George Armstrong Custer, one of the most familiar figures of nineteenth-century American history, is known almost exclusively as a soldier, his brilliant military career culminating in catastrophe at Little Bighorn. But Custer, author James E. Mueller suggests, had the soul of an artist, not of a soldier. Ambitious Honor elaborates this radically new perspective, arguing that an artistic passion for creativity and recognition drove Custer to success—and, ultimately, to the failure that has overshadowed his notable achievements. Custer's ambition is well known and played itself out on the battlefield and in his persistent quest for recognition. What Ambitious Honor provides is the context for understanding how Custer's theatrical personality took shape and thrived, beginning with his training at a teaching college before he entered West Point. Teaching, Mueller notes, requires creativity and performance, both of which fascinated and served Custer throughout his life—in his military leadership, his politics, and even his attention-getting, self-designed uniforms. But Custer's artistic personality emerges most clearly in his writing career, where he displayed a talent for what we now call literary journalism. Ambitious Honor offers a close look at Custer's work as a best-selling author right up to the time of his death, when he was writing another book and planning a speaking tour after the 1876 campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne. Custer's fate at Little Bighorn was so dramatic that it sealed his place in the national story—and obscured, Mueller contends, the more interesting facets of his true nature. Ambitious Honor shows us Custer anew, as an artist thrust into the military because of the times in which he lived. This nuanced portrait, for the first time delineating his sense of image, whether as creator or consumer, forever alters Custer's own image in our view.

Murder, street brawls, marital squabbles, infidelity, official corruption, public insults, and rebellion are just a few of the social layers Reuben Zahler investigates as he studies the dramatic shifts in Venezuela as it transformed from a Spanish colony to a modern republic. His book Ambitious Rebels illuminates the enormous changes in honor, law, and political culture that occurred and how ordinary men and women promoted or rejected those changes. In a highly engaging style, Zahler examines gender and class against the backdrop of Venezuelan institutions and culture during the late colonial period through post-independence (known as the “middle period”). His fine-grained analysis shows that liberal ideals permeated the elite and popular classes to a substantial degree while Venezuelan institutions enjoyed impressive levels of success. Showing remarkable ambition, Venezuela’s leaders aspired to transform a colony that adhered to the king, the church, and tradition into a liberal republic with minimal state intervention, a capitalistic economy, freedom of expression and religion, and an elected, representative government. Subtle but surprisingly profound changes of a liberal nature occurred, as evidenced by evolving standards of honor, appropriate gender roles, class and race relations, official conduct, courtroom evidence, press coverage, economic behavior, and church-state relations. This analysis of the philosophy of the elites and the daily lives of common men and women reveals in particular the unwritten, unofficial norms that lacked legal sanction but still greatly affected political structures. Relying on extensive archival resources, Zahler focuses on Venezuela but provides a broader perspective on Latin American history. His examination provides a comprehensive look at intellectual exchange across the Atlantic, comparative conditions throughout the Americas, and the tension between traditional norms and new liberal standards in a postcolonial society.

A friend of Shakespeare, the Elizabethan poet Michael Drayton produced a prolific body of works of innovative metres and forms. The Delphi Poets Series offers readers the works of literature's finest poets, with superior formatting. This volume presents Drayton’s collected works, with beautiful illustrations and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Drayton's life and works * Concise introduction to the life and poetry of Drayton * Images of how the poetry books were first printed, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts * Excellent formatting of the poems * Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the poetry * Easily locate the poems you want to read * Includes many rare poems available in no other collection * Also includes Drayton’s only extant drama, SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE * Features a bonus biography - discover Drayton's Elizabethan world * Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles CONTENTS: The Life and Poetry of Michael Drayton BRIEF INTRODUCTION: MICHAEL DRAYTON The Poetry Collections THE HARMONY OF THE CHURCH IDEA, THE SHEPHERD’S GARLAND THE LEGEND OF PIERS GAVESTON IDEA’S MIRROR MATILDA ENDIMION AND PHOEBE MORTIMERIADOS THE LEGEND OF ROBERT, DUKE OF NORMANDY ENGLAND’S HEROICAL EPISTLES THE BARONS’ WARS IN THE REIGN OF EDWARD II TO THE MAIESTIE OF KING JAMES THE OWL A PAEAN TRIUMPHALL THE MAN IN THE MOON BALLAD OF AGINCOURT POLY-OLBION IDEA, 1619 THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT NIMPHIDIA, THE COURT OF FAERY THE QUEST OF CINTHIA THE SHEPHERD’S SIRENA ELEGIES UPON SUNDRY OCCASIONS THE MOON CALF MOSES’ BIRTH AND MIRACLES THE MUSES’ ELIZIUM DAVID AND GOLIAH THE SHORTER POEMS The Poems LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER The Play SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE The Biography MICHAEL DRAYTON by Cyril Brett Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles