This biography of Britain’s spy chief during the Revolutionary War sheds new light on his conspiracy with Benedict Arnold—and his mysterious capture. John André was head of the British Army’s Secret Service in North America as the Revolutionary War entered its most decisive phase. In 1780, he masterminded the defection of the high-ranking American general Benedict Arnold. As the commander of West Point, Arnold agreed to turn the strategically vital fort over to the British. André and Arnold also conspired to kidnap George Washington. The secret negotiations between Arnold and André were protracted and fraught with danger. Arnold’s wife Peggy acted as go-between until September 21st, 1780, when the two men met face to face in no-man’s-land. But then André was captured forty-eight hours later, having broken every condition set by his commanding officer: he was within American lines, wearing civilian clothes, and carrying maps of West Point in his boots. When he announced himself as a spy, the Americans had no recourse. Tried by a military tribunal, he was convicted and hanged. André’s motives for his apparent sacrifice have baffled historians for generations. This biography provides a provocative answer to this mystery—explaining not only why he acted as he did, but how he wished others to see his actions.

Studies the book trade during the age of Fergusson and BurnsOver 40 leading scholars come together in this volume to scrutinise the development and impact of printing, binding, bookselling, libraries, textbooks, distribution and international trade, copyright, piracy, literacy, music publication, women readers, children's books and cookery books.The 18th century saw Scotland become a global leader in publishing, both through landmark challenges to the early copyright legislation and through the development of intricate overseas markets that extended across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Scots in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Dublin and Philadelphia amassed fortunes while bringing to international markets classics in medicine and economics by Scottish authors, as well as such enduring works of reference as the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Entrepreneurship and a vigorous sense of nationalism brought Scotland from financial destitution at the time of the 1707 Union to extraordinary wealth by the 1790s. Publishing was one of the country's elite new industries.

The Military Enlightenment brings to light a radically new narrative both on the Enlightenment and the French armed forces from Louis XIV to Napoleon. Christy Pichichero makes a striking discovery: the Geneva Conventions, post-traumatic stress disorder, the military "band of brothers," and soldierly heroism all found their antecedents in the eighteenth-century French armed forces. Readers of The Military Enlightenment will be startled to learn of the many ways in which French military officers, administrators, and medical personnel advanced ideas of human and political rights, military psychology, and social justice.

DIVEnlightenment’s Frontier is the first book to investigate the environmental roots of the Scottish Enlightenment. What was the place of the natural world in Adam Smith’s famous defense of free trade? Fredrik Albritton Jonsson recovers the forgotten networks of improvers and natural historians that sought to transform the soil, plants, and climate of Scotland in the eighteenth century. The Highlands offered a vast outdoor laboratory for rival liberal and conservative views of nature and society. But when the improvement schemes foundered toward the end of the century, northern Scotland instead became a crucible for anxieties about overpopulation, resource exhaustion, and the physical limits to economic growth. In this way, the rise and fall of the Enlightenment in the Highlands sheds new light on the origins of environmentalism./div