IIt's America's boot camp, 88 days of drills, inspections, rifle practices, war games, grueling physical exercise and a regimen that separates the men from the boys...Boot is an insider's account, told by a former Marine and veteran j...
Executions in America: Over Three Hun...
Frederick DrimmerFrom the first Pilgrim hanged in 1630 right up to Ted Bundy in 1989, legal execution has been a facet of the American justice system. Now, for the first time ever, the dramatic history of the men and women who have been put to death i...
From the acclaimed author of Augustus, Cicero, and The Rise of Rome, an entertaining and richly informative miscellany of facts about Rome and the Roman world SPQR: Senatus Populusque Romanus. Do you know to what use the Romans put th...
The Allure of the Archives (The Lewis...
Arlette FargeArlette Farge's Le Goût de l'archive is widely regarded as a historiographical classic. While combing through two-hundred-year-old judicial records from the Archives of the Bastille, historian Farge was struck by the extraordinarily ...
How to Lose a War: More Foolish Plans...
Bill FawcettThis is a followup to 'How to Lose a Battle', more military blunder miscellany, from Ancient Greece to modern-day, including such ill-fated plans as; Xerxes' defeat in Greece at Marathon; Alexander's invasion of India; Napoloeon's occ...
Civilization: The West and the Rest
Niall FergusonWestern civilization's rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed hist...
History of the Philippines: From Indi...
Luis H. FranciaOver three million Filipino Americans now live in the US, but popular histories of this rich, complicated nation are still rare. From ancient Malay settlements to Spanish colonization, the American occupation and beyond, A History o...
Medic!: How I Fought World War II wit...
Robert "Doc Joe" FranklinLt. Gen. George S. Patton remarked that the "45th Infantry Division is one of the best, if not the best division that the American army has ever produced." Such praise, however, came at a steep price, for the 45th saw some o...
Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone
Eduardo GaleanoThroughout his career, Eduardo Galeano has turned our understanding of history and reality on its head. Isabelle Allende said his works "invade the reader's mind, to persuade him or her to surrender to the charm of his writing an...
In 1935, with a doctorate in art history and no prospect of a job, the 26-year-old Ernst Gombrich was invited by a publishing acquaintance to attempt a history of the world for younger readers. Amazingly, he completed the task in an i...
How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Gui...
Ruth GoodmanAn erudite romp through the intimate details of life in Tudor England, "Goodman's latest…is a revelation" (New York Times Book Review).On the heels of her triumphant How to Be a Victorian, Ruth Goodman travels even further...
Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War ...
Max HastingsA New York Times Notable Book of 2013A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the YearWorld War I evokes images of the trenches: grinding, halting battles that sacrificed millions of lives for no territory or visible gain. Yet the fir...
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty a...
Adam Hochschild"This is the kind of investigatory history Hochschild pulls off like no one else . . . Hochschild is a master at chronicling how prevailing cultural opinion is formed and, less frequently, how it's challenged." — Maureen Corrigan, N...
Russian History: A Very Short Introdu...
Geoffrey HoskingRussia's sheer size has made it difficult to mobilize resources and to govern effectively, especially given its harsh climate, vast and vulnerable borders, and the diversity of its people. In this Very Short Introduction, Geoffrey Hos...
In the winter of 1910, the river that brought life to Paris quickly became a force of destruction. Torrential rainfall saturated the soil, and faulty engineering created a perfect storm of conditions that soon drowned Parisian stre...
Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty
Dan Jones"Dan Jones has an enviable gift for telling a dramatic story while at the same time inviting us to consider serious topics like liberty and the seeds of representative government." —Antonia FraserFrom the New York Times bestsellin...
Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and t...
John B. JudisA probing look at one of the most incendiary subjects of our time—the relationship between the United States and IsraelThere has been more than half a century of raging conflict between Jews and Arabs—a violent, costly struggle t...
Digging Up the Dead: A History of Not...
Michael KammenA funeral closes a life story, and a grave in a cemetery marks its end forever. But what happens when those left behind don't agree about the meaning of that story? Or when that disagreement extends all the way to arguments about the ...
India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in...
Akash KapurA New Republic Editors' and Writers' Pick 2012A New Yorker Contributors' Pick 2012 A Newsweek "Must Read on Modern India""For people who savored Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers."-Evan Osnos, newy...
As the Western-Iranian impasse continues to dominate international affairs, politicians and the media confidently proclaim Iran the greatest threat to the Western World. But this villainous mask obscures a far more complex identity fo...
The acclaimed author of The Face of Battle examines centures of conflict in a variety of diverse societies and cultures. 'Keegan is at once the most readable and the most original of living military historians . . . A History of Warfa...
The Bedford Boys: One American Town's...
Alex KershawJune 6, 1944: Nineteen boys from Bedford, Virginia--population just 3,000 in 1944--died in the first bloody minutes of D-Day. They were part of Company A of the 116th Regiment of the 29th Division, and the first wave of American soldi...
The Longest Winter: The Battle of the...
Alex KershawOn the morning of December 16, 1944, eighteen men of the Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon attached to the 99th Infantry Division found themselves directly in the path of the main thrust of Hitler's massive Ardennes offensive. D...
The Assassination of the Archduke: Sa...
Greg KingDrawing on unpublished letters and rare primary sources, King and Woolmans tell the true story behind the tragic romance and brutal assassination that sparked World War I In the summer of 1914, three great empires dominated Europe: G...
The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Ac...
Thomas KingIn The Inconvenient Indian, Thomas King offers a deeply knowing, darkly funny, unabashedly opinionated, and utterly unconventional account of Indian–White relations in North America since initial contact. Ranging freely across the c...
Castro's Secrets: The CIA and Cuba's ...
Brian LatellPublished to glowing reviews, this riveting narrative takes us back to when the Cuban Revolution was young and offers a new and surprising look at Fidel Castro. Drawing on interviews with high-level defectors from Cuban intelligence,...
The Duel: The Eighty-Day Struggle
John LukacsThis is a day-by-day account of the eighty-day struggle in 1940 between Hitler—poised on the edge of absolute victory—and Churchill—threatened by imminent invasion and defeat.
Double Cross: The True Story of the D...
Ben MacintyreOn June 6, 1944, 150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy and suffered an astonishingly low rate of casualties. A stunning military accomplishment, it was also a masterpiece of trickery. Operation Fortitude, which...
Although often written off as myths, UFOs are found in Renaissance Art, on ancient coins, etched on cave walls-and even reported in the Bible. Even more surprising is when they are documented most: in times of war. These sightings are...
Heinrich Himmler: The SS, Gestapo, Hi...
Roger ManvellAuthors Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, notable biographers of the World War II German leaders Joseph Goebbels and Herman Goring, delve into the life of one of the most sinister, clever, and successful of all the Nazi leaders: He...