Europe Audiobooks | Travel

The Cathars: History of the Gnostic Christian Sect during the Inquisition

The Cathars were different from the mainstream Catholic church in the 13th century. They openly rebelled against some of the hypocritical behavior by priests and leaders, and they established their own deviant beliefs according to the best ability of their conscience. But when it all came down to it, what did this mean? What were those belief systems? How did they look at God, Satan, the purpose of life, or equality between the sexes, sexuality itself, or any other principle they embraced? What did they think of the crusades in the Middle East? And how did it all end for them? Learn more about the Cathars, a community that made a significant impact during a time of dictatorships, massacres, and persecution of supposed heretics.

Kelly Mass (Author), Doug Greene (Narrator)

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The Cathars and Huguenots: The History and Legacy of the Major French Christian Groups Who Were Pers

Carcassonne today is the capital of the Aude department in the Occitanie region of southwestern France, about 58 miles from Toulouse. This land is also home to several legends and local traditions. When the earth is drenched by heavy storms, the crumbling red soil drifts into the River Aude, staining the water with crimson. This beautiful, yet haunting phenomenon, which the locals call the “blood of the Cathars,” is a symbolic reminder of the blood shed by these “heretics” at the hands of the Catholic Church. Despite the controversial events, and their supposed heresy, it seemed that the fall of the Cathars brought an everlasting curse upon the region. In the 16th century, corruption, debauchery, and the general perversion of ethics were running rampant within the Roman Catholic Church. The public began to grow leery of the crooked church, and soon, they could no longer bite their tongues. Among the church's most vocal opponents was Martin Luther, whose publication of the 95 Theses gave rise to the Protestant movement. This reformed brand of Christianity gradually spread throughout Europe, planting flags across the continent. France was among the first to latch onto the movement, and these new-wave Protestants became known as the “Huguenots.” The exact origins of the Huguenot name is still disputed to this day, but most historians have agreed it is a French and German translation of the Swiss-German term, “eidgenossen,” meaning “oath-fellowship.” The Huguenots mostly resided in the southern regions of France, along with the northern regions of Normandy and Picardy. They shared quite a few similarities with the Protestant Walloons, who lived in what is now Belgium, but the two groups were unique communities. Even so, both groups frequently convened to worship together as refugees.

Charles River Editors (Author), Jim D. Johnston (Narrator)

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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library

Without libraries, what have we? We have no past and no future. This book tells for the first time in English the story of the first great universal library in the age of printing - and of the son of Christopher Columbus who created it. This is the scarcely believable - and wholly true - story of Christopher Columbus' bastard son Hernando, who sought to equal and surpass his father's achievements by creating a universal library. His father sailed across the ocean to explore the known boundaries of the world for the glory of God, Spain and himself. His son Hernando sought instead to harness the vast powers of the new printing presses to assemble the world's knowledge in one place, his library in Seville. Hernando was one of the first and greatest visionaries of the print age, someone who saw how the scale of available information would entirely change the landscape of thought and society. His was an immensely eventual life. As a youth, he spent years travelling in the New World, and spent one living with his father in a shipwreck off Jamaica. He created a dictionary and a geographical encyclopaedia of Spain, helped to create the first modern maps of the world, spent time in almost every major European capital, and associated with many of the great people of his day, from Ferdinand and Isabel to Erasmus, Thomas More, and Dürer. He wrote the first biography of his father, almost single-handedly creating the legend of Columbus that held sway for many hundreds of years, and was highly influential in crafting how Europe saw the world his father reached in 1492. He also amassed the largest collection of printed images and of printed music of the age, started what was perhaps Europe's first botanical garden, and created by far the greatest private library Europe had ever seen, dwarfing with its 15,000 books every other library of the day. Edward Wilson-Lee has written the first major modern biography of Hernando - and the first of any kind available in English. In a work of dazzling scholarship, The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books tells an enthralling tale of the age of print and exploration, a story with striking lessons for our own modern experiences of information revolution and Globalisation.

Edward Wilson-Lee (Author), Richard Trinder (Narrator)

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The Caste War of Yucatán: The History and Legacy of the Last Major Indigenous Revolt in the Americas

When the Spaniards 'discovered' Yucatán, they thought it was an island. Although they later realized that it was part of the vast country that Cortés had conquered, they were not very wrong to think of it as an isle, considering the zealous and independent spirit that has characterized its inhabitants then and now. Although it has been part of Mexico for 170 years, it was encouraged by the example of Texas, compelling the peninsula to twice proclaim its independence and create the short-lived Republic of Yucatán. Many presidents in Mexico had to repress the great peninsula that, despite its longing for independence, had a vibrant foreign trade with the world capitals and a privileged geographical location, even as it lacked the abundance of resources that Texas and California possessed. As that suggests, Yucatán was not a wasteland when the first shipwrecked, battered Spaniards arrived on its shores. In fact, they found the descendants of an ancient civilization who refused to be conquered and who, when they finally succumbed to the steel and germs of the Europeans, refused to assimilate and instead disappeared into the jungle. By the mid-19th century, virtually all the native peoples of America had been defeated or were fleeing in small bands from canyon to canyon, only for the Maya to lead the last great, indigenous rebellion in the Yucatán, attempting to shake off the white domain initiated through the conquest of Spain. The so-called 'Caste War' was a total war, much larger than the skirmishes with the Native Americans in the United States around the same time. While the Apaches and Comanches were barely bands of men attacking towns and ranches, wandering homeless, the Mayan rebellion was nothing less than a war of annihilation in an attempt to take back their former nation.

Charles River Editors (Author), Daniel Houle (Narrator)

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The Case of the Married Woman

'Before biography was fashionable, Antonia Fraser made the past popular' Guardian 'As a pure storyteller, Antonia Fraser has few equals' Sunday Times CAROLINE NORTON, a nineteenth-century heroine who wanted justice for women. Poet, pamphleteer and artist's muse, Caroline Norton dazzled nineteenth-century society with her vivacity and intelligence. After her marriage in 1828 to the MP George Norton, she continued to attract friends and admirers to her salon in Westminster, which included the young Disraeli. Most prominent among her admirers was the widowed Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. Racked with jealousy, George Norton took the Prime Minister to court, suing him for damages on account of his 'Criminal Conversation' (adultery) with Caroline. A dramatic trial followed. Despite the unexpected and sensational result - acquittal - Norton legally denied Caroline access to her three children under seven. He also claimed her income as an author for himself, since the copyrights of a married woman belonged to her husband. Yet Caroline refused to despair. Beset by the personal cruelties perpetrated by her husband and a society whose rules were set against her, she chose to fight, not surrender. She channelled her energies in an area of much-needed reform: the rights of a married woman and specifically those of a mother. Over the next few years she campaigned tirelessly, achieving her first landmark victory with the Infant Custody Act of 1839. Provisions which are now taken for granted, such as the right of a mother to have access to her own children, owe much to Caroline, who was determined to secure justice for women at all levels of society from the privileged to the dispossessed. Award-winning historian Antonia Fraser brilliantly portrays a woman, at once courageous and compassionate, who refused to be curbed by the personal and political constraints of her time.

Antonia Fraser (Author), Penelope Wilton (Narrator)

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The Cartiers: The Untold Story of the Family Behind the Jewelry Empire

"An enchanting jewel of a book."-Douglas Smith, author of Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy The captivating story of the family behind the Cartier empire and the three brothers who turned their grandfather's humble Parisian jewelry store into a global luxury icon-as told by a great-granddaughter with exclusive access to long-lost family archives The Cartiers is the revealing tale of a jewelry dynasty-four generations, from revolutionary France to the 1970s. At its heart are the three Cartier brothers whose motto was "Never copy, only create" and who made their family firm internationally famous in the early days of the twentieth century, thanks to their unique and complementary talents: Louis, the visionary designer who created the first men's wristwatch to help an aviator friend tell the time without taking his hands off the controls of his flying machine; Pierre, the master dealmaker who bought the New York headquarters on Fifth Avenue for a double-stranded natural pearl necklace; and Jacques, the globe-trotting gemstone expert whose travels to India gave Cartier access to the world's best rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, inspiring the celebrated Tutti Frutti jewelry. Francesca Cartier Brickell, whose great-grandfather was the youngest of the brothers, has traveled the world researching her family's history, tracking down those connected with her ancestors and discovering long-lost pieces of the puzzle along the way. Now she reveals never-before-told dramas, romances, intrigues, betrayals, and more. The Cartiers also offers a behind-the-scenes look at the firm's most iconic jewelry-the notoriously cursed Hope Diamond, the Romanov emeralds, the classic panther pieces-and the long line of stars from the worlds of fashion, film, and royalty who wore them, from Indian maharajas and Russian grand duchesses to Wallis Simpson, Coco Chanel, and Elizabeth Taylor. Published in the two-hundredth anniversary year of the birth of the dynasty's founder, Louis-François Cartier, this book is a magnificent, definitive, epic social history shown through the deeply personal lens of one legendary family.

Francesca Cartier Brickell (Author), Hattie Morahan (Narrator)

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The Carolingian Empire: A Captivating Guide to the Carolingian Dynasty and Their Large Empire That C

If you want to discover the captivating history of the Carolingian Empire, then pay attention... One of the few names to emerge from the Dark Ages to live on today is that of Charlemagne. After the fall of Rome, Western Europe was in almost complete disarray for several centuries, with different tribes and factions running different parts of the continent. Then in 768 CE, Charles the Great, more commonly known as Charlemagne, became the ruler of the Franks. In The Carolingian Empire: A Captivating Guide to the Carolingian Dynasty and Their Large Empire That Covered Most of Western Europe During the Reign of Charlemagne, you will discover topics such as - A Quick Overview - The World After Rome - Ending a Dynasty - Pepin, Charles, and Carloman - The Conquests of Charles - In the Name of Religion - Pope Leo III and the Founding of an Empire - The Carolingian Renaissance - The Empire under Charlemagne - The Rule of Louis the Pious - Familial Strife and the Decay of the Empire - The Division Effectively Ending the Empire - Echoes of the Roman Empire - How Outside Forces Picked Apart the Carolingian Empire - Lasting Effects and Hope of Reunification - And much, much more! So if you want to learn more about the history of The Carolingian Empire, scroll up and click the 'add to cart' button!

Captivating History (Author), Jason Zenobia (Narrator)

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The Carlist Wars: The History and Legacy of the Spanish Civil Wars in the 19th Century

Thinking of Spain as a modern nation state today distorts the complicated reality that the Iberian Peninsula faced in the past. Spain was a nation in progress, consisting of regions united under the Spanish crown, but with strong regional identities based on different historical and cultural experiences. The largest entities were the kingdoms of León and Castile, but Spain also included the kingdoms of Navarre, Andalusia, Granada, Jaén, Aragon, and Valencia. There were also the principalities of Asturias and Catalonia, the lordship of Vizcaya, and both Guipúzcoa and Alava were “exempted provinces.” Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia had separate Cortes, which were versions of parliaments (Parker 18-19). This complex system of entities granted privilege to local power structures over the concept of a unified nation and made administration difficult, because there were few standards that applied to all of Spain. Many of the regions had special laws that respected and allowed traditional institutions, administrative patterns, and cultural patterns. These local and regional rights were called fueros and were fiercely defended against centralization. The fueros originated as rights agreed to when the regions joined the Spanish crown. Before becoming king, the king-designate had to swear to maintain and respect the fueros. This meant that the rights of the king were to a considerable extent limited. Inevitably, liberals and centralizing monarchs alike tried to change the situation over the years, which produced political tensions. The Carlists promised to maintain the older system, which is why they were so firmly backed in the Basque regions by most of the peasants and nobility. The Carlist claimants were strong Catholics and were strongly supported by the Church, and thus by the more fervently Catholic portions of the population.

Charles River Editors (Author), Steve Knupp (Narrator)

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The Carlist Wars and the Spanish Civil War: The History of the Conflicts that Divided Spain in the L

Thinking of Spain as a modern nation state today distorts the complicated reality that the Iberian Peninsula faced in the past. Spain was a nation in progress, consisting of regions united under the Spanish crown, but with strong regional identities based on different historical and cultural experiences. The largest entities were the kingdoms of León and Castile, but Spain also included the kingdoms of Navarre, Andalusia, Granada, Jaén, Aragon, and Valencia. There were also the principalities of Asturias and Catalonia, the lordship of Vizcaya, and both Guipúzcoa and Alava were “exempted provinces.” Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia had separate Cortes, which were versions of parliaments (Parker 18-19). This complex system of entities granted privilege to local power structures over the concept of a unified nation and made administration difficult, because there were few standards that applied to all of Spain. Many of the regions had special laws that respected and allowed traditional institutions, administrative patterns, and cultural patterns. These local and regional rights were called fueros and were fiercely defended against centralization. The Spanish Civil War has exerted a powerful impact on the historical imagination. Without question, the conflict was a key moment in the 20th century, a precursor to World War II, and an encapsulation of the rise of extremist movements in the 1930s, but it was also a complex narrative in and of itself, even as it offered a truly international theatre of war. It marked one of the seminal moments, along with the 1929 Wall Street Crash, between the two apocalyptic wars of the early 20th century, and since it occurred between 1936 and 1939, Spain proved to be a testing ground of tactics, weaponry, and ideology ahead of World War II.

Charles River Editors (Author), Jim Walsh (Narrator)

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The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain

The Cancer Problem offers the first medical, cultural, and social history of cancer in nineteenth-century Britain. It begins by looking at a community of doctors and patients who lived and worked in the streets surrounding the Middlesex Hospital in London. It follows in their footsteps as they walked the labyrinthine lanes and passages that branched off Tottenham Court Road; then, through seven chapters, its focus expands to successively include the rivers, lakes, and forests of England, the mountains, poverty, and hunger of the four nations of the British Isles, the reluctant and resistant inhabitants of the British Empire, and the networks of scientists and doctors spread across Europe and North America. The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain argues that it was in the nineteenth century that cancer acquired the unique emotional, symbolic, and politicized status it maintains today. Through an interrogation of the construction, deployment, and emotional consequences of the disease's incurability, this book reframes our conceptualization of the relationship between medicine and modern life and reshapes our understanding of chronic and incurable maladies, both past and present.

Agnes Arnold-Forster (Author), Cat Gould (Narrator)

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The Campaign of Magenta and Solferino, 1859

A Dusty Tomes Audio BookIn Cooperation with Spoken Realms The Campaign of Magenta and Solferino, 1859 by Colonel H. C. Wylly, CB. Late of the Sherwood Foresters, Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire Regiment. Special Campaign Series No. 4 published by Swan Sonnenschein, 1907. Narrated by Joseph TablerNote: This book is “read as written.” It was published in 1907 and is in the public domain. Publisher’s Preface to the Series: The “Special Campaign” Series deals with the history of war in its technical aspect, and the text of each volume is interspersed with strategical and tactical comments … subsequent volumes will deal with those campaigns of the nineteenth century that present features of exceptional military interest. It is hoped that this series will not only be useful for examination purposes but may form the nucleus of an interesting library for military students.Colonel Harold Charmichael Wylly (1858–1932) served in the Anglo-Egyptian War in 1882, the Sikkim Expedition in 1888, the Tirah Campaign from 1897–98, and in the Second Boer War. Other works include The Military Memoirs of Lieut.-General Sir Joseph Thackwell (1908) and From the Black Mountain to Waziristan (1912). From the Author’s Preface:The campaign of 1859 in Northern Italy was one of the first of the epoch-making, rapidly conducted wars that marked the latter half of the nineteenth century. It was, moreover, as has been pointed out by the author of Imperial Strategy, the “first war in Europe which conveyed some preliminary indication of what railways can accomplish.” Author’s PrefaceI. Preparations for WarII. The Austrian Advance to the SesiaIII. Action at MontebelloIV. The Flank March by the Allies and the Fighting at PalestroV. The Austrians Recross the Ticino and the French Occupy RobecchettoVI. The Battle of MagentaVII. The Action at MelegnanoVIII. Movements of the Vth French Corps - Action at Castenedolo - Austrians Retreat Behind the MincioIX. The Battle of SolferinoX. The Peace of Villafranca Dusty Tomes Audio Books are public domain books retrieved from the ravages of time. Available as never before, as audio books, for your edification, pleasure, and consideration. Please excuse the dust.

Colonel H. C. Wylly (Author), Joseph Tabler (Narrator)

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The Cajuns and Creoles: The History and Legacy of the Unique Ethnic Groups in the American South and

Deep within the bayous and swamps of Louisiana resides a population descended from an exodus. These people, called Cajuns or Acadians, were expelled from their homelands. Persecuted and homeless, they traveled hundreds of miles south in search of a new home and ultimately settled in the Pelican State, where they made new lives for themselves free from their British conquerors. Though not always warmly welcomed, they were accepted, allowing them to practice their different culture amidst their new neighbors. Though their home has changed flags over the centuries, the people themselves have remained, retaining a culture that goes back several centuries. While people continue to assimilate, some have continued to live same lifestyles their ancestors did for generations, and they continue to fascinate outsiders, so much so that they occasionally end up being featured on the History Channel. Contrary to popular belief, the term “Creole” is not restricted to the Louisiana Creole, nor the Creoles of color, which collectively refers to the overall ethnic group and different local Creole cultures that blossomed across the Spanish and French colonies in Louisiana, Mississippi, and northwestern Florida. Today, the term is much more complex and may be applied to any of the various Creole cultures around the globe. The word may also be used to describe any language that has spawned from a mixture of languages, or specifically the associated, but distinct tongues developed within Creole communities, as well as the speakers of these languages themselves. Generally speaking, however, the word “Creole” refers to the cultures birthed from the colonial-era racial and cultural mixing between Europeans (mostly of French, Spanish, or Portuguese descent) and Africans, as well as Native Americans, and other local or indigenous peoples in French, Spanish, and Portuguese territories.

Charles River Editors (Author), Mary Rossman (Narrator)

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