THE NEW YORK TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK `Dramatic and preciseâ ¦ [A] thrilling and comprehensive account of what seems certain to be the most radical, controversial and, to borrow from the subtitle, intimate science of our timeâ ¦ He is a natural storytellerâ ¦ A...  more

THE NEW YORK TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK `Dramatic and preciseâ ¦ [A] thrilling and comprehensive account of what seems certain to be the most radical, controversial and, to borrow from the subtitle, intimate science of our timeâ ¦ He is a natural storytellerâ ¦ A page-turnerâ ¦ Read this book and steel yourself for what comes next' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times The Gene is the story of one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in our history, from bestselling, prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee. Spanning the globe and several centuries, The Gene is the story of the quest to decipher the master-code that makes and defines humans, that governs our form and function. This is an epic, moving history of a scientific idea coming to life, by the author of The Emperor of All Maladies. But woven through The Gene, like a red line, is also an intimate history - the story of Mukherjee's own family and its recurring pattern of mental illness, reminding us that genetics is vitally relevant to everyday lives. These concerns reverberate even more urgently today as we learn to "read" and "write" the human genome - unleashing the potential to change the fates and identities of our children. The story of the gene begins in an obscure Augustinian abbey in Moravia in 1856 where a monk stumbles on the idea of a `unit of heredity'. It intersects with Darwin's theory of evolution, and collides with the horrors of Nazi eugenics in the 1940s. The gene transforms post-war biology. It reorganizes our understanding of sexuality, temperament, choice and free will. This is a story driven by human ingenuity and obsessive minds - from Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel to Francis Crick, James Watson and Rosalind Franklin, and the thousands of scientists still working to understand the code of codes. Majestic in its ambition, and unflinching in its honesty, The Gene gives us a definitive account of the fundamental unit of heredity - and a vision of both humanity's past and future.

Masters of the AirMasters of the Air is a narrative history of the bomber war in World War Two. The U.S. had two air forces conducting strategic bombing in Europe during the war, the Eighth and the Fifteenth. The Eighth was the more powerful and was the one that bombed Germany. Masters of the...  more

Masters of the AirMasters of the Air is a narrative history of the bomber war in World War Two. The U.S. had two air forces conducting strategic bombing in Europe during the war, the Eighth and the Fifteenth. The Eighth was the more powerful and was the one that bombed Germany. Masters of the Air is the story of the Eighth Air Force. The American bomber war began in the summer of 1942 with a strike by a dozen Flying Fortresses (B-17s), or "Forts," as they were called, against Rouen, then occupied by the Germans. It ended in the spring of 1945 with a succession of thousand-bomber terror attacks against Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden and other cities in Germany.Of all the military services in World War Two, only the German U-boat crews suffered a higher casualty rate than the bomber crews. The Eighth Air Force suffered over 26,000 fatal casualties, more than the entire Marine Corps. An additional 23,000 flyers were made prisoners of war. In 1943 an airman's chance of surviving 25 missions - the number required to go home - were about one in four. And as Catch-22 so cleverly suggested, many airmen suffered debilitating mental breakdowns. Despite all this, the bombing campaign was a success. It took nearly two years for the commanders to figure out how to use the bombers most effectively, during which time the crews paid a horrible price for this new form of warfare. But starting in the spring of 1944, American bombers began punishing German oil and transportation targets, disrupting the Nazi war machine. By January, 1945, before a single soldier had crossed the Rhine, the German economy was in ruins and defeat was inevitable. As Don Miller puts it, air power alone did not win the war, but the war could not have been won without air power.Masters of the Air, as its title suggests, focuses on the crews who flew the planes. It is based on over a thousand oral histories and an even greater number of unpublished letters and diaries. Masters of the Air takes readers into battle with the crews, freezing in the air in unheated, unpressurized aircraft. It takes readers to East Anglia, where nearly a quarter of a million Eighth Air Force personnel were stationed, many living among their English hosts. Air men had comforts unknown to the infantry: beds with clean sheets, nights at the local pubs. But they faced far worse odds than any other branch of the armed services. The POW camps are an important part of this story. Among the captured airmen was Chuck Yeager, who escaped a POW camp across the Pyrenees to Spain, with the help of the French Underground. Many airmen spent most of the war in the stalags, where life was far grimmer than portrayed in movies and television. The book also grapples with the moral issue that has re-surfaced recently. Most of the air crews knew that they were bombing civilians. Some historians have argued that the bombing campaign failed to destroy the morale of the German people, but Miller makes clear that it succeeded. The problem was that the German people had no options but to continue to work and hope to survive, demoralized or not. The RAF believed strongly in "city busting," bombing civilians, but as Masters of the Air shows, bombing oil refineries, factories, and rail hubs was far more effective, even though these campaigns produced heavy civilian casualties, too. All but a relative handful of the airmen had never flown in a plane in their lives until they joined the Eighth. Among those whose stories Miller tells are Robert Morgan, pilot of the famous Memphis Belle; Col. William Wyler, the director, who flew with Morgan and filmed the story of the plane and its crew (and who later directed the Oscar-winning Best Years of Our Lives, which featured Dana andrews as a bombardier just home from the war); Clark Gable, an Eighth Air Force gunner, who made a little-known documentary about the Eighth; Andy Rooney and Walter Cronkite, young war correspondents who flew in the bombers; Bernie Lay, Jr., an Eighth Air Force commander and flier who wrote Twelve O'Clock High!, the finest novel and film about the air war; and Jimmy Stewart, one of the most decorated air commanders in the Eighth Air Force.At the center of the story is a single bomb group, the Hundredth, known as the Bloody Hundredth for its heavy casualties. Masters of the Air follows the Bloody Hundredth from basic training to the end of the war, when the POWs were reunited with their comrades back in England. The inspirational leader of the Bloody Hundredth is Robert "Rosie" Rosenthal, now 88. He enlisted on the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, a former athlete at Brooklyn College and law student at the time. He flew 52 combat missions (the record was 93) and was shot down three times, the last time behind Russian lines. In one bombing raid, over Munster, Germany, his was the only plane to return. He became part of the team of prosecuting attorneys at the Nuremberg Trials, where he met his wife, another young army prosecutor.Masters of the Air deftly mixes the strategic with the personal, giving us a riveting account of the bomber war while at the same time telling us unforgettable stories about the young men who flew these planes.

Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History After the Civil War the Indian Wars would last more than three decades, permanently altering the physical and political landscape of America. Peter Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly intimate detail. He illuminates...  more

Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History After the Civil War the Indian Wars would last more than three decades, permanently altering the physical and political landscape of America. Peter Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly intimate detail. He illuminates the intertribal strife over whether to fight or make peace; explores the dreary, squalid lives of frontier soldiers and the imperatives of the Indian warrior culture; and describes the ethical quandaries faced by generals who often sympathized with their native enemies. In dramatically relating bloody and tragic events as varied as Wounded Knee, the Nez Perce War, the Sierra Madre campaign, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, we encounter a pageant of fascinating characters, including Custer, Sherman, Grant, and a host of officers, soldiers, and Indian agents, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud and the warriors they led. The Earth Is Weeping is a sweeping, definitive history of the battles and negotiations that destroyed the Indian way of life even as they paved the way for the emergence of the United States we know today. A Smithsonian Top History Book of 2016 Finalist for the Western Writers of America 2017 Spur Award in Best Western Historical Nonfiction

From beach peas to serviceberries, hen of the woods to Indian cucumber, ostrich ferns to sea rocket, this guide uncovers the edible wild foods and healthful herbs of New York. Helpfully organized by environmental zone, the book is an authoritative guide for nature lovers, outdoorsmen, and...  more

From beach peas to serviceberries, hen of the woods to Indian cucumber, ostrich ferns to sea rocket, this guide uncovers the edible wild foods and healthful herbs of New York. Helpfully organized by environmental zone, the book is an authoritative guide for nature lovers, outdoorsmen, and gastronomes.

The shocking truth about the government?s secret plans to survive a catastrophic attack on US soil?even if the rest of us die?is ?a frightening eye-opener? (Kirkus Reviews) that spans the dawn of the nuclear age to today, and "contains everything one could possibly want to know" (The Wall Street...  more

The shocking truth about the government?s secret plans to survive a catastrophic attack on US soil?even if the rest of us die?is ?a frightening eye-opener? (Kirkus Reviews) that spans the dawn of the nuclear age to today, and "contains everything one could possibly want to know" (The Wall Street Journal). Every day in Washington, DC, the blue-and-gold first Helicopter Squadron, codenamed ?MUSSEL,? flies over the Potomac River. As obvious as the Presidential motorcade, most people assume the squadron is a travel perk for VIPs. They?re only half right: while the helicopters do provide transport, the unit exists to evacuate high-ranking officials in the event of a terrorist or nuclear attack on the capital. In the event of an attack, select officials would be whisked by helicopters to a ring of secret bunkers around Washington, even as ordinary citizens were left to fend for themselves. ?In exploring the incredible lengths (and depths) that successive administrations have gone to in planning for the aftermath of a nuclear assault, Graff deftly weaves a tale of secrecy and paranoia? (The New York Times Book Review) with details "that read like they've been ripped from the pages of a pulp spy novel" (Vice). For more than sixty years, the US government has been developing secret Doomsday strategies to protect itself, and the multibillion-dollar Continuity of Government (COG) program takes numerous forms?from its potential to evacuate the Liberty Bell from Philadelphia to the plans to launch nuclear missiles from a Boeing-747 jet flying high over Nebraska. Garrett M. Graff sheds light on the inner workings of the 650-acre compound, called Raven Rock, just miles from Camp David, as well as dozens of other bunkers the government built for its top leaders during the Cold War, from the White House lawn to Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado to Palm Beach, Florida, and the secret plans that would have kicked in after a Cold War nuclear attack to round up foreigners and dissidents and nationalize industries. Equal parts a presidential, military, and cultural history, Raven Rock tracks the evolution of the government plan and the threats of global war from the dawn of the nuclear era through the War on Terror.

The history of America is, at its core, the story of the American West. In this new volume from the Western Writers of America, readers are taken deep into the true stories that helped America form its identity, and the people that embodied its essence. James A. Crutchfield, a long-time WWA...  more

The history of America is, at its core, the story of the American West. In this new volume from the Western Writers of America, readers are taken deep into the true stories that helped America form its identity, and the people that embodied its essence. James A. Crutchfield, a long-time WWA Secretary-Treasurer and seasoned historian, has assembled a remarkable cadre of contributors in The Way West. Included are winners of the Owen Wister Award, given for lifetime achievement in literature on the West: * David Dary explores the network of trails that lead explorers West* Bill Gulick recalls the Steamboat days of the Pacific Northwest* Leon Claire Metz goes deep into John Wesley Hardin's world* Robert M. Utley shows us the true faces of the Texas Rangers* Dale L. Walker takes us on a tour of the final resting places of forty of the West's most celebrated figures.The Way West covers many of the now obscure individuals and long-lost tales of our storied past and gives new insights into famous characters and events of this legendary era. So join the Western Writers of America on a journey back in time and lose yourself in the colorful history of the American West. (11/16/2005)

Combining epic history with rich family stories, Michael Korda chronicles the outbreak of World War II and the great events that led to Dunkirk.In an absorbing work peopled with world leaders, generals, and ordinary citizens who fought on both sides of World War II, Alone brings to resounding...  more

Combining epic history with rich family stories, Michael Korda chronicles the outbreak of World War II and the great events that led to Dunkirk.In an absorbing work peopled with world leaders, generals, and ordinary citizens who fought on both sides of World War II, Alone brings to resounding life perhaps the most critical year of twentieth-century history. For, indeed, May 1940 was a month like no other, as the German war machine blazed into France while the supposedly impregnable Maginot Line crumbled, and Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister in an astonishing political drama as Britain, isolated and alone, faced a triumphant Nazi Germany. Against this vast historical canvas, Michael Korda relates what happened and why, and also tells his own story, that of a six-year-old boy in a glamorous movie family who would himself be evacuated. Alone is a work that seamlessly weaves a family memoir into an unforgettable account of a political and military disaster redeemed by the evacuation of more than 300,000 men in four days?surely one of the most heroic episodes of the war. ?The incredible, almost miraculous story of what happened at Dunkirk in the year 1940?and why?is unfolded in Alone with great narrative skill and superb delineation of a highly interesting cast of characters, including, importantly, the author himself and his own remarkable family.? ? David McCullough 12 maps; 68 illustrations

By the time Henry Kissinger was made secretary of state in 1973, he had become, according to the Gallup Poll, the most admired person in America and one of the most unlikely celebrities ever to capture the world's imagination. Yet Kissinger was also reviled by large segments of the American...  more

By the time Henry Kissinger was made secretary of state in 1973, he had become, according to the Gallup Poll, the most admired person in America and one of the most unlikely celebrities ever to capture the world's imagination. Yet Kissinger was also reviled by large segments of the American public, ranging from liberal intellectuals to conservative activists. Kissinger explores the relationship between this complex man's personality and the foreign policy he pursued. Drawing on extensive interviews with Kissinger as well as 150 other sources, including U.S. presidents and his business clients, this first full-length biography makes use of many of Kissinger's private papers and classified memos to tell his uniquely American story. The result is an intimate narrative, filled with surprising revelations, that takes this grandly colorful statesman from his childhood as a persecuted Jew in Nazi Germany, through his tortured relationship with Richard Nixon, to his later years as a globe-trotting business consultant.

From the acclaimed author of "Agent Zigzag" comes an extraordinary account of the most successful deception -- and certainly the strangest -- ever carried out in World War II, one that changed the prospects for an Allied victory. The purpose of the plan--code named Operation Mincemeat...  more

From the acclaimed author of "Agent Zigzag" comes an extraordinary account of the most successful deception -- and certainly the strangest -- ever carried out in World War II, one that changed the prospects for an Allied victory. The purpose of the plan--code named Operation Mincemeat -- was to deceive the Nazis into thinking that Allied forces were planning to attack southern Europe by way of Greece or Sardinia, rather than Sicily, as the Nazis had assumed, and the Allies ultimately chose. 

The Second World War lasted for 2,174 days, cost $1.5 trillion, and claimed the lives of more than 50 million people. What were the factors that affected the war's outcome? Why did the Axis lose? And could they, with a different strategy, have won?  Andrew Roberts' acclaimed new...  more

The Second World War lasted for 2,174 days, cost $1.5 trillion, and claimed the lives of more than 50 million people. What were the factors that affected the war's outcome? Why did the Axis lose? And could they, with a different strategy, have won?  Andrew Roberts' acclaimed new history has been hailed as the finest single-volume account of this epic conflict. From the western front to North Africa, from the Baltic to the Far East, he tells the story of the war - the grand strategy and the individual experience, the cruelty and the heroism - as never before.  In researching this magnificently vivid history, Roberts walked many of the key battlefields and wartimes sites in Russia, France, Italy, Germany, and the Far East, and drew on a number of never-before-published documents, such as a letter from Hitler's director of military operations explaining the reasoning behind the Fuhrer's order to halt the Panzers outside Dunkirk - a delay that enabled British forces to evacuate. Roberts illuminates the principal actors on both sides and analyzes how they reached critical decisions. He also presents the tales of many little-known individuals whose experiences form a panoply of the extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice, as well as the terrible depravity and cruelty, of the Second World War.  Meticulously researched and masterfully written, The Storm of War gives a dramatic account of this momentous event and shows in remarkable detail why the war took the course it did.

Beginning in January 1692, Salem Village in colonial Massachusetts witnessed the largest and most lethal outbreak of witchcraft in early America. Villagers--mainly young women--suffered from unseen torments that caused them to writhe, shriek, and contort their bodies, complaining of pins stuck...  more

Beginning in January 1692, Salem Village in colonial Massachusetts witnessed the largest and most lethal outbreak of witchcraft in early America. Villagers--mainly young women--suffered from unseen torments that caused them to writhe, shriek, and contort their bodies, complaining of pins stuck into their flesh and of being haunted by specters. Believing that they suffered from assaults by an invisible spirit, the community began a hunt to track down those responsible for the demonic work. The resulting Salem Witch Trials, culminating in the execution of 19 villagers, persists as one of the most mysterious and fascinating events in American history. Historians have speculated on a web of possible causes for the witchcraft that stated in Salem and spread across the region-religious crisis, ergot poisoning, an encephalitis outbreak, frontier war hysteria--but most agree that there was no single factor. Rather, as Emerson Baker illustrates in this seminal new work, Salem was "a perfect storm": a unique convergence of conditions and events that produced something extraordinary throughout New England in 1692 and the following years, and which has haunted us ever since. Baker shows how a range of factors in the Bay colony in the 1690s, including a new charter and government, a lethal frontier war, and religious and political conflicts, set the stage for the dramatic events in Salem. Engaging a range of perspectives, he looks at the key players in the outbreak--the accused witches and the people they allegedly bewitched, as well as the judges and government officials who prosecuted them--and wrestles with questions about why the Salem tragedy unfolded as it did, and why it has become an enduring legacy. Salem in 1692 was a critical moment for the fading Puritan government of Massachusetts Bay, whose attempts to suppress the story of the trials and erase them from memory only fueled the popular imagination. Baker argues that the trials marked a turning point in colonial history from Puritan communalism to Yankee independence, from faith in collective conscience to skepticism toward moral governance. A brilliantly told tale, A Storm of Witchcraft also puts Salem's storm into its broader context as a part of the ongoing narrative of American history and the history of the Atlantic World.

From an acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist, a sweeping history of the largely forgotten time when the eastern seaboard marked the tense frontier between great colonial empires and countless native tribes Once, the East was frontier?the boundary between complex native cultures and the first...  more

From an acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist, a sweeping history of the largely forgotten time when the eastern seaboard marked the tense frontier between great colonial empires and countless native tribes Once, the East was frontier?the boundary between complex native cultures and the first colonizing Europeans. How they each adopted and adapted the ways and manners of the other, while contesting for control of what all considered to be their land, shaped both societies in profound and lasting ways. The First Frontier traces two and a half centuries of history through poignant, mostly unheralded personal stories?like that of a Harvard-educated Indian caught up in seventeenth-century warfare, a mixed-blood interpreter trying to straddle his white and native heritage, and a Puritan woman wielding a scalping knife. It is the first book in years to tell the far-reaching story of the eastern frontier, combining vivid storytelling with the latest research to bring to life modern America?s tumultuous, uncertain beginnings.

Beginning in the early nineteenth century, and ending with the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, award-winning historian Margaret MacMillan uncovers the huge political and technological changes, national decisions and - just as important - the small moments of human muddle and weakness...  more

Beginning in the early nineteenth century, and ending with the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, award-winning historian Margaret MacMillan uncovers the huge political and technological changes, national decisions and - just as important - the small moments of human muddle and weakness that led Europe from peace to disaster. This masterful exploration of how Europe chose its path towards war will change and enrich how we see this defining moment in our history.

A New York Times Bestseller -- A Pulitzer Prize?winning AuthorAfter his Pulitzer Prize?winning history of the Allied triumph in North Africa, Rick Atkinson follows the strengthening armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943 and, mile by bloody mile, fight their way north. The decision to invade...  more

A New York Times Bestseller -- A Pulitzer Prize?winning AuthorAfter his Pulitzer Prize?winning history of the Allied triumph in North Africa, Rick Atkinson follows the strengthening armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943 and, mile by bloody mile, fight their way north. The decision to invade Europe's so-called soft underbelly was controversial, but once under way the commitment never wavered. And with the liberation of Rome from the Nazis in June 1944, victory at last began to seem inevitable.

The classic bestseller and definitive study of Hitler's rise to power, now in hardcover, with a new introductory essay by Ron Rosenbaum.

"An extraordinary human document and a suspense story that is hard to put down."?The New York Times In May 1939, the SS St. Louis set sail from Hamburg carrying 937 German Jews seeking asylum from Nazi persecution. Unknown to the captain, the ship was merely a pawn of Nazi propaganda. Among the...  more

"An extraordinary human document and a suspense story that is hard to put down."?The New York Times In May 1939, the SS St. Louis set sail from Hamburg carrying 937 German Jews seeking asylum from Nazi persecution. Unknown to the captain, the ship was merely a pawn of Nazi propaganda. Among the crew were members of the dreaded Gestapo, and the steward himself was on a mission for the SS. Made into an Academy Award?winning film in 1976, Voyage of the Damned is the gripping, day-by-day account of how those refugees on board the liner struggled to survive. 24 b&w illustrations

T he enormous historical significance of Adolf Hitler, indisputably the most studied, infamous, and reviled person ever to live, has overshadowed the man behind the public persona. For decades, misconceptions about Hitler have percolated, with a common notion emerging that he was...  more

T he enormous historical significance of Adolf Hitler, indisputably the most studied, infamous, and reviled person ever to live, has overshadowed the man behind the public persona. For decades, misconceptions about Hitler have percolated, with a common notion emerging that he was unintelligent, merely a political animal, with no normal social or romantic relationships to speak of. But to cast Hitler as purely a psychopathic monster is to ignore the facets of his personality that help explain his enigmatic hold on the German populace. With unprecedented nuance and insight, Volker Ullrich recounts Hitler's personal journey from childhood to his failures as a young man in Vienna to his service during the First World War to the missteps and successes in his consolidation of political power. In doing so, Ullrich deftly captures Hitler's canniness, instinctive grasp of politics, and gift for oratory as well as his megalomania, deep insecurity, and repulsive worldview.

For the past decade, Richard Rubin sought every last living American veteran of World War I?and uncovered a forgotten great generation, and their war.

The telephone rings on the hospital floor, and they tell you it is your mother, the phone call you have been dreading. You've lost part of your face to a Japanese sniper on Okinawa, and after many surgeries, the doctor has finally told you that at 19, you will never see again. The pain and shock...  more

The telephone rings on the hospital floor, and they tell you it is your mother, the phone call you have been dreading. You've lost part of your face to a Japanese sniper on Okinawa, and after many surgeries, the doctor has finally told you that at 19, you will never see again. The pain and shock are one thing. But now you have to tell her, from 5000 miles away.-- 'So I had a hard two months, I guess. I kept mostly to myself. I wouldn't talk to people. I tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do when I got home. How was I going to tell my mother this? You know what I mean?' Jimmy Butterfield, WWII Marine veteran From the author of 'The Things Our Fathers Saw' World War II eyewitness history series How soon we forget. Or perhaps, we were never told. That is understandable, given what they saw.-- 'I was talking to a shipmate of mine waiting for the motor launch, and all at once I saw a plane go over our ship. I did not know what it was, but the fellow with me said, 'That's a Jap plane, Jesus!' It went down and dropped a torpedo. Then I saw the Utah turn over.' Barney Ross, U.S. Navy seaman, Pearl HarborAt the height of World War II, LOOK Magazine profiled a small American community for a series of articles portraying it as the wholesome, patriotic model of life on the home front. Decades later, author Matthew Rozell tracks down over thirty survivors who fought the war in the Pacific, from Pearl Harbor to the surrender at Tokyo Bay.-- 'Rage is instantaneous. He's looking at me from a crawling position. I didn't shoot him; I went and kicked him in the head. Rage does funny things. After I kicked him, I shot and killed him.' Thomas Jones, Marine veteran, Battle of GuadalcanalThese are the stories that the magazine could not tell to the American public.-- 'I remember it rained like hell that night, and the water was running down the slope into our foxholes. I had to use my helmet to keep bailing out, you know. Lt. Gower called us together. He said, 'I think we're getting hit with a banzai. We're going to have to pull back. 'Holy God, there was howling and screaming! They had naked women, with spears, stark naked!' Nick Grinaldo, U.S. Army veteran, SaipanBy the end of 2018, fewer than 400,000 WW II veterans will still be with us, out of the over 16 million who put on a uniform. But why is it that today, nobody seems to know these stories? Maybe our veterans did not volunteer; maybe we were too busy with our own lives to ask. But they opened up to the younger generation, when a history teacher told their grandchildren to ask.-- 'I hope you'll never have to tell a story like this, when you get to be 87. I hope you'll never have to do it.' Ralph Leinoff, Marine veteran Iwo JimaThis book brings you the previously untold firsthand accounts of combat and brotherhood, of captivity and redemption, and the aftermath of a war that left no American community unscathed.-- 'After 31/2 years of starvation and brutal treatment, that beautiful symbol of freedom once more flies over our head! Our POW camp tailor worked all night and finished our first American flag! The blue came from a GI barracks bag, red from a Jap comforter and the white from an Australian bed sheet. When I came out of the barracks and saw those beautiful colors for the first time, I felt like crying!' Joe Minder, U.S. Army POW, Japan,1945As we forge ahead as a nation, we owe it to ourselves to become reacquainted with a generation that is fast leaving us, who asked for nothing but gave everything, to attune ourselves as Americans to a broader appreciation of what we stand for."Should be a must-read in every high school in America" --Reviewer

From the best-selling author of Leviathan comes this sweeping narrative of one of America?s most historically rich industries. Beginning his epic history in the early 1600s, Eric Jay Dolin traces the dramatic rise and fall of the American fur industry, from the first Dutch encounters with the...  more

From the best-selling author of Leviathan comes this sweeping narrative of one of America?s most historically rich industries. Beginning his epic history in the early 1600s, Eric Jay Dolin traces the dramatic rise and fall of the American fur industry, from the first Dutch encounters with the Indians to the rise of the conservation movement in the late nineteenth century. Dolin shows how the fur trade, driven by the demands of fashion, sparked controversy, fostered economic competition, and fueled wars among the European powers, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations. The trade in beaver, buffalo, sea otter, and other animal skins spurred the exploration and the settlement of the vast American continent, while it alternately enriched and gravely damaged the lives of America?s native peoples. Populated by a larger-than-life cast?including Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant; President Thomas Jefferson; America?s first multimillionaire, John Jacob Astor; and mountain man Kit Carson?Fur, Fortune, and Empire is the most comprehensive and compelling history of the American fur trade ever written. 16 pages of color and 16 pages of black-and-white illustrations

One of the bloodiest battles in world history?a military tragedy that would come to define a generation. On July 1, 1916, the British Army launched the ?Big Push? that was supposed to bring an end to the horrific stalemate on the Western Front between British, French, and German forces. What...  more

One of the bloodiest battles in world history?a military tragedy that would come to define a generation. On July 1, 1916, the British Army launched the ?Big Push? that was supposed to bring an end to the horrific stalemate on the Western Front between British, French, and German forces. What resulted was one of the greatest single human catastrophes in twentieth century warfare. Scrambling out of trenches in the face of German machine guns and artillery fire, the Allied Powers lost over twenty thousand soldiers that first day. This ?battle? would drag on for another four bloody months, resulting in over one million causalities among the three powers. As the oral historian at the Imperial War Museum in London, Peter Hart has brought to light new material never before seen or heard. The Somme is an unparalleled evocation of World War I?s iconic contest?the definitive account of one of the major tragedies of the twentieth century. 32 b&w illustrations.

The Barbary War - the first American war against Libya - was the first war waged by the United States outside national boundaries after gaining independence and unification of the country. The four Barbary States of North Africa - Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli - had plundered seaborne...  more

The Barbary War - the first American war against Libya - was the first war waged by the United States outside national boundaries after gaining independence and unification of the country. The four Barbary States of North Africa - Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli - had plundered seaborne commerce for centuries. This was piracy on an extraordinary scale: they controlled all trading routes through the Barbary waters and North Africa: demanding ransom and booty for safe passage. In 1801 the newly elected President Jefferson ordered a naval and military expedition to North Africa in order to put down regimes that endorsed piracy and slavery. The Pasha of Tripoli declared war on the United States. Under the leadership of Commodores Richard Dale and Edward Preble, the US Navy blockaded the enemy coast and engaged in close, bitterly contested gunboat actions. On 16 February 1804 LT Stephen Decatur led 74 volunteers into Tripoli to burn the captured American frigate The Philadelphia. British Admiral Lord Nelson called the raid "the most daring act of the age". In 1805 Marines stormed the Barbary pirates' harbor fortress stronghold of Derna (Tripoli), commemorated in the Marine Corp Hymn invocation "To the Shores of Tripoli."The US Navy troops were recalled before they could secure their gains, but returned after the War of 1812. Their success then won worldwide admiration for the Americans and their Navy. They marked the way for the European nations to finally quash the Barbary States and end the piracy.This event marks the true birth of the US Navy and Marines and is ever remembered in the Marines' battle hymn.

The Catskills (?Cat Creek? in Dutch), America?s original frontier, northwest of New York City, with its seven hundred thousand acres of forest land preserve and its five counties?Delaware, Greene, Sullivan, Ulster, Schoharie; America?s first great vacationland; the subject of the...  more

The Catskills (?Cat Creek? in Dutch), America?s original frontier, northwest of New York City, with its seven hundred thousand acres of forest land preserve and its five counties?Delaware, Greene, Sullivan, Ulster, Schoharie; America?s first great vacationland; the subject of the nineteenth-century Hudson River School paintings that captured the almost godlike majesty of the mountains and landscapes, the skies, waterfalls, pastures, cliffs . . . refuge and home to poets and gangsters, tycoons and politicians, preachers and outlaws, musicians and spiritualists, outcasts and rebels . . . Stephen Silverman and Raphael Silver tell of the turning points that made the Catskills so vital to the development of America: Henry Hudson?s first spotting the distant blue mountains in 1609; the New York State constitutional convention, resulting in New York?s own Declaration of Independence from Great Britain and its own constitution, causing the ire of the invading British army . . . the Catskills as a popular attraction in the 1800s, with the construction of the Catskill Mountain House and its rugged imitators that offered WASP guests ?one-hundred percent restricted? accommodations (?Hebrews will knock vainly for admission?), a policy that remained until the Catskills became the curative for tubercular patients, sending real-estate prices plummeting and the WASP enclave on to richer pastures . . . Here are the gangsters (Jack ?Legs? Diamond and Dutch Schultz, among them) who sought refuge in the Catskill Mountains, and the resorts that after World War II catered to upwardly mobile Jewish families, giving rise to hundreds of hotels inspired by Grossinger?s, the original ?Disneyland with knishes??the Concord, Brown?s Hotel, Kutsher?s Hotel, and others?in what became known as the Borscht Belt and Sour Cream Alps, with their headliners from movies and radio (Phil Silvers, Eddie Cantor, Milton Berle, et al.), and others who learned their trade there, among them Moss Hart (who got his start organizing summer theatricals), Sid Caesar, Lenny Bruce, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Joan Rivers. Here is a nineteenth-century America turning away from England for its literary and artistic inspiration, finding it instead in Washington Irving?s ?Rip Van Winkle? and his childhood recollections (set in the Catskills) . . . in James Fenimore Cooper?s adventure-romances, which provided a pastoral history, describing the shift from a colonial to a nationalist mentality . . . and in the canvases of Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederick Church, and others that caught the grandeur of the wilderness and that gave texture, color, and form to Irving?s and Cooper?s imaginings. Here are the entrepreneurs and financiers who saw the Catskills as a way to strike it rich, plundering the resources that had been likened to ?creation,? the Catskills? tanneries that supplied the boots and saddles for Union troops in the Civil War . . . and the bluestone quarries whose excavated rock became the curbs and streets of the fast-growing Eastern Seaboard.  Here are the Catskills brought fully to life in all of their intensity, beauty, vastness, and lunacy.

New York now has a new, comprehensive history book that chronicles the state through centuries of change. A richly illustrated volume, The Empire State begins in the early seventeenth century (when the region was still populated solely by Native Americans) and concludes in the mid-1990s, by...  more

New York now has a new, comprehensive history book that chronicles the state through centuries of change. A richly illustrated volume, The Empire State begins in the early seventeenth century (when the region was still populated solely by Native Americans) and concludes in the mid-1990s, by which time people from all over the world had made the state their home. Throughout the book, politics, economics, culture, and social history all are emphasized, as are the important contributions made by ethnic groups and women. The Empire State serves as a successor to A History of New York State, for many years the standard one-volume account of the region but today outdated and long out of print. Now students, scholars, and history enthusiasts will find thorough and fascinating coverage in The Empire State. The authors--distinguished authorities on New York State--draw on current research and perspectives as they address such topics as • the Dutch colonization of the region, • the English province, • the Revolution, • antebellum society, • the abolition of slavery and the Civil War, • the New York City media, • New York's vibrant political culture, • labor and leisure • women's suffrage • immigration and migration, • the World Wars, and • the state's economic development. Readers from the Big Apple to Buffalo and beyond will find The Empire State, which provides equal coverage to "upstate" and "downstate" events and people, satisfying and informative reading.

The Encyclopedia of New York State is one of the most complete works on the Empire State to be published in a half-century. In nearly 2,000 pages and 4,000 signed entries, this single volume captures the impressive complexity of New York State as a historic crossroads of people and ideas, as a...  more

The Encyclopedia of New York State is one of the most complete works on the Empire State to be published in a half-century. In nearly 2,000 pages and 4,000 signed entries, this single volume captures the impressive complexity of New York State as a historic crossroads of people and ideas, as a cradle of abolitionism and feminism, and as an apex of modern urban, suburban, and rural life. The Encyclopedia is packed with fascinating details from fields ranging from sociology and geography to history. Did you know that Manhattan's Lower East Side was once the most populated neighborhood in the world, but Hamilton County in the Adirondacks is the least densely populated county east of the Mississippi; New York is the only state to border both the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean; the Erie Canal opened New York City to rich farmland upstate . . . and to the west. Entries by experts chronicle New York's varied areas, politics, and persuasions with a cornucopia of subjects from environmentalism to higher education to railroads, weaving the state's diverse regions and peoples into one idea of New York State. Lavishly illustrated with 500 photographs and figures, 120 maps, and 140 tables, the Encyclopedia is key to understanding the state's past, present, and future. It is a crucial reference for students, teachers, historians, and business people, for New Yorkers of all persuasions, and for anyone interested in finding out more about New York State.

This is the story of the oldest warship afloat in the world, the venerable frigate USS Constitution, the cornerstone of the nascent American navy created by act of Congress in 1794. Colonel David Fitz-Enz re-creates the world of sail, when seven knots an hour was considered blinding speed for a...  more

This is the story of the oldest warship afloat in the world, the venerable frigate USS Constitution, the cornerstone of the nascent American navy created by act of Congress in 1794. Colonel David Fitz-Enz re-creates the world of sail, when seven knots an hour was considered blinding speed for a warship. In Old Ironsides, Fitz-Enz tells the story of the ship, from its construction to the ongoing restoration efforts that keep it active today.

Author and journalist Anderson Cooper teams with historian and novelist Katherine Howe to chronicle the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty -- his mother’s family, the Vanderbilts. When eleven-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt began to work on his father’s small boat...  more

Author and journalist Anderson Cooper teams with historian and novelist Katherine Howe to chronicle the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty -- his mother’s family, the Vanderbilts. When eleven-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt began to work on his father’s small boat ferrying supplies in New York Harbor at the beginning of the nineteenth century, no one could have imagined that one day he would, through ruthlessness, cunning, and a pathological desire for money, build two empires -- one in shipping and another in railroads -- that would make him the richest man in America. His staggering fortune was fought over by his heirs after his death in 1877, sowing familial discord that would never fully heal. Though his son Billy doubled the money left by “the Commodore,” subsequent generations competed to find new and ever more extraordinary ways of spending it. By 2018, when the last Vanderbilt was forced out of The Breakers -- the seventy-room summer estate in Newport, Rhode Island, that Cornelius’s grandson and namesake had built -- the family would have been unrecognizable to the tycoon who started it all. Now, the Commodore’s great-great-great-grandson Anderson Cooper, joins with historian Katherine Howe to explore the story of his legendary family and their outsized influence. Cooper and Howe breathe life into the ancestors who built the family’s empire, basked in the Commodore’s wealth, hosted lavish galas, and became synonymous with unfettered American capitalism and high society. Moving from the hardscrabble wharves of old Manhattan to the lavish drawing rooms of Gilded Age Fifth Avenue, from the ornate summer palaces of Newport to the courts of Europe, and all the way to modern-day New York, Cooper and Howe wryly recount the triumphs and tragedies of an American dynasty unlike any other. Written with a unique insider’s viewpoint, this is a rollicking, quintessentially American history as remarkable as the family it so vividly captures.

The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, two New York Times bestsellers, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. Now, in the newest volume in the series, one of America's...  more

The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, two New York Times bestsellers, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. Now, in the newest volume in the series, one of America's most esteemed historians, Gordon S. Wood, offers a brilliant account of the early American Republic, ranging from 1789 and the beginning of the national government to the end of the War of 1812. As Wood reveals, the period was marked by tumultuous change in all aspects of American life--in politics, society, economy, and culture. The men who founded the new government had high hopes for the future, but few of their hopes and dreams worked out quite as they expected. They hated political parties but parties nonetheless emerged. Some wanted the United States to become a great fiscal-military state like those of Britain and France; others wanted the country to remain a rural agricultural state very different from the European states. Instead, by 1815 the United States became something neither group anticipated. Many leaders expected American culture to flourish and surpass that of Europe; instead it became popularized and vulgarized. The leaders also hope to see the end of slavery; instead, despite the release of many slaves and the end of slavery in the North, slavery was stronger in 1815 than it had been in 1789. Many wanted to avoid entanglements with Europe, but instead the country became involved in Europe's wars and ended up waging another war with the former mother country. Still, with a new generation emerging by 1815, most Americans were confident and optimistic about the future of their country. Integrating all aspects of life, from politics and law to the economy and culture, Empire of Liberty offers a marvelous account of this pivotal era when America took its first unsteady steps as a new and rapidly expanding nation.

In this major new history of the Civil War, Bruce Levine tells the riveting story of how that conflict upended the economic, political, and social life of the old South, utterly destroying the Confederacy and the society it represented and defended. Told through the words of the people who lived...  more

In this major new history of the Civil War, Bruce Levine tells the riveting story of how that conflict upended the economic, political, and social life of the old South, utterly destroying the Confederacy and the society it represented and defended. Told through the words of the people who lived it, The Fall of the House of Dixie illuminates the way a war undertaken to preserve the status quo became a second American Revolution whose impact on the country was as strong and lasting as that of our first.   In 1860 the American South was a vast, wealthy, imposing region where a small minority had amassed great political power and enormous fortunes through a system of forced labor. The South?s large population of slaveless whites almost universally supported the basic interests of plantation owners, despite the huge wealth gap that separated them. By the end of 1865 these structures of wealth and power had been shattered. Millions of black people had gained their freedom, many poorer whites had ceased following their wealthy neighbors, and plantation owners were brought to their knees, losing not only their slaves but their political power, their worldview, their very way of life. This sea change was felt nationwide, as the balance of power in Congress, the judiciary, and the presidency shifted dramatically and lastingly toward the North, and the country embarked on a course toward equal rights.   Levine captures the many-sided human drama of this story using a huge trove of diaries, letters, newspaper articles, government documents, and more. In The Fall of the House of Dixie, the true stakes of the Civil War become clearer than ever before, as slaves battle for their freedom in the face of brutal reprisals; Abraham Lincoln and his party turn what began as a limited war for the Union into a crusade against slavery by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation; poor southern whites grow increasingly disillusioned with fighting what they have come to see as the plantation owners? war; and the slave owners grow ever more desperate as their beloved social order is destroyed, not just by the Union Army, but also from within. When the smoke clears, not only Dixie but all of American society is changed forever.   Brilliantly argued and engrossing, The Fall of the House of Dixie is a sweeping account of the destruction of the old South during the Civil War, offering a fresh perspective on the most colossal struggle in our history and the new world it brought into being. Praise for The Fall of the House of Dixie   ?This is the Civil War as it is seldom seen. . . . A portrait of a country in transition . . . as vivid as any that has been written.??The Boston Globe   ?An absorbing social history . . . For readers whose Civil War bibliography runs to standard works by Bruce Catton and James McPherson, [Bruce] Levine?s book offers fresh insights.??The Wall Street Journal   ?More poignantly than any book before, The Fall of the House of Dixie shows how deeply intertwined the Confederacy was with slavery, and how the destruction of both made possible a ?second American revolution? as far-reaching as the first.??David W. Blight, author of American Oracle   ?Splendidly colorful . . . Levine recounts this tale of Southern institutional rot with the ease and authority born of decades of study.??Kirkus Reviews (starred review)   ?A deep, rich, and complex analysis of the period surrounding and including the American Civil War.??Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A tale of Nazi lives, mass murder, love, cold war espionage, a mysterious death in the Vatican -- and "the Ratline," the Nazi escape route to Peron's Argentina. Baron Otto von Wächter, Austrian lawyer, husband, father, high Nazi official, senior SS officer, former governor...  more

A tale of Nazi lives, mass murder, love, cold war espionage, a mysterious death in the Vatican -- and "the Ratline," the Nazi escape route to Peron's Argentina. Baron Otto von Wächter, Austrian lawyer, husband, father, high Nazi official, senior SS officer, former governor of Galicia during the war, creator and overseer of the Krakow ghetto, indicted after as a war criminal for the mass murder of more than 100,000 Poles, hunted by the Soviets, the Americans, the British, by Simon Wiesenthal, on the run for three years, from 1945 to 1948 . . . Philippe Sands pieces together, in riveting detail, Wächter's extraordinary, shocking story. Given full access to the Wächter family archives -- journals, diaries, tapes, and more -- and with the assistance of the Wächters' son Horst, who believes his father to have been a "good man," Sands writes of Wächter's rise through the Nazi high command, his "blissful" marriage and family life as their world was brought to ruin, and his four-year flight to escape justice -- to the Tirol, to Rome, and the Vatican; given a new identity, on his way to a new life via "the Ratline" to Perón's Argentina, the escape route taken by Eichmann, Mengele, and thousands of other Nazis. Wächter's escape was cut short by his mysterious, shocking death in Rome, in the midst of the burgeoning Cold War (was he being recruited in postwar Italy by the Americans and the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps or by the Soviet NKVD or by both; or was he poisoned by one side or the other, as his son believes -- or by both?) . . . An extraordinary discovery, told up-close through access to a trove of family correspondence between Wächter and his wife -- part historical detective story, part love story, part family memoir, part Cold War espionage thriller.

On the morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob numbering in the thousands marched across the railroad tracks dividing black from white in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and obliterated a black community then celebrated as one of America's most prosperous. 34 square blocks of Tulsa's Greenwood community, known...  more

On the morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob numbering in the thousands marched across the railroad tracks dividing black from white in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and obliterated a black community then celebrated as one of America's most prosperous. 34 square blocks of Tulsa's Greenwood community, known then as the Negro Wall Street of America, were reduced to smoldering rubble.And now, 80 years later, the death toll of what is known as the Tulsa Race Riot is more difficult to pinpoint. Conservative estimates put the number of dead at about 100 (75% of the victims are believed to have been black), but the actual number of casualties could be triple that. The Tulsa Race Riot Commission, formed two years ago to determine exactly what happened, has recommended that restitution to the historic Greenwood Community would be good public policy and do much to repair the emotional as well as physical scars of this most terrible incident in our shared past. With chilling details, humanity, and the narrative thrust of compelling fiction, The Burning will recreate the town of Greenwood at the height of its prosperity, explore the currents of hatred, racism, and mistrust between its black residents and neighboring Tulsa's white population, narrate events leading up to and including Greenwood's annihilation, and document the subsequent silence that surrounded the tragedy.

SINCE ITS PUBLICATION FIVE DECADES AGO, William L. Shirer?s monumental study of Hitler?s empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of the twentieth century?s blackest hours. A worldwide bestseller with millions of copies in print, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich offers an...  more

SINCE ITS PUBLICATION FIVE DECADES AGO, William L. Shirer?s monumental study of Hitler?s empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of the twentieth century?s blackest hours. A worldwide bestseller with millions of copies in print, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich offers an unparalleled and thrillingly told examination of how Adolf Hitler nearly succeeded in conquering the world. Here, in a thoughtful new introduction for the fiftieth anniversary of its National Book Award win, Ron Rosenbaum, author of the much-admired Explaining Hitler, takes a fresh and penetrating look at this vital and enduring classic and the role it continues to play in today?s discussions of the history of Nazi Germany.

In time for the 150th anniversary of our defining national event: an original and altogether gripping account of how the Civil War began.1861 is an epic of courage and heroism beyond the battlefields. Early in that fateful year, Americans began to rally around an idea of remaking the country...  more

In time for the 150th anniversary of our defining national event: an original and altogether gripping account of how the Civil War began.1861 is an epic of courage and heroism beyond the battlefields. Early in that fateful year, Americans began to rally around an idea of remaking the country into a morally coherent stronghold of liberty. This second American revolution inspired a new generation to reject their parents’ faith in compromise and appeasement, to do the unthinkable in the name of an ideal.The book introduces us to a heretofore little-known cast of Civil War heroes?among them, an acrobatic militia colonel, an explorer’s wife, a close-knit band of German immigrants, a regiment of New York City firemen, and a young college professor who would one day become president. Adam Goodheart takes us from the halls of the Capitol to the slums of Manhattan, from the mouth of the Chesapeake to the deserts of Nevada, from Boston Common to Alcatraz Island, vividly evoking the Union at this moment of ultimate crisis and decision.

Gunther Koschorrek wrote his illicit diary on any scraps of paper he could lay his hands on. As keeping a diary was strictly forbidden, he sewed the pages into the lining of his thick winter coat and deposited them with his mother on infrequent trips home on leave. The diary went missing...  more

Gunther Koschorrek wrote his illicit diary on any scraps of paper he could lay his hands on. As keeping a diary was strictly forbidden, he sewed the pages into the lining of his thick winter coat and deposited them with his mother on infrequent trips home on leave. The diary went missing and it was when he was reunited with his daughter in America some forty years later that it came to light and became "Blood Red Snow." The horror and confusion of fighting in the streets of Stalingrad are brought to life by his descriptions of the others in his unit: their differing manners and techniques for dealing with the squalor and death. This harrowing book takes the reader to the front line and paints a very human picture of what life was like under relentless Russian attacks in freezing conditions. As Koschorrek says in his introduction, the book stands as a memorial to the huge numbers on both sides who did not survive and is, over five decades later, the fulfillment of a responsibility he feels to honor the memory of those who perished.

Mark Puls delivers a compelling portrait of the Revolutionary War general who played a key role in all of George Washington?s battles. During the Siege of Boston, Henry Knox?s amazing 300 mile transport of forty nine cannons from Ticonderoga saved the city. Building upon his talent for...  more

Mark Puls delivers a compelling portrait of the Revolutionary War general who played a key role in all of George Washington?s battles. During the Siege of Boston, Henry Knox?s amazing 300 mile transport of forty nine cannons from Ticonderoga saved the city. Building upon his talent for logistics, Knox engineered Washington?s famous Christmas night passage to safety across the Delaware River. And it was the general?s tactical successes that made the final victory at Yorktown possible. With riveting battle scenes, inspiring patriotism, and vivid prose, Puls breathes new life into the American Revolution and firmly re-establishes Knox in his deserved place in history.

Robert Graves, aged nineteen, left school within a week of the outbreak of World War I, and immediately volunteered with the Royal Welch Fusiliers. His experiences as a junior officer form the heart of this compelling autobiography. Beginning with an ironic overview of his Edwardian childhood,...  more

Robert Graves, aged nineteen, left school within a week of the outbreak of World War I, and immediately volunteered with the Royal Welch Fusiliers. His experiences as a junior officer form the heart of this compelling autobiography. Beginning with an ironic overview of his Edwardian childhood, he proceeds to a tongue-in-cheek account of a young poet's life at public school (not helpful to be half-German, but handy to take up boxing), progressing to caricatures of military stereotypes he encounters in training, and the devastating farce of the War itself, the blundering and mismanagement, and the appalling human consequences. Graves's handling of the horrors of war is always deadpan, honest and unadorned. It is wholly in line with his sense of the absurd that his commanding officer should write to inform his parents that he had died of wounds during the battle of the Somme. He soon found that patriotism was meaningless to the men in the trenches; loyalty to comrades alive and dead drove him back to active service though still suffering from shell-shock. Goodbye to All That takes Graves through his convalescence in England, his efforts to protect the poet Siegfried Sassoon, a friend and fellow officer, from the consequences of his public denunciation of the war; marriage to artist and feminist Nancy Nicholson, postwar undergraduate years at Oxford and a decade as a struggling writer with four young children, beset with money problems and neurasthenia. It is written in a spirit of defiance as he prepared to put 'all that' behind him and begin a new life in Majorca with the American poet Laura Riding.

A chronicle of the American experience during World War I and the unexpected changes that rocked the country in its immediate aftermath?the Red Scare, race riots, women?s suffrage, and Prohibition. The Great War?s bitter outcome left the experience largely overlooked and forgotten in American...  more

A chronicle of the American experience during World War I and the unexpected changes that rocked the country in its immediate aftermath?the Red Scare, race riots, women?s suffrage, and Prohibition. The Great War?s bitter outcome left the experience largely overlooked and forgotten in American history. This timely book is a reexamination of America?s first global experience as we commemorate World War I's centennial. The U.S. had steered clear of the European conflagration known as the Great War for more than two years, but President Woodrow Wilson reluctantly led the divided country into the conflict with the goal of making the world ?safe for democracy.? The country assumed a global role for the first time and attempted to build the foundations for world peace, only to witness the experience go badly awry and it retreated into isolationism. Though overshadowed by the tens of millions of deaths and catastrophic destruction of World War II, the Great War was the most important war of the twentieth century. It was the first continent-wide conflagration in a century, and it drew much of the world into its fire. By the end of it, four empires and their royal houses had fallen, communism was unleashed, the map of the Middle East was redrawn, and the United States emerged as a global power ? only to withdraw from the world?s stage. The Great War is often overlooked, especially compared to World War II, which is considered the ?last good war.? The United States was disillusioned with what it achieved in the earlier war and withdrew into itself. Americans have tried to forget about it ever since. The Great War in America presents an opportunity to reexamine the country?s role on the global stage and the tremendous political and social changes that overtook the nation because of the war.

Forget what you think you know about the Mafia.  After reading this book, even life-long mob aficionados will have a new perspective on organized crime. Informative, authoritative, and eye-opening, this is the first full-length book devoted exclusively to uncovering the hidden history of how...  more

Forget what you think you know about the Mafia.  After reading this book, even life-long mob aficionados will have a new perspective on organized crime. Informative, authoritative, and eye-opening, this is the first full-length book devoted exclusively to uncovering the hidden history of how the Mafia came to dominate organized crime in New York City during the 1930s through 1950s.  Based on exhaustive research of archives and secret files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, author and attorney C. Alexander Hortis draws on the deepest collection of primary sources, many newly discovered, of any history of the modern mob. Shattering myths, Hortis reveals how Cosa Nostra actually obtained power at the inception.  The author goes beyond conventional who-shot-who mob stories, providing answers to fresh questions such as:      * Why did the Sicilian gangs come out on top of the criminal underworld?    * Can economics explain how the Mafia families operated?    * What was the Mafia's real role in the drug trade?    * Why was Cosa Nostra involved in gay bars in New York since the 1930s?   Drawing on an unprecedented array of primary sources, The Mob and the City is the most thorough and authentic history of the Mafia's rise to power in the early-to-mid twentieth century.

Of course I knew how to scalp, and soon accomplished the feat, much to his satisfaction, for he said, ?You are broke in now. You will do.? Following the doctor?s orders for a change of climate, in 1842 William Hamilton found himself accompanying a party of trappers on a year-long expedition. ...  more

Of course I knew how to scalp, and soon accomplished the feat, much to his satisfaction, for he said, ?You are broke in now. You will do.? Following the doctor?s orders for a change of climate, in 1842 William Hamilton found himself accompanying a party of trappers on a year-long expedition. Heading into the wild, Hamilton would prove himself to be a fast learner, as adept with a firearm as with sign language: this early experience would be the making of him. As the nineteenth century progressed, along with many other trappers Hamilton found himself drawn into the Indian Wars brought about by territorial expansion. Exploring, trapping, trading and fighting, Hamilton shows how every aspect of a mountain man?s life relied on his wits and knowledge in order survive the inhospitable environments. First published in 1905, when the experiences of such pushing, adventurous and fearless men were becoming a thing of the past, Hamilton?s unassuming memoir relates an extraordinary life in a disappearing American West. William Thomas Hamilton (1822-1908), also known as Wildcat Bill, was a Scottish-born mountain man, trapper, and scout of the American West. Trapping from an early age, in the 1850s he became an Indian fighter and at the end of the decade established a trading post, concurrently holding a variety of jobs including county sheriff. Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

In Polk, Walter R. Borneman gives us the first complete and authoritative biography of a president often overshadowed in image but seldom outdone in accomplishment.James K. Polk occupied the White House for only four years, from 1845 to 1849, but he is rightly recognized as the last strong...  more

In Polk, Walter R. Borneman gives us the first complete and authoritative biography of a president often overshadowed in image but seldom outdone in accomplishment.James K. Polk occupied the White House for only four years, from 1845 to 1849, but he is rightly recognized as the last strong pre-Civil War president. His pledge to serve a single term, which many thought would immediately consign him to lame-duck status, enabled Polk to rise above electoral politics and to outflank his adversaries.Thus Polk plotted and attained a formidable agenda: He fought for and won tariff reductions, reestablished an independent Treasury, and most notably, brought Texas into the Union, bluffed Great Britain out of the lion’s share of Oregon, and wrested California and much of the Southwest from Mexico. On reflection, these successes seem even more impressive, given the contentious political environment of the time. In tracing Polk’s life and career–his early childhood in a prominent frontier family, his meteoric rise in public office and storied turn in the House of Representatives, the dramatic plunge of his career fortunes early in the post-Jacksonian period, and his political rebirth prior to the 1844 campaign season–Borneman dispels conventional views of Polk as a dark horse or an accidental president. Instead, we see Polk as he was–a decisive, if not partisan, statesman whose near doubling of America’s boundaries and expansive broadening of executive powers redefined the country at large, as well as the nature of its highest office. Along with Polk, this is also the story of Andrew Jackson, Polk’s longtime political patron; Henry Clay, Polk’s ambitious rival; ex-president Martin Van Buren, who lusted to return to the White House; Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, who shared Polk’s commitment to territorial expansion but came to quarrel with him over the means; Polk’s fellow Tennessee politicos Davy Crockett and Sam Houston; and a principled young Whig from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln, who goaded Polk about misleading the nation into war with Mexico.Proving the eternal truth of the adage “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” especially in terms of presidential politics, Borneman also provides engrossing blow-by-blow tales of punishing campaigns, audacious third-party spoilers, and the often comical lengths political fixers will go to reach a highly fickle electorate.In this unprecedented, long-overdue warts-and-all biography, we are reminded anew of the true meaning of presidential accomplishment and resolve.From the Trade Paperback edition.

In the tradition of Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm comes the riveting account of a deadly plane crash in northern Canada and its aftermath. Written by an award-winning journalist who is the daughter of one of the survivors, Into the Abyss is a dramatic true story of survival, and a...  more

In the tradition of Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm comes the riveting account of a deadly plane crash in northern Canada and its aftermath. Written by an award-winning journalist who is the daughter of one of the survivors, Into the Abyss is a dramatic true story of survival, and a compassionate account of 4 men's journey from the depths of tragedy to the riches of lives begun anew. On an icy night in October 1984, a Piper Navajo commuter plane carrying 9 passengers crashed in the remote wilderness of northern Alberta, killing 6 people. 4 survived: the rookie pilot, a prominent politician, a cop and the criminal he was escorting to face charges. As they fought through the night to stay alive, the dividing lines of power, wealth and status were erased and each man was forced to confront the precious and limited nature of his existence. The survivors forged unlikely friendships and through them found strength and courage to rebuild their lives. Into the Abyss is a powerful narrative that combines in-depth reporting with sympathy and grace to explore how a single, tragic event can upset our assumptions and become a catalyst for transformation.

The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically acclaimed volume--a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize--offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic. Beginning with the French and Indian War and...  more

The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically acclaimed volume--a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize--offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic. Beginning with the French and Indian War and continuing to the election of George Washington as first president, Robert Middlekauff offers a panoramic history of the conflict between England and America, highlighting the drama and anguish of the colonial struggle for independence. Combining the political and the personal, he provides a compelling account of the key events that precipitated the war, from the Stamp Act to the Tea Act, tracing the gradual gathering of American resistance that culminated in the Boston Tea Party and "the shot heard 'round the world." The heart of the book features a vivid description of the eight-year-long war, with gripping accounts of battles and campaigns, ranging from Bunker Hill and Washington's crossing of the Delaware to the brilliant victory at Hannah's Cowpens and the final triumph at Yorktown, paying particular attention to what made men fight in these bloody encounters. The book concludes with an insightful look at the making of the Constitution in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 and the struggle over ratification. Through it all, Middlekauff gives the reader a vivid sense of how the colonists saw these events and the importance they gave to them. Common soldiers and great generals, Sons of Liberty and African slaves, town committee-men and representatives in congress--all receive their due. And there are particularly insightful portraits of such figures as Sam and John Adams, James Otis, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and many others. This new edition has been revised and expanded, with fresh coverage of topics such as mob reactions to British measures before the War, military medicine, women's role in the Revolution, American Indians, the different kinds of war fought by the Americans and the British, and the ratification of the Constitution. The book also has a new epilogue and an updated bibliography. The cause for which the colonists fought, liberty and independence, was glorious indeed. Here is an equally glorious narrative of an event that changed the world, capturing the profound and passionate struggle to found a free nation.

Andrew Roberts's acclaimed new history has been hailed as the finest single-volume account of this epic conflict. From the western front to North Africa, from the Baltic to the Far East, he tells the story of the war?the grand strategy and the individual experience, the brutality and the...  more

Andrew Roberts's acclaimed new history has been hailed as the finest single-volume account of this epic conflict. From the western front to North Africa, from the Baltic to the Far East, he tells the story of the war?the grand strategy and the individual experience, the brutality and the heroism?as never before. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, The Storm of War illuminates the war's principal actors, revealing how their decisions shaped the course of the conflict. Along the way, Roberts presents tales of the many lesser-known individuals whose experiences form a panoply of the courage and self-sacrifice, as well as the depravity and cruelty, of the Second World War.

Book Three of Robert A. Caro’s monumental work, The Years of Lyndon Johnson—the most admired and riveting political biography of our era—which began with the best-selling and prizewinning The Path to Power and Means of Ascent.Master of the Senate carries Lyndon Johnson’s...  more

Book Three of Robert A. Caro’s monumental work, The Years of Lyndon Johnson—the most admired and riveting political biography of our era—which began with the best-selling and prizewinning The Path to Power and Means of Ascent.Master of the Senate carries Lyndon Johnson’s story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done.It was during these years that all Johnson’s experience—from his Texas Hill Country boyhood to his passionate representation in Congress of his hardscrabble constituents to his tireless construction of a political machine—came to fruition. Caro introduces the story with a dramatic account of the Senate itself: how Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun had made it the center of governmental energy, the forum in which the great issues of the country were thrashed out. And how, by the time Johnson arrived, it had dwindled into a body that merely responded to executive initiatives, all but impervious to the forces of change. Caro anatomizes the genius for political strategy and tactics by which, in an institution that had made the seniority system all-powerful for a century and more, Johnson became Majority Leader after only a single term—the youngest and greatest Senate Leader in our history; how he manipulated the Senate’s hallowed rules and customs and the weaknesses and strengths of his colleagues to change the “unchangeable” Senate from a loose confederation of sovereign senators to a whirring legislative machine under his own iron-fisted control.Caro demonstrates how Johnson’s political genius enabled him to reconcile the unreconcilable: to retain the support of the southerners who controlled the Senate while earning the trust—or at least the cooperation—of the liberals, led by Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, without whom he could not achieve his goal of winning the presidency. He shows the dark side of Johnson’s ambition: how he proved his loyalty to the great oil barons who had financed his rise to power by ruthlessly destroying the career of the New Dealer who was in charge of regulating them, Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds. And we watch him achieve the impossible: convincing southerners that although he was firmly in their camp as the anointed successor to their leader, Richard Russell, it was essential that they allow him to make some progress toward civil rights. In a breathtaking tour de force, Caro details Johnson’s amazing triumph in maneuvering to passage the first civil rights legislation since 1875.Master of the Senate is told with an abundance of rich detail that could only have come from Caro’s peerless research—years immersed in the worlds of Johnson and the United States Senate, examining thousands of documents and talking to hundreds of people, from pages and cloakroom clerks to senators and administrative aides. The result is both a galvanizing portrait of the man himself—the titan of Capitol Hill, volcanic, mesmerizing—and a definitive and revelatory study of the workings of personal and legislative power. It is a work that displays all the acuteness of understanding and narrative brilliance that led the New York Times to call Caro’s The Path to Power “a monumental political saga . . . powerful and stirring.”

An explosive, headline-making portrait of Allen Dulles, the man who transformed the CIA into the most powerful -- and secretive -- colossus in Washington. America’s greatest untold story: the United States’ rise to world dominance under the guile of Allen Welsh Dulles, the...  more

An explosive, headline-making portrait of Allen Dulles, the man who transformed the CIA into the most powerful -- and secretive -- colossus in Washington. America’s greatest untold story: the United States’ rise to world dominance under the guile of Allen Welsh Dulles, the longest-serving director of the CIA. Drawing on revelatory new materials -- including newly discovered U.S. government documents, U.S. and European intelligence sources, the personal correspondence and journals of Allen Dulles’s wife and mistress, and exclusive interviews with the children of prominent CIA officials -- Talbot reveals the underside of one of America’s most powerful and influential figures. Dulles’s decade as the director of the CIA -- which he used to further his public and private agendas -- were dark times in American politics. Calling himself “the secretary of state of unfriendly countries,” Dulles saw himself as above the elected law, manipulating and subverting American presidents in the pursuit of his personal interests and those of the wealthy elite he counted as his friends and clients -- colluding with Nazi-controlled cartels, German war criminals, and Mafiosi in the process. Targeting foreign leaders for assassination and overthrowing nationalist governments not in line with his political aims, Dulles employed those same tactics to further his goals at home, Talbot charges, offering shocking new evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. An exposé of American power that is as disturbing as it is timely, The Devil’s Chessboard is a provocative and gripping story of the rise of the national security state -- and the battle for America’s soul. 

Nineteen fourteen was a year of unparalleled change. The year that diplomacy failed, imperial Europe was thrown into its first modernised warfare and white-gloved soldiers rode in their masses across pastoral landscapes into the blaze of machine guns. What followed were the costliest days of the...  more

Nineteen fourteen was a year of unparalleled change. The year that diplomacy failed, imperial Europe was thrown into its first modernised warfare and white-gloved soldiers rode in their masses across pastoral landscapes into the blaze of machine guns. What followed were the costliest days of the entire war. But how had it happened? In Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914, Max Hastings, best-selling author of the acclaimed All Hell Let Loose, answers at last how World War I could ever have begun. Ranging across Europe, from Paris to St. Petersberg, from Kings to corporals, Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 traces how tensions across the continent kindled into a blaze of battles -- not the stalemates of later trench-warfare but battles of movement and dash where Napoleonic tactics met with weapons from a newly industrialised age. A searing analysis of the power brokering, vanity and bluff in the diplomatic maelstrom reveals who was responsible for the birth of this catastrophic world in arms. Mingling the experiences of humbler folk with the statesmen on whom their lives depended, Hastings asks: whose actions were justified? From the outbreak of war through to its terrible making and the bloody gambles in Sarajevo and Mons, Le Cateau, Marne and Tannenberg, this is the international story of World War I in its most severe and influential period. Published to coincide with its 100th Anniversary, Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 explains how and why this war, which shattered and changed the Western world for ever, was fought.

There are few moments in American history in which the course of events tipped so suddenly and so dramatically as at the Battle of Midway. At dawn of June 4, 1942, a rampaging Japanese navy ruled the Pacific. By sunset, their vaunted carrier force, the Kido Butai, had been sunk and their grip on...  more

There are few moments in American history in which the course of events tipped so suddenly and so dramatically as at the Battle of Midway. At dawn of June 4, 1942, a rampaging Japanese navy ruled the Pacific. By sunset, their vaunted carrier force, the Kido Butai, had been sunk and their grip on the Pacific had been loosened forever. In this absolutely riveting account of a key moment in the history of World War II, leading naval historian Craig L. Symonds paints an unforgettable portrait of ingenuity, courage, and sacrifice. Symonds begins with the arrival of Admiral Chester A. Nimitz at Pearl Harbor after the devastating Japanese attack, and describes the key events leading to the climactic battle, including both Coral Sea-the first battle in history against opposing carrier forces-and Jimmy Doolittle's daring raid of Tokyo. He focuses throughout on the people involved, offering telling portraits of Admirals Nimitz, Halsey, Spruance and numerous other Americans, as well as the leading Japanese figures, including the poker-loving Admiral Yamamoto. Symonds' account of the battle itself is masterful, weaving together the many disparate threads of attack-attacks which failed in the early going-that ultimately created a five-minute window in which three of the four Japanese carriers were mortally wounded, changing the course of the Pacific war in an eye-blink.

When Norman Maclean sent the manuscript of A River Runs through It to New York publishers, he received a slew of rejections. ?It has trees in it,? one editor replied. Forty years later, the title novella is widely recognized as one of the great American tales of the twentieth century, and...  more

When Norman Maclean sent the manuscript of A River Runs through It to New York publishers, he received a slew of rejections. ?It has trees in it,? one editor replied. Forty years later, the title novella is widely recognized as one of the great American tales of the twentieth century, and Maclean as one of the most beloved writers of our time. Maclean?s later triumph, Young Men and Fire, has over the decades also established itself as a classic of the American West. And with this twenty-fifth-anniversary edition, a fresh audience will be introduced to Maclean?s beautiful prose and understated emotional insights. A devastating and lyrical work of nonfiction, Young Men and Fire describes the events of August 5, 1949, when a crew of fifteen of the US Forest Service?s elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of the men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, in his last decades Maclean put together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy in Young Men and Fire, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. This twenty-fifth-anniversary edition includes a powerful new foreword by Timothy Egan, author of The Big Burn and The Worst Hard Time. Though he grew up in the first decades of the twentieth century in the western Rockies?working summers in logging camps and for the US Forest Service and cultivating a lifelong passion for the dry fly?it was only at the age of seventy, as a retired English professor, that Norman Maclean discovered what he was meant to do: write. Moving and profound, Young Men and Fire honors the literary legacy of a man who improbably gave voice to an essential corner of the American soul.

An epic narrative of World War II naval action that brings to life the sailors and exploits of the war's most decorated destroyer squadron When Admiral William Halsey selected Destroyer Squadron 21 (Desron 21) to lead his victorious ships into Tokyo Bay to accept the Japanese surrender, it was...  more

An epic narrative of World War II naval action that brings to life the sailors and exploits of the war's most decorated destroyer squadron When Admiral William Halsey selected Destroyer Squadron 21 (Desron 21) to lead his victorious ships into Tokyo Bay to accept the Japanese surrender, it was the most battle-hardened US naval squadron of the war. But it was not the squadron of ships that had accumulated such an inspiring resume; it was the people serving aboard them. Sailors, not metallic superstructures and hulls, had won the battles and become the stuff of legend. Men like Commander Donald MacDonald, skipper of the USS O'Bannon, who became the most decorated naval officer of the Pacific war; Lieutenant Hugh Barr Miller, who survived his ship's sinking and waged a one-man battle against the enemy while stranded on a Japanese-occupied island; and Doctor Dow "Doc" Ransom, the beloved physician of the USS La Vallette, who combined a mixture of humor and medical expertise to treat his patients at sea, epitomize the sacrifices made by all the men and women of World War II. Through diaries, personal interviews with survivors, and letters written to and by the crews during the war, preeminent historian of the Pacific theater John Wukovits brings to life the human story of the squadron and its men who bested the Japanese in the Pacific and helped take the war to Tokyo.

In the darkest days of the American Revolution, Francis Marion and his band of militia freedom fighters kept hope alive for the patriot cause during the critical British “southern campaign.? Like the Robin Hood of legend, Marion and his men attacked from secret hideaways before melting back into...  more

In the darkest days of the American Revolution, Francis Marion and his band of militia freedom fighters kept hope alive for the patriot cause during the critical British “southern campaign.? Like the Robin Hood of legend, Marion and his men attacked from secret hideaways before melting back into the forest or swamp. Employing insurgent tactics that became commonplace in later centuries, Marion and his brigade inflicted losses on the enemy that were individually small but cumulatively a large drain on British resources and morale. In The Swamp Fox, the first major biography of Marion in more than forty years, John Oller compiles striking evidence to provide a fresh look at Marion, the man, and how he helped save the American Revolution.

The definitive account of General Douglas MacArthur's rise during World War II, from the author of the bestseller The Admirals. World War II changed the course of history. Douglas MacArthur changed the course of World War II. MACARTHUR AT WAR will go deeper into this transformative period of his...  more

The definitive account of General Douglas MacArthur's rise during World War II, from the author of the bestseller The Admirals. World War II changed the course of history. Douglas MacArthur changed the course of World War II. MACARTHUR AT WAR will go deeper into this transformative period of his life than previous biographies, drilling into the military strategy that Walter R. Borneman is so skilled at conveying, and exploring how personality and ego translate into military successes and failures. Architect of stunning triumphs and inexplicable defeats, General MacArthur is the most intriguing military leader of the twentieth century. There was never any middle ground with MacArthur. This in-depth study of the most critical period of his career shows how MacArthur's influence spread far beyond the war-torn Pacific.

In 2003, 85 years after the armistice, it took Richard Rubin months to find just one living American veteran of World War I. But then, he found another. And another. Eventually he managed to find dozens, aged 101 to 113, and interview them. All are gone now. A decade-long odyssey to recover...  more

In 2003, 85 years after the armistice, it took Richard Rubin months to find just one living American veteran of World War I. But then, he found another. And another. Eventually he managed to find dozens, aged 101 to 113, and interview them. All are gone now. A decade-long odyssey to recover the story of a forgotten generation and their Great War led Rubin across the United States and France, through archives, private collections, and battlefields, literature, propaganda, and even music. But at the center of it all were the last of the last, the men and women he met: a new immigrant, drafted and sent to France, whose life was saved by a horse; a Connecticut Yankee who volunteered and fought in every major American battle; a Cajun artilleryman nearly killed by a German aeroplane; an 18-year-old Bronx girl ?drafted? to work for the War Department; a machine-gunner from Montana; a Marine wounded at Belleau Wood; the 16-year-old who became America?s last WWI veteran; and many, many more. They were the final survivors of the millions who made up the American Expeditionary Forces, nineteenth-century men and women living in the twenty-first century. Self-reliant, humble, and stoic, they kept their stories to themselves for a lifetime, then shared them at the last possible moment, so that they, and the World War they won ? the trauma that created our modern world ? might at last be remembered. You will never forget them. The Last of the Doughboys is more than simply a war story: It is a moving meditation on character, grace, aging, and memory.

On an icy night in October 1984, a Piper Navajo commuter plane carrying 9 passengers crashed in the remote wilderness of northern Alberta, killing 6 people. Four survived: the rookie pilot, a prominent politician, a cop, and the criminal he was escorting to face charges. Despite the poor...  more

On an icy night in October 1984, a Piper Navajo commuter plane carrying 9 passengers crashed in the remote wilderness of northern Alberta, killing 6 people. Four survived: the rookie pilot, a prominent politician, a cop, and the criminal he was escorting to face charges. Despite the poor weather, Erik Vogel, the 24-year-old pilot, was under intense pressure to fly--a situation not uncommon to pilots working for small airlines. Overworked and exhausted, he feared losing his job if he refused to fly. Larry Shaben, the author's father and Canada's first Muslim Cabinet Minister, was commuting home after a busy week at the Alberta Legislature. After Paul Archambault, a drifter wanted on an outstanding warrant, boarded the plane, rookie Constable Scott Deschamps decided, against RCMP regulations, to remove his handcuffs--a decision that profoundly impacted the men's survival. As they fought through the night to stay alive, the dividing lines of power, wealth and status were erased and each man was forced to confront the precious and limited nature of his existence. The survivors forged unlikely friendships and through them found strength and courage to rebuild their lives. Into the Abyss is a powerful narrative that combines in-depth reporting with sympathy and grace to explore how a single, tragic event can upset our assumptions and become a catalyst for transformation.

 A revolutionary new appraisal of the Old West and the America it made The open range cattle era lasted barely a quarter-century, but it left America irrevocably changed. These few decades following the Civil War brought America its greatest boom-and-bust cycle until the Depression, the...  more

 A revolutionary new appraisal of the Old West and the America it made The open range cattle era lasted barely a quarter-century, but it left America irrevocably changed. These few decades following the Civil War brought America its greatest boom-and-bust cycle until the Depression, the invention of the assembly line, and the dawn of the conservation movement. It inspired legends, such as that icon of rugged individualism, the cowboy. Yet this extraordinary time and its import have remained unexamined for decades. Cattle Kingdom reveals the truth of how the West rose and fell, and how its legacy defines us today. The tale takes us from dust-choked cattle drives to the unlikely splendors of boomtowns like Abilene, Kansas, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. We venture from the Texas Panhandle to the Dakota Badlands to the Chicago stockyards. We meet a diverse array of players?from the expert cowboy Teddy Blue to the failed rancher and future president Teddy Roosevelt. Knowlton shows us how they and others like them could achieve so many outsized feats: killing millions of bison in a decade, building the first opera house on the open range, driving cattle by the thousand, and much more. Cattle Kingdom is a revelatory new view of the Old West.

In February 1959, a group of nine experienced hikers in the Russian Ural Mountains died mysteriously on an elevation known as Dead Mountain. Eerie aspects of the incident -- unexplained violent injuries, signs that they cut open and fled the tent without proper clothing or shoes, a strange final...  more

In February 1959, a group of nine experienced hikers in the Russian Ural Mountains died mysteriously on an elevation known as Dead Mountain. Eerie aspects of the incident -- unexplained violent injuries, signs that they cut open and fled the tent without proper clothing or shoes, a strange final photograph taken by one of the hikers, and elevated levels of radiation found on some of their clothes -- have led to decades of speculation over what really happened. This New York Times bestseller is a gripping work of literary nonfiction delves into the mystery through unprecedented access to the hikers' own journals and photographs, rarely seen government records, dozens of interviews, and the author's retracing of the hikers' fateful journey in the Russian winter. A fascinating portrait of the young hikers in the Soviet era, and a skillful interweaving of the hikers narrative, the investigators' efforts, and the author's investigations, here for the first time is the real story of what happened that night on Dead Mountain.

Best-selling author Adrian Goldsworthy turns his attention to the Pax Romana, the famous peace and prosperity brought by the Roman Empire at its height in the first and second centuries AD. Yet the Romans were conquerors, imperialists who took by force a vast empire stretching from the Euphrates...  more

Best-selling author Adrian Goldsworthy turns his attention to the Pax Romana, the famous peace and prosperity brought by the Roman Empire at its height in the first and second centuries AD. Yet the Romans were conquerors, imperialists who took by force a vast empire stretching from the Euphrates to the Atlantic coast. Ruthless, Romans won peace not through coexistence but through dominance; millions died and were enslaved during the creation of their empire.   Pax Romana examines how the Romans came to control so much of the world and asks whether traditionally favorable images of the Roman peace are true. Goldsworthy vividly recounts the rebellions of the conquered, examines why they broke out, why most failed, and how they became exceeding rare. He reveals that hostility was just one reaction to the arrival of Rome and that from the outset, conquered peoples collaborated, formed alliances, and joined invaders, causing resistance movements to fade away.

The First World War is one of history’s greatest tragedies. In this remarkable and intimate account, author G. J. Meyer draws on exhaustive research to bring to life the story of how the Great War reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked...  more

The First World War is one of history’s greatest tragedies. In this remarkable and intimate account, author G. J. Meyer draws on exhaustive research to bring to life the story of how the Great War reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of the world we live in today.The First World War is one of history’s greatest tragedies. In this remarkable and intimate account, author G. J. Meyer draws on exhaustive research to bring to life the story of how the Great War reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of the world we live in today.

The first novel in a brilliant new series by award-winning historian James L. Haley, featuring young midshipman Bliven Putnam as he begins his naval service aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. It is 1801 and President Thomas Jefferson has assembled a deep-water navy to fight the growing threat of...  more

The first novel in a brilliant new series by award-winning historian James L. Haley, featuring young midshipman Bliven Putnam as he begins his naval service aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. It is 1801 and President Thomas Jefferson has assembled a deep-water navy to fight the growing threat of piracy, as American civilians are regularly kidnapped by Islamist brigands and held for ransom, enslaved, or killed, all at their captors? whim. The Berber States of North Africa, especially Tripoli, claimed their faith gave them the right to pillage anyone who did not submit to their religion. Young Bliven Putnam, great-nephew of Revolutionary War hero Israel Putnam, is bound for the Mediterranean and a desperate battle with the pirate ship Tripoli. He later returns under legendary Commodore Edward Preble on the Constitution, and marches across the Libyan desert with General Eaton to assault Derna?discovering the lessons he learns about war, and life, are not what he expected. Rich with historical detail and cracking with high-wire action, The Shores of Tripoli brings this amazing period in American history to life with brilliant clarity.

The remarkable story of the mission that inspired a nation to donate massive relief to Ireland during the potato famine and began America's tradition of providing humanitarian aid around the world More than 5,000 ships left Ireland during the great potato famine in the late 1840s,...  more

The remarkable story of the mission that inspired a nation to donate massive relief to Ireland during the potato famine and began America's tradition of providing humanitarian aid around the world More than 5,000 ships left Ireland during the great potato famine in the late 1840s, transporting the starving and the destitute away from their stricken homeland. The first vessel to sail in the other direction, to help the millions unable to escape, was the USS Jamestown, a converted warship, which left Boston in March 1847 loaded with precious food for Ireland. In an unprecedented move by Congress, the warship had been placed in civilian hands, stripped of its guns, and committed to the peaceful delivery of food, clothing, and supplies in a mission that would launch America’s first full-blown humanitarian relief effort. Captain Robert Bennet Forbes and the crew of the USS Jamestown embarked on a voyage that began a massive eighteen-month demonstration of soaring goodwill against the backdrop of unfathomable despairâۥone nation’s struggle to survive, and another’s effort to provide a lifeline. The Jamestown mission captured hearts and minds on both sides of the Atlantic, of the wealthy and the hardscrabble poor, of poets and politicians. Forbes’ undertaking inspired a nationwide outpouring of relief that was unprecedented in size and scope, the first instance of an entire nation extending a hand to a foreign neighbor for purely humanitarian reasons. It showed the world that national generosity and brotherhood were not signs of weakness, but displays of quiet strength and moral certitude. In Voyage of Mercy, Stephen Puleo tells the incredible story of the famine, the Jamestown voyage, and the commitment of thousands of ordinary Americans to offer relief to Ireland, a groundswell that provided the collaborative blueprint for future relief efforts, and established the United States as the leader in international aid. The USS Jamestown’s heroic voyage showed how the ramifications of a single decision can be measured not in days, but in decades.

More than 140 years ago, Mark Twain observed that the Civil War had "uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be...  more

More than 140 years ago, Mark Twain observed that the Civil War had "uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations." In fact, five generations have passed, and Americans are still trying to measure the influence of the immense fratricidal conflict that nearly tore the nation apart. In The War that Forged a Nation, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James M. McPherson considers why the Civil War remains so deeply embedded in our national psyche and identity. The drama and tragedy of the war, from its scope and size--an estimated death toll of 750,000, far more than the rest of the country's wars combined--to the nearly mythical individuals involved--Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson--help explain why the Civil War remains a topic of interest. But the legacy of the war extends far beyond historical interest or scholarly attention. Here, McPherson draws upon his work over the past fifty years to illuminate the war's continuing resonance across many dimensions of American life. Touching upon themes that include the war's causes and consequences; the naval war; slavery and its abolition; and Lincoln as commander in chief, McPherson ultimately proves the impossibility of understanding the issues of our own time unless we first understand their roots in the era of the Civil War. From racial inequality and conflict between the North and South to questions of state sovereignty or the role of government in social change--these issues, McPherson shows, are as salient and controversial today as they were in the 1860s. Thoughtful, provocative, and authoritative, The War that Forged a Nation looks anew at the reasons America's civil war has remained a subject of intense interest for the past century and a half, affirms the enduring relevance of the conflict for America today.

An epic adventure and spy story about what many consider the greatest act of sabotage of World War II, based on a trove of exciting new research. It's 1942 and the Nazis are racing to build an atomic bomb. They have the physicists. They have the will. What they don't have is enough...  more

An epic adventure and spy story about what many consider the greatest act of sabotage of World War II, based on a trove of exciting new research. It's 1942 and the Nazis are racing to build an atomic bomb. They have the physicists. They have the will. What they don't have is enough "heavy water," an essential ingredient for their nuclear designs. For two years, the Nazis have occupied Norway, and with it the Vemork hydroelectric plant, a massive industrial complex nestled on a precipice of a gorge. Vemork is the world's sole supplier of heavy water, and under the threat of death, its engineers pushed production into overtime.  For the Allies, Vemork must be destroyed. But how would they reach the castle fortress high in a mountainous valley? The answer became the most dramatic commando raid of the war. The British Special Operations Executive put together a brilliant scientist and eleven refugee Norwegian commandos, who, with little more than parachutes, skis, and Tommy Guns, would destroy Hitler's nuclear ambitions and help end the reign of the Third Reich.   Based on exhaustive research and never-before-seen diaries and letters of the saboteurs, The Winter Fortress is a compulsively readable narrative about a group of young men who endured soul-crushing setbacks and Gestapo hunts and survived in one of the coldest, most inhospitable places on earth to save the world from destruction.   

For fans of The Lost City of Z, Walking the Amazon, and Turn Right at Machu Picchu comes naturalist and explorer Paul Rosolie?s extraordinary adventure in the uncharted tributaries of the Western Amazon?a tale of discovery that vividly captures the awe, beauty, and isolation of this endangered...  more

For fans of The Lost City of Z, Walking the Amazon, and Turn Right at Machu Picchu comes naturalist and explorer Paul Rosolie?s extraordinary adventure in the uncharted tributaries of the Western Amazon?a tale of discovery that vividly captures the awe, beauty, and isolation of this endangered land and presents an impassioned call to save it.In the Madre de Dios?Mother of God?region of Peru, where the Amazon River begins its massive flow, the Andean Mountain cloud forests fall into lowland Amazon Rainforest, creating the most biodiversity-rich place on the planet. In January 2006, when he was just a restless eighteen-year-old hungry for adventure, Paul Rosolie embarked on a journey to the west Amazon that would transform his life.Venturing alone into some of the most inaccessible reaches of the jungle, he encountered giant snakes, floating forests, isolated tribes untouched by outsiders, prowling jaguars, orphaned baby anteaters, poachers in the black market trade in endangered species, and much more. Yet today, the primordial forests of the Madre de Dios are in danger from developers, oil giants, and gold miners eager to exploit its natural resources.In Mother of God, this explorer and conservationist relives his amazing odyssey exploring the heart of this wildest place on earth. When he began delving deeper in his search for the secret Eden, spending extended periods in isolated solitude, he found things he never imagined could exist. ?Alone and miniscule against a titanic landscape I have seen the depths of the Amazon, the guts of the jungle where no men go, Rosolie writes. ?But as the legendary explorer Percy Fawcett warned, ?the few remaining unknown places of the world exact a price for their secrets.??Illustrated with 16 pages of color photos.

D-Day, June 6, 1944, and the seventy-six days of bitter fighting in Normandy that followed the Allied landing, have become the defining episode of World War II in the west -- the object of books, films, television series, and documentaries. Yet as familiar as it is, as James Holland makes clear...  more

D-Day, June 6, 1944, and the seventy-six days of bitter fighting in Normandy that followed the Allied landing, have become the defining episode of World War II in the west -- the object of books, films, television series, and documentaries. Yet as familiar as it is, as James Holland makes clear in his definitive history, many parts of the OVERLORD campaign, as it was known, are still shrouded in myth and assumed knowledge. Drawing freshly on widespread archives and on the testimonies of eye-witnesses, Holland relates the extraordinary planning that made Allied victory in France possible; indeed, the story of how hundreds of thousands of men, and mountains of materiel, were transported across the English Channel, is as dramatic a human achievement as any battlefield exploit. The brutal landings on the five beaches and subsequent battles across the plains and through the lanes and hedgerows of Normandy -- a campaign that, in terms of daily casualties, was worse than any in World War I -- come vividly to life in conferences where the strategic decisions of Eisenhower, Rommel, Montgomery, and other commanders were made, and through the memories of paratrooper Lieutenant Dick Winters of Easy Company, British corporal and tanker Reg Spittles, Thunderbolt pilot Archie Maltbie, German ordnance officer Hans Heinze, French resistance leader Robert Leblanc, and many others. For both sides, the challenges were enormous. The Allies confronted a disciplined German army stretched to its limit, which nonetheless caused tactics to be adjusted on the fly. Ultimately ingenuity, determination, and immense materiel strength -- delivered with operational brilliance -- made the difference. A stirring narrative by a pre-eminent historian, Normandy '44 offers important new perspective on one of history's most dramatic military engagements and is an invaluable addition to the literature of war.

The War of 1812 is typically noted for a handful of events: the burning of the White House, the rise of the Star Spangled Banner, and the battle of New Orleans. But in fact the greatest consequence of that distant conflict was the birth of the U.S. Navy. During the War of 1812, America?s tiny...  more

The War of 1812 is typically noted for a handful of events: the burning of the White House, the rise of the Star Spangled Banner, and the battle of New Orleans. But in fact the greatest consequence of that distant conflict was the birth of the U.S. Navy. During the War of 1812, America?s tiny fleet took on the mightiest naval power on earth, besting the British in a string of victories that stunned both nations. In his new book, Ships of Oak, Guns of Iron: The War of 1812 and the Birth of the American Navy, author Dr. Ronald Utt not only sheds new light on the naval battles of the War of 1812 and how they gave birth to our nation?s great navy, but tells the story of the War of 1812 through the portraits of famous American war heroes. From the cunning Stephen Decatur to the fierce David Porter, Ships of Oak, Guns of Iron relates how thousands of American men and boys gave better than they got against the British Navy. The great age of fighting sail is as rich in heroic drama as any epoch. Dr. Utt?s Ships of Oak, Guns of Iron retrieves the American chapter of that epoch from unjustified obscurity, and offers readers an intriguing chronicle of the War of 1812 as well as a unique perspective on the birth of the U.S. Navy.

Are trees social beings? In this international bestseller, forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with...  more

Are trees social beings? In this international bestseller, forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers. Wohlleben also shares his deep love of woods and forests, explaining the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in his woodland. After learning about the complex life of trees, a walk in the woods will never be the same again.

A New York Times bestseller and international sensation, this ?stimulating and important book? (Financial Times) from the director of UC Berkeley?s Center for Human Sleep Science is a fascinating dive into the purpose and power of slumber. As the Guardian said, Walker explains ?how a good...  more

A New York Times bestseller and international sensation, this ?stimulating and important book? (Financial Times) from the director of UC Berkeley?s Center for Human Sleep Science is a fascinating dive into the purpose and power of slumber. As the Guardian said, Walker explains ?how a good night's shut-eye can make us cleverer, more attractive, slimmer, happier, healthier, and ward off cancer.? With two appearances on CBS This Morning and Fresh Air's most popular interview of 2017, Matthew Walker has made abundantly clear that sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life. Until very recently, science had no answer to the question of why we sleep, or what good it served, or why we suffer such devastating health consequences when it is absent. Compared to the other basic drives in life?eating, drinking, and reproducing?the purpose of sleep remains more elusive. Within the brain, sleep enriches a diversity of functions, including our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions. It recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite. Dreaming creates a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge, inspiring creativity. In this ?compelling and utterly convincing? (The Sunday Times) book, preeminent neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker provides a revolutionary exploration of sleep, examining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. Charting the most cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and marshalling his decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer?s and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity. He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night?s sleep every night. Clear-eyed, fascinating, and accessible, Why We Sleep is a crucial and illuminating book. Written with the precision of Atul Gawande, Andrew Solomon, and Sherwin Nuland, it is ?recommended for night-table reading in the most pragmatic sense? (The New York Times Book Review).

He was history?s most creative genius. What secrets can he teach us? The author of the acclaimed bestsellers Steve Jobs, Einstein, and Benjamin Franklin brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this exciting new biography. Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo?s astonishing notebooks and new...  more

He was history?s most creative genius. What secrets can he teach us? The author of the acclaimed bestsellers Steve Jobs, Einstein, and Benjamin Franklin brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this exciting new biography. Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo?s astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo?s genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy. He produced the two most famous paintings in history, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. But in his own mind, he was just as much a man of science and technology. With a passion that sometimes became obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry. His ability to stand at the crossroads of the humanities and the sciences, made iconic by his drawing of Vitruvian Man, made him history?s most creative genius. His creativity, like that of other great innovators, came from having wide-ranging passions. He peeled flesh off the faces of cadavers, drew the muscles that move the lips, and then painted history?s most memorable smile. He explored the math of optics, showed how light rays strike the cornea, and produced illusions of changing perspectives in The Last Supper. Isaacson also describes how Leonardo?s lifelong enthusiasm for staging theatrical productions informed his paintings and inventions. Leonardo?s delight at combining diverse passions remains the ultimate recipe for creativity. So, too, does his ease at being a bit of a misfit: illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted, and at times heretical. His life should remind us of the importance of instilling, both in ourselves and our children, not just received knowledge but a willingness to question it?to be imaginative and, like talented misfits and rebels in any era, to think different.

The story of the ill-fated Donner party, a group of nineteenth-century settlers en route to California who became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains and resorted to cannibalism to survive, remains an iconic moment in American history. Given the story?s inherent elements of horror and...  more

The story of the ill-fated Donner party, a group of nineteenth-century settlers en route to California who became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains and resorted to cannibalism to survive, remains an iconic moment in American history. Given the story?s inherent elements of horror and heroism, it is surprising that this account, told from the point of view of a young bride who survived the tragedy, is finally such an uninteresting book. Part of the problem is the author?s inability of incorporate his copious background material into the flow of the narrative (readers probably don?t need to know about 1840s-era birth-control methods). Even the author?s treatment of the tragedy itself, however, feels dully reportorial, without any of the you-are-there drama that Piers Paul Reid brough to Alive!, his account of history?s second-most-famous cannibalism-survival story, concerning the famous 1972 airplane crash in the Andes. So why bother with this Donner party treatment when so many other, more compelling works exist? The premise itself sets this book apart, and while it?s not handled particularly effectively, it will still interest those fascinated by the subject.

In the spring of 1862, many Americans still believed that the Civil War, "would be over by Christmas." The previous summer in Virginia, Bull Run, with nearly 5,000 casualties, had been shocking, but suddenly came word from a far away place in the wildernesses of Southwest Tennessee of an...  more

In the spring of 1862, many Americans still believed that the Civil War, "would be over by Christmas." The previous summer in Virginia, Bull Run, with nearly 5,000 casualties, had been shocking, but suddenly came word from a far away place in the wildernesses of Southwest Tennessee of an appalling battle costing 23,000 casualties, most of them during a single day. It was more than had resulted from the entire American Revolution. As author Winston Groom reveals in this dramatic, heart-rending account, the Battle of Shiloh would singlehandedly change the psyche of the military, politicians, and American people--North and South--about what they had unleashed by creating a Civil War. In this gripping telling of the first "great and terrible" battle of the Civil War, Groom describes the dramatic events of April 6 and 7, 1862, when a bold surprise attack on Ulysses S. Grant's encamped troops and the bloody battle that ensued would alter the timbre of the war. The Southerners struck at dawn on April 6th, and Groom vividly recounts the battle that raged for two days over the densely wooded and poorly mapped terrain. Driven back on the first day, Grant regrouped and mounted a fierce attack the second, and aided by the timely arrival of reinforcements managed to salvage an encouraging victory for the Federals. Groom's deft prose reveals how the bitter fighting would test the mettle of the motley soldiers assembled on both sides, and offer a rehabilitation of sorts for Union General William Sherman, who would go on from the victory at Shiloh to become one of the great generals of the war. But perhaps the most alarming outcome, Groom poignantly reveals, was the realization that for all its horror, the Battle of Shiloh had solved nothing, gained nothing, proved nothing, and the thousands of maimed and slain were merely wretched symbols of things to come. With a novelist's eye for telling and a historian's passion for detail, context, and meaning, Groom brings the key characters and moments of battle to life. Shiloh is an epic tale, deftly told by a masterful storyteller.

Tudors

Americans call the Second World War “The Good War.” But before it even began, America's wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens -- and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and...  more

Americans call the Second World War “The Good War.” But before it even began, America's wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens -- and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war's end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness. Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.

The page-turning, news-breaking, inside account of Israel?s state-sponsored assassination programs, from the man hailed by David Remnick as ?arguably [Israel?s] best investigative reporter.?

Christopher R. Browning?s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews?now with a new afterword and additional photographs. Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police,...  more

Christopher R. Browning?s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews?now with a new afterword and additional photographs. Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of  RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever. While this book discusses a specific Reserve Unit during WWII, the general argument Browning makes is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do of their own volition.   Ordinary Men is a powerful, chilling, and important work with themes and arguments that continue to resonate today.  ?A remarkable?and singularly chilling?glimpse of human behavior...This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust."?Newsweek  

A deadly continental struggle, the Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe, killing nearly a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to towns and countryside alike. Peter Wilson offers the first new history in a generation of a horrifying conflict that transformed the map of the...  more

A deadly continental struggle, the Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe, killing nearly a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to towns and countryside alike. Peter Wilson offers the first new history in a generation of a horrifying conflict that transformed the map of the modern world. When defiant Bohemians tossed the Habsburg emperor?s envoys from the castle windows in Prague in 1618, the Holy Roman Empire struck back with a vengeance. Bohemia was ravaged by mercenary troops in the first battle of a conflagration that would engulf Europe from Spain to Sweden. The sweeping narrative encompasses dramatic events and unforgettable individuals?the sack of Magdeburg; the Dutch revolt; the Swedish militant king Gustavus Adolphus; the imperial generals, opportunistic Wallenstein and pious Tilly; and crafty diplomat Cardinal Richelieu. In a major reassessment, Wilson argues that religion was not the catalyst, but one element in a lethal stew of political, social, and dynastic forces that fed the conflict. By war?s end a recognizably modern Europe had been created, but at what price? The Thirty Years War condemned the Germans to two centuries of internal division and international impotence and became a benchmark of brutality for centuries. As late as the 1960s, Germans placed it ahead of both world wars and the Black Death as their country?s greatest disaster. An understanding of the Thirty Years War is essential to comprehending modern European history. Wilson?s masterful book will stand as the definitive account of this epic conflict. For a map of Central Europe in 1618, referenced on page XVI, please visit the book feature. (20090824)

Tony Judt's Postwar makes one lament the overuse of the word "groundbreaking." It is an unprecedented accomplishment: the first truly European history of contemporary Europe, from Lisbon to Leningrad, based on research in six languages, covering thirty-four countries across sixty years in a...  more

Tony Judt's Postwar makes one lament the overuse of the word "groundbreaking." It is an unprecedented accomplishment: the first truly European history of contemporary Europe, from Lisbon to Leningrad, based on research in six languages, covering thirty-four countries across sixty years in a single integrated narrative, using a great deal of material from newly available sources. Tony Judt has drawn on forty years of reading and writing about modern Europe to create a fully rounded, deep account of the continent's recent past. The book integrates international relations, domestic politics, ideas, social change, economic development, and culture--high and low--into a single grand narrative. Every country has its chance to play the lead, and although the big themes are superbly handled--including the cold war, the love/hate relationship with America, cultural and economic malaise and rebirth, and the myth and reality of unification--none of them is allowed to overshadow the rich pageant that is the whole. Vividly and clearly written for the general reader; witty, opinionated, and full of fresh and surprising stories and asides; visually rich and rewarding, with useful and provocative maps, photos, and cartoons throughout, Postwar is a movable feast for lovers of history and lovers of Europe alike. A magnificent history of postwar Europe, East and West, by arguably the subject's most esteemed historian.

In an astonishing work of scholarship that reads like an adventure thriller, historian Buddy Levy records the last days of the Aztec empire and the two men at the center of an epic clash of cultures. ?I and my companions suffer from a disease of the heart which can be cured only with gold.?...  more

In an astonishing work of scholarship that reads like an adventure thriller, historian Buddy Levy records the last days of the Aztec empire and the two men at the center of an epic clash of cultures. ?I and my companions suffer from a disease of the heart which can be cured only with gold.? ?Hernán CortésIt was a moment unique in human history, the face-to-face meeting between two men from civilizations a world apart. Only one would survive the encounter. In 1519, Hernán Cortés arrived on the shores of Mexico with a roughshod crew of adventurers and the intent to expand the Spanish empire. Along the way, this brash and roguish conquistador schemed to convert the native inhabitants to Catholicism and carry off a fortune in gold. That he saw nothing paradoxical in his intentions is one of the most remarkable?and tragic?aspects of this unforgettable story of conquest.In Tenochtitlán, the famed City of Dreams, Cortés met his Aztec counterpart, Montezuma: king, divinity, ruler of fifteen million people, and commander of the most powerful military machine in the Americas. Yet in less than two years, Cortés defeated the entire Aztec nation in one of the most astonishing military campaigns ever waged. Sometimes outnumbered in battle thousands-to-one, Cortés repeatedly beat seemingly impossible odds. Buddy Levy meticulously researches the mix of cunning, courage, brutality, superstition, and finally disease that enabled Cortés and his men to survive.Conquistador is the story of a lost kingdom?a complex and sophisticated civilization where floating gardens, immense wealth, and reverence for art stood side by side with bloodstained temples and gruesome rites of human sacrifice. It?s the story of Montezuma?proud, spiritual, enigmatic, and doomed to misunderstand the stranger he thought a god. Epic in scope, as entertaining as it is enlightening, Conquistador is history at its most riveting.

From the acclaimed author of Conquistador comes this thrilling account of one of history?s greatest adventures of discovery. With cinematic immediacy and meticulous attention to historical detail, here is the true story of a legendary sixteenth-century explorer and his death-defying navigation...  more

From the acclaimed author of Conquistador comes this thrilling account of one of history?s greatest adventures of discovery. With cinematic immediacy and meticulous attention to historical detail, here is the true story of a legendary sixteenth-century explorer and his death-defying navigation of the Amazon?river of darkness, pathway to gold. In 1541, the brutal conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro and his well-born lieutenant Francisco Orellana set off from Quito in search of La Canela, South America?s rumored Land of Cinnamon, and the fabled El Dorado, ?the golden man.? Driving an enormous retinue of mercenaries, enslaved natives, horses, hunting dogs, and other animals across the Andes, they watched their proud expedition begin to disintegrate even before they descended into the nightmarish jungle, following the course of a powerful river. Soon hopelessly lost in the swampy labyrinth, their numbers diminishing daily through disease, starvation, and Indian attacks, Pizarro and Orellana made a fateful decision to separate. While Pizarro eventually returned home barefoot and in rags, Orellana and fifty-seven men, in a few fragile craft, continued downriver into the unknown reaches of the mighty Amazon, serenaded by native war drums and the eerie cries of exotic predators. Theirs would be the greater glory.   Interweaving eyewitness accounts of the quest with newly uncovered details, Buddy Levy reconstructs the seminal journey that has electrified adventurers ever since, as Orellana became the first European to navigate and explore the entire length of the world?s largest river. Levy gives a long-overdue account of the native populations?some peaceful and welcoming, offering sustenance and life-saving guidance, others ferociously hostile, subjecting the invaders to gauntlets of unremitting attack and intimations of terrifying rituals. And here is the Amazon itself, a powerful presence whose every twist and turn held the promise of new wonders both natural and man-made, as well as the ever-present risk of death?a river that would hold Orellana in its irresistible embrace to the end of his life. Overflowing with violence and beauty, nobility and tragedy, River of Darkness is both riveting history and a breathtaking adventure that will sweep readers along on an epic voyage unlike any other.

Does the Church use words that have lost their meaning? Are there Christian words and phrases that have lost their power to convict the human spirit and bring transformation to the world? One of the twentieth century's most renowned prophetic thinkers, A.W. Tozer, saw a dangerous trend gaining...  more

Does the Church use words that have lost their meaning? Are there Christian words and phrases that have lost their power to convict the human spirit and bring transformation to the world? One of the twentieth century's most renowned prophetic thinkers, A.W. Tozer, saw a dangerous trend gaining momentum even before his death---a trend that has become commonplace now in the twenty-first century. In this never-before-published book, Tozer sounds his alarm for the modern Church: We must stop parroting words carelessly, and instead allow the meaning that these words convey to empower, shape and direct the work of the Church. Yet Reclaiming Christianity is not just a warning; it is a spiritual guidebook for reconnecting to the deepest meaning of Christianity's sacred messages.

From the bestselling author of the Liberation Trilogy comes the extraordinary first volume of his new trilogy about the American Revolution Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army at Dawn and two other superb books about World War II, has long been admired for his deeply...  more

From the bestselling author of the Liberation Trilogy comes the extraordinary first volume of his new trilogy about the American Revolution Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army at Dawn and two other superb books about World War II, has long been admired for his deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative histories. Now he turns his attention to a new war, and in the initial volume of the Revolution Trilogy he recounts the first twenty-one months of America?s violent war for independence. From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, American militiamen and then the ragged Continental Army take on the world?s most formidable fighting force. It is a gripping saga alive with astonishing characters: Henry Knox, the former bookseller with an uncanny understanding of artillery; Nathanael Greene, the blue-eyed bumpkin who becomes a brilliant battle captain; Benjamin Franklin, the self-made man who proves to be the wiliest of diplomats; George Washington, the commander in chief who learns the difficult art of leadership when the war seems all but lost. The story is also told from the British perspective, making the mortal conflict between the redcoats and the rebels all the more compelling.Full of riveting details and untold stories, The British Are Coming is a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. Rick Atkinson has given stirring new life to the first act of our country?s creation drama.