Book cover of Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail by Stephen Brown
Health and Psychology

Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail

Scurvy took a terrible toll in the Age of Sail, killing more sailors than were lost in all sea battles combined. The threat of the disease kept ships close to home and doomed those vessels that ventured too far from port. The willful ignorance of the royal medical elite, who endorsed ludicrous medical theories based on speculative research while ignoring the life-saving properties of citrus fruit, cost tens of thousands of lives and altered the course of many battles at sea. […Learn More]

Book cover of Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It by Larrie D. Ferreiro
Europe

Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It

Pulitzer Prize Finalist in History

Winner of the Journal of the American Revolution 2016 Book of the Year Award

At the time the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord the American colonists had little chance, if any, of militarily defeating the British. The nascent American nation had no navy, little in the way of artillery, and a militia bereft even of gunpowder. In his detailed accounts Larrie Ferreiro shows that without the extensive military and financial support of the French and Spanish, the American cause would never have succeeded. […Learn More]