Plebs

Die Redekunst vor dem Volk im 1. Jahrhundert v. Chr. als Element der politischen Strategie der Politiker sowie die Art und Weise, wie ihre Reden die Bevolkerung Roms erreichten und diese beeinflussten, sind die Hauptthemen dieses Buches.

Music of predominantly royal association spanning the reign of Henry V, the Battle of Agincourt and its aftermath, and the coronations in England and France of the boy king Henry VI. The Binchois Consort under Andrew Kirkman bring this music vividly to life, while the copiously illustrated booklet is a pleasure in itself.

Devoted to the hybrid of '60s mod, British Invasion, and psychedelia known as "freakbeat," the series That Driving Beat ran to five volumes in the first decade of the 21st century. This five-CD box set brings them all together, presenting around 150 rarities from the 1963-1967 era, most of them British (a few items from Continental Europe are also thrown in). Pinpointing who this should be recommended to is tough, because any passionate collector of freakbeat is already going to have some to a lot (but almost certainly not all) of it. At the same time, it's likely too much for the novice, for whom single-volume comps with a higher percentage of killer cuts make far better initiations. But make no mistake: this certainly is good value if you like the style and don't have the majority of the contents, and not just for the sheer quantity of the material. Odd tracks like the Poets' "That's the Way It's Got to Be" and Him & the Others' "She's Got Eyes That Tell Lies" aside, there aren't that many absolute undisputed monsters of the genre here, most of it's at least decent, and good percentage of it is quite good.