On two hundred and one days between May 1, 1245, and August 1, 1246, more than five thousand people from the Lauragais were questioned in Toulouse about the heresy of the good men and the good women (more commonly known as Catharism). Nobles and diviners, butchers and monks, concubines and physicians, blacksmiths and pregnant girls--in short, all men over fourteen and women over twelve--were summoned by Dominican inquisitors Bernart de Caux and Jean de Saint-Pierre. In the cloister of the Saint-Sernin abbey, before scribes and witnesses, they confessed whether they, or anyone else, had ever seen, heard, helped, or sought salvation through the heretics. This inquisition into heretical depravity was the single largest investigation, in the shortest time, in the entire European Middle Ages. Mark Gregory Pegg examines the sole surviving manuscript of this great inquisition with unprecedented care--often in unexpected ways--to build a richly textured understanding of social life in southern France in the early thirteenth century. He explores what the interrogations reveal about the individual and communal lives of those interrogated and how the interrogations themselves shaped villagers' perceptions of those lives. The Corruption of Angels, similar in breadth and scope to Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou, is a major contribution to the field. It shows how heretical and orthodox beliefs flourished side by side and, more broadly, what life was like in one particular time and place. Pegg's passionate and beautifully written evocation of a medieval world will fascinate a diverse readership within and beyond the academy.

A description of General Eisenhower's wartime command, focusing on the general, his staff, and his superiors in London and Washington and contrasting Allied and enemy command organizations.

Resistance is universal, but why does it occur, and fail or succeed? Resistance is often regarded in traditional management books as a problem to be overcome because it is seen as short-sighted or self-interested. Grint suggests, however, that resistance is not necessarily right or wrong. From resistance to the Roman Empire, to slavery, to the Nazis, to racism, to the state and capital, to patriarchy, and to imperialism, this book ranges across time and place to explain the success or failure of resistance. While many contemporary approaches focus on leadership as the explanatory variable, A Cartography of Resistance expands the approach to include management and command of resistance movements - and of their opponents. Many of the case studies explore the failures, as well as the successes, of resistance and the book suggests that even the failures reveal a fundamental truth about the human condition: just because the situation looks bleak for those suffering from oppression does not mean they surrendered meekly. Rather many seemed to adopt the same attitude that led Sisyphus to keep rolling the boulder up the hill: they were determined not to let their situation define or defeat them.

Three years, half a million miles of travel across the world, a huge number of first time visits, and a vast collection of new experiences and memories...This is the unique focus of Extraordinarily Rich Memories Of My First Time In....by Maurice Samuel. In it, he shares these personal experiences, that he wrote contemporaneously as emails to friends between 2007-2010. From playing the Pied Piper in Mumbai, swimming with sea lions in the Galapagos, being stopped by police on his way to Guantanamo, bathing at night in the Dead Sea, partying at Christmas in hyper-exclusive Mustique, horseback riding in the wilds of Cotopaxi volcano, whitewater rafting and zip-lining in Costa Rica, the ups and downs of Carnaval in Santa Cruz...and many, many more. Whilst the book’s focus is this period, he brings it up to date, with his more recent experiences from travels to places like Kazakhstan, where he is constantly asked for selfies, his struggles to leave Uzbekistan, and taking a two week cruise through South East Asia without knowing where it’s going from day to day. The book is richly illustrated with his personal photographs and videos.

In a mystery that ranks with the best of Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie, shots are fired at a policeman aboard an aircraft on which a murder has already occurred. Will the officer survive, and will anyone emerge from the now-plummeting plane? With its intricate plot and "locked room" scenario, this masterpiece of detective fiction was hailed by The New York Times as "a very thrilling story."