"The superliners of the Gilded Age so eclipsed their predecessors in size, splendor, and speed that they remain potent symbols of elegance, arrogance, and industrial might nearly a century after the last ones were built. They carried a flood of immigrants to America even as they reflected and magnified the frightening forces that were pushing Europe blindly into World War I. In a crowning irony, Germany's prize liners were used against her to carry American doughboys to the trenches of Europe." "Seize the Trident is a parable of imperial ambitions and ultimate tragedy set against the ostentatious backdrop of the Edwardian age, when dreams had no limits and the only standard of supremacy was excess."--BOOK JACKET.

Transatlantic Broadway traces the infrastructural networks and technological advances that supported the globalization of popular entertainment in the pre-World War I period, with a specific focus on the production and performance of Broadway as physical space, dream factory, and glorious machine.

Steamship Nationalism is a cultural, social, and political history of the S.S. Imperator, Vaterland, and Bismarck. Transatlantic passenger steamships launched by the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Aktien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG) between 1912 and 1914, they do not enjoy the international fame of their British counterparts, most notably the Titanic. Yet the Imperator-class liners were the largest, most luxurious passenger vessels built before the First World War. In keeping with the often-overlooked history of its merchant marine as a whole, they reveal much about Imperial Germany in its national and international dimensions. As products of business decisions shaped by global dynamics and the imperatives of international travel, immigration, and trade, HAPAG’s giant liners bear witness to Germany’s involvement in the processes of globalization prior to 1914. Yet this book focuses not on their physical, but on their cultural construction in a variety of contemporaneous media, including the press and advertising, on both sides of the Atlantic. At home, they were presented to the public as symbolic of the nation’s achievements and ambitions in ways that emphasize the complex nature of German national identity at the time. Abroad, they were often construed as floating national monuments and, as such, facilitated important encounters with Germany, both virtual and real, for the populations of Britain and America. Their overseas reception highlights the multi-faceted image of the European superpower that was constructed in the Anglo-American world in these years. More generally, it is a pointed indicator of the complex relationship between Britain, the United States, and Imperial Germany.

Predentia is set to show the realm they are undefeated with the upcoming splendor of the chariot races. A restless King Horton is keen to forge an alliance with the new king of Vallandria by tempting him with the offer of marriage to one of his daughters. Demelda, the youngest princess, nervously awaits her fate. Will she be chosen to marry the mysterious new ruler that may not be all he seems? ​ Meanwhile, having been imprisoned for his new found abilities, Kavic desperately tries to break free to rescue the princess from all those who seek to use her. With the help of an unlikely source, he races against time to save her from a lifetime of misery married to a tyrant. ​ With the impending prophecies hanging on everyone's lips, the rulers of Cassadon desperately search for the only thing that can keep their iron grip on their thrones: the highly coveted golden trident that possesses the power of the sea. Can Demelda and Kavic acquire the sacred merfolk sceptre before the human rulers can abuse its power? As the battle reaches the high seas, no one is safe in the scramble for ultimate dominion.

On the eve of the war in August 1914, Great Britain and Germany possessed the two greatest navies the world had ever seen: two fleets of dreadnoughts – gigantic 'castles of steel' able to hurl massive shells at an enemy miles away – were ready to test their terrible power against each other. They skirmished across the globe before Germany, suffocated by an implacable naval blockade, decided to definitively strike against the British ring of steel. The result was Jutland, a titanic clash of fifty-eight dreadnoughts, each holding of a thousand men. When the German High Seas Fleet retreated, the Kaiser unleashed unrestricted U-boat warfare, which, in its indiscriminate violence, brought a reluctant America into the war: the German effort to "seize the trident" led to the fall of the German empire. Massie's portrayals of Winston Churchill, the British admirals Fisher, Jellicoe, and Beatty, and the Germans Scheer, Hipper, and Tirpitz are stunning in their veracity and artistry.