Bøger af John Abbott

This is a new release of the original 1932 edition.

Louis XIV, by John Abbott, is a classic French history text detaling the life of King Louis XIV. We all live a double life: the external life which the world sees, and the internal life of hopes and fears, joys and griefs, temptations and sins, which the world sees not, and of which it knows but little. None lead this double life more emphatically than those who are seated upon thrones. Louis XIV (5 September 1638 - 1 September 1715), known as Louis the God-Given (Louis Dieudonné), Louis the Great (Louis le Grand) or the Sun King (Roi Soleil), was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who reigned as King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. Starting at the age of 4, his reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country in European history.[1][2] In the age of absolutism in Europe, Louis XIV's France was a leader in the growing centralization of power.[3] Louis began his personal rule of France in 1661, after the death of his chief minister, the Italian Cardinal Mazarin.[4] An adherent of the concept of the divine right of kings, which advocates the divine origin of monarchical rule, Louis continued his predecessors' work of creating a centralized state governed from the capital. He sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France and, by compelling many members of the nobility to inhabit his lavish Palace of Versailles, succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many members of which had participated in the Fronde rebellion during Louis' minority. By these means he became one of the most powerful French monarchs and consolidated a system of absolute monarchical rule in France that endured until the French Revolution. Louis encouraged and benefited from the work of prominent political, military, and cultural figures such as Mazarin, Colbert, Louvois, the Grand Condé, Turenne, and Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, as well as André Charles Boulle, Molière, Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine, Lully, Marais, Le Brun, Rigaud, Bossuet, Le Vau, Mansart, Charles and Claude Perrault, and Le Nôtre. Under his rule, the Edict of Nantes, which granted rights to Huguenots, was abolished. The revocation effectively forced Huguenots to emigrate or convert in a wave of dragonnades, which managed to virtually destroy the French Protestant minority. During Louis' reign, France was the leading European power, and it fought three major wars: the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and the War of the Spanish Succession. There were also two lesser conflicts: the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions. Warfare defined the foreign policy of Louis XIV, and his personality shaped his approach. Impelled "by a mix of commerce, revenge, and pique", Louis sensed that warfare was the ideal way to enhance his glory. In peacetime he concentrated on preparing for the next war. He taught his diplomats that their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military.

This accessible, immensely readable biography of Daniel Boone by John Abbott is part of the 'American Pioneers and Patriots' series, and is the best single-volume introduction to Boone's life and times.

This accessible, immensely readable biography of Davy Crockett by John Abbott is part of the 'American Pioneers and Patriots' series, and is the best single-volume introduction to Crockett's life and times.

Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi is a classic biography of the great Spanish explorer, Ferdinand De Soto. Mr. Theodore Irving, in his valuable history of the "Conquest of Florida," speaking of the astonishing achievements of the Spanish Cavaliers, in the dawn of the sixteenth century says: "Of all the enterprises undertaken in this spirit of daring adventure, none has surpassed, for hardihood and variety of incident, that of the renowned Ferdinand de Soto, and his band of cavaliers. It was poetry put in action. It was the knight-errantry of the old world carried into the depths of the American wilderness.

Madame Roland (17 March 1754 - 8 November 1793), was, together with her husband Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière, a supporter of the French Revolution and influential member of the Girondist faction. She fell out of favour during the Reign of Terror and died on the guillotine. The history of Madame Roland embraces the most interesting events of the French Revolution, that most instructive tragedy which time has yet enacted. There is, perhaps, contained in the memoirs of no other woman so much to invigorate the mind with the desire for high intellectual culture, and so much to animate the spirit heroically to meet all the ills of this eventful life. Madame Roland, born Marie-Jeanne Phlippon, the sole surviving child of eight pregnancies, was born to Gratien Phlippon and Madame Phlippon in March 1754. From her early years she was a successful, enthusiastic, and talented student. In her youth she studied literature, music and drawing. From the beginning she was strong willed and frequently challenged her father and instructors as she progressed through an advanced, well-rounded education. Enthusiastically supporting her education, Jeanne's parents enrolled her in the convent school of the Sisterhood of the Congregation in Paris - for one year only. She was enthusiastically religious, leading John Abbott to state "God thus became in Jane's mind a vision of poetic beauty".Following her convent school education, she pursued her education independently, Abbott relating that "Heraldry and books of romance, lives of the saints and fairy legends, biography, travels, history, political philosophy, poetry, and treatises upon morals, were all read and meditated upon by this young child".[2] Several literary figures influenced Roland's philosophy, including Voltaire, Montesquieu, Plutarch, and others. Most significantly, Rousseau's literature strongly influenced Roland's understanding of feminine virtue and political philosophy, and she came to understand a woman's genius as residing in Rousseau's definition of feminine virtue as "a pleasurable loss of self-control", which for Roland meant the courage of maternal self-sacrifice and suffering. Manon Phlippon (as her close friends and relatives called her) also, as she traveled, developed an increasing awareness of the outside world. In 1774, on a trip to Versailles, some of her most famous letters were sent to her friend Sophie Cannet, wherein she first begins to display an interest in politics, describing admiringly (if not presciently) the enthronement of Louis XVI and his queen Marie Antoinette fifteen years before the start of the French Revolution: The ministers are enlightened and well disposed, the young prince docile and eager for good, the queen amiable and beneficent, the court kind and respectable, the legislative body honourable, the people obedient, wishing only to love their master, the kingdom full of resources. Ah but we are going to be happy!

John Abbott was a well-known historian in the mid-19th century, and this is his biography of Founding Father Benjamin Franklin. Before the United States of America even existed, the first American celebrity was Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). In his career, Franklin was an author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. After having his hand in all kinds of community service in Philadelphia, and inventing important devices like lightning rods, Franklin used his unique status as an international celebrity to become the colonies' best diplomat, first as an ambassador to Britan and then as an ambassador to France during the American Revolution. Franklin was particularly revered in Enlightened France, where he skillfully negotiated French entry into the Revolutionary War in a manner that practically bankrupted them, a critical step that helped the colonists win their independence. After negotiating the Treaty of Paris, Franklin played a role at the Constitutional Convention in his adopted home town of Philadelphia during the twilight of his life. Like other Founding Fathers, Franklin's lengthy career and magnificent exploits have been heavily embellished, to the point that some of the myths of Franklin's life are better known than the man himself. From the intro: "Next to George Washington, we must write, upon the Catalogue of American Patriots, the name of Benjamin Franklin. He had so many virtues that there is no need of exaggerating them; so few imperfections that they need not be concealed. The writer has endeavored to give a perfectly accurate view of his character, and of that great struggle, in which he took so conspicuous a part, which secured the Independence of the United States. Probably there can no where be found, within the same limits, so vivid a picture of Life in America, one hundred years ago, as the career of Franklin presents. This volume is the twelfth of the Library Series of Pioneers and Patriots. The series presents a graphic history of our country from its discovery."

This is a biography of the Dutch official Peter Stuyvesant, who oversaw early New York City when it was still a colonial possession of the Netherlands before the British took it over.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1883 Edition.

About four hundred years ago there was a small kingdom, spreading over the cliffs and ravines of the eastern extremity of the Pyrenees, called Navarre. Its population, of about five hundred thousand, consisted of a very simple, frugal, and industrious people. Those who lived upon the shore washed by the stormy waves of the Bay of Biscay gratified their love of excitement and of adventure by braving the perils of the sea. Those who lived in the solitude of the interior, on the sunny slopes of the mountains, or by the streams which meandered through the verdant valleys, fed their flocks, and harvested their grain, and pressed rich wine from the grapes of their vineyards, in the enjoyment of the most pleasant duties of rural life. Proud of their independence, they were ever ready to grasp arms to repel foreign aggression. The throne of this kingdom was, at the time of which we speak, occupied by Catharine de Foix. She was a widow, and all her hopes and affections were centred in her son Henry, an ardent and impetuous boy six or seven years of age, who was to receive the crown when it should fall from her brow, and transmit to posterity their ancestral honors.

A collection of short stories from author John Abbott. REVIEWS "Easy to forget all around us are worlds in motion with lives larger or smaller than our own involved in most of the similar intricacies it takes to survive, to live, to struggle, to love, suffer, procreate, laugh or just stand still. What's not so easy is the ability to take all these individual identities and have them stand out in their worlds of activity where normally they might not. John Abbott's ability to allow his characters and their situations to stand out on the page is something one gets in the exchange that takes place between he and his reader. Theft: And Other Tales of Loss and the Working Class masterfully accomplishes the deepest part of this relationship and offers the reader something unique, something apart from the expected, and from the commonplace in the name of a reality running parallel to our own and right before our eyes." - Paul B. Roth, editor & publisher The Bitter "John Abbott's stories remind me of those writers like Chekhov and de Maupassant. They have the same control of language, the same wry affection for their characters, the same understanding of, as Faulkner put, "the human heart in conflict with itself." Every moment of emotion in these stories is earned, and the stories' mastery literally jumps off the page when I read them. The work here is serious without being self-serious, funny without being easy, and always engaging." - Steven Carter, author of I Was Howard Hughes and Famous Writers School "This is a dazzling story collection about ordinary people in extraordinary moments, and Abbott give us these moments, beautifully, in lucid prose." - J.D. Dolan, author of Phoenix: A Brother's Life

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1834 Edition.

Abbott's "The History of Prussia" is a comprehensive history of the kingdom that eventually became the backbone of Germany. As he put it in the preface: "Prussia is now recognized not only as one of the great powers, but as, probably, the first military power in Europe. The steps by which this greatness has been attained constitute one of the most interesting chapters in the history of modern times. Prussia is the representative, not of liberalism, but of absolutism. It has been under the banner of despotic sway that most of its victories have been achieved. Prussia now presents to the world the somewhat appalling spectacle of a nation of forty millions, in which every able-bodied man is a trained soldier. It has been able, at a moment's warning, to send into the field armies so overwhelming in numbers, and so admirably organized and disciplined, as to crush the military power of France, to batter down her strongest fortresses, and even to penetrate the heart of the empire, and invest her proud metropolis with beleaguering hosts. The object of this volume is to give a narrative of the origin, growth, and present condition, of this gigantic power. It would be difficult to find anywhere a theme more full of instructive and exciting incidents."

Henry IV is a classic English royal family biography by John Abbott. Henry IV (15 April 1367[1] - 20 March 1413), also known as Henry Bolingbroke, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1399 to 1413, and asserted the claim of his grandfather, Edward III, to the Kingdom of France. Henry was born at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire. His father, John of Gaunt, was the fourth son of Edward III and the third son to survive to adulthood, and enjoyed a position of considerable influence during much of the reign of Henry's cousin Richard II, whom Henry eventually deposed. Henry's mother was Blanche, heiress to the considerable Lancaster estates, and thus he became the first King of England from the Lancaster branch of the Plantagenets and the first King of England since the Norman Conquest whose mother tongue was English rather than French. One of Henry's elder sisters, Philippa, married John I of Portugal, and the other, Elizabeth, was the mother of John Holland, 2nd Duke of Exeter. His younger half-sister Catherine, the daughter of his father's second wife, Constance of Castile, was queen consort of Castile. He also had four half-siblings by Katherine Swynford, originally his sisters' governess, then his father's longstanding mistress, and later his third wife. These four children were given the surname Beaufort after a castle their father held in Champagne, France.[4] Henry's relationship with his stepmother, Katherine Swynford, was a positive one, but his relationship with the Beauforts varied. In youth he seems to have been close to all of them, but rivalries with Henry and Thomas Beaufort proved problematic after 1406. Ralph Neville, who had married Henry's half-sister Joan Beaufort, remained one of his strongest supporters, and so did his eldest half-brother John Beaufort, even though Henry revoked Richard II's grant to John of a marquessate. Thomas Swynford, a son from Katherine's first marriage to Sir Hugh Swynford, was another loyal companion. Thomas was Constable of Pontefract Castle, where King Richard II is said to have died. Henry's half-sister Joan Beaufort was the grandmother of Edward IV and Richard III. Joan's daughter Cecily married Richard, Duke of York and had several offspring, including Edward IV and Richard III, making Joan the grandmother of two Yorkist kings of England.

One of the most controversial characters of Elizabethan era was Mary Queen of Scots, Queen Elizabeth's second cousin once removed. Mary was the granddaughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's sister, which made Mary a claimant to the English Crown as well. Moreover, her Catholicism made Mary the true and rightful Queen of England in the eyes of many Catholics and The Vatican. Mary's first marriage to the Dauphin of France had made her the queen consort of France, but his early death and their lack of issue had made it untenable for Mary Stuart to remain in France. Upon returning to Scotland, she married her cousin and gave birth to James VI. Mary Stuart, exhorted by her Catholic supporters, had claimed Elizabeth's crown. Eventually she was imprisoned for nearly two decades and subsequently executed for plotting against the Queen, actions that brought about scorn for centuries. As the preface to Abbott's biography puts it: "Of the unfortunates of history, few touch our sympathies so deeply as Mary Queen of Scots, though perhaps in so doing we allow her beauty, her grace and her rare accomplishments to influence us too strongly, for history cannot acquit her of grave error. Half French by birth and wholly French by education, she dazzled the brilliant court of which she became queen, when suddenly her gorgeous diadem vanished, and she was torn from her beloved France to be thrust upon stern and rugged Scotland. A foreigner to the land of her birth, she commenced a series of missteps, followed exultantly by her watchful rival on the English throne; and, at last, driven from her throne by her outraged subjects, she cast herself blindly upon Elizabeth's generosity. That generosity was Fotheringay."

This accessible, immensely readable biography of Maria Antoinette by John Abbott is part of the 'Makers of History' series, and is the best single-volume introduction to the life and times of the tragic queen, who was guillotined at the height of the French Revolution in 1793.

The book ""The Mother at Home or The Principles of Maternal Duty Familiarly Illustrated"" by John Abbott is a comprehensive guide for mothers on how to fulfill their maternal duties effectively. The book covers various aspects of motherhood, including the physical, intellectual, and moral development of children. It provides practical advice on how to create a nurturing environment at home, how to discipline children, and how to instill good values and virtues in them.The author emphasizes the importance of a mother's role in shaping the character and future of her children. He encourages mothers to be patient, loving, and positive in their interactions with their children. He also stresses the need for mothers to be knowledgeable about child psychology and development, and to use this knowledge to guide their parenting decisions.The book is written in a clear and accessible style, making it easy for readers to understand and apply the principles of maternal duty. It is also illustrated with stories and anecdotes that help to illustrate the author's points and make the book engaging and enjoyable to read.Overall, ""The Mother at Home or The Principles of Maternal Duty Familiarly Illustrated"" is an excellent resource for mothers who want to be the best possible parents to their children. It provides practical guidance, inspiration, and encouragement for mothers of all ages and backgrounds.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Miles Standish is a biography of the famous pilgrim.

It is a prominent object of this Kit Carson biography, Christopher Carson, to bring to light the wild adventures of the pioneers of this continent, in the solitudes of the mountains, the prairies and the forests; often amidst hostile Indians, and far away from the restraints and protection of civilization. This strange, weird-like life is rapidly passing away, before the progress of population, railroads and steamboats. But it is desirable that the memory of it should not drift into oblivion. Christopher Houston Carson (December 24, 1809 - May 23, 1868), better known as Kit Carson, was an American frontiersman. He was a mountain man (fur trapper), wilderness guide, Indian agent, and U.S. Army officer. Carson became a frontier legend in his own lifetime via biographies and news articles. Exaggerated versions of his exploits were the subject of dime novels. Carson left home in rural present-day Missouri at age 16 to become a mountain man and trapper in the West. In the 1830s, he accompanied Ewing Young on an expedition to Mexican California and joined fur trapping expeditions into the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married into the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes. In the 1840s, he was hired as a guide by John C. Fremont. Fremont's expedition covered much of California, Oregon, and the Great Basin area. Fremont mapped and wrote reports and commentaries on the Oregon Trail to assist and encourage westward-bound American pioneers. Carson achieved national fame through Fremont's accounts of his expeditions. Under Fremont's command, Carson participated in the uprising against Mexican rule in California at the beginning of the Mexican-American War. Later in the war, Carson was a scout and courier, celebrated for his rescue mission after the Battle of San Pasqual and for his coast-to-coast journey from California to Washington, DC to deliver news of the conflict in California to the U.S. government. In the 1850s, he was appointed as the Indian agent to the Ute Indians and the Jicarilla Apaches. During the American Civil War, Carson led a regiment of mostly Hispanic volunteers from New Mexico on the side of the Union at the Battle of Valverde in 1862. When the Confederate threat to New Mexico was eliminated, Carson led forces to suppress the Navajo, Mescalero Apache, and the Kiowa and Comanche Indians. Carson was breveted a Brigadier General and took command of Fort Garland, Colorado. He was there only briefly: poor health forced him to retire from military life. Carson was married three times and had ten children. The Carson home was in Taos, New Mexico. Carson died at Fort Lyon, Colorado, of an aortic aneurysm on May 23, 1868. He is buried in Taos, New Mexico, next to his third wife Josefa Jaramillo. In 1847, General William Tecumseh Sherman met Kit Carson in Monterey, California. Sherman wrote: "His fame was then at its height, ... and I was very anxious to see a man who had achieved such feats of daring among the wild animals of the Rocky Mountains, and still wilder Indians of the plains ... I cannot express my surprise at beholding such a small, stoop-shouldered man, with reddish hair, freckled face, soft blue eyes, and nothing to indicate extraordinary courage or daring. He spoke but little and answered questions in monosyllables." Colonel Edward W. Wynkoop wrote: "Kit Carson was five feet five and one half-inches tall, weighed about 140 pounds, of nervy, iron temperament, squarely built, slightly bow-legged, and those members apparently too short for his body. But, his head and face made up for all the imperfections of the rest of his person. His head was large and well-shaped with yellow straight hair, worn long, falling on his shoulders. His face was fair and smooth as a woman's with high cheekbones, straight nose, a mouth with a firm, but somewhat sad expression, a keen, deep-set but beautiful, mild blue eye, which could become terrible under some circumstances, and like the warning of the rattlesnake.

1932. It is not the object of this book to offer directly any analysis of animism or of the religion of the Prophet, still less to follow any of the many side tracks taken by Hindu philosophy, but primarily to record as many customs as possible before it is too late, and to attempt to show how far the concept of a supernatural cosmic power dominates popular practice. The reader will find few references to customs collected by other writers, and this is because the author could not but think that the circular questionnaire which has so often been the means of gathering information led to many errors.

Kit Carson is a succinct biography of the famous American frontiersman.