The Terrible 10

The U.S. economy made impressive gains in the 20th century, but this progress makes it easy to forget a harsh reality: Americans were the victims of disastrous government policies that cost trillions of dollars in wasted resources, created mass unemployment, and kept millions of people in poverty who otherwise would have participated in the nation's growing prosperity. A complete dissection of the 10 most egregious economic blunders of the past century, this work provides the key lessons to help in avoiding such policy mistakes in the future. The Terrible 10 notes that, unlike the private sector, when the governance of the federal government fails, the role and scope of government is usually increased and that politicians from both parties tend to favor short-run benefits for friends while imposing costs on current and later generations. With issues and blame divided equally among Democrats and Republicans, this work stands as a highly readable history of how government economic blunders affect everyone.

Nights of terror! A city awash in blood! New Orleans right after the First World War. The party returns to the Big Easy but someone looks to spoil it. Grocers are being murdered in the dead of night by someone grabbing their axe and hacking them right in their own cushy beds! The pattern for each murder is the same: a piece of the door is removed for entry, the axe is borrowed on the property, and the assailant aims straight for the head! Why? How could he fit through that piece in the door? The man is never found for sure but speculations abound which Geary presents with his usual gusto!

Recounts the events of a day when everything goes wrong for Alexander. Suggested level: junior, primary.

Ten terrible dinosaurs standing in a line, soon began to mess about until there were . . . nine. This lively counting book stars the same colourful dinosaurs as in the classic picture book Dinosaur Roar! The bouncy rhyming text encourages children to join in, helping them to learn their numbers as they count down from ten to one, ending with a wonderful loud ROAR!

Since the end of the Cold War, the Middle Ages has returned to debates about history, culture, and politics in Northern and Eastern Europe. This volume explores political medievalism in two language areas that are crucial to understanding global medievalism but are, due to language barriers, often inaccessible to the majority of Western scholars and students. The importance of Russian medievalism has been acknowledged, but little analysed until now. Medievalism in Finland and Russia offers a selection of chapters by Russian, Finnish and American scholars covering historiography, presidential speeches, participatory online discussions and the neo-pagan revival in Russia. Finland is currently even more poorly understood than Russia in the discussions about global medievalism. It is usually mentioned only as of the birthplace of the Soldiers of Odin. The street patrol is, however, a marginal phenomenon in Finnish medievalism as this volume demonstrates. Instead of merely adopting the medievalist interpretation of the international alt-right, even the right-wing populists in Finland refer more to the nationalistic medievalist tradition, where crusades do not mark a Western Christian victory over the Muslim East, but a Swedish occupation of Finnish lands. In addition to presenting particular cases of medievalism, the chapters here on Finland challenge and diversify today's prevailing interpretation of shared online medievalism of European and American right-wing populists. This book reveals that while medievalisms in Finland and Russia share many features with the contemporary Anglo-American medievalist imaginations, they also display many original characteristics due to particular political situations and indigenous medievalist traditions. They have their own meta-medievalisms, cumulative core ideas and interpretations about the medieval past that are thoroughly examined here in English for the very first time.

This is the first major re-assessment of Ivan the Terrible to be published in the West in the post-Soviet period. It breaks away from older stereotypes of the tsar – whether as ‘crazed tyrant’ and ‘evil genius’, on the one hand, or as a ‘great and wise statesman’, on the other – to provide a more balanced picture. It examines the ways in which Ivan’s policies contributed to the creation of Russia’s distinctive system of unlimited monarchical rule. Ivan is best remembered for his reign of terror, the book pays due attention to the horrors of his executions, tortures and repressions, especially in the period of the oprichnina (1565-72), when he mysteriously divided his realm into two parts, one of which was under the direct control of the tsar and his oprichniki (bodyguard). This work argues that the often gruesome forms assumed by the terror reflected not only Ivan’s personal cruelty and sadism, but also his religious views about the divinely ordained right of the tsar to punish his treasonous subjects, just as sinners were punished in Hell. Primarily chronological in its organisation, the book focuses on three main aspects of Ivan’s power: the territorial expansion of the state, the mythology, rituals and symbols of monarchy; and the development of the autocratic system of rule.

Ivan was also the first Russian ruler to invade Europe, and his Campaigns against the Livonian Confederation were initially very successful. In 1558, Russian soldiers occupied Dorpat and Narva, and laid siege to Reval, creating vital trade routes over the Baltic Sea. At the Battle of Ergema the Russians defeated the knights of the Livonian Order, fuelling Ivan's dreams of a Russian Empire. However, as Erik XIV of Sweden recaptured Reval, and the Poles joined forces with the Lithuannians, the war began to turn against Ivan. In 1571, an army of 120,000 Crimean Tatars crossed the River Ugra, crushed the Russian defences, and burned Moscow to the ground. As Ivan became increasingly paranoid and violent, he carried out a number of terrible massacres. It is thought that more than forty thousand were killed when the Russians sacked the town of Novgorod in 1570, and many were tortured and murdered in front of Ivan and his son. Ivan the Terrible describes the organisation and equipment of the tsar's army and the forces of his enemies, the Poles, Lithuanians, Tatars and Livonian Knights. The narrative examines all of Russia's military campaigns in Eastern Europe and Western Siberia during the period of 1533 to 1584. This is the first specialist study of Ivan the Terrible's military strategy to be published in English.

"When four friends hear that the crazy old inventor in their neighborhood has left town, they decide to sneak into his house to see for themselves if all the stories about him are true. Rumors about fingers, eyeballs, brains, and dead mice preserved in glass jars are impossible for them to ignore. Unfortunately for them and without their knowing it, he comes backwhile they are in his house. And thats when the story gets exciting.