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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Until World War II aircraft had played only a minor role incombat, but with the RAF and Luftwaffe fiercely dueling in theBattle of Britain it was apparent that air superiority would be thedeciding factor in the war. The Eighth Air Force quickly grew fromits first modest effort into the mightiest aerial armada inhistory, eventually launching thousand-plane raids. WhileFortresses and Liberators attacked factories, fuel supplies, andtransportation networks, Lightnings, Thunderbolts, and Mustangsshot enemy fighters from the skies. But the road to victory was paved with sacrifice. From itsinaugural mission on July 4, 1942, until V-E Day, the Eighth AirForce lost more men than did the entire United States Marine Corpsin all its campaigns in the Pacific. The Mighty Eighth chroniclesthe testimony of the pilots, bombardiers, navigators, and gunnerswho daily put their lives on the line. Their harrowing accountsrecall the excitement and terror of dogfights against Nazi aces,maneuvering explosive-laden aircr

Drawing from Smith's own personal journals, this concisebiography paints a rich and detailed portrait of one of America'smost intriguing founding fathers. Historian John Thompson guides usthrough annotated selections of Smith's most important andcompelling writings, adding authoritative perspective andcommentary to round out the picture. The volume includes some ofthe earliest primary source accounts of life in colonial Virginia,including excerpts from Proceedings of the English Colony ofVirginia (1612), Generall Historie of Virginia (1624), and The TrueAdventures and Observations of Captain John Smith (1630). Readers share eyewitness accounts of Smith's capture andimprisonment by the Indians, his explorations of the Chesapeake Bayregion, and various other adventures and exploits in the New World.We get a firsthand look at Smith's pivotal role in the founding andgovernance of colonial Jamestown and his attempts to establishtrade relationships with the Native Americans. We also learn thereal facts behind Smi

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

Paris - Underground BY ETTA SHIBER. Contents include: I Escapefrom Europe i II Flight from Paris 13 III The English Pilot 22 IVRunning the Gauntlet 31 V They Are Here 37 VI Plans for Escape 51VII William Escapes 57 VIII A Trip to Doullens 67 IX Ten T

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.

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.

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

David Kenyon Webster’s memoir is a clear-eyed, emotionallycharged chronicle of youth, camaraderie, and the chaos of war.Relying on his own letters home and recollections he penned justafter his discharge, Webster gives a first hand account of life in E Company, 101st Airborne Division , crafting a memoir thatresonates with the immediacy of a gripping novel. From the beaches of Normandy to the blood-dimmed battlefields ofHolland, here are acts of courage and cowardice, moments ofirritating boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror, andpitched urban warfare. Offering a remarkable snapshot of what itwas like to enter Germany in the last days of World War II, Websterpresents a vivid, varied cast of young paratroopers from all walksof life, and unforgettable glimpses of enemy soldiers and haplesscivilians caught up in the melee. Parachute Infantry is at onceharsh and moving, boisterous and tragic, and stands today as anunsurpassed chronicle of war--how men fight it, survive it, andremember it.

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 1971 a young French ethnologist named Francois Bizot wastaken prisoner by forces of the Khmer Rouge who kept him chained ina jungle camp for months before releasing him. Four years laterBizot became the intermediary between the now victorious KhmerRouge and the occupants of the besieged French embassy in PhnomPenh, eventually leading a desperate convoy of foreigners to safetyacross the Thai border. Out of those ordeals comes this transfixing book. At its centerlies the relationship between Bizot and his principal captor, a mannamed Douch, who is today known as the most notorious of the KhmerRouge’s torturers but who, for a while, was Bizot’s protector andfriend. Written with the immediacy of a great novel, unsparing inits understanding of evil, The Gate manages to be at oncewrenching and redemptive.

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.

By the end of World War I, in November 1918, Europe’s oldauthoritarian empires had fallen, and new and seemingly democraticgovernments were rising from the debris. As successor states foundtheir place on the map, many hoped that a more liberal Europe wouldemerge. But this post-war idealism all too quickly collapsed underthe political and economic pressures of the 1920s and '30s. HowardM. Sachar chronicles this visionary and tempestuous era byexamining the fortunes of Europe’s Jewish minority, a group whoseprecarious status made them particularly sensitive to changes inthe social order. Writing with characteristic lucidity and verve,Sachar spotlights an array of charismatic leaders–from HungarianCommunist Bela Kun to Germany’s Rosa Luxemburg, France’s SocialistPrime Minister Léon Blum and Austria’s Sigmund Freud–whosecollective experience foretold significant democratic failures longbefore the Nazi rise to power. In the richness of its humantapestry and the acuity of its social insights, Dream

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.

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.