Jack Tar: Life in Nelson’s Navy

Every cartoon about seamen and sailors and many a horror story is built on the old adage of 'no women on board'. Someone might know where the saying comes from, I certainly don't. What I do know is that is wrong. This book will tell you why.

Pirates of Barbary

The Coast of Barbary extends from the Straits of Gibraltar to Tripoli in the Mediterranean Sea. That means it runs from modern Morocco to Algeria. The name Barbary was derived from Barbarians, but this epithet shouldn’t be applied to the inhabitants of that coast but to the truly barbarian pirates that used the coast as their base. They were for the greater part European.

Arthur Miller

Writing biographies is a dangerous business. Autobiographies should be the easiest to write but end up as a pack of lies as authors want to present life according to their wishes instead of the truth. Unauthorized biographies don't have access to all the facts and end up gossip mongering and stating the obvious. And then there are authorized biographies which combine the worst of both the ones mentioned before.

A Natural History of Ghosts

Can something not made of matter matter to science? We are talking ghosts. People might believe in atoms, neurons, and black matter. People might believe in gods, demons, and eternal beings. But people also believe in ghosts. The first two groups are amply served by scientific research in several fields. Ghosts finally receive the recognition they deserve in a book dealing exclusively with them.

Through The Language Glass

Linguistics is a science that is at best a bit murky; it can become a quagmire, too. The language barriers I mention in the title refer to the barriers put up by linguists on their own understanding of languages. A new book tries to get rid of a few 19th century hold-overs embedded in our minds.