Bandon Public Library

HarperCollins is proud to present a range of best-loved, essential classics. 'The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.' At the peak of European Imperialism, steamboat captain Charles Marlow travels deep into the African Congo on his way to relieve the elusive Mr Kurtz, an ivory trader renowned for...

Intricate and compelling, Palmares recounts the journey of Almeyda, a Black slave girl who comes of age on Portuguese plantations and escapes to a fugitive slave settlement called Palmares. Following its destruction, Almeyda embarks on a journey across colonial Brazil to find her husband, lost in battle. Her story brings to life a world impacted by greed, conquest, and colonial desire. She encounters a mad lexicographer, desperate to avoid military...

European history is deeply embedded in the global civilization that has emerged in the 21st century. More than two thirds of today's nations were once European colonies or protectorates. Europe's legacy is evident in the trajectory of the United States and has influenced aspiring hegemonic powers like China. For centuries, Europe was the heart and soul of the West, and European powers enjoyed unprecedented global hegemony, not only by military and...

"Our world was made on and by the Silk Roads. For millennia it was here that East and West encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas and cultures, the birth of the world's great religions, the appetites for foreign goods that drove economies and the growth of nations. From the first cities in Mesopotamia to the growth of Greece and Rome to the depredations by the Mongols and the Black Death to the Great Game...

To the haunting notes of a lone bugle playing "The Last Post," the sole remaining Western flag is lowered. With Hong Kong's return to China on June 30, 1997, an era of empire ends, exactly five hundred years after Vasco de Gama first sailed to the Asian mainland. As recently as 1930, half of the world's population was somewhere subject to American, British, French or Dutch colonial rule; two generations later, the West's empires in the East are extinct....

"It's 1956, and six-year-old Eddie Toma lives with his mother, Grace, and his little brother, Lewis, near the Salmon River on the far edge of the Okanagan Indian Reserve in the British Columbia Southern Interior. Grace, her friend Isabel, Isabel's husband Ray, and his nephew Gregory cross the border to work as summer farm labourers in Washington state. There Eddie is free to spend long days with Gregory exploring the farm: climbing a hill to watch...

An explosive account of the resentments American policies are sowing around the world and of the payback that will be our harvest in the twenty-first century. Blowback, a term invented by the CIA, refers to the united consequences of American policies. In this sure-to-be-controversial book, Chalmers Johnson lays out in vivid detail the dangers faced by our overextended empire, which insists on projecting its military power to every corner of the...

The leading ancient world historian and author of Caesar presents “an engrossing account of how the Roman Empire grew and operated” (Kirkus).
Renowned for his biographies of Julius Caesar and Augustus, Adrian Goldsworthy turns his attention to the Roman Empire as a whole during its height in the first and second centuries AD. Though this time is known as the Roman Peace, or Pax Romana, the Romans were...

"In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea and attempted to seize a portion of Ukraine. While the world watched in outrage, this blatant violation of national sovereignty was only the latest iteration of a centuries-long effort to expand Russian boundaries and create a pan-Russian nation. In Lost Kingdom, award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues that we can only understand the confluence of Russian imperialism and nationalism today by delving into the...