The war on the Iberian peninsula, waged from 1807 until 1814, pitted British forces against those of Napoleon, and also involved troops from Spain and Portugal, as well as a large number of soldiers from other countries.

Despite the many celebrated victories of the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars, the role of the Royal Navy should never be overlooked. The 'wooden walls' formed the country's first and most important line of defence, and ranged throughout the world to protect Britain's trade-routes and in support of the land forces and overseas possessions. This book covers the huge variations in uniforms not just in the Navy but the Royal Marines and Infantry regiments which served alongside naval crews. It also looks at the organisation, training and recruitment of the force and corrects a number of misconceptions regarding impressment and training.

The story of America is a story of dreamers and defaulters. It is also a story of dramatic financial panics that defined the nation, created its political parties, and forced tens of thousands to escape their creditors to new towns in Texas, Florida, and California. As far back as 1792, these panics boiled down to one simple question: Would Americans pay their debts—or were we just a nation of deadbeats? From the merchant William Duer’s attempts to speculate on post–Revolutionary War debt, to an ill-conceived 1815 plan to sell English coats to Americans on credit, to the debt-fueled railroad expansion that precipitated the Panic of 1857, Scott Reynolds Nelson offers a crash course in America’s worst financial disasters—and a concise explanation of the first principles that caused them all. Nelson shows how consumer debt, both at the highest levels of finance and in the everyday lives of citizens, has time and again left us unable to make good. The problem always starts with the chain of banks, brokers, moneylenders, and insurance companies that separate borrowers and lenders. At a certain point lenders cannot tell good loans from bad—and when chits are called in, lenders frantically try to unload the debts, hide from their own creditors, go into bankruptcy, and lobby state and federal institutions for relief. With a historian’s keen observations and a storyteller’s nose for character and incident, Nelson captures the entire sweep of America’s financial history in all its utter irrationality: national banks funded by smugglers; fistfights in Congress over the gold standard; and presidential campaigns forged in stinging controversies on the subject of private debt. A Nation of Deadbeats is a fresh, irreverent look at Americans’ addiction to debt and how it has made us what we are today.

In 1993 The Macmillan Publishing Company set the Napoleonic enthusiast community alight when it produced the major two volume work, Napoleonic Uniforms by John R. Elting, featuring the superb works of the famous illustrator Herbert Knötel. Now, in an unprecedented transatlantic co-operation, Greenhill Books in London and Casemate Publishing in the USA are together bringing these books back into print after some 14 years. This new edition, as before, is sold as a two volume set. In addition, the new edition is presented in a cloth bound slipcase. Pagination and an index have been added, significantly enhancing its reference value. Napoleonic Uniforms is the only reference work of its kind to depict accurately the entire Grande Armée in detail. It portrays the French armies as seen by their contemporaries, and combines authoritative text with lavish illustrations, enabling the reader to experience the spectacle first hand. Napoleonic Uniforms also depicts the various types of soldiers within the various regiments of the Grande Armée - officers, sergeants, color-bearers, bandsmen, drummers and trumpeters, privates and surgeons. In addition the volumes contain material on lesser-known formations such as the Army of Egypt (1798 - 1801), the pre-Revolutionary French Army, and Napoleon's police and internal security organizations. Nine hundred and eighteen original watercolors by Herbert Knötel, an internationally acclaimed authority on military uniforms, with a special talent for depicting men and horses in action, bring the nineteenth-century French soldier to life. Together with the late Colonel John R. Elting's definitive captions, they preserve a significant aspect of this famous era for historians, researchers, teachers, students, model makers, "uniformologists", and the general reader interested in this historical period.