The veteran Wall Street Journal science reporterMarilyn Chase’s fascinating account of an outbreak of bubonicplague in late Victorian San Francisco is a real-life thriller thatresonates in today’s headlines. The Barbary Plague transports us to the Gold Rush boomtown in 1900, at the end of thecity’s Gilded Age. With a deep understanding of the effects onpublic health of politics, race, and geography, Chase shows how onecity triumphed over perhaps the most frightening and deadly of allscourges.

November 11, 1918. The final hours pulsate with tension asevery man in the trenches hopes to escape the melancholydistinction of being the last to die in World War I. The Alliedgenerals knew the fighting would end precisely at 11:00 A.M, yet inthe final hours they flung men against an already beaten Germany.The result? Eleven thousand casualties suffered–more than duringthe D-Day invasion of Normandy. Why? Allied commanders wanted topunish the enemy to the very last moment and career officers saw afast-fading chance for glory and promotion. Joseph E. Persico puts the reader in the trenches with theforgotten and the famous–among the latter, Corporal Adolf Hitler,Captain Harry Truman, and Colonels Douglas MacArthur and GeorgePatton. Mainly, he follows ordinary soldiers’ lives, illuminatingtheir fate as the end approaches. Persico sets the last day of thewar in historic context with a gripping reprise of all that led upto it, from the 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke, FranzFerdinand

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"

The Boys’ Crusade is the great historian PaulFussell’s unflinching and unforgettable account of the Americaninfantryman’s experiences in Europe during World War II. Based inpart on the author’s own experiences, it provides a stirringnarrative of what the war was actually like, from the point of viewof the children—for children they were—who fought it. While dealingdefinitively with issues of strategy, leadership, context, andtactics, Fussell has an additional purpose: to tear away the veilof feel-good mythology that so often obscures and sanitizes war’sbrutal essence. “A chronicle should deal with nothing but the truth,” Fussellwrites in his Preface. Accord-ingly, he eschews every kind ofsentimentalism, focusing instead on the raw action and humanemotion triggered by the intimacy, horror, and intense sorrows ofwar, and honestly addressing the errors, waste, fear, misery, andresentments that plagued both sides. In the vast literature onWorld War II, The Boys’ Crusade stands

John Julius Norwich’s A History of Venice has been dubbed“indispensable” by none other than Jan Morris. Now, in his secondbook on the city once known as La Serenissima, Norwich advances thestory in this elegant chronicle of a hundred years of Venice’shighs and lows, from its ignominious capture by Napoleon in 1797 tothe dawn of the 20th century. An obligatory stop on the Grand Tour for any cultured Englishman(and, later, Americans), Venice limped into the 19th century–firstunder the yoke of France, then as an outpost of the AustrianHapsburgs, stripped of riches yet indelibly the most ravishing cityin Italy. Even when subsumed into a unified Italy in 1866, itremained a magnet for aesthetes of all stripes–subject or settingof books by Ruskin and James, a muse to poets and musicians, in itsway the most gracious courtesan of all European cities. Byrefracting images of Venice through the visits of such extravagant(and sometimes debauched) artists as Lord Byron, Richard Wagner,and the inimi

Sherman's March is the vivid narrative of General William T.Sherman's devastating sweep through Georgia and the Carolinas inthe closing days of the Civil War. Weaving together hundreds ofeyewitness stories, Burke Davis graphically brings to life thedramatic experiences of the 65,000 Federal troops who plunderedtheir way through the South and those of the anguished -- and oftendefiant -- Confederate women and men who sought to protectthemselves and their family treasures, usually in vain. Dominatingthese events is the general himself -- "Uncle Billy" to his troops,the devil incarnate to the Southerners he encountered.

Whether he is evoking the blind carnage of the Tet offensive,the theatrics of his fellow Americans, or the unraveling of his ownillusions, Wolff brings to this work the same uncanny eye fordetail, pitiless candor and mordant wit that made This Boy's Life amodern classic.

The fighting that waged across the Philippines during WorldWar II ranks among the most vicious in the annals of war. Nearly80,000 Americans and Filipinos were taken prisoner on Bataan, thename of which is forever linked with the notorious "death march."During the three years that Japan occupied the archipelago, 130,000American and Filipinos were killed. Prisoners in Japanese prisoncamps were 10 times as likely to die in captivity as soldiers heldby the Germans. When they returned to retake the islands, Americantroops preferred not to take any prisoners at all. Gerald Astorgives voice to the soldiers who participated in this gruesomeperiod of world military history. --This text refers to an outof print or unavailable edition of this title.

In the spring of 2003, acclaimed journalist Anne Nivat set offfrom Tajikistan on a six-month journey through the aftermath of theAmerican invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Nivatfelt compelled to meet and write about the lives of everydaypeople, whom she allows to speak in their own voices, in their ownwords--words of hope, sadness, anger, and, above all, theuncertainty that fills their everyday lives. Her new Preface forthe paperback edition looks at the situation in Iraq today.

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

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

For the first time in one enthralling book, here is theincredible true story of the numerous attempts to assassinate AdolfHitler and change the course of history. Disraeli once declared that “assassination never changed anything,”and yet the idea that World War II and the horrors of the Holocaustmight have been averted with a single bullet or bomb has remained atantalizing one for half a century. What historian Roger Moorhousereveals in Killing Hitler is just how close–and how often–historycame to taking a radically different path between Adolf Hitler’srise to power and his ignominious suicide. Few leaders, in any century, can have been the target of so manyassassination attempts, with such momentous consequences in thebalance. Hitler’s almost fifty would-be assassins ranged fromsimple craftsmen to high-ranking soldiers, from the apolitical tothe ideologically obsessed, from Polish Resistance fighters topatriotic Wehrmacht officers, and from enemy agents to his closestassociates. And yet, up to

Throughout history, the Balkans have been a crossroads, a zoneof endless military, cultural, and economic mixing and clashingbetween Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, Catholicism andOrthodoxy. In this highly acclaimed short history, Mark Mazowersheds light on what has been called the tinderbox of Europe, whosetroubles have ignited wider wars for hundreds of years. Focusing onevents from the emergence of the nation-state onward, The Balkansreveals with piercing clarity the historical roots of currentconflicts and gives a landmark reassessment of the region’shistory, from the world wars and the Cold War to the collapse ofcommunism, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and the continuingsearch for stability in southeastern Europe.

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.

Before writing his award-winning Going After Cacciato ,Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year asa foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him toexperience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk theminefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and toexplore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war goneterribly wrong. Beautifully written and searingly heartfelt, IfI Die in a Combat Zone is a masterwork of its genre.

“Dray captures the genius and ingenuity of Franklin’s scientificthinking and then does something even more fascinating: He showshow science shaped his diplomacy, politics, and Enlightenmentphilosophy.” –Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An AmericanLife Today we think of Benjamin Franklin as a founder of Americanindependence who also dabbled in science. But in Franklin’s day,the era of Enlightenment, long before he was an eminent statesman,he was famous for his revolutionary scientific work. Pulitzer Prizefinalist Philip Dray uses the evolution of Franklin’s scientificcuriosity and empirical thinking as a metaphor for America’sstruggle to establish its fundamental values. He recounts howFranklin unlocked one of the greatest natural mysteries of his day,the seemingly unknowable powers of lightning and electricity. Richin historical detail and based on numerous primary sources,Stealing God’s Thunder is a fascinating original look at one of ourmost beloved and complex founding fathers

These nine biographies illuminate the careers, personalitiesand military campaigns of some of Rome's greatest statesmen, whoselives span the earliest days of the Republic to the establishmentof the Empire. Selected from Plutarch's "Roman Lives", they includeprominent figures who achieved fame for their pivotal roles inRoman history, such as soldierly Marcellus, eloquent Cato andcautious Fabius. Here too are vivid portraits of ambitious,hot-tempered Coriolanus; objective, principled Brutus andopen-hearted Mark Anthony, who would later be brought to life byShakespeare. In recounting the lives of these great leaders,Plutarch also explores the problems of statecraft and power andillustrates the Roman people's genius for political compromise,which led to their mastery of the ancient world.

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

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 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

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.

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.