good job at portraying how ordinary people lived their lives in the time of the Good Queen Bessie, from what they ate and wore to their furniture and sewage conditions. The only complaint that I have about it is that it is very difficult to visualize the descriptions of the clothing, and when referenced to one of the pictures I still didn't know what part of the outfit she was talking about. I would have rated this a 5 out of 5 if it would have included labled diagrams of the clothing.

a very good connection between the percy family and british history, so detailed with perfect details

This was a good, popular, history of Northern England, the Anglo-Scottish wars and their impact on Late Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Britain told through the prism of the Percy family. But the Percys appear and fade from this history with an annoying regularity. Also much of this history is reasoned conjecture...as it necessarily must be since documentation is rather spotty at times. This is not the fault of the author...the records, it would seem, just were not there to access.

All-in-all a good and informative read about an area of British history in which little is in print for the average reader. A recommended read for anyone interested in British history...and, really, who couldn't be interested in British history...such an anodyne to the flood of American history that every press, these days, seems obsessed with.

Kings in the North is the best kind of history. It has been extensively researched and is written in a style accessible even to to non-historians. I am a psychologist and I couldn't put it down! It's a must-read for anyone interested in the details of what really happened in early England. Shakespeare and Hollywood have sold us many fictions, but in this book you can find out the facts about Hotspur, Prince Hal and what really happened to William Wallace (Braveheart.)

The Percy family's rise from small landholders to virtual kings of the north of England. The book is not only about the Percy's: it is about the period, but with them at the centre. They lived in a tumultous era and they were very much part of it. The author has done a splendid job with his source material and paints a fascinating history of the politics and warfare of the period. The tone of the book is slightly irreverent, which is good, since the protagonists are not always the nicest people.
This book is very much about politics, not so much about culture or life in the middle ages. The only drawback is a lack of maps, which makes much of the activity in the book unclear.