Improbable Voices

"Interweaves the lives of twenty-six women and men who are not well known with the major political, economic, social, and cultural developments that have shaped the human experience through the course of the last 570 years ... this book details the lives of doctors and musicians, aristocrats and artists, businessmen and suffragettes, scientists and generals who made essential, but now-largely forgotten, contributions to places and eras as diverse as Reformation Europe, Mughal India, Tokugawa Japan, colonial Australia, and post-colonial Kenya"--Page 4 of cover.