Merkaba Press imprint: 261 books

                        THE close of the Seven Years' War brought only a lull in the great conflicts of the eighteenth century, and yet for a time men seemed less influenced by dynastic quarrels, and their attention was centered upon questions of social and political reconstruction....

Our earliest glimpse of the Aegean area reveals a people in possession of the neolithic culture; as yet they were ignorant of the metals but had learned to polish their stone implements with a view to increasing the cutting power. A good opportunity for the study of progress during the neolithic age...

The island of Corsica, in the Mediterranean Sea, sixty miles from the coast of Tuscany, is about half as large as the State of Massachusetts. In the year 1767 this island was one of the provinces of Italy. There was then residing, in the small town of Corté, in Corsica, a young lawyer nineteen years...

On St. Andrew's Eve, in the year 1433, the good people of Dijon were abroad, eager to catch what glimpses they might of certain stately functions to be formally celebrated by the Duke of Burgundy. The mere presence of the sovereign in the capital of his duchy was in itself a gala event from its rarity....

Ingratitude in masses, as in individuals, is very apt to be the reward of great benefactors. Egypt, taciturn, proud, and self-contained, was respected and admired by all her neighbours, while Greece and Judea, the shining beacons of Mediterranean civilisation, from the point of view of morals and...

THE HISTORY of the middle ages presents no spectacle more imposing than the Crusades, in which are to be seen the nations of Asia and of Europe armed against each other, two religions contending for superiority, and disputing the empire of the world. After having been several times threatened by the...

Two centuries ago when the kingdoms of Northern Europe were struggling for supremacy on the Baltic and control of the narrow portal to the sea, there appeared a young prince, the marvel of his age, who made himself the arbiter of these kingdoms and of their rulers. The military successes of Charles...

A London Life is one of James’s longest tales, in fact it falls into the category which he labelled the nouvelle. It seems that in writing it the author’s attitude to his heroine gradually became more critical and in the finished text a number of the other characters try to make Laura Wing realize...

On the night of June 17–18, 1239, Queen Eleanor, the consort of Henry III., presented her husband with a son, who was born in the Palace of Westminster, and who was instantly, says the old chronicler, named by the king, “Edward, after the glorious king and confessor, whose body rests in the church...

There is a story that Schopenhauer used to begin his lectures on Kant by saying: "Let no one tell you what is contained in the Critique of Pure Reason." The writer of this little book hopes that no one will imagine that he has disregarded this warning. There are no short-cuts to the understanding...

THE present series of lectures is designed to give a broad and general view of the long sequence of the migratory movements of the northern barbarians which began in the third and fourth centuries A.D. and cannot be said to have terminated till the ninth. This long process shaped Europe into its present...

By far one of the greatest history books ever written, James Robinson’s classic of Western European history is an absolute must-read for anyone seeking a greater understanding of the power struggles and armed conflicts that formed the Europe, and the world, of today. Spanning over a thousand...

Whenever we hear the name of Napoleon mentioned, or see it printed in a book, it is usually in connection with a hard-fought victory on the battlefield. He certainly spent most of his life in the camp, and enjoyed the society of soldiers more than that of courtiers. The thunder of guns, the charge...

Excerpt from The Mystery of the Locks Davy's Bend - a river town, a failing town, and an old town, on a dark night, with a misty rain falling, and the stars hiding from the dangerous streets and walks of the failing town by the sluggish river which seems to be hurrying away from it, too, like...