"[A] landmark book...[a] bold reframing of the history of the British Empire."--Caroline Elkins, Foreign Affairs An award-winning historian places the corporation--more than the Crown--at the heart of British colonialism, arguing that companies built and governed global empire, raising questions about public and private power that were just as troubling four hundred years ago as they are today. Across four centuries, from Ireland to India, the Americas to Africa and Australia, British colonialism was above all the business of corporations. Corporations conceived, promoted, financed, and governed overseas expansion, making claims over territory and peoples while ensuring that British and colonial society were invested, quite literally, in their ventures. Colonial companies were also relentlessly controversial, frequently in debt, and prone to failure. The corporation was well-suited to overseas expansion not because it was an inevitable juggernaut but because, like empire itself, it was
From an Idea to Disney is a behind-the-movie-screen look into the history, business, and brand of the world's largest entertainment empire. With humorous black & white illustrations throughou
Genovese, Gambino, Bonnano, Colombo, and Lucchese. For decades these Five Families ruled New York and built the American Mafia (or Cosa Nostra) into an underworld empire. Today, the Mafia is an endang
The armed forces of Rome, particularly those of the later Republic and Principate, are rightly regarded as some of the finest military formations ever to engage in warfare. Less well known however is
The only biography of Jack White, widely considered the twenty-first century's most vital rock star. Jack White is the "coolest, weirdest, savviest rock star of our time" (The New York Times Magazine)
History is littered with examples of tyrants, hopelessly out of touch with the plight of the commoners, ruthlessly pursuing their own ambitions or hedonistic whims. But Caesar was a different kind of
Comtesse Valtesse de la Bigne was a celebrated nineteenth-century Parisian courtesan. She was painted by Manet and inspired Emile Zola, who immortalized her in his scandalous novel Nana. Her rumored a
Barlag uses dramatic and colorful incidents from Caesar's career-being held hostage by pirates, charging headlong alone into enemy lines, pardoning people he knew wanted him dead-to illustrate what
