Early English

The idea of the sword-wielding samurai, beholden to a strict ethical code and trained in deadly martial arts, dominates popular conceptions of the samurai. As early as the late 17th century, they were heavily featured in literature, art, theater, and even comedy. This book gives listeners access to the real samurai as they lived, fought, and served. Much as they capture the modern imagination, the samurai commanded influence over the politics, arts, philosophy, and religion of their own time, and controlled Japan from the 14th century until their demise in the mid-19th century.

Celebrated religious and social historian Rodney Stark traces the extraordinary rise of Christianity through its most pivotal and controversial moments to offer fresh perspective on the history of the world's largest religion.

Based on the accidental death of the author's father due to a surgical mistake, Early Winter will help you to reconnect with your own feelings of loss and eventual acceptance. This book will make you laugh at times and cry at others as it takes you through the process of challenging loss and delivers you to a better place.

Anne, Duchess of Brittany, is the love of King Louis XII of France's life. Too bad he's already married. While his annulment proceedings create Europe's most sensational scandal of 1498, Anne returns to Brittany to take back control of her duchy that her late husband, Charles VIII, King of France, had wrested from her. At age 21, Anne is sovereign ruler of Brittany as well as Europe's most wealthy widow. But can she maintain Brittany's independence from France if she accepts Louis's offer to make her Queen of France once more?

A look at many different aspects of how Martin Luther became the Father of the Reformation.

When a little girl gets a plush stingray for her birthday, it makes friends with some of her other toys as they all try to navigate in the world of real people.

In How to Be, Adam Nicolson takes us on a glorious, immersive journey. Grounded in the belief that places give access to minds, however distant and strange, this book reintroduces us to our earliest thinkers through the lands they inhabited. To know the mental occupations of Homer or Heraclitus, one must visit their cities, sail their seas, and find landscapes not overwhelmed by the millennia that have passed but retain the atmosphere of that ancient life. Nicolson takes us to the dawn of investigative thought and a nexus of cross-cultural connection.

In this book, E. Fuller Torrey draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to propose a startling answer to the ultimate question. Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods locates the origin of gods within the human brain, arguing that religious belief is a by-product of evolution. Based on an idea originally proposed by Charles Darwin, Torrey marshals evidence that the emergence of gods was an incidental consequence of several evolutionary factors.

Pick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa? On the periphery. This pioneering book tells a different story. Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, Michael Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history.

American Indians remain familiar as icons, yet poorly understood as historical agents. In this ambitious book that ranges across Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and eastern California (a region known as the Great Basin), Ned Blackhawk places Native peoples squarely at the center of a dynamic and complex story as he chronicles two centuries of Indian and imperial history that profoundly shaped the American West.

She calls herself Hope Miller, but she has no idea who she actually is. Fifteen years ago, she was found in a small New Jersey town thrown from an overturned vehicle, with no clue to her identity. Doctors assumed her amnesia was a temporary side effect of her injuries, but she never regained her memory. Hope eventually started a new life with a new name in a new town that welcomed her, yet always wondered what she may have left behind—or been running from. Now, she’s leaving New Jersey to start over once again.

This great hymn is taught in two levels so the student learns how to take a basic arrangement and fill it out. The arrangements are fully demonstrated before being taught and explained in two- to four-measure sections “by ear.” The entire lesson is taught using no music, print, or video.

This is another Bach minuet in Gm that is easy to learn “by ear”. The lesson starts with a full demonstration of the minuet followed by a detailed lesson teaching the song in two to four measure sections.

This minuet focuses on phrasing, legato technique, and the balancing of the tone between the two hands. The lesson starts with a full demonstration of the minuet followed by a detailed lesson teaching the song in two to four measure sections completely “by ear”. This minuet is rated at an early intermediate level.

This arrangement is from the famous “Notebook for Anna Magdalena” which was a volume of songs J.S. Bach presented to his second wife full of minuets, marches, sonatinas, etc. This notebook has become very popular through the years because it contains pieces of an intermediate level that help to hone the essential skills needed for proficient keyboard playing. This lesson starts with a full demonstration followed by a two to four measure sectional lesson of the entire song describing notes and fingering.

This lesson includes a full demonstration followed by a detailed “by ear” lesson teaching the song in two to four measure sections. When you learn without print or video, you memorize the song while you learn it and develop your ability to pick out other songs “by ear”.

Bach’s affinity towards this piece was its development of consistent arpeggio playing in both hands. There are also plenty of partial scale passages to develop adjacent finger coordination as well. The lesson starts with a full demonstration followed by a detailed “by ear” lesson breaking the entire song down into two to four measure sections.

This song develops finger independence in that it introduces a drone tone that must be sustained while the other fingers develop the melody and its harmonies. This song is suitable for most second year adult students. The lesson starts with a full demonstration followed by a two to four measure sectional lesson of the entire songs describing notes and fingering.

This lesson includes a full demonstration followed by a detailed “by ear” lesson teaching the song in two to four measure sections. When you learn without print or video, you memorize the song while you learn it and develop your skill to pick out other songs “by ear”.

This lesson includes a full demonstration of the song followed by a detailed “by ear” lesson teaching the song in two to four measure sections. Learning a song this way, without print or video, allows the student to memorize the song while learning it and develop their ability to pick out other songs “by ear”.