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 Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Marine Corps’ ground campaignup the Tigris and Euphrates was notable for speed andaggressiveness unparalleled in military history. Little has beenwritten, however, of the air support that guaranteed the drive’ssuccess. Paving the way for the rush to Baghdad was “the hammerfrom above”–in the form of attack helicopters, jet fighters,transport, and other support aircraft. Now a former Marine fighterpilot shares the gripping never-before-told stories of the Marineswho helped bring to an end the regime of Saddam Hussein. As Jay Stout reveals, the air war had actually been in theplanning stages ever since the victory of Operation Desert Storm,twelve years earlier. But when Operation Iraqi Freedom officiallycommenced on March 20, 2003, the Marine Corps entered the fightwith an aviation arm at its smallest since before World War II.Still, with the motto “Speed Equals Success,” the separate air andground units acted as a team to get the job done. Drawing

As a senior foreign correspondent for The Times ofLondon, Janine di Giovanni was a firsthand witness to the brutaland protracted break-up of Yugoslavia. With unflinchingsensitivity, Madness Visible follows the arc of the wars inthe Balkans through the experience of those caught up in them:soldiers numbed by the atrocities they commit, women driven todespair by their life in paramilitary rape camps, civilians (diGiovanni among them) caught in bombing raids of uncertain origin,babies murdered in hate-induced rage. Di Giovanni’s searing memoir examines the turmoil of the Balkansin acute detail, and uncovers the motives of the leaders whocreated hell on earth; it raises challenging questions about ethnicconflict and the responsibilities of foreign governments in timesof mass murder. Perceptive and compelling, this unique work ofreportage from the physical and psychological front lines makes themadness of war wholly visible.

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

In a journey across four continents, acclaimed science writerSteve Olson traces the origins of modern humans and the migrationsof our ancestors throughout the world over the past 150,000 years.Like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, Mapping Human Historyis a groundbreaking synthesis of science and history. Drawing on awide range of sources, including the latest genetic research,linguistic evidence, and archaeological findings, Olson reveals thesurprising unity among modern humans and "demonstrates just hownaive some of our ideas about our human ancestry have been"(Discover).Olson offers a genealogy of all humanity, explaining,for instance, why everyone can claim Julius Caesar and Confucius asforebears. Olson also provides startling new perspectives on theinvention of agriculture, the peopling of the Americas, the originsof language, the history of the Jews, and more. An engaging andlucid account, Mapping Human History will forever change how wethink about ourselves and our relations with others.

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.

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.

The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkestyears of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before orsince. Timothy Egan's critically acclaimed account rescues thisiconic chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour deforce of historical reportage. Following a dozen families and theircommunities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells oftheir desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dustblizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantlycapturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, Egan does equaljustice to the human characters who become his heroes, "the stoic,long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgencyand respect" (New York Times). In an era that promises ever-greaternatural disasters, "The Worst Hard Time" is "arguably the bestnonfiction book yet" (Austin Statesman Journal) on the greatestenvironmental disaster ever to be visited upon our land and apowerful cautionary tale about the dangers of trifling withnature

Ernest Furgurson, author of Ashes of Glory and Chancellorsville 1863 , brings his talents to a pivotal andoften neglected Civil War battle–the fierce, unremitting slaughterat Cold Harbor, Virginia, which ended the lives of 10,000 Unionsoldiers. In June of 1864, the Army of the Potomac attacked heavilyentrenched Confederate forces outside of Richmond, hoping to breakthe strength of Robert E. Lee and take the capital. Facing almostcertain death, Union soldiers pinned their names to their uniformsin the forlorn hope that their bodies would be identified andburied. Furgurson sheds new light on the personal conflicts thatled to Grant’s worst defeat and argues that it was a watershedmoment in the war. Offering a panorama rich in detail and revealinganecdotes that brings the dark days of the campaign to life, NotWar But Murder is historical narrative as compelling as anynovel.

In the tradition of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and SebastianJunger’s The Perfect Storm comes a true tale of riveting adventurein which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a greathistorical mystery–and make history themselves. For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was morethan a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents,braving depths that induced hallucinatory effects, navigatingthrough wreckage as perilous as a minefield, they pushed themselvesto their limits and beyond, brushing against death more than oncein the rusting hulks of sunken ships. But in the fall of 1991, not even these courageous divers wereprepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in thefrigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: aWorld War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wastelandof twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones–all buried underdecades of accumulated sediment. No identifying marks were visible on

Georges Duby, one of this century's great medieval historians,has brought to life with exceptional brilliance and imaginationWilliam Marshal, adviser to the Plantagenets, knightextraordinaire, the flower of chivalry. A marvel of historicalreconstruction, William Marshal is based on a biographical poemwritten in the thirteenth century, and offers an evocation ofchivalric life -- the contests and tournaments, the rites of war,the daily details of medieval existence -- unlike any we have everseen. An enchanting and profoundly instructive book....Owing in signalpart to the imaginative scholarship of Georges Duby, darkness ismore and more receding from the Dark Ages." George Steiner New Yorker "A small masterpiece of its genre....It is a splendid story andProfessor Duby tells it splendidly....Duby has reconstructed aliving picture of a particular sector of society at a crucialmoment, at the brink of great change. The vividness, the intimacy,and the historical perception with which he presents his picture ofth

What ties Americans to one another? What unifies a nation ofcitizens with different racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds?These were the dilemmas faced by Americans in the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries as they sought ways to bind the newly UnitedStates together. In A is for American, award-winning historian Jill Leporeportrays seven men who turned to language to help shape a newnation’s character and boundaries. From Noah Webster’s attempts tostandardize American spelling, to Alexander Graham Bell’s use of“Visible Speech” to help teach the deaf to talk, to Sequoyah’sdevelopment of a Cherokee syllabary as a means of preserving hispeople’s independence, these stories form a compelling portrait ofa developing nation’s struggles. Lepore brilliantly explores thepersonalities, work, and influence of these figures, seven mendriven by radically different aims and temperaments. Through thesesuperbly told stories, she chronicles the challenges faced by ayoung country trying to unify

In this gripping memoir, the daughter of a man who conspiredto assassinate Hitler tells the story of three generations of herfamily and offers unparalleled insight into the German experiencein the last century. On August 15, 1944, Major Hans Georg Klamroth was tried fortreason for his part in the July Plot to kill Hitler. Eleven dayslater, he was executed. His youngest daughter, Wibke Bruhns, wassix years old. Decades later, watching a documentary about theevents of July 20, she saw images of her father in court suddenlyappear on-screen. “I stare at this man with the empty face. I don'tknow him. But I can see myself in him.” How could her familysuccumb to Nazi sympathies? And what made her father finallyrenounce Hitler?

In this luminous portrait of wartime Washington, Ernest B.Furgurson–author of the widely acclaimed Chancellorsville1863 , Ashes of Glory , and Not War butMurder --brings to vivid life the personalities and events thatanimated the Capital during its most tumultuous time. Here amongthe sharpsters and prostitutes, slaves and statesmen are detectiveAllan Pinkerton, tracking down Southern sympathizers; poet WaltWhitman, nursing the wounded; and accused Confederate spy AntoniaFord, romancing her captor, Union Major Joseph Willard. Here aregenerals George McClellan and Ulysses S. Grant, railroad crew bossAndrew Carnegie, and architect Thomas Walter, striving to finishthe Capitol dome. And here is Abraham Lincoln, wrangling withofficers, pardoning deserters, and inspiring the nation. FreedomRising is a gripping account of the era that transformedWashington into the world’s most influential city.

This sweeping history provides the reader with a betterunderstanding of America’s consumer society, obsession withshopping, and devotion to brands. Focusing on the advertisingcampaigns of Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, Wrigley’s, Gillette, and Kodak,Strasser shows how companies created both national brands andnational markets. These new brands eventually displaced genericmanufacturers and created a new desire for brand-name goods. Thebook also details the rise and development of department storessuch as Macy’s, grocery store chains such as A P and PigglyWiggly, and mail-order companies like Sears Roebuck and MontgomeryWard.

This paperback edition has a new introduction by the authorand updated content. This is the first volume of North Atlantic Books’ updatedpaperback edition of Dale Pendell’s Pharmako trilogy, anencyclopedic study of the history and uses of psychoactive plantsand related synthetics first published between 1995 and 2005. Thebooks form an interrelated suite of works that provide the readerwith a unique, reliable, and often personal immersion in thismedically, culturally, and spiritually fascinating subject. Allthree books are beautifully designed and illustrated, and arewritten with unparalleled authority, erudition, playfulness, andrange. Pharmako/Poeia: Plant Powers, Poisons, and Herbcraft includes anew introduction by the author and as in previous editions focuseson familiar psychoactive plant-derived substances and relatedsynthetics, ranging from the licit (tobacco, alcohol) to theillicit (cannabis, opium) and the exotic (absinthe, salviadivinorum, nitrous oxide). Each substance is expl

An analysis of the Civil War, drawing on letters and diariesby more than one thousand soldiers, gives voice to the personalreasons behind the war, offering insight into the ideology thatshaped both sides. Reprint. PW.

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The effects of war refuse to remain local: they persistthrough the centuries, sometimes in unlikely ways far removed fromthe military arena. In Ripples of Battle , the acclaimed historianVictor Davis Hanson weaves wide-ranging military and culturalhistory with his unparalleled gift for battle narrative as heilluminates the centrality of war in the human experience. The Athenian defeat at Delium in 424 BC brought tacticalinnovations to infantry fighting; it also assured the influence ofthe philosophy of Socrates, who fought well in the battle. Nearlytwenty-three hundred years later, the carnage at Shiloh and thedeath of the brilliant Southern strategist Albert Sidney Johnsoninspired a sense of fateful tragedy that would endure and stymieSouthern culture for decades. The Northern victory would alsobolster the reputation of William Tecumseh Sherman, and inspire LewWallace to pen the classic Ben Hur . And, perhaps most resonant forour time, the agony of Okinawa spurred the Japanese towardstate-sanct

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"