The son of a Yorkshire coal miner seeks a new life with the British Army in the second novel of this historical family saga. Born and raised in Yorkshire, England, Probyn Kilmaster wants more out of life than to follow his father down the pit. He has always admired his convention-defying Aunt Kit and, inspired by her, runs away to join the army. Though he is eager to see the world, war is brewing in South Africa, and his first foreign posting is unlike anything he could imagine. Stationed abroad, Probyn meets an older woman who persuades him to have an unofficial wedding ceremony. But in the aftermath of the whirlwind, he soon yearns for escape. Narrowly avoiding court martial, Probyn returns to England where he hopes to make peace with his family and settle down. Yet even after finding a wife, his happiness is threatened by mistakes from his past . . .

In this lively and detailed study, Beth Severy examines the relationship between the emergence of the Roman Empire and the status and role of this family in Roman society. The family is placed within the social and historical context of the transition from republic to empire, from Augustus' rise to sole power into the early reign of his successor Tiberius. Augustus and the Family at the Birth of the Roman Empire is an outstanding example of how, if we examine "private" issues such as those of family and gender, we gain a greater understanding of "public" concerns such as politics, religion and history. Discussing evidence from sculpture to cults and from monuments to military history, the book pursues the changing lines between public and private, family and state that gave shape to the Roman imperial system.

Family values in the Roman empire centered on an all-powerful father-owner-master of each household and of the empire itself. Many imperial subjects, including early Christians, resisted this form of family. Elliott's review of first-century struggles

Partners of the Empire offers a radical rethinking of the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Over this unstable period, the Ottoman Empire faced political crises, institutional shakeups, and popular insurrections. It responded through various reform options and settlements. New institutional configurations emerged; constitutional texts were codified—and annulled. The empire became a political theater where different actors struggled, collaborated, and competed on conflicting agendas and opposing interests. This book takes a holistic look at the era, interested not simply in central reforms or in regional developments, but in their interactions. Drawing on original archival sources, Ali Yaycioglu uncovers the patterns of political action—the making and unmaking of coalitions, forms of building and losing power, and expressions of public opinion. Countering common assumptions, he shows that the Ottoman transformation in the Age of Revolutions was not a linear transition from the old order to the new, from decentralized state to centralized, from Eastern to Western institutions, or from pre-modern to modern. Rather, it was a condensed period of transformation that counted many crossing paths, as well as dead-ends, all of which offered a rich repertoire of governing possibilities to be followed, reinterpreted, or ultimately forgotten.