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1Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865

By Carlton McCarthy

The author, who fought as a private in the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War, describes the Confederate soldier’s daily struggles with hunger, illness, fear, and the perils of combat; as well as his pride of service, love of comrades, and courage in the face of overwhelming odds (summary by D. Leeson).

This romantic mystery - or mysterious romance - tells the tale of jilted lover, Jim Conrad, who discovers an unusual gold ring while on a visit to Paris. What is the story of the ring? Why is Clelia Vine so sad? Who is the nameless 'chief'? And how is a dour English barber in a Parisian salon mixed up in all this?<br /><br />The novel, published in 1896, was written by Justin McCarthy, an Irish nationalist, Liberal historian, novelist and politician. (Introduction by Ruth Golding)

In the South African wilderness, six men got together to mine for diamonds and become very rich. They agree that the wealth is to be split equally between them or their heirs after a few years and that the share of any one who died without leaving an heir or whose heir died before the time would be split between the remaining partners. Soon, all heirs are notified and wait expectantly for the first of January, on which the diamonds are to be divided between the partners. However, the diamonds are becoming increasingly blood stained, and January the first is still some time off... (Summary by Carolin)

The Rebel Rose is the story of Mary Stuart Beaton, a descendant of Mary Queen of Scots who has come to London in the hope of having her family claims legitimized. <br /><br /> The Pretendress -- as she is called, finds herself caught up in the devices of her own personal guardians as well as a scheming London society woman scorned by a powerful member of Parliament who has become an admirer of the Princess. Apart from the claims of royalty, Mary Beaton knows where her worth is found and she proves to be a formidable opponent for all those scheming for and against her.

Justin McCarthy (1830-1912), liberal member of Parliament and historian. He brings the great 18th Century personalities to life: Walpole and Swift, Bolingbroke and Mary Wortley Montagu, the Old Pretender and Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the four King Georges. The first volume begins with the death of Queen Anne in 1714 and ends in 1733, with Robert Walpole fleeing Parliament as London erupts in rioting over his excise scheme. - Summary by Pamela Nagami

Justin McCarthy (1830-1912), liberal member of Parliament and historian. He brings the great 18th Century personalities to life: Walpole and Swift, Bolingbroke and Mary Wortley Montagu, the Old Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the four King Georges. This second volume brings us the terrible death of Queen Caroline, Swift and Stella, the Jacobite rising of 1745, the Wesleyan Movement, Clive's victories, and the struggle for Canada. - Summary by Pamela Nagami

7History of the Four Georges, and of William IV, Volume 3

By Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

In Volume III of this series on the Hanoverian Kings, Justin McCarthy is joined by his son, Justin Hartly McCarthy, a liberal Irish MP like his father. Together they bring to life, poor stubborn George III, the outrageous radical, John Wilkes, the rebellious American Colonies, great-hearted Charles James Fox, the Gordon Riots which set London ablaze, Edmund Burke, Britain's problematic Indian policy, and the brave, enigmatic Younger Pitt, who faced national fears of the spread of revolution across the Channel from France and then confronted the imminent threat of invasion by the armies of Napoleon. - Summary by Pamela Nagami

8History of the Four Georges, and of William IV, Volume 4

By Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

In Volume IV of this series on the Hanoverian kings, Justin McCarthy and his son, Justin Huntly McCarthy, both Liberal Irish MPs., bring on the stage that bulky, big-spender, George IV, his bumbling brother, William IV, the impulsive Liberal loose cannon, Lord Brougham, George Canning, true author of the Monroe Doctrine, and Earl Grey and Lord John Russell and their struggle to pass the great Parliamentary Reform Bill of 1832. - Summary by Pamela Nagami

Anne Stuart (1665-1714), Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, succeeded William III to the throne in 1702. She was the daughter of the deposed Catholic king, James II, but was of the Anglican faith. Liberal, Irish member of Parliament, Justin McCarthy, writing in 1902, creates in sparkling, uncluttered prose a panoramic canvas of Anne and her times. In the first of the two volumes, the brilliant commander, the Duke of Marlborough, defeats the French and Bavarians at the Battle of Blenheim, while the flagship of the admiral of the fleet, Sir Cloudesley Shovell, strikes the rocks near the Isles of Scilly and is lost with all eight hundred hands. We are at street level in rowdy London with its aristocratic bully boys, the Mohocks, its coffee houses, and its theaters. We meet the great Tories, Harley and Bolingbroke, and encounter the satiric spirit who haunts it all, Jonathan Swift. (Pamela Nagami)

William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), four times Prime Minister of Great Britain, dominated the Liberal Party for thirty years, but ultimately divided it over the issue of Irish Home Rule, which he unsuccessfully championed. He brought to parliamentary politics a moral fervor which made him the personification of the Victorian Age, but which also challenged the complacency of its imperialistic assumptions. In this 1897 biography, the Liberal Irish member of Parliament, Justin McCarthy, presents a Gladstone still vividly remembered, rising to speak in the House of Commons among a host of illustrious contemporaries, including Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Palmerston, and Sir Robert Peel, or expounding his views to a bored and baffled Queen Victoria, who called him a "ridiculous, wild, and incomprehensible old fanatic." (Pamela Nagami)

Anne Stuart (1665-1714), Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, succeeded William III to the throne in 1702. She was the daughter of the deposed Catholic king, James II, but was of the Anglican faith. Liberal, Irish member of Parliament, Justin McCarthy, writing in 1902, creates in sparkling, uncluttered prose a panoramic canvas of Anne and her times. In the second of the two volumes, McCarthy describes the Battle of Malplaquet, where Marlborough meets the French in "a contest of hand-to-hand fighting on a gigantic scale." Then follows "the darkest chapter in the record of Queen Anne's reign," as a parliamentary conspiracy, headed by Bolingbroke, topples Marlborough from power. From Parliament we move to London's coffee houses where Londoners gather to read the "Spectator" and where, in 1714, they anxiously await news of the dying Queen. Scarcely has George I ascended his throne, when Jacobites at home and abroad begin to plot a Stuart Restoration under the son of the ousted James. (Pamela Nagami)

An engaging history of Great Britain in the heyday of Queen Victoria and of her empire by the liberal Irish Member of Parliament, Justin McCarthy. He brings us the larger than life personalities of the day, Victoria and Albert, Russell and Peel, O'Connell and Palmerston, Gladstone and Disraeli, and relates great events, the Afghan War, the Irish famine, and the Crimean War without ever losing sight of the hopes and fears of the common people at home and abroad. (Pamela Nagami)

Volume II of this popular history opens in the revolutionary year, 1848, with the Chartist movement for manhood suffrage and with the rise of Young Ireland. Next we join the crowds in 1851 at the opening of the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, of which Queen Victoria wrote, ''A little rain fell just as we started, but before we came near the Crystal Palace the sun shone and gleamed upon the gigantic edifice, upon which the flags of all nations were floating.'' Hopes for a new era of peace expired in the freezing trenches before Sebastopol, where not even the heroics of the Light Brigade could distract the British public for long from the debacle of failed leadership and the criminal collapse of logistics. (Pamela Nagami, M.D.)

Volume III of this history of Victorian Britain begins in 1856 with the gunboat diplomacy of the Second Opium War and then moves to the harrowing days of the Indian (Sepoy) Rebellion of 1857. In June 1858, Benjamin Disraeli secures passage of the Jews Relief Act and Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild takes his seat in Parliament. Prince Albert dies after a short illness in December 1861, leaving a distraught and cloistered Queen. Lord Palmerston's diplomacy increases Britain's influence on the Continent, while the Civil War in America divides the country in surprising ways. Bismarck emerges and Prussia begins her ascent to power. (Pamela Nagami, M.D.)

The fourth and concluding volume of this history of Victorian Britain opens with the brutal repression in 1865 of a rebellion by ex-slaves in Jamaica. Then in 1867, the Conservative Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, takes his celebrated "leap in the dark" with the passage of the most comprehensive expansion of manhood suffrage in British history. The Fenian movement agitates unsuccessfully for Irish independence. British trade unions win the right to organize. William Ewart Gladstone launches his great reform ministry by abolishing in Ireland the hated Anglican establishment and follows with a flood of bills reforming education, the British army, and poor relief. The period closes with the imperialist adventures of Benjamin Disraeli's last ministry and the pageantry of the Congress of Berlin, at which Disraeli and Bismarck conclude the negotiations ending the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. - Summary by Pamela Nagami, M.D.

Senator Joseph McCarthy examines the life of General George Catlett Marshall, particularly his role in government beginning in 1945 as United States Special Envoy to China, and encompassing his role of Secretary of State in the late 1940's. This book can provide context which is important to a rounded understanding of how Communist China came to be a nation in 1949, and Marshall's crucial role as Secretary of State in its birth. - Summary by Robert L. Morel