Browse Our Online Discount Bookstore Selection
Page 1 of 5 - 212 results
Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11
Zuckoff, Mitchell
(Compact Disc)
List Price: $55.99 Sale: $18.01
This is a 9/11 book like no other. Masterfully weaving together multiple strands of the events in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, Fall and Rise is a mesmerizing, minute-by-minute account of that terrible day.In the days and months after 9/11, Mitchell Zuckoff, then a reporter for the Boston Globe, wrote about the attacks, the victims, and their families. After further years of meticulous reporting, Zuckoff has filled Fall and Rise with voices of the lost and the saved. The result is an utterly gripping book, filled with intimate stories of people most affected by the events of that sunny Tuesday in September: an out-of-work actor stuck in an elevator in the North Tower of the World Trade Center; the heroes aboard Flight 93 deciding to take action; a veteran trapped in the inferno in the Pentagon; the fire chief among the first on the scene in sleepy Shanksville; a team of firefighters racing to save an injured woman and themselves; and the men, women, and children flying across country to see loved ones or for work who suddenly faced terrorists bent on murder.Fall and Rise will open new avenues of understanding for everyone who thinks they know the story of 9/11, bringing to life - and in some cases, bringing back to life - the extraordinary ordinary people who experienced the worst day in modern American history.Destined to be a classic, Fall and Rise will move, shock, inspire, and fill hearts with love and admiration for the human spirit as it triumphs in the face of horrifying events.
The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914 (The Penguin History of Europe)
Evans, Richard J.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $40.00 Sale: $14.61
An Economist Best Book of the Year“Sweeping . . . an ambitious synthesis . . . [Evans] writes with admirable narrative power and possesses a wonderful eye for local color . . . Fascinating.”—Stephen Schuker, The Wall Street JournalFrom the bestselling author of The Third Reich at War, a masterly account of Europe in the age of its global hegemony; the latest volume in the Penguin History of Europe series Richard J. Evans, bestselling historian of Nazi Germany, returns with a monumental new addition to the acclaimed Penguin History of Europe series, covering the period from the fall of Napoleon to the outbreak of World War I. Evans’s gripping narrative ranges across a century of social and national conflicts, from the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 to the unification of both Germany and Italy, from the Russo-Turkish wars to the Balkan upheavals that brought this era of relative peace and growing prosperity to an end. Among the great themes it discusses are the decline of religious belief and the rise of secular science and medicine, the journey of art, music, and literature from Romanticism to Modernism, the replacement of old-regime punishments by the modern prison, the end of aristocratic domination and the emergence of industrial society, and the dramatic struggle of feminists for women’s equality and emancipation. Uniting the era’s broad-ranging transformations was the pursuit of power in all segments of life, from the banker striving for economic power to the serf seeking to escape the power of his landlord, from the engineer asserting society’s power over the environment to the psychiatrist attempting to exert science’s power over human nature itself.       The first single-volume history of the century, this comprehensive and sweeping account gives the reader a magnificently human picture of Europe in the age when it dominated the rest of the globe.
Three Days at the Brink
Baier, Bret
(Compact Disc)
List Price: $44.99 Sale: $14.61
From the #1 bestselling author and award-winning anchor of Special Report with Bret Baier, comes the gripping lost history of the Tehran Conference, where FDR, Churchill, and Stalin plotted D-Day and the Second World War’s endgame. With the fate of World War II in doubt and rumors of a Nazi assassination plot swirling, Franklin Roosevelt risked everything at a clandestine meeting that would change the course of history.November 1943: The Nazis and their Axis allies controlled nearly the entire European continent. Japan dominated the Pacific. Allied successes at Sicily and Guadalcanal had gained them modest ground but at an extraordinary cost. On the Eastern Front, the Soviet Red Army had been bled white. The path of history walked a knife’s edge.That same month a daring gambit was hatched that would alter everything. The "Big Three" - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin - secretly met for the first time to chart a strategy for defeating Adolf Hitler. Over three days in Tehran, Iran, this trio - strange bedfellows united by their mutual responsibility as heads of the Allied powers - made essential decisions that would direct the final years of the war and its aftermath. Meanwhile, looming over the covert meeting was the possible threat of a Nazi assassination plot, code-named Operation Long Jump.Before they left Tehran, the three leaders agreed to open a second front in the West, spearheaded by Operation Overload and the D-Day invasion of France at Normandy the following June. They also discussed what might come after the war, including dividing Germany and establishing the United Nations - plans that laid the groundwork for the postwar world order and the Cold War.Bestselling author and Fox News Channel anchor Bret Baier’s new epic history, Three Days at the Brink, centers on these crucial days in Tehran, the medieval Persian city on the edge of the desert. Baier makes clear the importance of Roosevelt, who stood apart as the sole leader of a democracy, recognizing him as the lead strategist for the globe’s future-the one man who could ultimately allow or deny the others their place in history.With new details discovered in rarely seen transcripts, oral histories, and declassified State Department and presidential documents from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Baier illuminates the complex character of Roosevelt, revealing a man who grew into his role and accepted the greatest challenge any American president since Lincoln had faced.Unabridged on 11 compact discs.
Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Coll, Steve
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Sale: $13.76
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars, the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11.Prior to 9/11, the United States had been carrying out small-scale covert operations in Afghanistan, ostensibly in cooperation, although often in direct opposition, with I.S.I., the Pakistani intelligence agency. While the US was trying to quell extremists, a highly secretive and compartmentalized wing of I.S.I., known as "Directorate S," was covertly training, arming, and seeking to legitimize the Taliban, in order to enlarge Pakistan's sphere of influence. After 9/11, when fifty-nine countries, led by the U. S., deployed troops or provided aid to Afghanistan in an effort to flush out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the U.S. was set on an invisible slow-motion collision course with Pakistan.Today we know that the war in Afghanistan would falter badly because of military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the drain on resources and provocation in the Muslim world caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and corruption. But more than anything, as Coll makes painfully clear, the war in Afghanistan was doomed because of the failure of the United States to apprehend the motivations and intentions of I.S.I.'s "Directorate S". This was a swirling and shadowy struggle of historic proportions, which endured over a decade and across both the Bush and Obama administrations, involving multiple secret intelligence agencies, a litany of incongruous strategies and tactics, and dozens of players, including some of the most prominent military and political figures. A sprawling American tragedy, the war was an open clash of arms but also a covert melee of ideas, secrets, and subterranean violence. Coll excavates this grand battle, which took place away from the gaze of the American public. With unsurpassed expertise, original research, and attention to detail, he brings to life a narrative at once vast and intricate, local and global, propulsive and painstaking. This is the definitive explanation of how America came to be so badly ensnared in an elaborate, factional, and seemingly interminable conflict in South Asia. Nothing less than a forensic examination of the personal and political forces that shape world history, Directorate S is a complete masterpiece of both investigative and narrative journalism.
The Illustrated Secret History of the World
Booth, Mark
(Hardcover)
List Price: $45.00 Sale: $13.76
Since its first publication in 2008, The Secret History of the World has sold over 250,000 copies and established itself as the authoritative text on the subject of esoteric belief systems and secret societies. Now, with The Illustrated Secret History of the World, this landmark book achieves a new level of authority, adding to its thorough and revealing text more than 350 illustrations—many of them rare—of the symbols, drawings, engravings, paintings, and photographs that are a key part of the world’s secret history. This richly illustrated edition features exclusive new material to accompany the original text in a beautiful package and oversized format. The Illustrated Secret History of the World presents a radical re-interpretation of human existence and a view of the world previously hidden from us. Featuring: Alchemists & Freemasons The Illuminati The Garden of Eden The Knights Templar The Looking Glass Universe The Gods Who Loved Women The Green King The Prophets The Sphinx & the Timelock The Neolithic Alexander Zarathustra The Rise of the Magi Lucifer Gnostics & Shamans Mohammed and Gabriel Francis Bacon and the Green One The Rosicrucian Age The Seven Seals & The New Jerusalem And much more . . . 
Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975
Hastings, Max
(Hardcover)
List Price: $37.50 Sale: $13.76
Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the 1968 Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and also much less familiar miniatures such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh’s warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings, and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners’ victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls, and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, and Huey pilots from Arkansas.No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings’ readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the twenty-first century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.
Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet
Roper, Lyndal
(Hardcover)
List Price: $40.00 Sale: $12.91
On October 31, 1517, so the story goes, a shy monk named Martin Luther nailed a piece of paper to the door of the Castle Church in the university town of Wittenberg. The ideas contained in these Ninety-five Theses, which boldly challenged the Catholic Church, spread like wildfire. Within two months, they were known all over Germany. So powerful were Martin Luther’s broadsides against papal authority that they polarized a continent and tore apart the very foundation of Western Christendom. Luther’s ideas inspired upheavals whose consequences we live with today. But who was the man behind the Ninety-five Theses? Lyndal Roper’s magisterial new biography goes beyond Luther’s theology to investigate the inner life of the religious reformer who has been called “the last medieval man and the first modern one.” Here is a full-blooded portrait of a revolutionary thinker who was, at his core, deeply flawed and full of contradictions. Luther was a brilliant writer whose biblical translations had a lasting impact on the German language. Yet he was also a strident fundamentalist whose scathing rhetorical attacks threatened to alienate those he might persuade. He had a colorful, even impish personality, and when he left the monastery to get married (“to spite the Devil,” he explained), he wooed and wed an ex-nun. But he had an ugly side too. When German peasants rose up against the nobility, Luther urged the aristocracy to slaughter them. He was a ferocious anti-Semite and a virulent misogynist, even as he argued for liberated human sexuality within marriage. A distinguished historian of early modern Europe, Lyndal Roper looks deep inside the heart of this singularly complex figure. The force of Luther’s personality, she argues, had enormous historical effects—both good and ill. By bringing us closer than ever to the man himself, she opens up a new vision of the Reformation and the world it created and draws a fully three-dimensional portrait of its founder.
Iconic Magazine Covers: The Inside Stories Told by the People Who Made Them
Birch, Ian
(Hardcover)
List Price: $49.95 Sale: $12.48
Iconic Magazine Covers is an oral history of the stories behind the most innovative and controversial magazine covers of all time, as told by the people who created them.Featuring shocking, evocative and powerful covers from Vogue, LIFE, Esquire, The New Yorker, i-D, The Face, Private Eye, Time, Rolling Stone and many more, this unique social document celebrates and chronicles the art of magazine design.Compiled by industry veteran Ian Birch, Iconic gathers together the insights of the magazine world's most important figures, including high-profile editors, creative directors, photographers, artists and cover stars.
Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World
Zeihan, Peter
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Sale: $12.06
A forward-thinking geopolitical guru explains who will win and who will lose in the coming global Disorder.The world is entering its greatest period of change in nearly a century. America's allies depend on her commitments for their economic and physical security, and they hope the Trump administration's positions are an aberration. This hope is misplaced. The world has gotten so used to the "normal" of an American-dominated Order that we all have forgotten the historical norm: several smaller, competing powers and economic systems throughout Europe and Asia. The period of American hyper-involvement in global affairs is ending. The impacts on global energy and agricultural markets, finance and technology will be transformative, but the heirs to the dying Order are not who you think. Russia, India, China and Brazil will not be the superpowers and wunderkind of the future. Rather, names familiar and new will be taking charge of the emerging global Disorder. Germany will decline as the most powerful country in Europe, with France taking its place. Every country should prepare for the collapse of China, not the rise of North Korea. We are already seeing, as Zeihan predicts, a shift in outlook on the Middle East: it is no longer Iran that is the region's most dangerous threat, but Saudi Arabia.Smart, gripping, and essential reading, Disunited Nations is a sure-to-be-controversial guidebook that analyzes the emerging shifts and resulting problems and issues that will arise in the next two decades. We are entering a period of profound upheaval; no political or corporate leader can ignore Zeihan's insights or his message if they want to survive and thrive in this uncertain new time.In Disunited Nations, Zeihan presents a compelling, unique vision about the future of the world.
Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine
Applebaum, Anne
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Sale: $12.06
AN ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEARFrom the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag and the National Book Award finalist Iron Curtain, a revelatory history of one of Stalin's greatest crimes—the consequences of which still resonate todayIn 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization—in effect a second Russian revolution—which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least five million people died between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. But instead of sending relief the Soviet state made use of the catastrophe to rid itself of a political problem. In Red Famine, Anne Applebaum argues that more than three million of those dead were Ukrainians who perished not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy but because the state deliberately set out to kill them.Applebaum proves what has long been suspected: after a series of rebellions unsettled the province, Stalin set out to destroy the Ukrainian peasantry. The state sealed the republic’s borders and seized all available food. Starvation set in rapidly, and people ate anything: grass, tree bark, dogs, corpses. In some cases, they killed one another for food. Devastating and definitive, Red Famine captures the horror of ordinary people struggling to survive extraordinary evil.Today, Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union, has placed Ukrainian independence in its sights once more. Applebaum’s compulsively readable narrative recalls one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century, and shows how it may foreshadow a new threat to the political order in the twenty-first.
To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949 (The Penguin History of Europe)
Kershaw, Ian
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Sale: $12.06
The Penguin History of Europe series reaches the twentieth century with acclaimed scholar Ian Kershaw's long-anticipated analysis of the pivotal years of World War I and World War II.The European catastrophe, the long continuous period from 1914 to 1949, was unprecedented in human history--an extraordinarily dramatic, often traumatic, and endlessly fascinating period of upheaval and transformation. This new volume in the Penguin History of Europe series offers comprehensive coverage of this tumultuous era. Beginning with the outbreak of World War I through the rise of Hitler and the aftermath of the Second World War, award-winning British historian Ian Kershaw combines his characteristic original scholarship and gripping prose as he profiles the key decision makers and the violent shocks of war as they affected the entire European continent and radically altered the course of European history. Kershaw identifies four major causes for this catastrophe: an explosion of ethnic-racist nationalism, bitter and irreconcilable demands for territorial revisionism, acute class conflict given concrete focus through the Bolshevik Revolution, and a protracted crisis of capitalism.Incisive, brilliantly written, and filled with penetrating insights, To Hell and Back offers an indispensable study of a period in European history whose effects are still being felt today.
The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz
Fairweather, Jack
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.99 Sale: $12.06
The incredible true story of a Polish resistance fighter’s infiltration of Auschwitz to sabotage the camp from within, and his death-defying attempt to warn the Allies about the Nazis’ plans for a "Final Solution" before it was too late.To uncover the fate of the thousands being interred at a mysterious Nazi camp on the border of the Reich, a thirty-nine-year-old Polish resistance fighter named Witold Pilecki volunteered for an audacious mission: assume a fake identity, intentionally get captured and sent to the new camp, and then report back to the underground on what had happened to his compatriots there. But gathering information was not his only task: he was to execute an attack from inside - where the Germans would least expect it. The name of the camp was Auschwitz.Over the next two and half years, Pilecki forged an underground army within Auschwitz that sabotaged facilities, assassinated Nazi informants and officers, and gathered evidence of terrifying abuse and mass murder. But as he pieced together the horrifying truth that the camp was to become the epicenter of Nazi plans to exterminate Europe’s Jews, Pilecki realized he would have to risk his men, his life, and his family to warn the West before all was lost. To do so, meant attempting the impossible - an escape from Auschwitz itself.Completely erased from the historical record by Poland’s post-war Communist government, Pilecki remains almost unknown to the world. Now, with exclusive access to previously hidden diaries, family and camp survivor accounts, and recently declassified files, Jack Fairweather offers an unflinching portrayal of survival, revenge and betrayal in mankind’s darkest hour. And in uncovering the tragic outcome of Pilecki’s mission, he reveals that its ultimate defeat originated not in Auschwitz or Berlin, but in London and Washington.
Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge
Beevor, Antony
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Sale: $11.12
On December 16, 1944, Hitler launched his "last gamble" in the snow-covered forests and gorges of the Ardennes in Belgium, believing he could split the Allies by driving all the way to Antwerp and forcing the Canadians and the British out of the war. Although his generals were doubtful of success, younger officers and NCOs were desperate to believe that their homes and families could be saved from the vengeful Red Army approaching from the east. Many were exultant at the prospect of striking back.The allies, taken by surprise, found themselves fighting two panzer armies. Belgian civilians abandoned their homes, justifiably afraid of German revenge. Panic spread even to Paris. While some American soldiers, overwhelmed by the German onslaught, fled or surrendered, others held on heroically, creating breakwaters which slowed the German advance.The harsh winter conditions and the savagery of the battle became comparable to the Eastern Front. In fact the Ardennes became the Western Front’s counterpart to Stalingrad. There was terrible ferocity on both sides, driven by desperation and revenge, in which the normal rules of combat were breached. The Ardennes - involving more than a million men - would prove to be the battle which finally broke the back of the Wehrmacht.In this deeply researched work, with striking insights into the major players on both sides, Antony Beevor gives us the definitive account of the Ardennes offensive which was to become the greatest battle of World War II.
In God's Hands: The Spiritual Diaries of Pope John Paul II
Pope Saint John Paul II
(Hardcover)
List Price: $34.99 Sale: $11.12
Available for the first time in English, the private reflections of the modern pope recently elevated to sainthood - deeply personal writings that reveal a spiritual leader who agonized over his service to God, continually questioning whether he was doing enough.As the head of the Roman Catholic Church for twenty-five years, from the final decades of the twentieth century to the first years of the new millennium, Pope John Paul II significantly impacted our world. As famous as a rock star, this powerful leader who conferred with numerous heads of state was the ultimate model of wisdom and religious commitment for numerous Catholics around the globe.Throughout much of his adult life, from 1962 until two years before his death in 2003, John Paul II kept a series of private diaries in which he disclosed his innermost thoughts, impressions, and concerns. Written in his native Polish and never before available in English until now, these journals provide intimate and deeply moving insight into a man, a priest, and a saint’s spirituality and a life devoted completely to God.In God’s Hands lays bare the soul of this powerful, influential statesman, revealing a devout man untouched by his celebrity status; a selfless servant of God who spent decades questioning whether he was worthy of the role he was called to carry out. Over forty years, from his bishopric in Krakow to his election to the papacy to his final years, one question guided him: "Am I serving God?"Entrusted to his personal secretary - who defied John Paul II’s instructions to burn them after his death - these notebooks provide us with a privileged glimpse into the life of a humble man who never took for granted his mission or his exalted role in the church and in the world.
Fighting Words: The Bold American Journalists Who Brought the World Home Between the Wars
Cott, Nancy F.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $32.00 Sale: $10.78
From a Harvard historian, this riveting portrait of four trailblazing American journalists highlights the power of the press in the interwar period.In the fragile peace following the Great War, a surprising number of restless young Americans abandoned their homes and set out impulsively to see the changing world. In Fighting Words, Nancy F. Cott follows four who pursued global news -- from contested Palestine to revolutionary China, from Stalin's Moscow to Hitler's Berlin. As foreign correspondents, they became players in international politics and shaped Americans' awareness of critical interwar crises, the spreading menace of European fascism, and the likelihood of a new war -- while living romantic and sexual lives as modern and as hazardous as their journalism.An indelible portrayal of a tumultuous era with resonance for our own, Fighting Words is essential reading on the power of the press and the growth of an American sense of international responsibility.
All Against All: The Long Winter of 1933 and the Origins of the Second World War
Jankowski, Paul
(Hardcover)
List Price: $32.50 Sale: $10.19
A narrative history, cinematic in scope, of a process that was taking shape in the winter of 1933 as domestic passions around the world colluded to drive governments towards a war few of them wanted and none of them could control.All Against All is the story of the season our world changed from postwar to prewar again. It is a book about the power of bad ideas—exploring why, during a single winter, between November 1932 and April 1933, so much went so wrong. Historian Paul Jankowski reveals that it was collective mentalities and popular beliefs that drove this crucial period that sent nations on the path to war, as much as any rational calculus called “national interest.”Over these six months, collective delusions filled the air. Whether in liberal or authoritarian regimes, mass participation and the crowd mentality ascended. Hitler came to power; Japan invaded Jehol and left the League of Nations; Mussolini looked towards Africa; Roosevelt was elected; France changed governments three times; and the victors of 1918 fell out acrimoniously over war debts, arms, currency, tariffs, and Germany. New hopes flickered but not for long: a world economic conference was planned, only to collapse when the US went its own way.All Against All reconstructs a series of seemingly disparate happenings whose connections can only be appraised in retrospect. As he weaves together the stories of the influences that conspired to lead the world to war, Jankowski offers a cautionary tale relevant for western democracies today. The rising threat from dictatorial regimes and the ideological challenge presented by communism and fascism gave the 1930s a unique face, just as global environmental and demographic crises are coloring our own. While we do not know for certain where these crises will take us, we do know that those of the 1930s culminated in the Second World War.
Case White: The Invasion of Poland 1939
Forczyk, Robert
(Hardcover)
List Price: $30.00 Sale: $10.19
The German invasion of Poland on 1 September, 1939, designated as Fall Weiss (Case White), was the event that sparked the outbreak of World War II in Europe. The campaign has widely been described as a textbook example of Blitzkrieg, but it was actually a fairly conventional campaign as the Wehrmacht was still learning how to use its new Panzers and dive-bombers.The Polish military is often misrepresented as hopelessly obsolete and outclassed by the Wehrmacht, yet in fact it was well-equipped with modern weapons and armor. Indeed, the Polish possessed more tanks than the British and had cracked the German Enigma machine cipher. Though the combined assault from Germany and the Soviet Union defeated Poland, it could not crush the Polish fighting spirit and thousands of soldiers and airmen escaped to fight on other fronts. The result of Case White was a brutal occupation, as Polish Slavs found themselves marginalized and later eliminated, paving the way for Hitler's vision of Lebensraum (living space) and his later betrayal and invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.Using a wide array of sources, Robert Forczyk challenges the myths of Case White to tell the full story of the invasion that sparked history's greatest conflict.
The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture
Figes, Orlando
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Sale: $10.19
The nineteenth century in Europe was a time of unprecedented artistic achievement. It was also the first age of cultural globalization?an epoch when mass communications and high-speed rail travel brought Europe together, overcoming the barriers of nationalism and facilitating the development of a truly European canon of artistic, musical, and literary works. By 1900, the same books were being read across the continent, the same paintings reproduced, the same music played in homes and heard in concert halls, the same operas performed in all the major theatres.Drawing from a wealth of documents, letters, and other archival materials, acclaimed historian Orlando Figes examines the interplay of money and art that made this unification possible. At the center of the book is a poignant love triangle: the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev; the Spanish prima donna Pauline Viardot, with whom Turgenev had a long and intimate relationship; and her husband Louis Viardot, an art critic, theater manager, and republican activist. Together, Turgenev and the Viardots acted as a kind of European cultural exchange - they either knew or crossed paths with Delacroix, Berlioz, Chopin, Brahms, Liszt, the Schumanns, Hugo, Flaubert, Dickens, and Dostoyevsky, among many other towering figures.As Figes observes, nearly all of civilization’s great advances have come during periods of heightened cosmopolitanism?when people, ideas, and artistic creations circulate freely between nations. Vivid and insightful, The Europeans shows how such cosmopolitan ferment shaped artistic traditions that came to dominate world culture.
The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
Gessen, Masha
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $10.19
A visionary journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a virulent and invincible strain of autocracy.
The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World (Large Print)
Winchester, Simon
(Paperback)
List Price: $29.99 Sale: $10.19
The revered New York Times bestselling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement - precision - in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future.The rise of manufacturing could not have happened without an attention to precision. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century England, standards of measurement were established, giving way to the development of machine tools - machines that make machines. Eventually, the application of precision tools and methods resulted in the creation and mass production of items from guns and glass to mirrors, lenses, and cameras - and eventually gave way to further breakthroughs, including gene splicing, microchips, and the Hadron Collider.Simon Winchester takes us back to origins of the Industrial Age, to England where he introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production: John Wilkinson, Henry Maudslay, Joseph Bramah, Jesse Ramsden, and Joseph Whitworth. It was Thomas Jefferson who later exported their discoveries to the fledgling United States, setting the nation on its course to become a manufacturing titan. Winchester moves forward through time, to today’s cutting-edge developments occurring around the world, from America to Western Europe to Asia.As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society?
Three Days at the Brink: FDR's Daring Gamble to Win World War II (Three Days Series)
Baier, Bret
(Paperback)
List Price: $28.99 Sale: $10.19
The gripping lost history of the Tehran Conference, where FDR, Churchill, and Stalin plotted D-Day and the Second World War's endgame.In November 1943, with the fate of World War II hanging in the balance, a daring gambit was hatched. The Big Three - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin - secretly met for the first time to chart a strategy for defeating Adolf Hitler. Over three days in Tehran, Iran, this trio made essential decisions agreeing to open a second front in the west, spearheaded by Operation Overload and the D-Day invasion of France at Normandy. They also discussed what might come after the war, including dividing Germany and establishing the United Nations, laying the groundwork for the postwar world order.Bret Baier's epic history Three Days at the Brink centers on these crucial days. With new details found in rarely seen transcripts, oral histories, and declassified documents, Baier illuminates the complex character of Roosevelt, revealing a man who grew into his role and accepted the greatest challenge any American president has faced since Lincoln.
Westminster Diary: A Reluctant Minister under Tony Blair
Donoughue, Bernard
(Hardcover)
List Price: $40.00 Sale: $10.19
On 2nd May 1997, Tony Blair swept into Downing Street, ending almost twenty years of Conservative government and beginning a decade as Prime Minister. Bernard Donoughue, a Labour peer in the House of Lords, chronicled the path to this momentous election victory in his diaries and this volume sheds new light on the process of forming government and on life working as a minister in the House of Lords. Infused with Donoughue's trademark wit and insight, the diaries covers daily life for a working peer – from the committees, bill discussion and public appearances to political spats – both policy-related and personal. Donoughue also casts a wry glance at a peer's extra-curricular events – from dinners and other high-profile social events to his own favourite hobby, horse-racing. Featuring a cast of high-profile political characters, this book is a must-read for fans of political diaries and anyone with an interest in the inside workings of Westminster.
Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America's Founding Father (Large Print)
Stark, Peter
(Paperback)
List Price: $35.00 Sale: $10.19
A new, brash, and unexpected view of the president we thought we knew, from the bestselling author of AstoriaTwo decades before he led America to independence, George Washington was a flailing young soldier serving the British Empire in the vast wilderness of the Ohio Valley. Naïve and self-absorbed, the twenty-two-year-old officer accidentally ignited the French and Indian War - a conflict that opened colonists to the possibility of an American Revolution.With powerful narrative drive and vivid writing, Young Washington recounts the wilderness trials, controversial battles, and emotional entanglements that transformed Washington from a temperamental striver into a mature leader. Enduring terrifying summer storms and subzero winters imparted resilience and self-reliance, helping prepare him for what he would one day face at Valley Forge. Leading the Virginia troops into battle taught him to set aside his own relentless ambitions and stand in solidarity with those who looked to him for leadership. Negotiating military strategy with British and colonial allies honed his diplomatic skills. And thwarted in his obsessive, youthful love for one woman, he grew to cultivate deeper, enduring relationships. By weaving together Washington’s harrowing wilderness adventures and a broader historical context, Young Washington offers new insights into the dramatic years that shaped the man who shaped a nation.
Hell and Other Destinations (Large Print)
Albright, Madeleine
(Paperback)
List Price: $31.99 Sale: $9.76
In 2001, when Madeleine Albright was leaving office as America’s first female secretary of state, interviewers asked her how she wished to be remembered. “I don’t want to be remembered,” she answered. “I am still here and have much more I intend to do. As difficult as it might seem, I want every stage of my life to be more exciting than the last.”In that time of transition, the former Secretary considered the possibilities: she could write, teach, travel, give speeches, start a business, fight for democracy, help to empower women, campaign for favored political candidates, spend more time with her grandchildren. Instead of choosing one or two, she decided to do it all. For nearly twenty years, Albright has been in constant motion, navigating half a dozen professions, clashing with presidents and prime ministers, learning every day. Since leaving the State Department, she has blazed her own trail - and given voice to millions who yearn for respect, regardless of gender, background, or age.Hell and Other Destinations reveals this remarkable figure at her bluntest, funniest, most intimate, and most serious. It is the tale of our times anchored in lessons for all time, narrated by an extraordinary woman with a matchless zest for life.
How Did We Get Here?: From Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump
Dallek, Robert
(Hardcover)
List Price: $32.50 Sale: $9.76
The award-winning, New York Times bestselling historian considers the vast array of triumphs and failures of America’s modern presidents that paved a path to Donald Trump, offering an understanding of our current moment and hope for a way back to true leadership.The struggle to preserve the Republic has never been easy or without perils. The rise of conflicting political parties, which the founders opposed, and President John Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts repressing First Amendment rights made Franklin’s observation at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention - “a republic, if you can keep it” - seem prescient.In the twentieth century, America endured numerous struggles: economic depression, World War II, McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iran-contra scandal, the war in Iraq—all of which gave rise to demagogues, as did the growth and reach of mass media. But this wasn’t the Founding Fathers’ vision for our leadership. The resistance to putting a demagogue in the White House survived the anti-Communist agitation of the 1950s and the Vietnam War in the 1960s. But the latter opened the way for Richard Nixon’s election in 1968 and Watergate, which again tested our democratic institutions and the rule of law. Nixon’s resignation in August 1974 moved Vice President Gerald Ford, his successor, to declare, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”But was it? Donald Trump’s 2016 election has presented a new challenge. How did past politics and presidential administrations pave the way for this current assault on American democracy? Our nation’s history provides reassurance that we will restore our better angels to government. Yet it must be considered that earlier administrations and public outlook facilitated the rise of such an un-presidential character as Trump in the first place. In How Did We Get Here?, Robert Dallek considers a century of modern administrations, from Teddy Roosevelt to today, shining a light on the personalities behind the politics and the voters who elected each. His cautionary tale reminds us that the only constant in history is change, but whether for good or ill the choice is Americans’ to make.
Three Days at the Brink: FDR's Daring Gamble to Win World War II (Three Days Series)
Baier, Bret
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.99 Sale: $9.76
From the #1 bestselling author and award-winning anchor of Special Report with Bret Baier, comes the gripping lost history of the Tehran Conference, where FDR, Churchill, and Stalin plotted D-Day and the Second World War’s endgame. With the fate of World War II in doubt and rumors of a Nazi assassination plot swirling, Franklin Roosevelt risked everything at a clandestine meeting that would change the course of history.November 1943: The Nazis and their Axis allies controlled nearly the entire European continent. Japan dominated the Pacific. Allied successes at Sicily and Guadalcanal had gained them modest ground but at an extraordinary cost. On the Eastern Front, the Soviet Red Army had been bled white. The path of history walked a knife’s edge.That same month a daring gambit was hatched that would alter everything. The "Big Three" - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin - secretly met for the first time to chart a strategy for defeating Adolf Hitler. Over three days in Tehran, Iran, this trio - strange bedfellows united by their mutual responsibility as heads of the Allied powers - made essential decisions that would direct the final years of the war and its aftermath. Meanwhile, looming over the covert meeting was the possible threat of a Nazi assassination plot, code-named Operation Long Jump.Before they left Tehran, the three leaders agreed to open a second front in the West, spearheaded by Operation Overload and the D-Day invasion of France at Normandy the following June. They also discussed what might come after the war, including dividing Germany and establishing the United Nations - plans that laid the groundwork for the postwar world order and the Cold War.Bestselling author and Fox News Channel anchor Bret Baier’s new epic history, Three Days at the Brink, centers on these crucial days in Tehran, the medieval Persian city on the edge of the desert. Baier makes clear the importance of Roosevelt, who stood apart as the sole leader of a democracy, recognizing him as the lead strategist for the globe’s future—the one man who could ultimately allow or deny the others their place in history.With new details discovered in rarely seen transcripts, oral histories, and declassified State Department and presidential documents from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Baier illuminates the complex character of Roosevelt, revealing a man who grew into his role and accepted the greatest challenge any American president since Lincoln had faced.
To Build a Better World: Choices to End the Cold War and Create a Global Commonwealth
Rice, Condoleezza
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Sale: $9.76
Two of America's leading scholar-diplomats, Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, have combed sources in several languages, interviewed leading figures, and drawn on their own firsthand experience to bring to life the choices that molded the contemporary world. Zeroing in on the key moments of decision, the might-have-beens, and the human beings working through them, they explore both what happened and what could have happened, to show how one world ended and another took form. Beginning in the late 1970s and carrying into the present, they focus on the momentous period between 1988 and 1992, when an entire world system changed, states broke apart, and societies were transformed. Such periods have always been accompanied by terrible wars - but not this time.This is also a story of individuals coping with uncertainty. They voice their hopes and fears. They try out desperate improvisations and careful designs. These were leaders who grew up in a "postwar" world, who tried to fashion something better, more peaceful, more prosperous, than the damaged, divided world in which they had come of age. New problems are putting their choices, and the world they made, back on the operating table. It is time to recall not only why they made their choices, but also just how great nations can step up to great challenges.
Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn
Gordis, Daniel
(Hardcover)
List Price: $29.99 Sale: $9.51
Israel is a tiny state, and yet it has captured the world’s attention, aroused its imagination, and lately, been the object of its opprobrium. Why does such a small country speak to so many global concerns? More pressingly: Why does Israel make the decisions it does? And what lies in its future?We cannot answer these questions until we understand Israel’s people and the questions and conflicts, the hopes and desires, that have animated their conversations and actions. Though Israel’s history is rife with conflict, these conflicts do not fully communicate the spirit of Israel and its people: they give short shrift to the dream that gave birth to the state, and to the vision for the Jewish people that was at its core. Guiding us through the milestones of Israeli history, Gordis relays the drama of the Jewish people’s story and the creation of the state. Clear-eyed and erudite, he illustrates how Israel became a cultural, economic and military powerhouse - but also explains where Israel made grave mistakes and traces the long history of Israel’s deepening isolation.With Israel, public intellectual Daniel Gordis offers us a brief but thorough account of the cultural, economic, and political history of this complex nation, from its beginnings to the present. Accessible, levelheaded, and rigorous, Israel sheds light on the Israel’s past so we can understand its future. The result is a vivid portrait of a people, and a nation, reborn.
The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
Winchester, Simon
(Hardcover)
List Price: $29.99 Sale: $9.25
The revered New York Times bestselling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement - precision - in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future.The rise of manufacturing could not have happened without an attention to precision. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century England, standards of measurement were established, giving way to the development of machine tools - machines that make machines. Eventually, the application of precision tools and methods resulted in the creation and mass production of items from guns and glass to mirrors, lenses, and cameras - and eventually gave way to further breakthroughs, including gene splicing, microchips, and the Hadron Collider.Simon Winchester takes us back to origins of the Industrial Age, to England where he introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production: John Wilkinson, Henry Maudslay, Joseph Bramah, Jesse Ramsden, and Joseph Whitworth. It was Thomas Jefferson who later exported their discoveries to the fledgling United States, setting the nation on its course to become a manufacturing titan. Winchester moves forward through time, to today’s cutting-edge developments occurring around the world, from America to Western Europe to Asia.As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society?
Three Days At the Brink
Baier, Bret
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.99 Sale: $9.25
From the #1 bestselling author and award-winning anchor of Special Report with Bret Baier, comes the gripping lost history of the Tehran Conference, where FDR, Churchill, and Stalin plotted D-Day and the Second World War’s endgame. With the fate of World War II in doubt and rumors of a Nazi assassination plot swirling, Franklin Roosevelt risked everything at a clandestine meeting that would change the course of history.November 1943: The Nazis and their Axis allies controlled nearly the entire European continent. Japan dominated the Pacific. Allied successes at Sicily and Guadalcanal had gained them modest ground but at an extraordinary cost. On the Eastern Front, the Soviet Red Army had been bled white. The path of history walked a knife’s edge.That same month a daring gambit was hatched that would alter everything. The "Big Three" - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin - secretly met for the first time to chart a strategy for defeating Adolf Hitler. Over three days in Tehran, Iran, this trio - strange bedfellows united by their mutual responsibility as heads of the Allied powers - made essential decisions that would direct the final years of the war and its aftermath. Meanwhile, looming over the covert meeting was the possible threat of a Nazi assassination plot, code-named Operation Long Jump.Before they left Tehran, the three leaders agreed to open a second front in the West, spearheaded by Operation Overload and the D-Day invasion of France at Normandy the following June. They also discussed what might come after the war, including dividing Germany and establishing the United Nations - plans that laid the groundwork for the postwar world order and the Cold War.Bestselling author and Fox News Channel anchor Bret Baier’s new epic history, Three Days at the Brink, centers on these crucial days in Tehran, the medieval Persian city on the edge of the desert. Baier makes clear the importance of Roosevelt, who stood apart as the sole leader of a democracy, recognizing him as the lead strategist for the globe’s future-the one man who could ultimately allow or deny the others their place in history.With new details discovered in rarely seen transcripts, oral histories, and declassified State Department and presidential documents from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Baier illuminates the complex character of Roosevelt, revealing a man who grew into his role and accepted the greatest challenge any American president since Lincoln had faced.
Under a Darkening Sky: The American Experience in Nazi Europe: 1939-1941
Lyman, Robert
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.95 Sale: $9.25
A vivid social history of the American expatriate experience in Europe between 1939 and 1941, as the Nazi menace brings a shadow over the continent, heralding the storms of war.A poignant and powerful portrait of Europe in the years between 1939 and 1941—as the Nazi menace marches toward the greatest man-made catastrophe the world has ever experienced—Under A Darkening Sky focuses on a diverse group of expatriate Americans. Told through the eyes and observations of these characters caught up in these seismic events, the story unfolds alongside a war that slowly drags a reluctant United States into its violent embrace. 
This vibrant narrative takes these dramatic personalities and evokes the engagement between Europe and a reluctant America from the September 3rd, 1939—when Britain declares war—through the tragedy of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. In a distinctively energetic storyline, Robert Lyman brings together a wide range of encounters, conversations, and memories. It includes individuals from across the social spectrum, from Josephine Baker to the young Americans who volunteered to fight in the RAF, as part of the famous “Eagle Squadrons.” 
Hundreds of young Americans—like the aces James Goodison, Art Donahue, and the wealthy playboy Billy Fiske, who was the first American volunteer in the RAF to die in action during the Battle of Britain—smuggled themselves into Canada so that they could volunteer for the cockpits of Spitfires and Hurricanes, as they flew against the deadly Luftwaffe over ever-darkening skies in London. 

The Zoo: The Wild and Wonderful Tale of the Founding of London Zoo: 1826-1851
Charman, Isobel
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.95 Sale: $9.25
Set in the heart of swirling, Dickensian London, the wondrous history of a unique institution and the incredible characters - human and animal - that populated it.The founding of a zoo in Georgian London is a story of jaw-dropping audacity in the Age of Empire. It is the story of diplomats, traders, scientists, and aristocratic amateur naturalists charged by Sir Stamford Raffles with collecting amazing creatures from all four corners of the globe.It is the story of the first zoo in history, a weird and wonderful oasis in the heart of the filthy, swirling city of Dickensian London, and of the incredible characters, both human and animal, that populated it - from Charles Darwin and Queen Victoria to Obaysch the celebrity hippo, the first that anyone in Britain had ever seen. This is a story of Victorian grandeur, of science and empire, and of adventurers and charlatans.And it is the story of a dizzying age of Empire and industrialization, a time of change unmatched before or since.This is the extraordinary story of London Zoo.
Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, The Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place On Earth
MacGregor, Iain
(Hardcover)
List Price: $30.00 Sale: $8.83
In the early 1960s, East Germany committed a billion dollars to the creation of the Berlin Wall, an eleven-foot-high barrier that consisted of seventy-nine miles of fencing, 300 watchtowers, 250 guard dog runs, twenty bunkers, and was operated around the clock by guards who shot to kill. Over the next twenty-eight years, at least five thousand people attempt to smash through it, swim across it, tunnel under it, or fly over it.In 1989, the East German leadership buckled in the face of a civil revolt that culminated in half a million East Berliners demanding an end to the ban on free movement. The world’s media flocked to capture the moment which, perhaps more than any other, signaled the end of the Cold War. Checkpoint Charlie had been the epicenter of global conflict for nearly three decades.Now, “in capturing the essence of the old Cold War [MacGregor] may just have helped us to understand a bit more about the new one” (The Times, London)—the mistrust, oppression, paranoia, and fear that gripped the world throughout this period. Checkpoint Charlie is about the nerve-wracking confrontation between the West and USSR, highlighting such important global figures as Eisenhower, Stalin, JFK, Nikita Khrushchev, Mao Zedung, Nixon, Reagan, and other politicians of the period. He also includes never-before-heard interviews with the men who built and dismantled the Wall; children who crossed it; relatives and friends who lost loved ones trying to escape over it; military policemen and soldiers who guarded the checkpoints; CIA, MI6, and Stasi operatives who oversaw operations across its borders; politicians whose ambitions shaped it; journalists who recorded its story; and many more whose living memories contributed to the full story of Checkpoint Charlie.
Travelers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism: 1919-1945
Boyd, Julia
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.95 Sale: $8.83
This fascinating and shocking history of the rise of the Nazis draws together
a multitude of expatriate voices—even Charles Lindbergh and Samuel Beckett—into a powerful narrative charting this extraordinary phenomenon.Without the benefit of hindsight, how do you interpret what’s right in front of your eyes?
The events that took place in Germany between 1919 and 1945 were dramatic and terrible, but there were also moments of confusion, of doubt—even of hope. How easy was it to know what was actually going on, to grasp the essence of National Socialism, to remain untouched by the propaganda, or predict the Holocaust?
Travelers in the Third Reich is an extraordinary history of the rise of the Nazis based on fascinating first-hand accounts, drawing together a multitude of voices and stories, including politicians, musicians, diplomats, schoolchildren, communists, scholars, athletes, poets, fascists, artists, tourists, and even celebrities like Charles Lindbergh and Samuel Beckett. Their experiences create a remarkable three-dimensional picture of Germany under Hitler—one so palpable that the reader will feel, hear, even breathe the atmosphere.
These are the accidental eyewitnesses to history. Disturbing, absurd, moving, and ranging from the deeply trivial to the deeply tragic, their tales give a fresh insight into the complexities of the Third Reich, its paradoxes, and its ultimate destruction.

The World Beneath Their Feet: Mountaineering, Madness, and the Deadly Race to Summit the Himalayas
Ellsworth, Scott
(Hardcover)
List Price: $30.00 Sale: $8.83
A saga of survival, technological innovation, and breathtaking human physical achievement -- all set against the backdrop of a world headed toward war -- that became one of the most compelling international dramas of the 20th century.As tension steadily rose between European powers in the 1930s, a different kind of battle was already raging across the Himalayas. Teams of mountaineers from Great Britain, Nazi Germany, and the United States were all competing to be the first to climb the world's highest peaks, including Mount Everest and K2. Unlike climbers today, they had few photographs or maps, no properly working oxygen systems, and they wore leather boots and cotton parkas. Amazingly, and against all odds, they soon went farther and higher than anyone could have imagined.And as they did, their story caught the world's attention. The climbers were mobbed at train stations, and were featured in movies and plays. James Hilton created the mythical land of Shangri-La in Lost Horizon, while an English eccentric named Maurice Wilson set out for Tibet in order to climb Mount Everest alone. And in the darkened corridors of the Third Reich, officials soon discovered the propaganda value of planting a Nazi flag on top of the world's highest mountains.Set in London, New York, Germany, and in India, China, and Tibet, The World Beneath Their Feet is a story not only of climbing and mountain climbers, but also of passion and ambition, courage and folly, tradition and innovation, tragedy and triumph. Scott Ellsworth tells a rollicking, real-life adventure story that moves seamlessly from the streets of Manhattan to the footlights of the West End, deadly avalanches on Nanga Parbat, rioting in the Kashmir, and the wild mountain dreams of a New Zealand beekeeper named Edmund Hillary and a young Sherpa runaway called Tenzing Norgay.Climbing the Himalayas was the Greatest Generation's moonshot - one that was clouded by the onset of war and then, incredibly, fully accomplished. A gritty, fascinating history that promises to enrapture fans of Hampton Sides, Erik Larson, Jon Krakauer, and Laura Hillenbrand, The World Beneath Their Feet brings this forgotten story back to life.
Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America's Founding Father
Stark, Peter
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Sale: $8.83
A new, brash, and unexpected view of the president we thought we knew, from the bestselling author of AstoriaTwo decades before he led America to independence, George Washington was a flailing young soldier serving the British Empire in the vast wilderness of the Ohio Valley. Naïve and self-absorbed, the twenty-two-year-old officer accidentally ignited the French and Indian War - a conflict that opened colonists to the possibility of an American Revolution.With powerful narrative drive and vivid writing, Young Washington recounts the wilderness trials, controversial battles, and emotional entanglements that transformed Washington from a temperamental striver into a mature leader. Enduring terrifying summer storms and subzero winters imparted resilience and self-reliance, helping prepare him for what he would one day face at Valley Forge. Leading the Virginia troops into battle taught him to set aside his own relentless ambitions and stand in solidarity with those who looked to him for leadership. Negotiating military strategy with British and colonial allies honed his diplomatic skills. And thwarted in his obsessive, youthful love for one woman, he grew to cultivate deeper, enduring relationships. By weaving together Washington’s harrowing wilderness adventures and a broader historical context, Young Washington offers new insights into the dramatic years that shaped the man who shaped a nation.
Freakonomics (Revised Edition, Large Print)
Levitt, Steven D.
(Softcover)
List Price: $27.95 Sale: $8.62
Levitt and writing collaborator Dubner dub the material in this work "freakonomics" because Levitt uses analytical tools from economics to address a range of questions that, at first glance, might seem to be far removed from the discipline of the "dismal science." They consider questions such as how to determine if teachers are aiding in students' cheating on standardized tests, the impact of information asymmetry on the operation of the Ku Klux Klan, how the organizational structure of crack gangs resemble other businesses, and the influence of parents on child development.
Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide
Bogosian, Eric
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $8.62
A masterful account of the assassins who hunted down the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide.In 1921, a tightly knit band of killers set out to avenge the deaths of almost one million victims of the Armenian Genocide. They were a humble bunch: an accountant, a life insurance salesman, a newspaper editor, an engineering student, and a diplomat. Together they formed one of the most effective assassination squads in history. They named their operation Nemesis, after the Greek goddess of retribution. The assassins were survivors, men defined by the massive tragedy that had devastated their people. With operatives on three continents, the Nemesis team killed six major Turkish leaders in Berlin, Constantinople, Tiflis, and Rome, only to disband and suddenly disappear. The story of this secret operation has never been fully told, until now. Eric Bogosian goes beyond simply telling the story of this cadre of Armenian assassins by setting the killings in the context of Ottoman and Armenian history, as well as showing in vivid color the era's history, rife with political fighting and massacres. Casting fresh light on one of the great crimes of the twentieth century and one of history's most remarkable acts of vengeance, Bogosian draws upon years of research and newly uncovered evidence. Operation Nemesis is the result - both a riveting read and a profound examination of evil, revenge, and the costs of violence.
Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War
White, Duncan
(Paperback)
List Price: $24.99 Sale: $8.40
In this brilliant account of the literary war within the Cold War, novelists and poets become embroiled in a dangerous game of betrayal, espionage, and conspiracy at the heart of the vicious conflict fought between the Soviet Union and the West.During the Cold War, literature was both sword and noose. Novels, essays, and poems could win the hearts and minds of those caught between the competing creeds of capitalism and communism. They could also lead to blacklisting, exile, imprisonment, or execution for their authors if they offended those in power. The clandestine intelligence services of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union recruited secret agents and established vast propaganda networks devoted to literary warfare. But the battles were personal, too: friends turned on one another, lovers were split by political fissures, artists were undermined by inadvertent complicities. And while literary battles were fought in print, sometimes the pen was exchanged for a gun, the bookstore for the battlefield.In Cold Warriors, Duncan White vividly chronicles how this ferocious intellectual struggle was waged on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Among those involved were George Orwell, Stephen Spender, Mary McCarthy, Graham Greene, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, John le Carré, Anna Akhmatova, Richard Wright, Ernest Hemingway, Boris Pasternak, Gioconda Belli, and Václav Havel. Here, too, are the spies, government officials, military officers, publishers, politicians, and critics who helped turn words into weapons at a time when the stakes could not have been higher.Drawing upon years of archival research and the latest declassified intelligence, Cold Warriors is both a gripping saga of prose and politics, and a welcome reminder that--at a moment when ignorance is all too frequently celebrated and reading is seen as increasingly irrelevant--writers and books can change the world.
Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War
White, Duncan
(Hardcover)
List Price: $32.50 Sale: $8.40
In this brilliant account of the literary war within the Cold War, novelists and poets become embroiled in a dangerous game of betrayal, espionage, and conspiracy at the heart of the vicious conflict fought between the Soviet Union and the West.During the Cold War, literature was both sword and noose. Novels, essays, and poems could win the hearts and minds of those caught between the competing creeds of capitalism and communism. They could also lead to blacklisting, exile, imprisonment, or execution for their authors if they offended those in power. The clandestine intelligence services of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union recruited secret agents and established vast propaganda networks devoted to literary warfare. But the battles were personal, too: friends turned on one another, lovers were split by political fissures, artists were undermined by inadvertent complicities. And while literary battles were fought in print, sometimes the pen was exchanged for a gun, the bookstore for the battlefield.In Cold Warriors, Duncan White vividly chronicles how this ferocious intellectual struggle was waged on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Among those involved were George Orwell, Stephen Spender, Mary McCarthy, Graham Greene, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, John le Carré, Anna Akhmatova, Richard Wright, Ernest Hemingway, Boris Pasternak, Gioconda Belli, and Václav Havel. Here, too, are the spies, government officials, military officers, publishers, politicians, and critics who helped turn words into weapons at a time when the stakes could not have been higher.Drawing upon years of archival research and the latest declassified intelligence, Cold Warriors is both a gripping saga of prose and politics, and a welcome reminder that--at a moment when ignorance is all too frequently celebrated and reading is seen as increasingly irrelevant--writers and books can change the world.
Empire of Democracy: The Remaking of the West Since the Cold War, 1971-2017
Reid-Henry, Simon
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Sale: $8.40
The first panoramic history of the Western world from the 1970s to the present day, Empire of Democracy is the story for those asking how we got to where we are.Half a century ago, at the height of the Cold War and amidst a world economic crisis, the Western democracies were forced to undergo a profound transformation. Against what some saw as a full-scale “crisis of democracy”— with race riots, anti-Vietnam marches and a wave of worker discontent sowing crisis from one nation to the next— a new political-economic order was devised and the postwar social contract was torn up and written anew.In this epic narrative of the events that have shaped our own times, Simon Reid-Henry shows how liberal democracy, and western history with it, was profoundly reimagined when the postwar Golden Age ended. As the institutions of liberal rule were reinvented, a new generation of politicians emerged: Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, Kohl. The late twentieth century heyday they oversaw carried the Western democracies triumphantly to victory in the Cold War and into the economic boom of the 1990s. But equally it led them into the fiasco of Iraq, to the high drama of the financial crisis in 2007/8, and ultimately to the anti-liberal surge of our own times.The present crisis of liberalism enjoins us to revisit these as yet unscripted decades. The era we have all been living through is closing out, democracy is turning on its axis once again. As this panoramic history poignantly reminds us, the choices we make going forward require us first to come to terms with where we have been.
Fascism: A Warning
Albright, Madeleine
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.99 Sale: $8.40
A personal and urgent examination of Fascism in the twentieth century and how its legacy shapes today’s world, written by one of America’s most admired public servants, the first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state.A Fascist, observes Madeleine Albright, “is someone who claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use violence and whatever other means are necessary to achieve the goals he or she might have.” The twentieth century was defined by the clash between democracy and Fascism, a struggle that created uncertainty about the survival of human freedom and left millions dead. Given the horrors of that experience, one might expect the world to reject the spiritual successors to Hitler and Mussolini should they arise in our era. In Fascism: A Warning, Madeleine Albright draws on her experiences as a child in war-torn Europe and her distinguished career as a diplomat to question that assumption.Fascism, as she shows, not only endured through the twentieth century but now presents a more virulent threat to peace and justice than at any time since the end of World War II. The momentum toward democracy that swept the world when the Berlin Wall fell has gone into reverse. The United States, which historically championed the free world, is led by a president who exacerbates division and heaps scorn on democratic institutions. In many countries, economic, technological, and cultural factors are weakening the political center and empowering the extremes of right and left. Contemporary leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are employing many of the tactics used by Fascists in the 1920s and 30s.Fascism: A Warning is a book for our times that is relevant to all times. Written by someone who has not only studied history but helped to shape it, this call to arms teaches us the lessons we must understand and the questions we must answer if we are to save ourselves from repeating the tragic errors of the past.
Fascism: A Warning (Large Print)
Albright, Madeleine
(Paperback)
List Price: $27.99 Sale: $8.40
A personal and urgent examination of Fascism in the twentieth century and how its legacy shapes today’s world, written by one of America’s most admired public servants, the first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state.A Fascist, observes Madeleine Albright, “is someone who claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use violence and whatever other means are necessary to achieve the goals he or she might have.” The twentieth century was defined by the clash between democracy and Fascism, a struggle that created uncertainty about the survival of human freedom and left millions dead. Given the horrors of that experience, one might expect the world to reject the spiritual successors to Hitler and Mussolini should they arise in our era. In Fascism: A Warning, Madeleine Albright draws on her experiences as a child in war-torn Europe and her distinguished career as a diplomat to question that assumption.Fascism, as she shows, not only endured through the twentieth century but now presents a more virulent threat to peace and justice than at any time since the end of World War II. The momentum toward democracy that swept the world when the Berlin Wall fell has gone into reverse. The United States, which historically championed the free world, is led by a president who exacerbates division and heaps scorn on democratic institutions. In many countries, economic, technological, and cultural factors are weakening the political center and empowering the extremes of right and left. Contemporary leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are employing many of the tactics used by Fascists in the 1920s and 30s.Fascism: A Warning is a book for our times that is relevant to all times. Written by someone who has not only studied history but helped to shape it, this call to arms teaches us the lessons we must understand and the questions we must answer if we are to save ourselves from repeating the tragic errors of the past.
The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties
Collier, Paul
(Hardcover)
List Price: $29.99 Sale: $8.40
From world-renowned economist Paul Collier, a candid diagnosis of the failures of capitalism and a pragmatic and realistic vision for how we can repair it.Deep new rifts are tearing apart the fabric of the United States and other Western societies: thriving cities versus rural counties, the highly skilled elite versus the less educated, wealthy versus developing countries. As these divides deepen, we have lost the sense of ethical obligation to others that was crucial to the rise of post-war social democracy. So far these rifts have been answered only by the revivalist ideologies of populism and socialism, leading to the seismic upheavals of Trump, Brexit, and the return of the far-right in Germany. We have heard many critiques of capitalism but no one has laid out a realistic way to fix it, until now.In a passionate and polemical book, celebrated economist Paul Collier outlines brilliantly original and ethical ways of healing these rifts—economic, social and cultural—with the cool head of pragmatism, rather than the fervor of ideological revivalism. He reveals how he has personally lived across these three divides, moving from working-class Sheffield to hyper-competitive Oxford, and working between Britain and Africa, and acknowledges some of the failings of his profession.Drawing on his own solutions as well as ideas from some of the world’s most distinguished social scientists, he shows us how to save capitalism from itself—and free ourselves from the intellectual baggage of the twentieth century.
Hell and Other Destinations
Albright, Madeleine
(Hardcover)
List Price: $29.99 Sale: $8.40
In 2001, when Madeleine Albright was leaving office as America’s first female secretary of state, interviewers asked her how she wished to be remembered. “I don’t want to be remembered,” she answered. “I am still here and have much more I intend to do. As difficult as it might seem, I want every stage of my life to be more exciting than the last.”In that time of transition, the former Secretary considered the possibilities: she could write, teach, travel, give speeches, start a business, fight for democracy, help to empower women, campaign for favored political candidates, spend more time with her grandchildren. Instead of choosing one or two, she decided to do it all. For nearly twenty years, Albright has been in constant motion, navigating half a dozen professions, clashing with presidents and prime ministers, learning every day. Since leaving the State Department, she has blazed her own trail—and given voice to millions who yearn for respect, regardless of gender, background, or age.Hell and Other Destinations reveals this remarkable figure at her bluntest, funniest, most intimate, and most serious. It is the tale of our times anchored in lessons for all time, narrated by an extraordinary woman with a matchless zest for life.
How Democracies Die
Levitsky, Steven
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.00 Sale: $8.40
Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang - in a revolution or military coup - but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one. Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die - and how ours can be saved.
Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency
Diamond, Larry
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $8.40
From America’s leading scholar of democracy,a personal, passionate call to action against the rising authoritarianism that challenges our world order—and the very value of liberty.Larry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Deeply attuned to the cycles of democratic expansion and decay that determine the fates of nations, he watched with mounting unease as illiberal rulers rose in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, and beyond, while China and Russia grew increasingly bold and bullying. Then, with Trump's election at home, the global retreat from freedom spread from democracy's margins to its heart.Ill Winds' core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on U.S. global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the twenty-first century into a dark time of despotism.We are at a hinge in history, between a new era of tyranny and an age of democratic renewal. Free governments can defend their values; free citizens can exercise their rights. We can make the internet safe for liberal democracy, exploit the soft, kleptocratic underbelly of dictatorships, and revive America's degraded democracy. Ill Winds offers concrete, deeply informed suggestions to fight polarization, reduce the influence of money in politics, and make every vote count.In 2019, freedom's last line of defense still remains "We the people."
The Light That Failed: Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy
Holmes, Stephen
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.95 Sale: $8.40
A landmark book that completely transforms our understanding of the crisis of liberalism, from two pre-eminent intellectuals.Why did the West, after winning the Cold War, lose its political balance?In the early 1990s, hopes for the eastward spread of liberal democracy were high. And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West.In this brilliant work of political history, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of Communism turned out to be only the beginning of the age of the autocrat. Reckoning with the history of the last thirty years, they show that the most powerful force behind the wave of populist xenophobia that began in Eastern Europe stems from resentment at the post-1989 imperative to become Westernized.Through this prism, the Trump revolution represents an ironic fulfillment of the promise that the nations exiting from communist rule would come to resemble the United States. In a strange twist, Trump has elevated Putin’s Russia and Orba´n’s Hungary into models for the United States.Written by two pre-eminent intellectuals bridging the East/West divide, The Light That Failed is a landmark book that sheds light on the extraordinary history of the fall of the Western ideal.
Page 1 of 5 - 212 results
To Top