"As we meet back up with twelve-year-old Brine, her friends, and the pirate crew of The Onion, they are sailing west towards the end of the world, filled with the hope of finding dragons and Brine's family"--

In this important new book the renowned historian Serge Gruzinski returns to two episodes in the sixteenth century which mark a decisive stage in global history and show how China and Mexico experienced the expansion of Europe. In the early 1520s, Magellan set sail for Asia by the Western route, Cortes seized Mexico and some Portuguese based in Malacca dreamed of colonizing China. The Aztec Eagle was destroyed but the Chinese Dragon held strong and repelled the invaders - after first seizing their cannon. For the first time, people from three continents encountered one other, confronted one other and their lives became entangled. These events were of great interest to contemporaries and many people at the time grasped the magnitude of what was going on around them. The Iberians succeeded in America and failed in China. The New World became inseparable from the Europeans who were to conquer it, while the Celestial Empire became, for a long time to come, an unattainable goal. Gruzinski explores this encounter between civilizations that were different from one another but that already fascinated contemporaries, and he shows that our world today bears the mark of this distant age. For it was in the sixteenth century that human history began to be played out on a global stage. It was then that connections between different parts of the world began to accelerate, not only between Europe and the Americas but also between Europe and China. This is what is revealed by a global history of the sixteenth century, conceived as another way of reading the Renaissance, less Eurocentric and more in tune with our age.

Early in the morning, the street was foggy. Hal opened the door, looked at the white street, breathed a sigh of relief and went out. The stone road was still frosty and slippery. He carefully avoided those Ivylinna Lee, walked across the street and knocked on the door

Welcome back as we join Jalen Bloom, old friends and new on another adventure through a world of magic and mysticism-Calladrin. Dragonsoft, the laptop business founded in Los Angeles, had been going strong for over a decade and a half, with Jim Foley happily married to Summer and raising their beloved fifteen-year-old son, Ralius. A break from adventuring had been positive as the time spent together allowed the good-natured kid to take after his father and focus on being a normal teenager. However, in his other life, Ralius was an apprentice blade-hand, or hero of Calladrin, a defender of the land. Ralius, along with his tall elven best friend, Riel, were both transitioning from boys to adults as they trained secretly with weapons to keep their abilities up in case of trouble. Both families, the human Bloom's and elven Sharpe's, worked together at Dragonsoft with Cleft, the mighty shaman, posing as lead programmer. Swen Sharp and Lexia, his wife, a.k.a. Riel's mom and dad worked as corporate lawyers and traders for Dragonsoft with the help of magic. Jim Foley, Jalen's Los Angeles alter persona, had been raising his son, rarely returning to the fantasy land of his true origin during a quiet phase of his life. It was a normal day at the office until the ghost of a fallen dwarf from the past came to warn Jim of danger, followed by goblins demanding the poor human's head. Suffice it to say, Jalen, Swen, Summer, and Cleft were needed back in Calladrin again. The question was would the kids come along this time? If you like, ghosts, remote viewing, astral projection, telepathy, portals, time travel, elemental magic, mythical and mythological creatures, paleontology, dinosaurs, alien technology, medieval armaments, demons, shape-shifting or talismans, and if even if you don't, you may want to take a look inside . . . Prepare for an adventure in the tradition of epic fantasy as you enjoy Dragon Flute, the second installment in the Dragon Talisman series!