Лучшие книги Фрэнка Маклинна

1759 год. Судьбоносная дата в истории Великобритании. Год, когда решалось, какой из двух сильнейших стран Европы - Англии или Франции - суждено стать "царицей морей" и безоговорочным лидером на континенте. Казалось, силы равны... Но за один только 1759 год англичанам удалось вытеснить французов из Индии, ограничить их влияние в бассейне Карибского моря и Канаде, наголову разбить в ходе Семилетней войны в Германии. Британия стала первой страной Европы. В своей увлекательной и глубокой книге, написанной на основе малоизученных и редких материалов, среди которых уникальные документы из архивов Ватикана, Фрэнк Маклинн анализирует причины, которые привели Британию к мировому господству.

Чингисхан был величайшим завоевателем за всю историю человечества. Его империя простиралась от Тихого океана до Центральной Европы, включая весь Китай, Средний Восток и Русь. Каким же образом неграмотный кочевник Центральной Азии смог покорить полмира и своим могуществом затмить и Александра Македонского, и Юлия Цезаря, и Наполеона? На эти и другие вопросы отвечает в своей книге Фрэнк Маклинн, сочетая описания походов и сражений с очерком быта, культуры и народных обычаев монголов.

The truth behind Richard the Lionheart and Bad King John - brilliantly readable, scrupulously researched and full of powerful story-telling
Anyone who has seen The Lion in Winter will remember the vicious, compelling world of the Plantagenets and readers of the romance of Robin Hood will be familiar with the typecasting of Good King Richard, defending Christendom in the Holy Land, and Bad King John who usurps the kingdom in his absence. But do these popular stereotypes correspond with reality?
In this sweeping narrative, celebrated historian Frank McLynn turns the tables on modern revisionist historians and shows these larger-than-life characters as they really were - crusading, fighting vicious wars in France, negotiating with the papacy, engaging in ruthless dynastic intrigue, often against each other: in Richard's case, even holding the kingdom together when fighting in the Holy Land; and in John's, losing Normandy, catastrophically agonising the barons over Magna Carta and losing the Crown Jewels in the Wash.

Marcus Aurelius is the one great figure of antiquity who still speaks to us today, nearly 2,000 years after his death. A philosopher as well as an emperor, his was an extraordinary reign. He proved himself a great leader, protecting the Empire from Germans in the North and fighting the Parthians in the East, and his Meditations - compared by John Stuart Mill to the Sermon on the Mount - remains one of the most widely-read Classical books. Impeccably researched and vividly told, Frank McLynn's Marcus Aurelius is the definitive biography of a monumental historical figure.

Frank McLynn has penned a year-by-year account of the pioneering efforts to conquer and settle the American West. Wagons West is a stirring history of the years from 1840 to 1849 - between the era of the fur trappers and the beginning of the gold rush. In all the sagas of human migration, few can top the drama of the journey by Midwestern farmers to Oregon and California. Although they used mountain men as guides, they went almost literally into the unknown, braving dangers from hunger, thirst, disease, and drowning. Using illustrations, along with original diaries and memoirs, McLynn underscores the incredible heroism and dangerous folly on the overland trails. His well-informed and authoritative narrative investigates the events leading up to the opening of the trails, the wagons and animals used by the pioneers, the role of women, relations with Native Americans, and much else. The climax arrives in McLynn's expertly re-created tale of the dreadful Donner party, and he closes with Brigham Young and the Mormons beginning communites of their own. Full of high drama, tragedy, and triumph, it brilliantly chronicles one of the principal chapters in the creation of the United States as we know it today.