In 1787, the beautiful Lucia is married off to AlviseMocenigo, scion of one of the most powerful Venetian families. Buttheir life as a golden couple will be suddenly transformed whenVenice falls to Bonaparte. We witness Lucia's painful series ofmiscarriages and the pressure on her to produce an heir; herimpassioned affair with an Austrian officer; the glamour and strainof her career as a hostess in Vienna; and her amazing firsthandaccount of the defeat of Napoleon in 1814. With his brave andarticulate heroine, Andrea di Robilant has once again reachedacross the centuries, and deep into his own past, to bring historyto rich and vivid life on the page.

This provocative work challenges traditional accounts ofMeriwether Lewis and William Clark’s expedition across thecontinent and back again. Uncovering deeper meanings in theexplorers’ journals and lives, Exploring Lewis and Clark exposes their self-perceptions and deceptions, and how theyinteracted with those who traveled with them, the people theydiscovered along the way, the animals they hunted, and the landthey walked across. The book discovers new heroes and brings oldones into historical focus. Thomas P. Slaughter interrogates the explorers’ dreams, how theywrote and what they aimed to possess, their interactions withanimals, Indians, and each other, their sense of themselves asleaders and men, and why they feared that they had failed theirnation and President. Slaughter’s Lewis and Clark are moreconfused, frightened, courageous, and flawed than in previousaccounts. They are more human, their expedition more dramatic, andthus their story is more revealing about our own relationships tohistory

In this rich and engrossing account, John and Abigail Adamscome to life against the backdrop of the Republic’s tenuous earlyyears. Drawing on over 1,200 letters exchanged between the couple, Ellistells a story both personal and panoramic. We learn about the manyyears Abigail and John spent apart as John’s political career senthim first to Philadelphia, then to Paris and Amsterdam; theirrelationship with their children; and Abigail’s role as John’sclosest and most valued advisor. Exquisitely researched andbeautifully written, First Family is both a revealing portrait of amarriage and a unique study of America’s early years.

In his writing, Borges always combined high seriousness with awicked sense of fun. Here he reveals his delight in re-creating (ormaking up) colorful stories from the Orient, the Islamic world, andthe Wild West, as well as his horrified fascination with knifefights, political and personal betrayal, and bloodthirsty revenge.Spark-ling with the sheer exuberant pleasure of story-telling, thiscollection marked the emergence of an utterly distinctive literaryvoice.

My Detachment is a war story like none you have ever readbefore, an unromanticized portrait of a young man coming of age inthe controversial war that defined a generation. In anastonishingly honest, comic, and moving account of his tour of dutyin Vietnam, master storyteller Tracy Kidder writes for the firsttime about himself. This extraordinary memoir is destined to becomea classic. Kidder was an ROTC intelligence officer, just months out ofcollege and expecting a stateside assignment, when his ordersarrived for Vietnam. There, lovesick, anxious, and melancholic, hetried to assume command of his detachment, a ragtag band of eightmore-or-less ungovernable men charged with reporting on enemy radiolocations. He eventually learned not only to lead them but to laugh anddrink with them as they shared the boredom, pointlessness, and fearof war. Together, they sought a ghostly enemy, homing in on radiotransmissions and funneling intelligence gathered by others. Kidderrealized that he would spend hi

In this heartbreaking but ultimately triumphant story ofcourage and will, journalist Robert Whitaker carefullydocuments--and exposes--one of the worst racial massacres inAmerican history. Whitaker's important book commemorates a legalstruggle, "Moore v. Dempsey, " that paved the way for the civilrights era, and tells too of a man, Scipio Africanus Jones, whosename surely deserves to be known by all Americans. "Whitaker has ... placed the massacre and the Supreme Courtdecision in their full legal and historical context. At the sametime, he has revived the story of a great African-American lawyer,Scipio Africanus Jones." --"New York Times Book Review"

Polk's Folly is William Polk's captivating investigation ofhis impressive family tree and of the broader American tale itnarrates. Growing up in Texas in the late 1930s, listening to hisgrandmother's memories of her childhood amidst the Civil War, Polkbecame fascinated by tales of his family's engagement in monumentalmoments of our nation's history. Beginning when Robert Pollok fledIreland in the 1680s, Polk's saga includes an Indian trader, anearly drafter of the Declaration of Independence, one of ourgreatest presidents, heroes and rascals on both sides of the CivilWar, Indian fighters, a World War I diplomat, and Polk's ownbrother, a journalist who reported on the Nuremberg Trials. Full ofstunning detail and based on primary historical documents, Polk'sFolly is a grand American chronicle that allows history to includethe lives that made it happen.

At the age of thirty-three, Ekow Eshun—born in London toAfrican-born parents—travels to Ghana in search of his roots. Hegoes from Accra, Ghana’s cosmopolitan capital city, to the storiedslave forts of Elmina, and on to the historic warrior kingdom ofAsante. During his journey, Eshun uncovers a long-held secret abouthis lineage that will compel him to question everything he knowsabout himself and where he comes from. From the London suburbs ofhis childhood to the twenty-first century African metropolis,Eshun’s is a moving chronicle of one man’s search for home, and ofthe pleasures and pitfalls of fashioning an identity in thesevibrant contemporary worlds.

In this unprecedented account, Chandra Manning uses letters,diaries, and regimental newspapers to take the reader inside theminds of Civil War soldiers-black and white, Northern andSouthern-as they fought and marched across a divided country. Withstunning poise and narrative verve, Manning explores how the Unionand Confederate soldiers came to identify slavery as the centralissue of the war and what that meant for a tumultuous nation. Thisis a brilliant and eye-opening debut and an invaluable addition toour understanding of the Civil War as it has never been renderedbefore.

Demonstrates how the colonies developed into the first nationcreated under the influences of nationalism, modern capitalism andProtestantism.

Here is an oral history of the Vietnam War by thirty-threeAmerican soldiers who fought it. A 1983 American Book Awardnominee.

From Midnight to Dawn presents compelling portraitsof the men and women who established the Underground Railroad andtraveled it to find new lives in Canada. Evoking the turmoil andcontroversies of the time, Tobin illuminates the historic eventsthat forever connected American and Canadian history by giving usthe true stories behind well-known figures such as Harriet Tubmanand John Brown. She also profiles lesser-known but equally heroicfigures such as Mary Ann Shadd, who became the first black femalenewspaper editor in North America, and Osborne Perry Anderson, theonly black survivor of the fighting at Harpers Ferry. Anextraordinary examination of a part of American history, FromMidnight to Dawn will captivate readers with its tales of hope,courage, and a people’s determination to live equally under thelaw.

From the deadly shores of North Africa to the invasion ofSicily to the fierce jungle hell of the Pacific, the contributionof the World War II Ranger Battalions far outweighed their numbers.They were ordinary men on an extraordinary mission, experiencingthe full measure of the fear, exhaustion, and heroism of combat innearly every major invasion of the war. Whether spearheading alanding force or scouting deep behind enemy lines, these highlymotivated, highly trained volunteers led the way for other soldiers-- they were Rangers. With first-person interviews, in-depth research, and a completeappendix naming every Ranger known to have served, author RobertBlack, a Ranger himself, has made the battles of WWII come to lifethrough the struggles of the men who fought to win the greatest warthe world has ever seen.

Robert Carter III, thegrandson of Tidewater legend Robert “King” Carter, was born intothe highest circles of Virginia’s Colonial aristocracy. He wasneighbor and kin to the Washingtons and Lees and a friend and peerto Thomas Jefferson and George Mason. But on September 5, 1791,Carter severed his ties with this glamorous elite at the stroke ofa pen. In a document he called his Deed of Gift, Carter declaredhis intent to set free nearly five hundred slaves in the largestsingle act of liberation in the history of American slavery beforethe Emancipation Proclamation. How did Carter succeed in the very action that George Washingtonand Thomas Jefferson claimed they fervently desired but werepowerless to effect? And why has his name all but vanished from theannals of American history? In this haunting, brilliantly originalwork, Andrew Levy traces the confluence of circumstance,conviction, war, and passion that led to Carter’s extraordinaryact. At the dawn of the Revolutionary War, Carter was one of thewealt

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.

On June 6, 1944, Frederick Giesbert, assigned to the Americanarmy’s 29th division, landed on bloody Omaha Beach, Normandy, anexperience from which he never recovered. Three years later,Frederick had returned to his hometown of Chicago, married to aFrench girl. But when the seemingly happy couple moved to Normandyto make a home with their baby, something in Frederick snapped, andhe turned cruel and violent. His son, Franz-Oliver, spent hischildhood doing everything he could to defy his father. TheAmerican is a son’s fiercely honest and emotionally grippingstory of a search for paternal understanding and forgiveness.