A wise and witty compendium of the greatest thoughts, greatestminds, and greatest books of all time -- listed in accessible andsuccinct form -- by one of the world's greatest scholars. From the "Hundred Best Books" to the "Ten Greatest Thinkers" tothe "Ten Greatest Poets," here is a concise collection of theworld's most significant knowledge. For the better part of acentury, Will Durant dwelled upon -- and wrote about -- the mostsignificant eras, individuals, and achievements of human history.His selections have finally been brought together in a single,compact volume. Durant eloquently defends his choices of thegreatest minds and ideas, but he also stimulates readers intoforming their own opinions, encouraging them to shed theirsurroundings and biases and enter "The Country of the Mind," atimeless realm where the heroes of our species dwell. From a thinker who always chose to exalt the positive in thehuman species, The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time stays true to Durant's optimism. This is a book c

Propelled by the discovery of an ancient book and a cache ofyellowing letters, a young woman plunges into a labyrinth where thesecrets of her family's past connect to an inconceivable evil: thedark reign of Vlad the Impaler and a time-defying pact that mayhave kept his awful work alive through the ages. The search for thethe truth becomes an adventure of monumental propportions, takingus from monasteries and dusty libraries to the captitals of EasternEurope - in a feat of storytelling so rich, so exciting, sosuspenseful that it has enthralled readers around he world.

Includes a complete copy of the Constitution.Fifty-five menmet in Philadelphia in 1787 to write a document that would create acountry and change a world. Here is a remarkable rendering of thatfateful time, told with humanity and humor. "The best popularhistory of the Constitutional Convention available."--LibraryJournal From the Paperback edition.

A memoir by a World War II ordinance officer offers abehind-the-scenes account of his ordnance inspections during theEuropean campaign, detailing his experiences on the front line andhis job coordinating the recovery and repair of damaged Americantanks. Reprint.

Part of the briefing included familiarizing the men with theenemy uniforms. Private Robert “Lightnin” Hayes had thisrecollection to add: “I remember the day we were assembled in atent for the first time and an officer told us where we were goingto jump. He then paused to watch our reactions. There was a sandtable near by with a facsimile of the terrain on which we weregoing to drop. There were tw...

At the end of 1618, a blazing green star soared across thenight sky over the northern hemisphere. From the Philippines to theArctic, the comet became a sensation and a symbol, a warning ofdoom or a promise of salvation. Two years later, as the Pilgrimsprepared to sail across the Atlantic on board the Mayflower, theatmosphere remained charged with fear and expectation. Men andwomen readied themselves for war, pestilence, or divineretribution. Against this background, and amid deep economicdepression, the Pilgrims conceived their enterprise of exile. Within a decade, despite crisis and catastrophe, they built athriving settlement at New Plymouth, based on beaver fur, corn, andcattle. In doing so, they laid the foundations for Massachusetts,New England, and a new nation. Using a wealth of new evidence fromlandscape, archaeology, and hundreds of overlooked or neglecteddocuments, Nick Bunker gives a vivid and strikingly originalaccount of the Mayflower project and the first decade of thePlymouth Colon

Nominated for the National Book Award, this book is set incolonial Massachusetts where, in 1704, a French and Indian warparty descended on the village of Deerfield, abducting a Puritanminister and his children. Although John Williams was eventuallyreleased, his daughter horrified the family by staying with hercaptors and marrying a Mohawk husband.

Advance praise for The Memoirs of Catherine the Great “Superb. The translation of the Memoirs is fluid, accessible, andidiomatic, while remaining accurate and as delightful as theoriginal. Students will heartily enjoy this excursion into thehistorical and literary world of the great empress.” –Cynthia Hyla Whittaker, professor and chair, Department ofHistory, Baruch College/CUNY “Several translations of the memoirs of Catherine the Great havebeen published before, but none of them can compare with thislatest edition. Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom have produced amasterpiece. Their translation fairly sings, capturing withstunning virtuosity all the beguiling wit and charm that make thesememoirs one of the most fascinating works ever penned by a Europeanmonarch.” –Douglas Smith, editor and translator of Love and Conquest:Personal Correspondence of Catherine the Great and Prince GrigoryPotemkin “Catherine the Great’s memoirs are a classic

September 17, 1944. Thousands of Screaming Eagles–101stAirborne Division paratroopers–descend from the sky over Holland,dropping deep behind German lines in a daring daylight mission toseize and secure the road leading north to Arnhem and the Rhine.Their success would allow the Allied army to advance swiftly intoGermany. The Screaming Eagles accomplish their initial objectiveswithin hours, but keeping their sections of “Hell’s Highway” opentakes another seventy-two days of fierce round-the-clock fightingagainst crack German troops and tank divisions. Drawing on interviews with more than six hundred paratroopers,George E. Koskimaki chronicles, with vivid firsthand accounts, thedramatic, never-before-told story of the Screaming Eagles’ valiantstruggle. Hell’s Highway also tellsof the Dutch citizens andmembers of the underground who were liberated after five years ofNazi oppression and never forgot America’s airborne heroes. Thisrenowned force risked their lives for the freedom of a

On January 5, 1924, a well-dressed young woman, accompanied bya male companion, walked into a Brooklyn grocery, pulled a “babyautomatic” from the pocket of her fur coat, emptied the cashregister, and escaped into the night. Dubbed “the Bobbed HairedBandit” by the press, the petite thief continued her escapades inthe months that followed, pulling off increasingly spectacularrobberies, writing taunting notes to police officials, and eludingthe biggest manhunt in New York City history. When laundress CeliaCooney was finally caught in Florida and brought back to New York,media attention grew to a fever pitch. Crowds gathered at thecourts and jails where she appeared, the public clamored to knowher story, and newspapers and magazines nationwide obliged bypublishing sensational front-page articles.

The heartwarming New York Times bestseller by the author ofThe Greatest Generation "When I wrote about the men and women who came out of theDepression, who won great victories and made lasting sacrifices inWorld War II and then returned home to begin building the world wehave today ... it was my way of saying thank you. I was notprepared for the avalanche of letters and responses touched off bythat book. "I had written a book about America, and now America was writingback." Tom Brokaw touched the heart of the nation with his towering #1bestseller The Greatest Generation, a moving tribute to those whogave the world so much -- and who left an enduring legacy ofheroism and grace. The Greatest Generation Speaks was born out ofthe vast outpouring of letters Brokaw received from people eager toshare their personal memories and experiences of a momentous timein America's history. These letters and reflections cross time, distance, andgenerations as they give voice to lives forever chan

In 1942, a dashing young man who liked nothing so much as aheated game of poker, a good bottle of scotch, and the company of apretty girl hopped a merchant ship to England. He was Robert Capa,the brilliant and daring photojournalist, and Collier's magazinehad put him on assignment to photograph the war raging in Europe.In these pages, Capa recounts his terrifying journey through thedarkest battles of World War II and shares his memories of the menand women of the Allied forces who befriended, amused, andcaptivated him along the way. His photographs are masterpieces --John G. Morris, Magnum Photos' first executive editor, called Capa"the century's greatest battlefield photographer" -- and hiswriting is by turns riotously funny and deeply moving. From Sicily to London, Normandy to Algiers, Capa experienced someof the most trying conditions imaginable, yet his compassion andwit shine on every page of this book. Charming and profound,Slightly Out of Focus is a marvelous memoir told in words andpictur

In a remarkably vibrant narrative, Michael Stürmer blends highpolitics, social history, portraiture, and an unparalleled commandof military and economic developments to tell the story ofGermany’s breakneck rise from new nation to Continental superpower.It begins with the German military’s greatest triumph, theFranco-Prussian War, and then tracks the forces of unification,industrialization, colonization, and militarization as theycombined to propel Germany to become the force that fatallydestabilized Europe’s balance of power. Without The GermanEmpire ’s masterly rendering of this story, a full understandingof the roots of World War I and World War II is impossible.

When the United States entered the Gilded Age after the CivilWar, argues cultural historian Christopher Benfey, the nation lostits philosophical moorings and looked eastward to “Old Japan,” withits seemingly untouched indigenous culture, for balance andperspective. Japan, meanwhile, was trying to reinvent itself as amore cosmopolitan, modern state, ultimately transforming itself, inthe course of twenty-five years, from a feudal backwater to aninternational power. This great wave of historical and culturalreciprocity between the two young nations, which intensified duringthe late 1800s, brought with it some larger-than-lifepersonalities, as the lure of unknown foreign cultures promptedpilgrimages back and forth across the Pacific. In The Great Wave, Benfey tells the story of the tightly knitgroup of nineteenth-century travelers—connoisseurs, collectors, andscientists—who dedicated themselves to exploring and preserving OldJapan. As Benfey writes, “A sense of urgency impelled them, forthe

In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched throughSanta Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territoriesclaimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “ManifestDestiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battlebetween the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistantrulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.In Bloodand Thunder , Hampton Sides gives us a magnificent history ofthe American conquest of the West. At the center of this sweepingtale is Kit Carson, the trapper, scout, and soldier whoseadventures made him a legend. Sides shows us how this illiteratemountain man understood and respected the Western tribes betterthan any other American, yet willingly followed orders that wouldultimately devastate the Navajo nation. Rich in detail and spanningmore than three decades, this is an essential addition to ourunderstanding of how the West was really won.

With a post* describing SEAL efforts in Afghanistan,The Warrior Elite takes you into the toughest, longest, and mostrelentless military training in the world. What does it take to become a Navy SEAL? What makes talented,intelligent young men volunteer for physical punishment, coldwater, and days without sleep? In The Warrior Elite, former NavySEAL Dick Couch documents the process that transforms young meninto warriors. SEAL training is the distillation of the humanspirit, a tradition-bound ordeal that seeks to find men withcharacter, courage, and the burning desire to win at all costs, menwho would rather die than quit.

The myths of the ancient Greeks have inspired us for thousandsof years. Where did the famous stories of the battles of their godsdevelop and spread across the world? The celebrated classicistRobin Lane Fox draws on a lifetime’s knowledge of the ancientworld, and on his own travels, answering this question by pursuingit through the age of Homer. His acclaimed history explores how theintrepid seafarers of eighth-century Greece sailed around theMediterranean, encountering strange new sights—volcanic mountains,vaporous springs, huge prehistoric bones—and weaving them into themyths of gods, monsters and heroes that would become thecornerstone of Western civilization.

In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte, only twenty-eight, set sail forEgypt with 335 ships, 40,000 soldiers, and a collection ofscholars, artists, and scientists to establish an eastern empire.He saw himself as a liberator, freeing the Egyptians fromoppression. But Napoleon wasn’t the first—nor the last—whotragically misunderstood Muslim culture. Marching across seeminglyendless deserts in the shadow of the pyramids, pushed to the limitsof human endurance, his men would be plagued by mirages, suicides,and the constant threat of ambush. A crusade begun in honor woulddegenerate into chaos. And yet his grand failure also yielded atreasure trove of knowledge that paved the way for modernEgyptology—and it tempered the complex leader who believed himselfdestined to conquer the world.

During World War Two, 131 German cities and towns weretargeted by Allied bombs, a good number almost entirely flattened.Six hundred thousand German civilians died—a figure twice that ofall American war casualties. Seven and a half million Germans wereleft homeless. Given the astonishing scope of the devastation, W.G. Sebald asks, why does the subject occupy so little space inGermany’s cultural memory? On the Natural History of Destructionprobes deeply into this ominous silence.

In this imaginative book, Maya Jasanoff uncovers theextraordinary stories of collectors who lived on the frontiers ofthe British Empire in India and Egypt, tracing their exploits totell an intimate history of imperialism. Jasanoff delves beneaththe grand narratives of power, exploitation, and resistance to lookat the British Empire through the eyes of the people caught up init. Written and researched on four continents, Edge ofEmpire enters a world where people lived, loved, mingled, andidentified with one another in ways richer and more complex thanprevious accounts have led us to believe were possible. And as thisbook demonstrates, traces of that world remain tangible—andtopical—today. An innovative, persuasive, and provocative work ofhistory.

The secretive Mysteries conducted at Eleusis in Greece fornearly two millennia have long puzzled scholars with strangeaccounts of initiates experiencing otherworldly journeys. In thisgroundbreaking work, three experts—a mycologist, a chemist, and ahistorian—argue persuasively that the sacred potion given toparticipants in the course of the ritual contained a psychoactiveentheogen. The authors then expand the discussion to show thatnatural psychedelic agents have been used in spiritual ritualsacross history and cultures. Although controversial when firstpublished in 1978, the book’s hypothesis has become more widelyaccepted in recent years, as knowledge of ethnobotany has deepened.The authors have played critical roles in the modern rediscovery ofentheogens, and The Road to Eleusis presents an authoritativeexposition of their views. The book’s themes of the universality ofexperiential religion, the suppression of that knowledge byexploitative forces, and the use of psychedelics to reconcile theh

The distinguished historian of the Jewish people, Howard M.Sachar, gives us a comprehensive and enthralling chronicle of theachievements and traumas of the Jews over the last four hundredyears. Tracking their fate from Western Europe’s age of mercantilism inthe seventeenth century to the post-Soviet and post-imperialistIslamic upheavals of the twenty-first century, Sachar applies hisrenowned narrative skill to the central role of the Jews in many ofthe most impressive achievements of modern civilization: whether inthe rise of economic capitalism or of political socialism; in thediscoveries of theoretical physics or applied medicine; in “higher”literary criticism or mass communication and popularentertainment. As his account unfolds and moves from epoch to epoch, fromcontinent to continent, from Europe to the Americas and the MiddleEast, Sachar evaluates communities that, until lately, have beenunderestimated in the perspective of Jewish and world history—amongthem, Jews of Sephardic