Autumn 2018 Contents Autumn 2018 Titles July 2 August 5 September 8 October 11 November 13 December 14 January 16

THE MEDIEVAL KNIGHT THE NOBLE WARRIORS OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF CHIVALRY AUTHOR NAME Amber Books Ltd United House North Road London N7 9DP United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)20 7520 7600 [email protected] www.amberbooks.co.uk www.facebook.com/amberbooks twitter: @amberbooks pinterest: amberbooksltd instagram: amberbooksltd BOOKSAutumn 2018 Contents Autumn 2018 Titles July 2 August 5 September 8 October 11 November 13 December 14 January 16 eBooks Many of our titles are also available as eBooks from major online stores. For details and links, please visit www.amberbooks.co.uk/ebooks JULY 2018 PUBLICATION Dark History of Russia MICHAEL KERRIGAN Native American Myths & Legends In the past 100 years alone, Russia has seen immense revolutions: CHRIS MCNAB from monarchy to the world’s first Native American culture is founded socialist state, from Communism to Dark History of Russia on stories told orally and handed Capitalism, from mass poverty to 244 x 186mm (9¾ x 7½”) down through the generations, Europe’s new super rich. In that time, Extent: 224pp Native American Myths & including myths that reveal the origin it has endured civil war, world war Word count: 58,000 words Legends Illustrations: 180 col & b/w photos of a tribe, legends that chronicle and the Cold War, as well as famines, 244 x 186mm (9¾ x 7½”) & a/ws heroes who fought gods, yarns that assassinations and massacres. tell of malevolent trickster spirits, Extent: 224pp ISBN: 978-1-78274-631-7 Word count: 50,000 words Ranging from medieval Kievan Rus and canny morality tales for the £19.99 Hardback Illustrations: 180 b/w and colour to Vladimir Putin, Dark History of ages. Covering creation myths and photographs and artworks Russia explores the brutality and family life, spirits and gods, warfare ISBN: 978-1-78274-628-7 skulduggery employed in maintaining and death, Native American Myths & £19.99 Hardback power in the Slav heartland. Legends is an informative exploration of the beliefs of North America’s first inhabitants. T EMPERING THE STEEL 145 TEMPERING THE STEEL 137 had to be fashioned into a machine for making the future; Opposite: ‘By the End people had to make themselves its moving parts. There was of the Five-Year Plan no place in such a scheme for individualism or freedom of Collectivization Should expression: the good citizen put society, and socialism, first. be Completed,’ this poster 6 (by the Latvian artist ‘DEKULAKIZATION’ Gustav Klutsis (1895– 52 PEOPLE, FAMILY AND CULTURE PEOPLE, FAMILY AND CULTURE 53 60 PEOPLE, FAMILY AND CULTURE PEOPLE, FAMILY AND CULTURE 61 The Soviet leadership’s resentments against the kulaks became 1938) enthuses. intensely emotional. ‘We must smash the kulaks, eliminate them as a class,’ said Stalin. The leaders had clashed with the kulaks TEMPERING ‘Then he said: “The next time you go out, take these things ‘At this time these supernatural powers, made an extraordinary demonstration. from the start; sturdily self-reliant, they had been slow to adapt Below: The rural with you, and use them as I tell you, and do not run from people had flint knives Having first painted his body in red and black paint, he wafted a to the social template the communists wanted to fit them into. Revolution marches these animals. When they run at you, as soon as they get given them, and they cut strong bowstring through the ceremonial incense, then wrapped Lenin had sparred with the kulaks in the first months of the on beneath a banner pretty close, shoot the arrows at them, as I have taught you; up the bodies of the dead it around his neck and covered himself with a robe. He told the THE STEEL Revolution. From 1930, however, their liquidation was official reading ‘We as Collective and you will see that they will run from you or will run in a buffalo. It is not healthful other men in the room to grip the loose ends of the bowstring Soviet policy. The kulaks were to be sent to the gulags or Workers Will Eradicate circle around you.” to eat the meat raw, so and then pull on them with all their strength. They did so, forcibly removed from their familial lands. the Kulaks…’ in 1932. In Stalin’s Soviet Union, the brave new future was built in ‘Now, as people became plenty, one day three men went Old Man gathered soft horrified when the boy’s decapitated head suddenly rolled out Of those expelled (at a conservative brutality and bloodshed. Sheer terror held sway across the out on to the plain to see the buffalo, but they had no arms. dry rotten driftwood and from beneath the robe. They put the head back, and when they estimate, almost two million in the Below: A famous They saw the animals, but when the buffalo saw the men, they made punk of it, and lifted the robe up an old man was sitting beneath it. Three more first 12 months), some were sent to ‘workers’ state’. depiction of a Native ran after them and killed two of them, but one got away. One then got a piece of hard times they replaced and lifted the robe, and each time revealed a smaller, less desirable, plots in nearby American buffalo hunt. day after this, the people went on a little hill to look about, wood, and drilled a hole different state beneath – first a pile of human districts; others were shipped to Many of the tribes in the and the buffalo saw them, and said, “Saiyah, there is some in it with an arrow point, bones, next nothing at all and finally the boy When he saw them he unsettled areas in western Siberia, the ONYA, CUT yourself loose and come to us. Let’s Opposite: ‘Let’s hit the North American interior more of our food,” and they rushed on them. This time the and gave them a pointed returned in perfect health. kicked over a cooking Urals or Kazakhstan. work together to finish with the bosses.’ This is the target on the state grain and plains were utterly people did not run. They began to shoot at the buffalo with piece of hard wood, and He was lauded as a powerful addition to ‘ pot onto the fire and Stalin’s suspicion of these small climactic romantic moment in one of the classic procurements fully and on dependent on the buffalo the bows and arrows Na´pi had given them, and the buffalo taught them how to make the circle of medicine men, but that status farmers takes us back to Russia’s works of Soviet literature, How the Steel was time.’ Soviet citizens went for their way of life. began to fall; but in the fight a person was killed. a fire with fire sticks, and was about to change. During an altercation magically disappeared in history of the carnivalesque. Like the T through life surrounded Tempered. ‘I would be a poor husband to you if you expected to cook the flesh of these between the boy and the chief of the tribe, top-hatted plutocrat, the caricatured me to put you before the Party,’ an impassioned Pavel Korchagin by urgent exhortation of animals and eat it. Young Wolf, over the butchering of a buffalo figure of the backward but grasping continues; ‘For I shall always put the Party first.’ An epic of the this kind. ‘They got a kind of carcass – the chief repeatedly pushed the boy off the carcass, peasant perhaps had a place in Civil War, this novel appeared in serial form between 1932 and stone that was in the saying he wanted the hide for a robe, even though the boy had the cartoon art of the Party press. 1934; a book-length edition followed in 1936. That same year, land, and then took killed the animal – the boy struck and killed the chief with a Historical and immediate experience its author Nikolai Ostrovsky (1904–36) died. The novel had been another harder stone and buffalo leg. Infuriated, the tribe’s warriors decided that the boy alike had made Russia’s country based loosely on his own life. worked one upon the must be killed. They tracked him down to his grandmother’s people conservative and resistant other, and hollowed out lodge, but when he saw them he kicked over a cooking pot onto to change – certainly when change EMOTIONAL ENGINEERING the softer one, and made the fire and magically disappeared in the smoke. The warriors was imposed upon them by city- The title How the Steel was Tempered seems almost comical a kettle of it. This was the fashion of their dishes. Above: A Blackfoot ran outside, only to see the boy in the distance walking off to the dwelling strangers. They were also now in the closeness with which it conforms to the oddly ‘Also Old Man said to the people: “Now, if you are medicine man, his human east. They chased him, but no matter how fast they went they undoubtedly selfish – if that’s how industrialized aesthetics of the ‘socialist-realist’ school. Ever overcome, you may go and sleep, and get power. Something form obscured by his never seemed to get any closer. we want to characterize the desire since Lenin had (in 1920) famously characterized communism will come to you in your dream that will help you. Whatever ceremonial outfit. The Eventually, the boy appeared to his pursuers on top of a these animals tell you to do, you must obey them, as they medicine man could nearby hill. On five separate occasions he appeared, each time appear to you in your sleep.

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