When restless New York City hedge fund manager Robert Fairchild watches the Baltic Dry Cargo Index plunge 97%, registering an all-time high and a 25-year low within the span of just six months, he decides to buy a ship. Immediately fantasizing about naming a vessel after his wife, carrying a string of worry beads and being able to introduce himself as a shipowner at his upcoming college reunion, Fairchild immediately embarks on an odyssey into the most exclusive, glamorous and high stakes business in the world. From pirates off the coast of Somalia and on Wall Street to Greek and Norwegian shipping magnates, the education of Robert Fairchild is an expensive one. In the end, he loses his hedge fund, but he gains a life - as a Shipping Man. Part fast-paced thriller, part ship finance text book, The Shipping Man is required reading for anyone with an interest in capital formation for shipping.

This is a study of the political, religious, social and mentalworlds of the Catholic aristocracy from 1550 to 1640. MichaelQuestier examines the familial and patronage networks of theEnglish Catholic community and their relationship to the laterTudors and Stuarts. He shows how the local history of theReformation can be used to rewrite mainstream accounts of nationalpolitics and religious conflict in this period. The book takes inthe various crises of mid- and late Elizabeth politics, theaccession of James VI, the Gunpowder Plot, religious toleration andthe start of the Thirty Years War and finally the rise ofLaudianism, leading up to the civil war. It challenges recenthistorical notions of Catholicism as fundamentally sectarian anddemonstrates the extent to which sections of the Catholic communityhad come to an understanding with both the local and national Stateby the later 1620s and 1630s.