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.

By the world-renowned novelist, playwright, critic, and authorof Wizard of the Crow, an evocative and affecting memoir ofchildhood. Ngugi wa Thiong’o was born in 1938 in rural Kenya to a fatherwhose four wives bore him more than a score of children. The manwho would become one of Africa’s leading writers was the fifthchild of the third wife. Even as World War II affected the lives ofAfricans under British colonial rule in particularly unexpectedways, Ngugi spent his childhood as very much the apple of hismother’s eye before attending school to slake what was thenconsidered a bizarre thirst for learning. In Dreams in a Time of War, Ngugi deftly etches a bygone era,capturing the landscape, the people, and their culture; the socialand political vicissitudes of life under colonialism and war; andthe troubled relationship between an emerging Christianized middleclass and the rural poor. And he shows how the Mau Mau armedstruggle for Kenya’s independence against the British informed noton

The Groundbreakers series examines the lives and work of pioneering men and women whose achievements and discoveries have had a lasting impact on our world. Each book tells us about the experiences that inspired these amazing individuals to think in new ways, and discusses how the environment they lived in affected their work. Information on their supporters, colleagues,and rivals adds to the story. Finally, a look at the person's legacy shows how their achievements and discoveries continue to affect people today.

Churchill's six-volume history of World War II -- the definitivework, remarkable both for its sweep and for its sense of personalinvolvement, universally acknowledged as a magnificent historicalreconstruction and an enduring work of literature. From Britian'sdarkest and finest hour to the great alliance and ultimate victory,the Second World War remains the pivotal event in our century.Churchill was not only its greatest leader, but the free world'smost eloquent voice of defiance in the face of Nazi tyranny. Hisepic account of those times, published in six volumes, won theNobel Prize in 1953.

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

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.

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

This is the story of a small group of soldiers from the 101stAirborne Division’s fabled 502nd Infantry Regiment—a unit known as“the Black Heart Brigade.” Deployed in late 2005 to Iraq’sso-called Triangle of Death, a veritable meat grinder just south ofBaghdad, the Black Hearts found themselves in arguably thecountry’s most dangerous location at its most dangerous time. Hit by near-daily mortars, gunfire, and roadside bomb attacks,suffering from a particularly heavy death toll, and enduring achronic breakdown in leadership, members of one Black Heartplatoon—1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion—descended, overtheir year-long tour of duty, into a tailspin of poor discipline,substance abuse, and brutality. Four 1st Platoon soldiers would perpetrate one of the mostheinous war crimes U.S. forces have committed during the IraqWar—the rape of a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and the cold-bloodedexecution of her and her family. Three other 1st Platoon soldierswould be overrun at

The complete text of the bestselling narrative history of theCivil War--based on the celebrated PBS television series. Thisnon-illustrated edition interweaves the author's narrative with thevoices of the men and women who lived through that cataclysmictrail of our nationhood, from Abraham Lincoln to ordinary footsoldiers. Includes essays by distinguished historians of theera.

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 experience of war has affected every generation in thetwentieth and twenty-first centuries, and every soldier has a storyto tell. Since the year 2000, the Veteran's History Project, a newpermanent department of the Library of Congress, has beencollecting and preserving the memories of veterans. In addition tomore than 50,000 recorded oral histories, the Veteran's HistoryProject has amassed thousands of letters, photographs, scrapbooks,and invaluable mementos from nearly a century of warfare. In the first book to showcase the richness and depth of thiscollection, Voices of War tells a compelling, emotional, history ofthe experience of war, weaving together veterans' stories from inWorld Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf. Thestories are organized thematically into sections-from signing up tocoming home, generations of veterans recall individual experiencesthat together tell the extraordinary story of America at war.Letters, photographs, sketches and paintings enrich the compellingoral hi

In mid-1943 James Megellas, known as “Maggie” to his fellowparatroopers, joined the 82d Airborne Division, his new “home” forthe duration. His first taste of combat was in the rugged mountainsoutside Naples. In October 1943, when most of the 82d departed Italy to prepare forthe D-Day invasion of France, Lt. Gen. Mark Clark, the Fifth Armycommander, requested that the division’s 504th Parachute InfantryRegiment, Maggie’s outfit, stay behind for a daring new operationthat would outflank the Nazis’ stubborn defensive lines and openthe road to Rome. On 22 January 1944, Megellas and the rest of the504th landed across the beach at Anzio. Following initial success,Fifth Army’s amphibious assault, Operation Shingle, bogged down inthe face of heavy German counterattacks that threatened to drivethe Allies into the Tyrrhenian Sea. Anzio turned into a fiasco, oneof the bloodiest Allied operations of the war. Not until April werethe remnants of the regiment withdrawn and shipped to England torecover, reo

Pulitzer Prize Finalist Anisfield-Wolf Award Winner Over a frigid few weeks in the winter of 1741, ten fires blazedacross Manhattan. With each new fire, panicked whites saw moreevidence of a slave uprising. In the end, thirteen black men wereburned at the stake, seventeen were hanged and more than onehundred black men and women were thrown into a dungeon beneath CityHall. In New York Burning , Bancroft Prize-winning historian JillLepore recounts these dramatic events, re-creating, withpath-breaking research, the nascent New York of the seventeenthcentury. Even then, the city was a rich mosaic of cultures,communities and colors, with slaves making up a full one-fifth ofthe population. Exploring the political and social climate of thetimes, Lepore dramatically shows how, in a city rife with stateintrigue and terror, the threat of black rebellion united the whitepolitical pluralities in a frenzy of racial fear andviolence.

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

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.

In this classic study, Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M.McPherson deftly narrates the experience of blacks--former slavesand soldiers, preachers, visionaries, doctors, intellectuals, andcommon people--during the Civil War. Drawing on contemporaryjournalism, speeches, books, and letters, he presents an eclecticchronicle of their fears and hopes as well as their essentialcontributions to their own freedom. Through the words of theseextraordinary participants, both Northern and Southern, McPhersoncaptures African-American responses to emancipation, the shiftingattitudes toward Lincoln and the life of black soldiers in theUnion army. Above all, we are allowed to witness the dreams of adisenfranchised people eager to embrace the rights and the equalityoffered to them, finally, as citizens.

In mid-1943 James Megellas, known as “Maggie” to his fellowparatroopers, joined the 82d Airborne Division, his new “home” forthe duration. His first taste of combat was in the rugged mountainsoutside Naples. In October 1943, when most of the 82d departed Italy to preparefor the D-Day invasion of France, Lt. Gen. Mark Clark, the FifthArmy commander, requested that the division’s 504th ParachuteInfantry Regiment, Maggie’s outfit, stay behind for a daring newoperation that would outflank the Nazis’ stubborn defensive linesand open the road to Rome. On 22 January 1944, Megellas and therest of the 504th landed across the beach at Anzio. Followinginitial success, Fifth Army’s amphibious assault, OperationShingle, bogged down in the face of heavy German counterattacksthat threatened to drive the Allies into the Tyrrhenian Sea. Anzioturned into a fiasco, one of the bloodiest Allied operations of thewar. Not until April were the remnants of the regiment withdrawnand shipped to England to r

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.

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

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.

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

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