The magnificent beast that once roamed from Alaska to the Carolinas "in numbers numberless" is splendidly memorialized in The Time of the Buffalo, which begins with its genesis in the Ice Age, traces its evolution and natural history, observes its patterns of behavior, and records its life-and-death relationship with three cultures of man. Here are the ways in which the buffalo crucially affected (and was affected by) the hunters of the Pleistocene epoch and, in our era, the life of the Plains Indians and nineteenth-century frontiersmen. Here is the creature itself-seen as an integral part of...

This book attempts to evaluate the role of the Malay Peninsula as a crossroads in the great wave of commercial relationships along the maritime Silk Road from the first centuries of the Christian era to the 14th century. Through these exchanges, representatives of all the civilizations of Asia entered into contact along its shores. They left in this place a part of themselves, as can be seen in the great stylistic diversity of the religious and commercial artefacts which have been found in the area. These artefacts have been analysed and categorized afresh in the light of more precise...

From 1516 to 1830, the Barbary corsairs dominated the Ottoman provinces of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. The years between 1800-1820 were crucial. Until 1805, a spectacular revival of privateering allows the author to present the men, the practices and the results gained by the privateers. From 1805 to 1814, the Maghrib states gave up a great part of privateering on behalf of transportation and seaborne trade, taking advantage of their neutrality during the Napoleonic wars. Thepeace in 1814 and the internal weaknesses of the regencies carried away this original attempt. After Lord Exmouth's...