WILLIAM WRIGHT

En Así nacemos, William Wright nos conduce en un viaje fascinante y exhaustivo al nuevo mundo de la investigación genética y la biología molecular y nos muestra cómo los extraordinarios descubrimientos sobre la conducta de los genes estan echando por tierra las teorias existentes y derribando los supuestos sobre los que se han basado años de pensamiento psicologico. Encuadernacion: Rustica.

Who were the men who commanded the British Army in the numerous small wars of the Victorian Empire? Today, many are all but forgotten, save the likes of Cardigan, Kitchener, Baden-Powell and Gordon of Khartoum. Yet they were a disparate and fascinating assemblage, made up of men of true military genius, as well as egoists, fools and despots. In Warriors of the Queen, William Wright surveys over 170 of these men, examining their careers and personalities. He reveals not only the lives of the great military names of the period but also of those whom history has overlooked, from James Buster Browne, who once fought a battle in his nightshirt, to Jack Bisset, who had fought in three South African wars by his twenty-third birthday. Based on original research and complemented by over sixty photographs, Warriors of the Queen provides new insight into the men who built (and sometimes endangered) the British Empire on the battlefield.

In 1882 the British invaded Egypt in an audacious war that gave them control of the country, and the Suez Canal, for more than seventy years. William Wright gives the first full account of that hard-fought and hitherto neglected campaign, which was not nearly as tidy as the British commander would later claim. Using unpublished documents and forgotten books, including the discovery of General Sir Garnet Wolseleys diaries, Wright highlights how the Egyptian War, climaxing in the dawn battle of Tel-el-Kebir was altogether a close-run thing. The major combined services operation of the late Victorian era also saw the Royal Navy sail into battle for the last time in its old glory and the book has the first full account of the Bombardment of Alexandria.

A comprehensive view of the most heated debate of our time -- are genes the primary influence on human personality and behavior? In presenting the recent findings, William Wright argues that in a century dominated by psychoanalytic thought, there has been an insistence that humans, unlike all other species, are brought into the world as blank slates on which personalities are etched by the environment. Wright describes the overthrow of this view by psychologists and geneticists whose discoveries, most dramatically through studies of identical twins separated at birth, have resulted in the recognition of the major role played by genes in personality and behavior. Wright describes how molecular biologists have reinforced these findings by locating the links between genes and behavior in DNA itself. And he explores the exciting future prospects of treating such conditions as depression, addiction, and hyper-aggressiveness that are implicit in the behavioral-genetic revolution.

The battle took place at Kerreri, 11km north of Omdurman in the Sudan. Kitchener commanded a force of 8,000 British regulars and a mixed force of 17,000 Sudanese and Egyptian soldiers. He arrayed his force in an arc around the village of Egeiga close to the bank of the Nile, where a gunboat flotilla waited in support, facing a wide, flat plain with hills rising to the left and right. The British and Egyptian cavalry were placed on either flank. Al-Taashis followers, known as Ansar and sometimes referred to as Dervishes, numbered around 50,000, including some 3,000 cavalry. In a few hours and at a loss of less than 400 officers and men killed and wounded, the Anglo-Egyptian army defeated the 50,000 brave tribesmen who charged their enemy, regardless of the hail of Maxim bullets, many of them armed only with spears, swords and ancient chainmail armour. In concise detail, with orders of battle, maps and over fifty images, the author shows how Omdurman was a superb example of tactics in warfare. First-hand accounts from both sides help the reader to understand all the horrors and glory of that day including the famous charge of the 21st Lancers, often called the last great cavalry charge of the British Army. This was arguably the height of British Empire military dominance.