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Monarchs throughout the ages have commissioned official histories that cast their reigns in a favorable light for future generations. These accounts, sanctioned and supported by the ruling government, often gloss over the more controversial aspects of a king's or queen's time on the throne. Instead, they present highly selective and positive readings of a monarch's contribution to national identity and global affairs. In Clio and the Crown, Richard L. Kagan examines the official histories of Spanish monarchs from medieval times to the middle of the 18th century. He expertly guides readers through the different kinds of official histories commissioned: those whose primary focus was the monarch; those that centered on the Spanish kingdom as a whole; and those that celebrated Spain's conquest of the New World. In doing so, Kagan also documents the life and work of individual court chroniclers, examines changes in the practice of official history, and highlights the political machinations that influenced the redaction of such histories. Just as world leaders today rely on fast-talking press officers to explain their sometimes questionable actions to the public, so too did the kings and queens of medieval and early modern Spain. Monarchs often went to great lengths to exert complete control over the official history of their reign, physically intimidating historians, destroying and seizing manuscripts and books, rewriting past histories, and restricting history writing to authorized persons. Still, the larger practice of history writing—as conducted by nonroyalist historians, various scholars and writers, and even church historians—provided a corrective to official histories. Kagan concludes that despite its blemishes, the writing of official histories contributed, however imperfectly, to the practice of historiography itself.

\"The Spanish Craze: America's Fascination with the Hispanic World, 1779-1939 examines the centuries-long fascination with the history, art, culture, and architecture of Spain in the United States from the Early Republic to the New Deal\"-- Provided by publisher.

A well-known observer of Taiwan and Asian history and culture provides an insightful biography of Lee Teng Hui, the pro-democracy statesman and former president of the Republic of China. As head of the Taiwanese government from 1988 to 2000, Lee managed, without violence or major civil unrest, to reform the authoritarian state into a constitutional democracy with a multi-party political system. This examination of Lee's success puts to rest the idea that Asian values support only authoritarian regimes and reject human rights and political democracy in favor of economic success and military power. Richard C. Kagan describes in rich detail Lee's struggle to reinvent Taiwan's culture and political system by advocating an independent sovereign nation with universal values of human rights, democracy, freedom, and economic justice. His book offers new insights into the role Lee played in the still volatile Taiwan Strait crisis and how Lee's diplomatic skills used the crisis to break free of the \"One China\" straitjacket of the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972 while avoiding open warfare with the People's Republic of China. The author argues that Taiwan is a vital part of America's national security interests in Asia and that the loss of Taiwan to Mainland China would seriously damage American economic and military power in Asia. He calls Lee's life a beacon for people looking for new ways to promote democracy and sovereignty and intends this biography of Lee's life to highlight the statesman's significant contributions, until now little known or misunderstood in the United States and Europe.

\"Alonso Berruguete (c. 1488-1561) revolutionized the arts of Renaissance Spain with a dramatic style of sculpture that reflected the decade or more he had spent in Italy while young. Trained as a painter, he traveled to Italy around 1506, where he interacted with Michelangelo and other leading artists. In 1518, he returned to Spain and was appointed court painter to the new king, Charles I. Eventually, he made his way to Valladolid, where he shifted his focus to sculpture, opening a large workshop that produced breathtaking multistory altarpieces (retablos) decorated with sculptures in painted wood. This handsomely illustrated catalogue is the first in English to treat Berruguete's art and career comprehensively. It follows his career from his beginnings in Castile to his final years in Toledo, where he produced his last great work, the marble tomb of Cardinal Juan de Tavera. Enriching the chronological narrative are discussions of important aspects of Berruguete's life and practice: his complicated relationship with social status and wealth; his activity as a draftsman and use of prints; how he worked with his many assistants to create his wood sculptures; and his legacy as an artist\"-- Provided by publisher.

In the late fifteenth century, many of the Jews expelled from Spain made their way to Morocco and established a dynamic community in Fez. A number of Jewish families became prominent in commerce and public life there. Among the Jews of Fez of Hispanic origin was Samuel Pallache, who served the Moroccan sultan as a commercial and diplomatic agent in Holland until Pallache's death in 1616. Before that, he had tried to return with his family to Spain, and to this end he tried to convert to Catholicism and worked as an informer, intermediary, and spy in Moroccan affairs for the Spanish court. Later he became a privateer against Spanish ships and was tried in London for that reason. His religious identity proved to be as mutable as his political allegiances: when in Amsterdam, he was devoutly Jewish; when in Spain, a loyal converso (a baptized Jew). In A Man of Three Worlds, Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers view Samuel Pallache's world as a microcosm of early modern society, one far more interconnected, cosmopolitan, and fluid than is often portrayed. Pallache's missions and misadventures took him from Islamic Fez and Catholic Spain to Protestant England and Holland. Through these travels, the authors explore the workings of the Moroccan sultanate and the Spanish court, the Jewish communities of Fez and Amsterdam, and details of the Atlantic-Mediterranean trade. At once a sweeping view of two continents, three faiths, and five nation-states and an intimate story of one man's remarkable life, A Man of Three Worlds is history at its most compelling.

Leaders in War present unique first-person perspectives across the spectrum of American combat operations during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. From division commanders to platoon leaders, the authors deliver an insider's view of tough leadership challenges, tragic failures, and triumphant victories. Leaders in War captures the essence of the post-Cold War US Army: how an all-volunteer army, equipped with new weapons systems and adjusting to new battle doctrine, mounted one of history's most successful military campaigns. Described here are the details of the tremendous logistical challenges, innovations in intelligence, ground combat operations from platoon to division, and a wide range of combat support operations. Leaders in War focuses not just on the successes, but on the failures as well, in operations ranging from violent tank battles against the vaunted Iraqi Republican Guard to train-and-fill operations thousands of miles away. Leaders in War illustrates how US Army leaders adapted to the psychological strains of combat, the fog of war, unforeseeable challenges, and the fury of tank warfare during the Persian Gulf War. Foreword Dennis Showalter. Introduction Frederick W. Kagan Part 1: Senior Combat Commanders 1. Brigadier General John S. Brown 2. Major General Eric T. Olson 3. Lieutenant General (Retired) James Johnson Part 2: Combat Support and Combat Service Support at the Theater Level 4. Dr. (Lieutenant Colonel, Retired) Kent Laudeman 5. Colonel (Retired) Richard A. Pomager 6. Major Christine Carbone Sandoval Part 3: Junior Combat Commanders 7. Colonel H. R. McMaster 8. Major Jonathan J. Negin Part 4: Combat Support and Combat Service Support at the Tactical Level 9. Major Sandra L.Vann-Olejasz 10. Major Chris Kubik 11. Lieutenant Colonel Michael Huber 12. Major Chris Tatarka Dr. Kagan is Associate Professor of Military History at the US Military Academy at West Point, NY. He has written extensively in the fields of military history and current American military policy including While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today, (co-authored with Donald Kagan), St. Martin's Press, 2000; The Military History of Tsarist Russian and The Military History of the Soviet Union (co-edited with Robin Higham), Palgrave, 2002; and The Military Reforms of Nicholas I: The Origins of the Modern Russian Army, St. Martin's Press, 1999. He has also written extensively in The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and elsewhere. Major Kubik has spent more than two decades as a leader in the US Army. Enlisting in 1982, he served as a team leader, squad leader, and platoon sergeant in the Republic of Panama and in the USA. After commissioning, he served as a platoon leader in the Persian Gulf War and as a company commander in Croatia / Bosnia. He earned his Masters Degree in English at the University of Virginia and is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the US Military Academy, West Point, NY.

Given the dearth of new documentary material, this book's failure to contribute anything to our understanding of Columbus is not surprising. Nor is it altogether unwelcome. In fact, [Gianni Granzotto]'s novelistic account may serve as an early warning that Colombomania has already gone too far. The quatercentenary of 1892 focused rather narrowly on the ''discovery'' and celebrated the arrival of European culture and civilization in the New World as an unquestioned good. This one-sided, Eurocentric view is now outdated, and even the word ''discovery'' itself is out of fashion as scholars have become more sensitive to the indigenous cultures of the New World and begun to develop a more balanced assessment of Europeans' impact on native American life. O UR view of Columbus and his achievement requires a similar re-evaluation. The ''discovery'' was less an isolated event than part of a process, a phase in the expansion of Europe into the Atlantic that led to a centuries-long encounter between two dissimilar cultures - the Amerindian and the European - that gradually but inexorably produced profound changes in both. The darker side of this encounter is already known - epidemiological disaster in the New World, colonial exploitation, the development of transoceanic slavery. But other questions require further thought. To what extent did the rise of an Atlantic economy create an Atlantic community of ideas that challenged people on both sides of the ocean - in Europe and Africa, as well as America - to re-evaluate themselves, their laws, institutions, society and beliefs, even their food and material culture, on a regular and continuing basis? Might not this dialectic account for much of the dynamism that the Atlantic community has manifested over the last 500 years?