- Table View
- List View
Joachim Prinz, Rebellious Rabbi: An Autobiography--the German and Early American Years
by Michael A. MeyerJoachim Prinz (1902-1988) was one of the most extraordinary and innovative figures in modern Jewish history. Never one for conformity, Prinz developed and modeled a new rabbinical role that set him apart from his colleagues in Weimar Germany. Provocative, strikingly informal and determinedly anti-establishment, he repeatedly stirred up controversy. During the Hitler years, Prinz strove to preserve the self-respect and dignity of a Jewish community that was vilified on a daily basis by Nazi propaganda. After immigrating to the United States in 1937, he soon became a prominent rabbi in New Jersey, drawing thousands to his unpredictable sermons. Prinz's autobiography, superbly introduced and annotated by Michael A. Meyer, offers a fascinating glimpse into the life and personality of this unconventional and influential rabbi.
Joan: The stunning new feminist reimagining of Joan of Arc for 2022
by Katherine J. ChenA stunning feminist reimagining of the life of Joan of Arc - perfect for fans of Cecily, Ariadne and MatrixGirl. Warrior. Heretic. Saint?France is mired in a losing war against England. Its people are starving. Its king is in hiding. And out of the chaos, an unlikely heroine is emerging.Reckless, steel-willed and brilliant, Joan has survived a childhood steeped in both joy and violence to claim an extraordinary - and fragile - position at the head of the French army. The battlefield and the royal court are full of dangers alike, and Joan finds herself under suspicion from all sides - as well as under threat from her own ambition.With unforgettably vivid characters and propulsive storytelling, Joan is a thrilling epic, a triumph of historical fiction, as well as a feminist celebration of one remarkable - and remarkably real - woman who left an indelible mark on history.PRAISE FOR JOAN'It is as if the author has crept inside a statue and breathed a soul into it, re-creating Joan of Arc as a woman for our time' Hilary Mantel, twice Booker Prize-winning author of The Mirror & the Light'A glorious, sweeping novel . . . Richly imagined, poignant and inspiring' Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne'Measured, austere, profoundly physical. I loved it' Jo Baker, author of Longbourn'In Katherine J. Chen's capable hands, Joan becomes fully flesh and achingly real' Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Friends 'An epic novel with the mythic power of a fairytale' Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train and The Exiles'When you look up the term 'historical fiction' in the dictionary it should say, simply, Read Katherine J. Chen' Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author of The Kaiser's Web 'A wholly original novel that inspires one's mind and awakens one's soul. With Joan, Katherine J. Chen has created nothing short of a masterpiece' Alyson Richman, USA Today and internationally bestselling author of The Lost Wife 'Beautifully written and confidently told, this is a story of how feminine strength and will can change the world' Megan Chance, bestselling author of A Splendid Ruin'This Joan is of the earth - scrappy and strong, resilient and curious. An ambitious, thrilling novel' Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Magnolia Palace 'Katherine J. Chen has stunningly summoned another time and place' M.J. Rose, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Tiara 'Visceral and piercing - I was blown away' Allison Pataki, New York Times bestselling author of The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post 'Every era has a need to recast the French maiden warrior in a manner that renews her relevance. In Chen's transporting prose, you will meet a towering new Joan of Arc, one of amazing physical strength, kindness, loyalty, and endurance' Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab's Wife, Four Spirits, and Abundance(P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
Joan: The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint
by Donald Spoto“A fresh and definitive biography in the context of Joan of Arc’s times.” — International Herald Tribune“Donald Spoto is one of the best biographers in the world today. “ — Acclaimed biographer Mary S. Lovell, author of the national bestselling The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family“A magnificent introduction to one of the most misunderstood and controversial of all the saints.” — James Martin, SJ, editor of America Magazine, author of My Life With the Saints“A worthy contribution to a renewed understanding of a figure who still speaks to today’s realities.” — Library Journal“[An] engaging, and at times gripping, biography.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)“I have never read a biography that affected me so deeply as a Catholic or as a woman.” — Sr. Joan Chittister, author of Called to Question and columnist for The National Catholic Reporter“Thought provoking and very readable… Joan’s story is significant and should be retold….” — United Press International“…a lively, accessible book …with a cogent discussion of faith, mystery and early church politics.” — Washington Times“[Spoto] approaches his subject with the sophistication of a historian and the admiration of a true believer.” — Washington Post“Spoto is a surprisingly apt biographer for [Joan] ….” — Slate“Spoto’s new biography is like bringing reality TV into a 15th century courtroom . . .a stunning miscarriage of justice.” — Denver Post
Joan, Lady of Wales: Power & Politics of King John's Daughter
by Danna R. MesserThe first account of the life of the illegitimate daughter of King John of England and wife of Llwelyn the Great of Gwynedd.The history of women in medieval Wales before the English conquest of 1282 is one largely shrouded in mystery. For the Age of Princes, an era defined by ever-increased threats of foreign hegemony, internal dynastic strife and constant warfare, the comings and goings of women are little noted in sources. This misfortune touches even the most well-known royal woman of the time, Joan of England (d. 1237), the wife of Llywelyn the Great of Gwynedd, illegitimate daughter of King John and half-sister to Henry III. With evidence of her hand in thwarting a full scale English invasion of Wales to a notorious scandal that ended with the public execution of her supposed lover by her husband and her own imprisonment, Joan’s is a known, but little-told or understood story defined by family turmoil, divided loyalties and political intrigue.From the time her hand was promised in marriage as the result of the first Welsh-English alliance in 1201 to the end of her life, Joan’s place in the political wranglings between England and the Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd was a fundamental one. As the first woman to be designated Lady of Wales, her role as one a political diplomat in early thirteenth-century Anglo-Welsh relations was instrumental. This first-ever account of Siwan, as she was known to the Welsh, interweaves the details of her life and relationships with a gendered re-assessment of Anglo-Welsh politics by highlighting her involvement in affairs, discussing events in which she may well have been involved but have gone unrecorded and her overall deployment of royal female agency.Praise for Joan, Lady of Wales“A seminal, original, and ground-breaking work of simply outstanding scholarship.” —Midwest Book Review
Joan Littlewood (Routledge Performance Practitioners)
by Nadine HoldsworthThis book uses original archival material to consider the theatrical and cultural innovations of Joan Littlewood and her company, 'Theatre Workshop'. Littlewood had a huge impact on the way theatre was generated, rehearsed and presented during the twentieth century. Now reissued, Joan Littlewood is the first book to combine: an overview of Littlewood's career in relation to the wider social, political and cultural context an exploration of Littlewood's theatrical influences, approach to actor's training, belief in the creative ensemble, attitude to text, rehearsal methods and use of improvisation a detailed case study of the origins, research, creative process and thinking behind Littlewood's most famous production, Oh What a Lovely War, and an assessment of its impact a series of practical exercises designed to capture and illustrate the key approaches Littlewood used in the rehearsal room. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performace Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today's student.
Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter
by Patricia Albers"Gee, Joan, if only you were French and male and dead." --New York art dealer to Joan Mitchell, the 1950s. She was a steel heiress from the Midwest--Chicago and Lake Forest (her grandfather built Chicago's bridges and worked for Andrew Carnegie). She was a daughter of the American Revolution--Anglo-Saxon, Republican, Episcopalian. She was tough, disciplined, courageous, dazzling, and went up against the masculine art world at its most entrenched, made her way in it, and disproved their notion that women couldn't paint.Joan Mitchell is the first full-scale biography of the abstract expressionist painter who came of age in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s; a portrait of an outrageous artist and her struggling artist world, painters making their way in the second part of America's twentieth century. As a young girl she was a champion figure skater, and though she lacked balance and coordination, accomplished one athletic triumph after another, until giving up competitive skating to become a painter. Mitchell saw people and things in color; color and emotion were the same to her. She said, "I use the past to make my pic[tures] and I want all of it and even you and me in candlelight on the train and every 'lover' I've ever had--every friend--nothing closed out. It's all part of me and I want to confront it and sleep with it--the dreams--and paint it."Her work had an unerring sense of formal rectitude, daring, and discipline, as well as delicacy, grace, and awkwardness.Mitchell exuded a young, smoky, tough glamour and was thought of as "sexy as hell." Albers writes about how Mitchell married her girlhood pal, Barnet Rosset, Jr.--scion of a financier who was head of Chicago's Metropolitan Trust and partner of Jimmy Roosevelt. Rosset went on to buy Grove Press in 1951, at Mitchell's urging, and to publish Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, et al., making Grove into the great avant-garde publishing house of its time. Mitchell's life was messy and reckless: in New York and East Hampton carousing with de Kooning, Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler, Jane Freilicher, Franz Kline, Helen Frankenthaler, and others; going to clambakes, cocktail parties, softball games--and living an entirely different existence in Paris and Vétheuil.Mitchell's inner life embraced a world beyond her own craft, especially literature . . . her compositions were informed by imagined landscapes or feelings about places. In Joan Mitchell, Patricia Albers brilliantly reconstructs the painter's large and impassioned life: her growing prominence as an artist; her marriage and affairs; her friendships with poets and painters; her extraordinary work. Joan Mitchell re-creates the times, the people, and her worlds from the 1920s through the 1990s and brings it all spectacularly to life.
Joan Myers Brown & The Audacious Hope Of The Black Ballerina
by Robert Farris Thompson Ananya ChatterjeaFounder of the Philadelphia Dance Company (PHILADANCO) and the Philadelphia School of Dance Arts, Joan Myers Brown's personal and professional histories reflect the hardships as well as the advances of African-Americans in the artistic and social developments of the second half of the twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries.
Joan: A Novel of Joan of Arc
by Katherine J. Chen&“It is as if Chen has crept inside a statue and breathed a soul into it, re-creating Joan of Arc as a woman for our time.&”—Hilary Mantel, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Booker Prize winner Wolf HallGirl. Warrior. Heretic. Saint? From the acclaimed author of Mary B comes a stunning, secular reimagining of the epic life of Joan of Arc. 1412. France is mired in a losing war against England. Its people are starving. Its king is in hiding. From this chaos emerges a teenage girl who will turn the tide of battle and lead the French to victory, becoming an unlikely hero whose name will echo across the centuries. In Katherine J. Chen&’s hands, the myth and legend of Joan of Arc is transformed into a flesh-and-blood young woman: reckless, steel-willed, and brilliant. This meticulously researched novel is a sweeping narrative of her life, from a childhood steeped in both joy and violence, to her meteoric rise to fame at the head of the French army, where she navigates the perils of the battlefield and the equally treacherous politics of the royal court. Many are threatened by a woman who leads, and Joan draws wrath and suspicion from all corners, while her first taste of fame and glory leaves her vulnerable to her own powerful ambition. With unforgettably vivid characters, transporting settings, and action-packed storytelling, Joan is a thrilling epic, a triumph of historical fiction, as well as a feminist celebration of one remarkable—and remarkably real—woman who left an indelible mark on history.
Joan of Arc
by Helen CastorThe acclaimed historian Helen Castor--bestselling author and BBC broadcaster of She-Wolves, the story of England's queens before Elizabeth I--returns with the incredible story of Joan of Arc, as only a biographer of Castor's enormous talents can tell it.Helen Castor brings us afresh a gripping life of Joan of Arc. Instead of the icon, she gives us a living, breathing young woman, a roaring girl fighting the English and taking sides in a bloody civil war that was tearing apart fifteenth-century France.Here is a portrait of a nineteen-year-old peasant who hears voices from God; a teenager transformed into a warrior, leading an army to victory in an age that believed women should not fight. And it is also the story behind the myth we all know, a myth that began to take hold at her trial: that of the Maid of Orleans, the savior of France, a young woman burned at the stake as a heretic, a woman who, five hundred years later, would be declared a saint.Joan and her world are brought vividly to life in this startling new take on the medieval world.Castor brings us to the heart of the action, to a woman and a country in turmoil, a world where no one, not Joan herself or the people around her--princes, bishops, soldiers, or peasants--knew what would happen next.Adding complexity, depth, and fresh insight into Joan's life, showing her confronting the challenges of faith and doubt in a superstitious age, Castor's Joan of Arc is a rich history and biography that allows us to better understand this remarkable woman and her world.
Joan of Arc
by Shana CoreySensitively and dramatically told, this book brings the story of Joan of Arc to life, from her simple childhood to her tragic end.
Joan of Arc
by Mary GordonJoan of Arc was born in 1412 and grew up during a time of invasion and civil war. At thirteen, she began to hear the voices of saints and followed their directives, believing they were sent to her by God. At seventeen, she rode into battle to rescue France from English domination in the Hundred Years War and in 1431, aged only nineteen, she was put on trial for heresy and sorcery by an ecclesiastical court of the Inquisition, and burned at the stake. Joan radiated with deep piety, self-assurance, decisiveness, and shrewd intelligence as her responses to hostile questioning preserved in the records of the rigged trial demonstrate. In this glittering portrait of the illiterate peasant girl who became the saviour of France, Joan of Arc's energy, spirit and her heroism as the first to die for a Christian-inspired idea of nationalism, are beautifully portrayed.
Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured
by Kathryn HarrisonThe profoundly inspiring and fully documented saga of Joan of Arc, the young peasant girl whose "voices" moved her to rally the French nation and a reluctant king against British invaders in 1428, has fascinated artistic figures as diverse as William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Voltaire, George Bernard Shaw, Bertolt Brecht, Carl Dreyer, and Robert Bresson. Was she a divinely inspired saint? A schizophrenic? A demonically possessed heretic, as her persecutors and captors tried to prove?Every era must retell and reimagine the Maid of Orleans's extraordinary story in its own way, and in Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured, the superb novelist and memoirist Kathryn Harrison gives us a Joan for our time--a shining exemplar of unshakable faith, extraordinary courage, and self-confidence during a brutally rigged ecclesiastical inquisition and in the face of her death by burning. Deftly weaving historical fact, myth, folklore, artistic representations, and centuries of scholarly and critical interpretation into a compelling narrative, she restores Joan of Arc to her rightful position as one of the greatest heroines in all of human history.
Joan of Arc: The Lily Maid
by Margaret Hodges Robert RayevskyA fifteenth-century peasant girl leads a French army to victory. A biography of the fifteenth-century peasant girl who led a French army to victory against the English, witnessed the crowning of King Charles VII, and was later burned at the stake for witchcraft. In the last two years several books have appeared about Joan of Arc. In this one, the story is kept simple with brief comments about the political situation in France and the long standing war with England. The dispirited and defeated French are rallied by Joan, The Lily Maid, who truly believes that God has placed her on earth to save her beloved country. She leads the troops to victory, attends King Charles VII's coronation, is captured by the British and tired as a witch, found guilty and burned at the stake.
Joan of Arc
by Kathleen V. KudlinskiThe story of Joan, a young farm girl who became a Christian martyr after she heard voices encouraging her to secure the throne of France for its rightful heir.
Joan of Arc
by Nancy W. RossIn the early 15th century, France was in turmoil. The country had been at war for years, and it had no king. Out of the chaos came Joan of Arc. No one knows how Joan, a poor farm girl, was able to command armies and win battles, but she did all that and more. Some called Joan a heroine. Others called her a witch. But with her determination and unwavering faith, she would go down in history as Saint Joan of Arc.
Joan of Arc: In Her Own Words
by Willard Trask Joan Of ArcThe only available source for the exact words of Joan of Arc, compiled from the transcript of her trials and rearranged as an autobiography by Willard Trask.
Joan of Arc in French Art and Culture (1700�855): From Satire to Sanctity
by Nora M. HeimannIn her meticulous and wide-ranging study, Nora M. Heimann follows the metamorphosis of Joan of Arc's posthumous representation during the years in which her image ascended from relative obscurity as a minor provincial figure in the middle ages through her treatment as a figure of political satire in the eighteenth century to her ultimate emergence as an image of piety and sanctity in the mid-nineteenth century. Offering the first scholarly art historical and cultural analysis of the origins of the modern Joan of Arc cult, she takes on the challenge of charting, as no previous critic has, why and how the Maid of Orl‘s has been all things to such a diverse public through the ages, particularly during the rapid shifts in political regimes that came in the wake of the French Revolution. Joan of Arc's image has shown a protean capacity to embody a vast and often contradictory range of qualities, from martial ascendancy to vulnerable piety, from maidenly purity to transgressive androgyny, from the power of the people to the divine right of kings. Heimann makes a persuasive case for this enduringly resonant woman as the only figure in French culture to be warmly embraced simultaneously by republicans, monarchists, feminists, and neo-fascists alike. In its recounting of the iconographic fortunes of this remarkable woman during her transformation from an image of satire to one of sanctity, Joan of Arc in French Art and Culture (1700-1855) offers an illustrated, interdisciplinary depiction of the relationship between art and politics that will appeal not only to art historians but also to those working in literature, women's studies, cultural studies, intellectual history, and religious history.
Joan of Arc in the English Imagination, 1429–1829
by Gail OrgelfingerIn this book, Gail Orgelfinger examines the ways in which English historians and illustrators depicted Joan of Arc over a period of four hundred years, from her capture in 1429 to the early nineteenth century.The variety of epithets attached to Joan of Arc—from “witch” and “Medean virago” to “missioned Maid” and “shepherd’s child”—attests to England’s complicated relationship with the saint. While portrayals of Joan in English popular culture evolved over the centuries, they do not follow a straightforward trajectory from vituperation to adulation. Focusing primarily on descriptions of Joan’s captivity, trial, and execution, this study shows how the exigencies of politics and the demands of genre shaped English retellings of her military successes, gender transgressions, and execution at the hands of her English enemies. Orgelfinger’s research illuminates how and why English writers and artists used the memory of Joan of Arc to grapple with issues such as England’s relationship with France, emerging protofeminism in the early modern era, and the sense of national guilt over her execution. A systematic analysis of Joan’s English historiography in its political and social contexts, this volume sheds light on four centuries of English thought on Joan of Arc. It will be welcomed by specialist and general readers alike, especially those interested in women’s studies.
Joan of Arc in the English Imagination, 1429–1829
by Gail OrgelfingerIn this book, Gail Orgelfinger examines the ways in which English historians and illustrators depicted Joan of Arc over a period of four hundred years, from her capture in 1429 to the early nineteenth century.The variety of epithets attached to Joan of Arc—from “witch” and “Medean virago” to “missioned Maid” and “shepherd’s child”—attests to England’s complicated relationship with the saint. While portrayals of Joan in English popular culture evolved over the centuries, they do not follow a straightforward trajectory from vituperation to adulation. Focusing primarily on descriptions of Joan’s captivity, trial, and execution, this study shows how the exigencies of politics and the demands of genre shaped English retellings of her military successes, gender transgressions, and execution at the hands of her English enemies. Orgelfinger’s research illuminates how and why English writers and artists used the memory of Joan of Arc to grapple with issues such as England’s relationship with France, emerging protofeminism in the early modern era, and the sense of national guilt over her execution. A systematic analysis of Joan’s English historiography in its political and social contexts, this volume sheds light on four centuries of English thought on Joan of Arc. It will be welcomed by specialist and general readers alike, especially those interested in women’s studies.
Joan of Arc on the Stage and Her Sisters in Sublime Sanctity (Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries)
by John PendergastThis book examines the figure of Joan of Arc as depicted in stage works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially those based on or related to Schiller’s 1801 romantic tragedy, Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans). The author elucidates Schiller’s appropriation of themes from Euripides’s Iphigenia plays, chiefly the quality of “sublime sanctity,” which transforms Joan’s image from a victim of fate to a warrior-prophet who changes history through sheer force of will. Finding the best-known works of his time about her – Voltaire’s La pucelle d’Orléans and Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part I – utterly dissatisfying, Schiller set out to replace them. Die Jungfrau von Orleans was a smashing success and inspired various subsequent treatments, including Verdi’s opera Giovanna d’Arco and a translation by the father of Russian Romanticism, Vasily Zhukovsky, on which Tchaikovsky based his opera Orleanskaya deva (The Maid of Orleans). In turn, the book’s final chapter examines Shaw’s Saint Joan and finds that the Irish playwright’s vociferous complaints about Schiller’s “romantic flapdoodle” belie a surprising affinity for Schiller’s approach.
Joan of Naples
by Alexandre DumasIt is the story of crimes against the royalty. The vast split between the masses and the elite, the frustration and aggravation in the masses, heedlessness of the authorities and the consequences thereof are depicted. It is a powerful story that highlights the antagonism between the two classes.
Joan of Navarre: Infanta, Duchess, Queen, Witch? (Lives of Royal Women)
by Elena WoodacreThis book is the first full-length biography of Joan of Navarre, a fascinating royal woman who became duchess of Brittany and queen consort of England through her two marriages in 1386 and 1403 respectively. Joan was enmeshed in the turbulent politics of the later Middle Ages as her extensive family and marital connections meant she was related to most of the royal houses of Western Europe—as well as the key protagonists of the Hundred Years War. The large foreign entourage that Joan brought with her to England, and her family ties across the Channel, made her unpopular with her subjects and her loyalties suspect, provoking several purges of her household and culminating in a charge of treason on which she was detained for several years. Yet Joan returned to court in her later years and fought vociferously to the end to retain queenly rights, revenues, and position. Ultimately, this book highlights Joan’s political agency and tenacity, bringing her out of the historical shadows and into the foreground of high politics in fifteenth-century England and Europe. Joan of Navarre is a useful resource for all students and scholars interested in queenship studies, women’s history, and European politics during the later Middle Ages.
Joan Soldado
by Paul J. VanderwoodPaul J. Vanderwood offers a fascinating look at the events, beliefs, and circumstances that have motivated popular devotion to Juan Soldado, a Mexican folk saint. In his mortal incarnation, Juan Soldado was Juan Castillo Morales, a twenty-four-year-old soldier convicted of and quickly executed for the rape and murder of eight-year-old Olga Camacho in Tijuana in 1938. Immediately after Morales's death, many people began to doubt the evidence of his guilt, or at least the justice of his brutal execution. People reported seeing blood seeping from his grave and hearing his soul cry out protesting his innocence. Soon the "martyred" Morales was known as Juan Soldado, or John the Soldier. Believing that those who have died unjustly sit closest to God, people began visiting Morales's grave asking for favors. Within months of his death, the young soldier had become a popular saint. He is not recognized by the Catholic Church, yet thousands of people have made pilgrimages to his gravesite. While Juan Soldado is well known in Tijuana, southern California's Mexican American community, and beyond, this book is the first to situate his story within a broader exploration of how and why popular canonizations such as his take root and flourish. In addition to conducting extensive archival research, Vanderwood interviewed central actors in the events of 1938, including Olga Camacho's mother, citizens who rioted to demand Morales's release to a lynch mob, those who witnessed his execution, and some of the earliest believers in his miraculous powers. Vanderwood also interviewed many present-day visitors to the shrine at Morales's grave. He describes them, their petitions--for favors such as health, a good marriage, or safe passage into the United States--and how they reconcile their belief in Juan Soldado with their Catholicism. Vanderwood puts the events of 1938 within the context of Depression-era Tijuana and he locates people's devotion, then and now, within the history of extra-institutional religious activity. In Juan Soldado, a gripping true-crime mystery opens up into a much larger and more elusive mystery of faith and belief.
Joanna: The Notorious Queen of Naples, Jerusalem and Sicily
by Nancy GoldstoneThe exceptionally dramatic and previously unchronicled life of the medieval queen Joanna I.On 15 March 1348, Joanna I, Queen of Naples, stood trial for her life before the pope and his court in Avignon. She was 22 years old. Her cousin and husband, Prince Andrew of Hungary, had recently been murdered, and Joanna was the chief suspect. Determined to defend herself, Joanna won her acquittal against enormous odds. Returning to Naples, she ruled over one of Europe's most prestigious and enlightened courts for more than thirty years - until she was herself murdered. As courageous as Eleanor of Aquitaine, as astute and determined as Elizabeth I, Joanna was the only female monarch in her time to rule in her own right. The taint of her husband's death never quite left her, but she was also widely admired. Dedicated to the welfare of her subjects and her realm, she reduced crime, built hospitals and churches, and encouraged the licensing of women physicians. But the turmoil of her times swirled around her: war, plague, intrigue and the treachery that would ultimately bring her down. Nancy Goldstone brings one of history's most remarkable women to life in this impeccably researched and captivating portrait of medieval royalty.