Carey: Eyewitness to History - Tapa dura

This book will make a history buff out of anyone. It's impossible not to be captivated by "Eyewitness to History..".These narratives make history come alive as no scholarly tone ever could. A quite stunning collection. There are descriptions in this book so fresh that they sear themselves into the imagination. -- Jeremy Paxman "The Independent" This collection is endlessly fascinating; its firsthand reports of acts of courage, cruelty, intolerance, discovery and simple pleasures burn indelible images into the mind. A wonderful book to browse in--a treasury of curious, touching memorabilia, shocking facts, and occasional stretches of brilliant writing. It deserves a place by the bedside of every literate insomniac. -- Jonathan Raban "The Observer" This book is a found treasure; it is also Pandora's box revisited. Make a list for yourself of the moments you would chose from history, and look at what you're saying about your politics, sins, desires and hopes. -- John Calvin Batchelor "Chicago Tribune" This unusual 700-page anthology of eyewitness accounts invites readers to dine with Attila the Hun, gaze on daffodils with Dorothy Wordsworth, attend Gauguin's impromptu wedding to a Tonga girl and roam Africa with Stanley as he searches for Livingston...This collection...is endlessly fascinating; its firsthand reports of acts of courage, cruelty, intolerance, discovery and simple pleasures burn indelible images into the mind. The book is a mosaic of startling, unforgettable images... Carey has created something rarer than history. He has made the past tangible, often terrifying. To read "Eyewitness to History" is to be assaulted with voices and images that will linger long after the accounts in formal histories are forgotten. These scenes will last not necessarily because they are artfully rendered, but because they draw on one of the most resonant sentences in English: I was there, and I saw it with my own eyes. -- Edward Dolnick "Wall Street Journal"

Civilization's most momentous events come vibrantly alive in this magnificent collection of over three hundred eyewitness accounts spanning twenty-four turbulent centuries--remarkable recollections of battles, atrocities, disasters, coronations, assassinations, and discoveries that shaped the course of history, all related in vivid detail by ovservers on the scene.