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

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

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

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

In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Marine Corps’ ground campaignup the Tigris and Euphrates was notable for speed andaggressiveness unparalleled in military history. Little has beenwritten, however, of the air support that guaranteed the drive’ssuccess. Paving the way for the rush to Baghdad was “the hammerfrom above”–in the form of attack helicopters, jet fighters,transport, and other support aircraft. Now a former Marine fighterpilot shares the gripping never-before-told stories of the Marineswho helped bring to an end the regime of Saddam Hussein. As Jay Stout reveals, the air war had actually been in theplanning stages ever since the victory of Operation Desert Storm,twelve years earlier. But when Operation Iraqi Freedom officiallycommenced on March 20, 2003, the Marine Corps entered the fightwith an aviation arm at its smallest since before World War II.Still, with the motto “Speed Equals Success,” the separate air andground units acted as a team to get the job done. Drawing

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.

This sweeping history provides the reader with a betterunderstanding of America’s consumer society, obsession withshopping, and devotion to brands. Focusing on the advertisingcampaigns of Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, Wrigley’s, Gillette, and Kodak,Strasser shows how companies created both national brands andnational markets. These new brands eventually displaced genericmanufacturers and created a new desire for brand-name goods. Thebook also details the rise and development of department storessuch as Macy’s, grocery store chains such as A P and PigglyWiggly, and mail-order companies like Sears Roebuck and MontgomeryWard.

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.

The secretive Mysteries conducted at Eleusis in Greece fornearly two millennia have long puzzled scholars with strangeaccounts of initiates experiencing otherworldly journeys. In thisgroundbreaking work, three experts—a mycologist, a chemist, and ahistorian—argue persuasively that the sacred potion given toparticipants in the course of the ritual contained a psychoactiveentheogen. The authors then expand the discussion to show thatnatural psychedelic agents have been used in spiritual ritualsacross history and cultures. Although controversial when firstpublished in 1978, the book’s hypothesis has become more widelyaccepted in recent years, as knowledge of ethnobotany has deepened.The authors have played critical roles in the modern rediscovery ofentheogens, and The Road to Eleusis presents an authoritativeexposition of their views. The book’s themes of the universality ofexperiential religion, the suppression of that knowledge byexploitative forces, and the use of psychedelics to reconcile theh

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.

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

At the end of World War II, long before an Allied victory wasassured and before the scope of the atrocities orchestrated byHitler would come into focus or even assume the name of theHolocaust, Allied forces had begun to prepare for its aftermath.Taking cues from the end of the First World War, planners had begunthe futile task of preparing themselves for a civilian healthcrisis that, due in large part to advances in medical science,would never come. The problem that emerged was not widespreaddisease among Europe’s population, as anticipated, but massivedisplacement among those who had been uprooted from home andcountry during the war. Displaced Persons, as the refugees would come to be known, were notcomprised entirely of Jews. Millions of Latvians, Poles,Ukrainians, and Yugoslavs, in addition to several hundred thousandGermans, were situated in a limbo long overlooked by historians.While many were speedily repatriated, millions of refugees refusedto return to countries that were forever changed by the wa

On April 29, 1968, the North Vietnamese Army is spotted lessthan four miles from the U.S. Marines’ Dong Ha Combat Base. Intensefighting develops in nearby Dai Do as the 2d Battalion, 4thMarines, known as “the Magnificent Bastards,” struggles to ejectNVA forces from this strategic position. Yet the BLT 2/4 Marines defy the brutal onslaught. Pressingforward, America’s finest warriors rout the NVA from theirfortress-hamlets–often in deadly hand-to-hand combat. At the end oftwo weeks of desperate, grinding battles, the Marines and theinfantry battalion supporting them are torn to shreds. But againstall odds, they beat back their savage adversary. The MagnificentBastards captures that gripping conflict in all its horror, hell,and heroism. “Superb . . . among the best writing on the Vietnam War . . .Nolan has skillfully woven operational records and oral historyinto a fascinating narrative that puts the reader in the thick ofthe action.” –Jon T. Hoffman, author of Chesty “

Award-winning historian Deborah Lipstadt gives us acom?pelling reassessment of the groundbreaking trial that hasbecome a touchstone for judicial proceedings throughout the worldin which victims of genocide confront its perpetrators. The capture of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eich?mann by Israeliagents in Argentina in May of 1960 and his subsequent trial in TelAviv by an Israeli court electrified the world. The public debateit sparked on where, how, and by whom Nazi war criminals should bebrought to justice, and the international media cov?erage of thetrial itself, is recognized as a watershed moment in how thecivilized world in general and Ho?locaust survivors in particularfound the means to deal with the legacy of genocide on a scale thathad never been seen before. In The Eichmann Trial, award-winning historian Deborah Lipstadtgives us an overview of the trial and analyzes the dramatic effectthat the testimony of sur?vivors in a court of law—which was itselfnot without controversy—had o