Robert Easton Knihy

Native American architecture is often associated with structures like wigwams, tipis, iglus, and pueblos, but it encompasses a much broader range of building traditions. These structures serve various purposes, including sleeping, working, worshipping, and honoring the dead, reflecting the full spectrum of Indian life. This book presents a comprehensive, fully illustrated exploration of North American Indian architecture, the first of its kind in over a century. Authors Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton delve into the building traditions of major tribes across nine regional areas, from the plank-house villages of the Northwest Coast to the moundbuilder towns of the Southeast and the Navajo hogans of the Southwest. They provide a holistic view of Native American culture, examining how architecture interacts with social mores, environmental factors, and religious beliefs. Each chapter highlights traditional building practices that are either being revived or are at risk of disappearing. The volume is enriched with historical photographs, drawings, architectural renderings, and interpretive diagrams that elucidate the sacred cosmology of key house types, offering readers a deeper understanding of Native American architectural heritage.

Was Ethelred, the Unready always late for breakfast? Was Ivan the Terrible simply impossible to live with? Exactly how often did Wilfrid the Shaggy get a haircut? These vital historical questions and others just as pressing are explored in this investigation into the vainglorious, unfortunate, and sometimes downright insulting names that pepper the history books. Anyone with a love the quirky side of history will enjoy the capricious world of noble nicknames, where military tacticians can be celebrated for their drinking habits (Michael the Drunkard), successful diplomats can be mocked for their diminutive stature (Ladislaus the Elbow-High), and a vicious tyrant can be kowtowed to (John the Good).

The Good , the Bad and the Unready is the perfect book for discovering how one man could be both Charles the Scourge of God and Charles the Affable. Or who exactly it was that Vlad impaled. Or how some eighteen people earned the appellation 'the Great' (and that's not including Anthony the Great Bastard and Anne the Great Whore). Or why Joan the Mad never went anywhere without her husband's corpse. The Reverend Robert Easton's irreverent guide to the most peculiar nicknames of history gives brief, funny biographies of not just the Good, the Bad and the Unready, but also the Shaggy, the Worthless, the Silly, the Elephant, the King of Slops and many more. Everybody history remembers for being blessed - or, more often, cursed - with a memorable moniker.