The Fall of The American Empire

A masterful narrative history of the dangerous lives of pirates during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, revealing their unique impact on colonialism and empire.

Classical archaeology—the excavation and analysis of ancient Greek and Roman sites—was born on Wednesday, October 22, 1738. On that day, Roque Joaquín Alcubierre, an engineer in the army of the Bourbon royal family in Naples, was lowered by ropes down a square well shaft cut through volcanic material that had formed on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.

In August 1812 Henry Bell s Comet, a revolutionary paddle steamer, made her first journey on the Clyde. This marked the start of extraordinary developments that completely transformed shipping and transport in Britain, Europe and the Americas.