An informative exploration of earthquakes places a particular focus on the San Francisco disaster of 1906, describing how it affected more than two hundred miles of California, triggered a vast firestorm, and destroyed the gold-rush c...

In this combination medical history and medical mystery, Steven Johnson recounts how John Snow, a scientist, traced the source of a London cholera outbreak in 1854 to a well pump, and how his inventive use and presentation of quantifi...

In a sweeping state-of-the-world address, America's leading foreign policy critic surveys the role of the U.S. in a post-9-11 world -- and finds nothing has changed. Ranging over American intervention in the Middle East, Asia, and Lat...

Like all Keegan's work, 'The First World War' is beautifully written and full of telling detail. It has its faults, but it is certainly the best overall account for the general reader that has appeared since that by Cyril Falls nearly...

A provocative new look at the man behind Lincoln's assassination and the intense sibling rivalry that motivated him to act.

In sumptuous and illuminating detail Simon Winchester chronicles the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who turned his eccentric genius on the study of China. In 1937 Joseph Needham fell in lov...

At the time of his tragic death in February 2013, former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the most accomplished sniper in U.S. military history, was finishing a remarkable book that retold American history through the lens of a hand-selected lis...

A well-researched story recounts how explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew battled against almost insuperable odds to return to civilization after their ship Endurance sank near the South Pole in 1914. Read by Tim Piggott-Smith.

Author Tom Standage details the history of the world, from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century, through the lens of six defining beverages: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola.

When young Theodore Roosevelt was appointed police commissioner of New York City, he had the astounding gall to try to shut down the brothels, gambling joints, and after-hours saloons. This is the story of how TR took on Manhattan vic...

The Gulag - a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners - was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet com...

In the second volume of his epic trilogy about the liberation of Europe in World War II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the harrowing story of the campaigns in Sicily and Italy In An Army at Dawn- winner of the Pulitzer ...

From 1866 to 1876, more than three thousand free African Americans and their white allies were killed in cold blood by terrorist organizations in the South. Over the years this fact would not only be forgotten, but a series of exculpa...

[Read by Robertson Dean] Gifted storyteller Winston Groom, the bestselling author of Forrest Gump, has written the fascinating story of three extraordinary heroes who defined aviation during the great age of flight: Charles Lindbergh,...

In the same stylish gift format of the best-selling series opener, this new Intellectual Devotional offers daily digests of wisdom from American history--365 brief lessons to stimulate the mind every day of the year. Modeled after ...

When two of his American employees were held hostage in a heavily guarded prison fortress in Iran, one man took matters into his own hands: American businessman H. Ross Perot. His team consisted of a group of volunteers from the execu...

From the front lines of the battle against Islamic fundamentalism, a searing, unforgettable book that captures, in stunning vignettes, snapshots, and episodes, the human essence of the greatest conflict of our time.New York Times corr...

This is a book about my home city. I was born in the immense and beautiful segment of it called Brooklyn, but I've lived and worked for much of my life in its center, the long skinny island called Manhattan. I live here still. With an...

In this combination medical history and medical mystery, Steven Johnson recounts how John Snow, a scientist, traced the source of a London cholera outbreak in 1854 to a well pump, and how his inventive use and presentation of quantifi...

The deepest cave on earth was a prize that had remained unclaimed for centuries, long after every other ultimate discovery had been made: both poles by 1912, Everest in 1958, the Challenger Deep in 1961. In 1969 we even walked on the ...

It was truly a white Christmas in the Ardennes Forest in 1944, but that was cold comfort to the Allied soldiers trying to stop the Nazis from retaking Belgium in one of the most decisive battles of World War II. While a German loudspe...

Dubbed the "pirate queen" by the Vatican and Spain's Philip II, Elizabeth I was feared and admired by her enemies. Extravagant, whimsical, and hot-tempered, Elizabeth was the epitome of power. Her visionary accomplishments were made p...

Midcentury Los Angeles. A city sold to the world as "the white spot of America," a land of sunshine and orange groves, wholesome Midwestern values and Hollywood stars, protected by the world's most famous police force, the D...

In the summer of 1913, under the cover of London's perpetual smoggy dusk, two brilliant minds are pitted against each other — a celebrated gentleman thief and a talented Scotland Yard detective — in the greatest jewel heist of the...

It was a contest of titans. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two heroes of the Revolutionary era, once intimate friends, now her antagonists locked in a fierce battle for the future of the United States. The election of 1800 was a thu...

While the Civil War raged in America, another very different revolution was beginning to take shape across the Atlantic, in the studios of Paris: The artists who would make Impressionism the most popular art form in history were showi...

A best-selling historian considers Churchill's first speech before Parliament--a speech that transformed both Churchill and the nation he had come to lead. On May 13, 1940, Winston Churchill stood before the House of Commons to deliv...

A gifted and well-practiced writer can tell an old story and make it seem new and exciting. Louis Menand is such a writer, and his version of the story of pragmatism is the most lively and integrated yet told. Menand's incisive and re...

In this acclaimed Lannan foundation lecture from September 2002, Roy speaks poetically to power on the US’ War on Terror, globalization, the misuses of nationalism, and the growing chasm between the rich and poor. With lyricism and ...

[Read by Malcolm Hillgartner] *Includes a bonus PDF with photos A thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and consequential periods in twentieth century history -- the Arab Revolt and the secret game to control the ...