More dramtatic than fiction...THE GUNS OF AUGUST is amagnificent narrative--beautifully organized, elegantly phrased,skillfully paced and sustained....The product of painstaking andsophisticated research. CHICAGO TRIBUNE Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman hasbrought to life again the people and events that led up to Worl WarI. With attention to fascinating detail, and an intense knowledgeof her subject and its characters, Ms. Tuchman reveals, for thefirst time, just how the war started, why, and why it could havebeen stopped but wasn't. A classic historical survey of a time anda people we all need to know more about, THE GUNS OF AUGUST willnot be forgotten.
In The Wall Street Journal, Victor Davis Hanson named With theOld Breed one of the top five books on epic twentieth-centurybattles. Studs Terkel interviewed the author for his definitiveoral history, The Good War. Now E. B. Sledge’s acclaimedfirst-person account of fighting at Peleliu and Okinawa returns tothrill, edify, and inspire a new generation. An Alabama boy steeped in American history and enamored of suchheroes as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene B. Sledgebecame part of the war’s famous 1st Marine Division–3d Battalion,5th Marines. Even after intense training, he was shocked to bethrown into the battle of Peleliu, where “the world was a nightmareof flashes, explosions, and snapping bullets.” By the time Sledgehit the hell of Okinawa, he was a combat vet, still filled withfear but no longer with panic. Based on notes Sledge secretly kept in a copy of the NewTestament, With the Old Breed captures with utter simplicity andsearing honesty the experience of a soldier
Less than 100 years after its creation as a fragile republic,the United States more than quadrupled its size, making it theworld's third largest nation. No other country or sovereign powerhad ever grown so big so fast or become so rich and sopowerful. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Richard Kluger chronicles thisepic achievement in a compelling narrative, celebrating the energy,daring, and statecraft behind America's insatiable land hungerwhile exploring the moral lapses that accompanied it. Comprehensiveand balanced, Seizing Destiny is a revelatory, often surprisingreexamination of the nation's breathless expansion, dwelling onboth great accomplishments and the American people's tendency toconfuse opportunistic success with heaven-sent entitlement thatcame to be called manifest destiny.
Paul Cartledge, one of the world’s foremost scholars ofancient Greece, illuminates the brief but iconic life of Alexander(356-323 BC), king of Macedon, conqueror of the Persian Empire, andfounder of a new world order. Alexander's legacy has had a major impact on military tacticians,scholars, statesmen, adventurers, authors, and filmmakers.Cartledge brilliantly evokes Alexander's remarkable political andmilitary accomplishments, cutting through the myths to show why hewas such a great leader. He explores our endless fascination withAlexander and gives us insight into his charismatic leadership, hiscapacity for brutality, and his sophisticated grasp ofinternational politics. Alexander the Great is an engagingportrait of a fascinating man, and a welcome balance to the myths,legends, and often skewed history that have obscured the realAlexander.
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, PulitzerPrize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the greatuntold stories of American history: the decades-long migration ofblack citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities,in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus ofalmost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkersoncompares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples inhistory. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gainedaccess to new data and official records, to write this definitiveand vividly dramatic account of how these American journeysunfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this storythrough the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, whoin 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi forChicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in oldage, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senateseat; sh
This brief and illuminating account of the ideas of worldorder prevalent in the Elizabethan age and later is anindispensable companion for readers of the great writers of thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries—Shakespeare and the Elizabethandramatists, Donne and Milton, among many others. The basic medievalidea of an ordered Chain of Being is studied by Professor Tillyardin the process of its various transformations by the dynamic spiritof the Renaissance. Among his topics are: Angels; the Stars andFortunes; the Analogy between Macrocosm and Microcosm; the FourElements; the Four Humours; Sympathies; Correspondences; and theCosmic Dance—ideas and symbols which inspirited the minds andimaginations not only of the Elizabethans but of all men of theRenaissance.
The Hellenistic Age chronicles the years 336 to 30 BCE, aperiod that witnessed the overlap of two of antiquity’s greatcivilizations, the Greek and the Roman. Peter Green’s remarkablyfar-ranging study covers the prevalent themes and events of thosecenturies: the Hellenization, by Alexander’s conquests, of animmense swath of the known world; the lengthy and chaotic partitionof this empire by rival Macedonian bands; the decline of thecity-state as the predominant political institution; and, finally,Rome’s moment of transition from republican to imperial rule. It isa story of war and power-politics, and of the developing fortunesof art, science, and statecraft, spun by an accomplished classicistwith an uncanny knack for infusing life into the distant past, andapplying fresh insights that make ancient history seem alarminglyrelevant to our own times. “Spectacular . . . [filled with] Mr. Green’s criticalacumen.” –The Wall Street Journal “Green draws upon a li
The story of two World War II battalions--one German, oneAmerican--each cut off behind enemy lines in the same forest at thesame time, and the heroic efforts to save them--InfantryMagazine
Book De*ion Marco Polo?s account of his journey throughout the East in thethirteenth century was one of the earliest European travelnarratives, and it remains the most important. Themerchant-traveler from Venice, the first to cross the entirecontinent of Asia, provided us with accurate de*ions of lifein China, Tibet, India, and a hundred other lands, and recordedcustoms, natural history, strange sights, historical legends, andmuch more. From the dazzling courts of Kublai Khan to the perilousdeserts of Persia, no book contains a richer magazine of marvelsthan the Travels. This edition, selected and edited by the great scholar ManuelKomroff, also features the classic and stylistically brilliantMarsden translation, revised and corrected, as well as Komroff?sIntroduction to the 1926 edition. Book Dimension length: (cm)19.7 width:(cm)12.8
A companion book to The History Channel specialseries of ten one-hour documentaries 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America pinpoints pivotaldays that transformed our nation. For the series and the book, TheHistory Channel challenged a panel of leading historians, includingauthor Steven M. Gillon, to come up with some less well-known buthistorically significant events that triggered change in America.Together, the days they chose tell a story about the greatdemocratic ideals upon which our country was built. You won’t find July 4, 1776, for instance, or the attack on FortSumter that ignited the Civil War, or the day Neil Armstrong setfoot on the moon. But January 25, 1787, is here. On that day, theragtag men of Shays’ Rebellion attacked the federal arsenal inSpringfield, Massachusetts, and set the new nation on the path to astrong central government. January 24, 1848, is also on the list.That’s when a carpenter named John Marshall spotted a fewglittering flakes of gold in a California riverbed.
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.
In this groundbreaking work, leading historian FelipeFernández-Armesto tells the story of our hemisphere as a whole,showing why it is impossible to understand North, Central, andSouth America in isolation without turning to the intertwiningforces that shape the region. With imagination, thematic breadth,and his trademark wit, Fernández-Armesto covers a range ofcultural, political, and social subjects, taking us from the dawnof human migration to North America to the Colonial andIndependence periods to the “American Century” and beyond.Fernández-Armesto does nothing less than revise the conventionalwisdom about cross-cultural exchange, conflict, and interaction,making and supporting some brilliantly provocative conclusionsabout the Americas’ past and where we are headed.
In this perfect companion to London: The Biography ,Peter Ackroyd once again delves into the hidden byways of history,describing the river's endless allure in a journey overflowing withcharacters, incidents, and wry observations. Thames: TheBiography meanders gloriously, rather like the river itself. Inshort, lively chapters Ackroyd writes about connections between theThames and such historical figures as Julius Caesar and Henry VIII,and offers memorable portraits of the ordinary men and women whodepend upon the river for their livelihoods. The Thames as a sourceof artistic inspiration comes brilliantly to life as Ackroydinvokes Chaucer, Shakespeare, Turner, Shelley, and other writers,poets, and painters who have been enchanted by its many moods andcolors.
To understand Iraq, Charles Tripp's history is the book to read.Since its first appearance in 2000, it has become a classic in thefield of Middle East studies, read and admired by students,soldiers, policymakers and journalists. The book is now updated toinclude the recent American invasion, the fall and capture ofSaddam Hussein and the subsequent descent into civil strife. Whatis clear is that much that has happened since 2003 was foreshadowedin the account found in this book. Tripp's thesis is that thehistory of Iraq throughout the twentieth-century has made it whatit is today, but also provides alternative futures. Unless this isproperly understood, many of the themes explored in this book -patron-client relations, organized violence, sectarian, ethnic andtribal difference - will continue to exert a hold over the futureof Iraq as they did over its past.
"In the spring of 1984, I went to the northwest of France, toNormandy, to prepare an NBC documentary on the fortieth anniversaryof D-Day, the massive and daring Allied invasion of Europe thatmarked the beginning of the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.There, I underwent a life-changing experience. As I walked thebeaches with the American veterans who had returned for thisanniversary, men in their sixties and seventies, and listened totheir stories, I was deeply moved and profoundly grateful for allthey had done. Ten years later, I returned to Normandy for thefiftieth anniversary of the invasion, and by then I had come tounderstand what this generation of Americans meant to history. Itis, I believe, the greatest generation any society has everproduced." In this superb book, Tom Brokaw goes out into America, to tellthrough the stories of individual men and women the story of ageneration, America's citizen heroes and heroines who came of ageduring the Great Depression and the Second World War and went
Dazzling in its originality, witty and perceptive inunearthing patterns of behavior that history has erased, RITES OFSPRING probes the origins, the impact, and the aftermath of WorldWar I -- from the premiere of Stravinsky's ballet The Rite ofSpring in 1913 to the death of Hitler in 1945. "The Great War," asModris Eksteins writes, "was the psychological turning point . . .for modernism as a whole. The urge to create and the urge todestroy had changed places." In this "bold and fertile book"(Atlantic Monthly), Eksteins goes on to chart the seismic shifts inhuman consciousness brought about by this great cataclysm throughthe lives and words of ordinary people, works of literature, andsuch events as Lindbergh's transatlantic flight and the publicationof the first modern bestseller, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT.RITES OF SPRING is a remarkable and rare work, a cultural historythat redefines the way we look at our past and toward ourfuture.
A perennial backlist performer.
FREDERICKSBURG TO MERIDIAN "Gettysburg...is described with such meticulous attention toaction, terrain, time, and the characters of the various commandersthat I understand, at last, what happened in that battle.... Mr.Foote has an acute sense of the relative importance of events and anovelist's skill in directing the reader's attention to the men andthe episodes that will influence the course of the whole war,without omitting items which are of momentary interest. Hisorganization of facts could hardly bebetter."-- Atlantic
In his first three Commanders books, Tom Clancy teamed withGenerals Fred Franks, Jr., Chuck Horner, and Carl Stiner to providemasterful blends of history, biography, you-are-there narrative,insight into the practice of leadership, and plain, old-fashionedstorytelling. Battle Ready is all of that-and it is also somethingmore. Marine General Tony Zinni was known as the "Warrior Diplomat"during his nearly forty years of service. As a soldier, hiscredentials were impeccable, whether leading troops in Vietnam,commanding hair-raising rescue operations in Somalia, or-asCommander in Chief of CENTCOM-directing strikes against Iraq and AlQaeda. But it was as a peacemaker that he made just as great amark-conducting dangerous troubleshooting missions all over Africa,Asia, and Europe; and then serving as Secretary of State ColinPowell's special envoy to the Middle East, before disagreementsover the 2003 Iraq War and its probable aftermath caused him toresign. Battle Ready follows the evolution of both G
A useful, important book that reminds us, at the right time,how hard [European unity] has been, and how much care must be takento avoid the terrible old temptations. --Los Angeles Times Dark Continent provides an alternative history of the twentiethcentury, one in which the triumph of democracy was anything but aforgone conclusion and fascism and communism provided rivalpolitical solutions that battled and sometimes triumphed in aneffort to determine the course the continent would take. Mark Mazower strips away myths that have comforted us since WorldWar II, revealing Europe as an entity constantly engaged in abloody project of self-invention. Here is a history not ofinevitable victories and forward marches, but of narrow squeaks andunexpected twists, where townships boast a bronze of Mussolini onhorseback one moment, only to melt it down and recast it as a pairof noble partisans the next. Unflinching, intelligent, DarkContinent provides a provocative vision of Europ's past, present,and fut
I have never read a better, more vivid, more understandableaccount of the savage battling between Grant's and Lee's armies....Foote stays with the human strife and suffering, and unlike mostSouthern commentators, he does not take sides. In objectivity, inrange, in mastery of detail in beauty of language and feeling forthe people involved, this work surpasses anything else on thesubject.... It stands alongside the work of the best ofthem.-- New Republic
