This handsomely illustrated volume commemorates AbrahamLincoln’s 200th birthday and gives rare insight into the Presidentwho shook the world—and whose words and example endure today innations from Siberia to Mexico to Pakistan. This is the officialbook of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (ALPLM)in Springfield, Illinois that has welcomed more than one millionvisitors since its 2005 opening. Using the exhibition halls as a launching point, this book offersstories, anecdotes, and never-before-seen images and artifacts fromthe museum’s vault. It positions Lincoln as a man of his century, atime ripe with Industrial Revolution, travel and culture,abolition, and war. Worldwide events figure into the story:Britain’s emergence as a democracy, Russia’s freeing of the serfs,Japan’s opening to foreign trade, Germany’s unity underBismarck. Every page reflects the humor, integrity, and unique style ofleadership that made Abe Lincoln a legend. Quote boxes reveal hissayings

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

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.

From a master chronicler of Spanish history comes amagnificent work about the pivotal years from 1522 to 1566, whenSpain was the greatest European power. Hugh Thomas has written arich and riveting narrative of exploration, progress, and plunder.At its center is the unforgettable ruler who fought the French andexpanded the Spanish empire, and the bold conquistadors who werehis agents. Thomas brings to life King Charles V—first as a ganglyand easygoing youth, then as a liberal statesman who exceeded allhis predecessors in his ambitions for conquest (while making sureto maintain the humanity of his new subjects in the Americas), andfinally as a besieged Catholic leader obsessed with Protestantheresy and interested only in profiting from those he presidedover. The Golden Empire also presents the legendary men whom KingCharles V sent on perilous and unprecedented expeditions: HernánCortés, who ruled the “New Spain” of Mexico as an absolutemonarch—and whose rebuilding of its capital, Tenochti

“An elegant synthesis done by the leading scholar in the field,which nicely integrates the work on the American Revolution overthe last three decades but never loses contact with the older,classic questions that we have been arguing about for over twohundred years.” -Joseph J. Ellis, author of Founding Brothers A magnificent account of the revolution in arms and consciousnessthat gave birth to the American republic. When Abraham Lincoln sought to define the significance of theUnited States, he naturally looked back to the American Revolution.He knew that the Revolution not only had legally created the UnitedStates, but also had produced all of the great hopes and values ofthe American people. Our noblest ideals and aspirations-ourcommitments to freedom, constitutionalism, the well-being ofordinary people, and equality-came out of the Revolutionary era.Lincoln saw as well that the Revolution had convinced Americansthat they were a special people with a special destiny to lead theworld toward liberty.

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.

A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an UnnecessaryWar Most Americans consider Abraham Lincoln to be the greatestpresident in history. His legend as the Great Emancipator has grownto mythic proportions as hundreds of books, a national holiday, anda monument in Washington, D.C., extol his heroism and martyrdom.But what if most everything you knew about Lincoln were false? Whatif, instead of an American hero who sought to free the slaves,Lincoln were in fact a calculating politician who waged thebloodiest war in american history in order to build an empire thatrivaled Great Britain's? In The Real Lincoln, author Thomas J.DiLorenzo uncovers a side of Lincoln not told in many history booksand overshadowed by the immense Lincoln legend. Through extensive research and meticulous documentation,DiLorenzo portrays the sixteenth president as a man who devoted hispolitical career to revolutionizing the American form of governmentfrom one that was very limited in scope and highly decentralize

This is a book aboutGermans and Jews, about power and money. It is a book focused onBismarck and Bleichroder, Junker and Jew, statesman and banker,collaborators for over thirty years. The setting is that of aGermany where two worlds clashed: the new world of capitalism andan earlier world with its ancient feudal ethos; gradually a new andbroadened elite emerged, and Bismarck's tie with Bleichroderepitomized that regrouping. It is the story of the founding of thenew German Empire, in whose midst a Jewish minority rose toembattled prominence.

During World War Two, 131 German cities and towns weretargeted by Allied bombs, a good number almost entirely flattened.Six hundred thousand German civilians died—a figure twice that ofall American war casualties. Seven and a half million Germans wereleft homeless. Given the astonishing scope of the devastation, W.G. Sebald asks, why does the subject occupy so little space inGermany’s cultural memory? On the Natural History of Destructionprobes deeply into this ominous silence.

With his characteristic enthusiasm and erudition, PeterAckroyd follows his acclaimed London: A Biography with aninspired look into the heart and the history of the Englishimagination. To tell the story of its evolution, Ackroyd rangesacross literature and painting, philosophy and science,architecture and music, from Anglo-Saxon times to thetwentieth-century. Considering what is most English about artistsas diverse as Chaucer, William Hogarth, Benjamin Britten andViriginia Woolf, Ackroyd identifies a host of sometimescontradictory elements: pragmatism and whimsy, blood and gore, apassion for the past, a delight in eccentricity, and much more. Abrilliant, engaging and often surprising narrative, Albion reveals the manifold nature of English genius.

When the British wrested New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664,the truth about its thriving, polyglot society began to disappearinto myths about an island purchased for 24 dollars and acartoonish peg-legged governor. But the story of the Dutch colonyof New Netherland was merely lost, not destroyed: 12,000 pages ofits records–recently declared a national treasure–are now beingtranslated. Drawing on this remarkable archive, Russell Shorto hascreated a gripping narrative–a story of global sweep centered on awilderness called Manhattan–that transforms our understanding ofearly America. The Dutch colony pre-dated the “original” thirteen colonies, yetit seems strikingly familiar. Its capital was cosmopolitan andmulti-ethnic, and its citizens valued free trade, individualrights, and religious freedom. Their champion was a progressive,young lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck, who emerges in thesepages as a forgotten American patriot and whose political visionbrought him into conflict with Pete

The Gulag--a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that heldmillions of political and criminal prisoners--was a system ofrepression and punishment that terrorized the entire society,embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In thismagisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the firstfully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in theRussian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to itscollapse in the era of glasnost. Applebaum intimately re-createswhat life was like in the camps and links them to the largerhistory of the Soviet Union. Immediately recognized as a landmarkand long-overdue work of scholarship, Gulag is an essentialbook for anyone who wishes to understand the history of thetwentieth century.

FORT SUMTER TO PERRYVILLE "Anyone who wants to relive the Civil War, as thousands ofAmericans apparently do, will go through this volume withpleasure.... Years from now, Foote's monumental narrative mostlikely will continue to be read and remembered as a classic of itskind."--New York Herald Tribune Book Review "Here, for a certainty, is one of the great historical narrativesof our century, a unique and brilliant achievement, one that mustbe firmly placed in the ranks of the masters."--Van Allen Bradley,Chicago Daily News

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

On April 10, 1970, Hill 927 was occupied by troopers of theScreaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division. By July, theactivities of the artillery and infantry of Ripcord had caught theattention of the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) and a long and deadlysiege ensued. Ripcord was the Screaming Eagles’ last chance to dosignificant damage to the NVA in the A Shau Valley before thedivision was withdrawn from Vietnam and returned to the UnitedStates. At Ripcord, the enemy counterattacked with ferocity, using mortarand antiaircraft fire to inflict heavy causalities on the unitsoperating there. The battle lasted four and a half months andexemplified the ultimate frustration of the Vietnam War: theinability of the American military to bring to bear its enormousresources to win on the battlefield. In the end, the 101stevacuated Ripcord, leaving the NVA in control of the battlefield.Contrary to the mantra “We won every battle but lost the war,” theUnited States was defeated at Ripcord. Now, at last, th

Here are two thousand years of London’s history and folklore,its chroniclers and criminals and plain citizens, its food anddrink and countless pleasures. Blackfriar’s and Charing Cross,Paddington and Bedlam. Westminster Abbey and St. Martin in theFields. Cockneys and vagrants. Immigrants, peasants, and punks. ThePlague, the Great Fire, the Blitz. London at all times of day andnight, and in all kinds of weather. In well-chosen anecdotes, keenobservations, and the words of hundreds of its citizens andvisitors, Ackroyd reveals the ingenuity and grit and vitality ofLondon. Through a unique thematic tour of the physical city and itsinimitable soul, the city comes alive.

In this vivid and compelling narrative, the Seven Years'War–long seen as a mere backdrop to the American Revolution–takeson a whole new significance. Relating the history of the war as itdeveloped, Anderson shows how the complex array of forces broughtinto conflict helped both to create Britain’s empire and to sow theseeds of its eventual dissolution. Beginning with a skirmish in the Pennsylvania backcountryinvolving an inexperienced George Washington, the Iroquois chiefTanaghrisson, and the ill-fated French emissary Jumonville,Anderson reveals a chain of events that would lead to worldconflagration. Weaving together the military, economic, andpolitical motives of the participants with unforgettable portraitsof Washington, William Pitt, Montcalm, and many others, Andersonbrings a fresh perspective to one of America’s most important wars,demonstrating how the forces unleashed there would irrevocablychange the politics of empire in North America.

Here’s the real history of our country. How Capitalism SavedAmerica explodes the myths spun by Michael Moore, the liberalmedia, Hollywood, academia, and the rest of the anticapitalistestablishment. Whether it’s Michael Moore or the New York Times, Hollywood oracademia, a growing segment in America is waging a war oncapitalism. We hear that greedy plutocrats exploit the Americanpublic; that capitalism harms consumers, the working class, and theenvironment; that the government needs to rein in capitalism; andon and on. Anticapitalist critiques have only grown more fevered inthe wake of corporate scandals like Enron and WorldCom. Indeed, the2004 presidential campaign has brought frequent calls tore-regulate the American economy. But the anticapitalist arguments are pure bunk, as Thomas J.DiLorenzo reveals in How Capitalism Saved America. DiLorenzo, aprofessor of economics, shows how capitalism has made America themost prosperous nation on earth—and how the sort of governmentregulation th

Mining newspaper files and the deep archives and journalisticexpertise of the Newseum, an interactive museum of news located inWashington, D.C., Outrage, Passion and Uncommon Sense examinesdecisive issues and events in U.S. history through the nation'seditorial pages. Approximately fifty editorials are reprinted hereon topics ranging from suffrage and race to war and politics—evenChristmas—with probing analysis by Gartner. "Editorials are the soul of the newspaper," Gartner says in thebook's introduction. "Maybe the heart and the soul. And, on a goodnewspaper that knows and understands and loves its hometown, or itshome country, the editorial is the heart and the soul of the town,or the nation, as well." Readers will also see a visual account of the era throughtwo-color illustrations, showcasing editorial cartoons, photographsand typographic details from period newspapers. Outrage, Passionand Uncommon Sense is a vital, significant collection that portraysthe undeniable influence one edi

The last quarter of the eighteenth century remains the mostpolitically creative era in American history, when a dedicatedgroup of men undertook a bold experiment in political ideals. Itwas a time of both triumphs and tragedies—all of which contributedto the shaping of our burgeoning nation. Ellis casts an incisiveeye on the gradual pace of the American Revolution and thecontributions of such luminaries as Washington, Jefferson, andMadison, and brilliantly analyzes the failures of the founders toadequately solve the problems of slavery and the treatment ofNative Americans. With accessible prose and stunning eloquence,Ellis delineates in American Creation an era of flawed greatness,at a time when understanding our origins is more important thanever.