Bad Queen Bess? analyses the back and forth between the Elizabethan regime and various Catholic critics, who, from the early 1570s to the early 1590s, sought to characterise that regime as a conspiracy of evil counsel. Through a genre novel - the libellous secret history - to English political discourse, various (usually anonymous) Catholic authors claimed to reveal to the public what was 'really happening' behind the curtain of official lies and disinformation with which the clique of evil counsellors at the heart of the Elizabethan state habitually cloaked their sinister manoeuvres. Elements within the regime, centred on William Cecil and his circle, replied to these assaults with their own species of plot talk and libellous secret history, specialising in conspiracy-driven accounts of the Catholic, Marian, and then, latterly, Spanish threats. Peter Lake presents a series of (mutually constitutive) moves and counter moves, in the course of which the regime's claims to represent a form of public political virtue, to speak for the commonweal and true religion, elicited from certain Catholic critics a simply inverted rhetoric of private political vice, persecution, and tyranny. The resulting exchanges are read not only as a species of 'political thought', but as a way of thinking about politics as process and of distinguishing between 'politics' and 'religion'. They are also analysed as modes of political communication and pitch-making - involving print, circulating manuscripts, performance, and rumour - and thus as constitutive of an emergent mode of 'public politics' and perhaps of a 'post reformation public sphere'. While the focus is primarily English, the origins and imbrication of these texts within, and their direct address to, wider European events and audiences is always present. The aim is thus to contribute simultaneously to the political, cultural, intellectual, and religious histories of the period.

Explores the role of plot talk, conspiracy theory, and libellous secret history during the Elizabethan regime, analyzing the back and forth between Catholic critics and William Cecil and his circle, and the effect this had on the political, cultural, intellectual, and religious history of the time, both in England, and in a wider European context.

Here is the brief but intense life of Bessie Coleman, America's first African American woman aviator. Born in 1892 in Atlanta, Texas, she became known as “Queen Bess,” a barnstormer and flying-circus performer who defied the strictures of race, sex, and society in pursuit of a dream.

This volume brings together cutting-edge research by some of the most innovative scholars of early modern Britain. Inspired in part by recent studies of the early modern ‘public sphere’, the twelve chapters collected here reveal an array of political and religious practices that can serve as a foundation for new narratives of the period. The practices considered range from deliberation and inscription to publication and profanity. The narratives under construction range from secularisation to the rise of majority rule. Many of the authors also examine ways British developments were affected by and in turn influenced the world outside of Britain. These chapter will be essential reading for students of early modern Britain, early modern Europe and the Atlantic World. They will also appeal to those interested in the religious and political history of other regions and periods.

America’s news media are relentlessly criticized as too negative, sensationalistic, profit-oriented, and biased, not to mention unpatriotic and a miserable failure at reflecting the nation’s diversity. Rodger Streitmatter makes clear that although much of the criticism is deserved, it obscures the fact that news outlets have also made—and continue to make—many positive contributions to the country’s well-being. A Force for Good: How the American News Media Have Propelled Positive Change offers a compelling account of the Fourth Estate’s efforts to improve U.S. society. Whether documenting the appalling conditions in mental institutions, exposing financial shenanigans and sex-abuse scandals, or championing an obscure pill as a form of contraception, Streitmatter argues, print and broadcast journalists have propelled significant social topics onto the public agenda and helped build support for change. This text draws on both historical and contemporary examples from a wide range of social contexts; the result is a fascinating tour of American history, social change, and the benefits of a robust media.

This book is a landmark study of Shakespeare’s politics as revealed in his later History Plays. It offers the first ever survey of anti-monarchism in Western literature, history and philosophy, tracked from Hesiod and Homer through to contemporaries of Shakespeare such as George Buchanan and the authors of the Mirror for Magistrates, thus demonstrating that anxiety over monarchic power, and contemptuous demolitions of kingship as a disastrously irrational institution, formed an important and irremovable body of reflection in prestigious Western writing. Overturning the widespread assumption that "Elizabethans believed in divine right monarchy", it exposits the anti-monarchic critique built into Shakespeare’s Histories and Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris, in five chapters of close literary critical readings, paying innovative attention to performance values. Part Two focuses Queen Elizabeth’s principal challenger for national rule: the Earl of Essex, England’s most popular man. It demonstrates from detailed readings that, far from being an admirer of the war-crazed, unstable, bi-polar Essex, as is regularly asserted, Shakespeare launched in Richard II and Henry IV a campaign to puncture the reputation of the great earl, exposing him as a Machiavel seeking Elizabeth’s throne. Shakespeare emerges as a humane and clear-sighted critic of the follies intrinsic to dynastic monarchy: yet hostile, likewise, to the rash militarist, Essex, who would fling England into permanent war against Spain. Founded on an unprecedented and wide-ranging study of anti-monarchist thought, this book presents a significant contribution to Shakespeare and Marlowe criticism, studies of Tudor England, and the history of ideas.