This acclaimed book on the Wright Brothers takes the readerstraight to the heart of their remarkable achievement, focusing onthe technology and offering a clear, concise chronicle of preciselywhat they accomplished and how they did it. This book deals withthe process of the invention of the airplane and how the brothersidentified and resolved a range of technical puzzles that othershad attempted to solve for a century. Step by step, the book details the path of invention (includingthe important wind tunnel experiments of 1901) which culminated inthe momentous flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903, the first majormilestone in aviation history. Enhanced by original photos,designs, drawings, notebooks, letters and diaries of the WrightBrothers, Visions of a Flying Machine is a fascinating book thatwill be of interest to engineers, historians, enthusiasts, oranyone interested in the process of invention.

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 22 June 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union, onehundred fifty divisions advancing on three axes in a surpriseattack that overwhelmed and destroyed whatever opposition theRussians were able to muster. The German High Command was under theimpression that the Red Army could be destroyed west of the DneprRiver and that there would be no need for conducting operations incold, snow, and mud. They were wrong. In reality, the extreme conditions of the German war in Russiawere so brutal that past experiences simply paled before them.Everything in Russia--the land, the weather, the distances, andabove all the people--was harder, harsher, more unforgiving, andmore deadly than anything the German soldier had ever facedbefore. Based on the recollections of four veteran German commanders ofthose battles, FIGHTING IN HELL describes in detail what happenedwhen the world's best-publicized "supermen" met the world's mostbrutal fighting. It is not a tale for the squeamish.

“What is the scene or incident in European history that youwould like to have witnessed-and why?” In this companion to I Wish I'd Been There: Twenty HistoriansBring to Life the Dramatic Events that Changed America , some ofour finest historical writers now turn their attention to Europe,with lively and detailed accounts of some of the most dramaticevents in history. Guided by peerless scholars such as PaulKennedy, John Keegan, Ross King, Freeman Dyson, and KatherineDuncan-Jones, readers will be transported to the signing of MagnaCarta, the Versailles Conference, the German surrender in WWII onLuneburg Heath, and other key turning points in the drama ofEuropean history. These essays encompass two millenia and an entirecontinent, addressing issues of politics, law, religion, peace andwar, science and the arts, and social change, all telescoped intofinely observed narratives. The result is an historical pageant ofcharacters and episodes that will attract and delight all readersof history.

In this gripping memoir, the daughter of a man who conspiredto assassinate Hitler tells the story of three generations of herfamily and offers unparalleled insight into the German experiencein the last century. On August 15, 1944, Major Hans Georg Klamroth was tried fortreason for his part in the July Plot to kill Hitler. Eleven dayslater, he was executed. His youngest daughter, Wibke Bruhns, wassix years old. Decades later, watching a documentary about theevents of July 20, she saw images of her father in court suddenlyappear on-screen. “I stare at this man with the empty face. I don'tknow him. But I can see myself in him.” How could her familysuccumb to Nazi sympathies? And what made her father finallyrenounce Hitler?

The heartwarming New York Times bestseller by the author ofThe Greatest Generation "When I wrote about the men and women who came out of theDepression, who won great victories and made lasting sacrifices inWorld War II and then returned home to begin building the world wehave today ... it was my way of saying thank you. I was notprepared for the avalanche of letters and responses touched off bythat book. "I had written a book about America, and now America was writingback." Tom Brokaw touched the heart of the nation with his towering #1bestseller The Greatest Generation, a moving tribute to those whogave the world so much -- and who left an enduring legacy ofheroism and grace. The Greatest Generation Speaks was born out ofthe vast outpouring of letters Brokaw received from people eager toshare their personal memories and experiences of a momentous timein America's history. These letters and reflections cross time, distance, andgenerations as they give voice to lives forever chan

A firsthand look at the Battle of Gettysburg offers Union andConfederate viewpoints of the conflict, recreating the three daysand discussing the decisions of Lee, Longstreet, and Meade.Reprint.

Infinitely readable and absorbing, Bruce Catton's The CivilWar is one of the best-selling, most widely read general historiesof the war available in a single volume. Newly introduced by thecritically acclaimed Civil War historian James M. McPherson, TheCivil War vividly traces one of the most moving chapters inAmerican history, from the early division between the North and theSouth to the final surrender of Confederate troops. Catton'saccount of battles is carefully interwoven with details about thepolitical activities of the Union and Confederate armies anddiplomatic efforts overseas. This new edition of The Civil War is amust-have for anyone interested in the war that dividedAmerica.

For the first time in a generation, here is a bold new accountof the Battle of the Marne, a cataclysmic encounter that preventeda quick German victory in World War I and changed the course of twowars and the world. With exclusive information based on newlyunearthed documents, Holger H. Herwig re-creates the dramaticbattle and reinterprets Germany’s aggressive “Schlieffen Plan” as acarefully crafted design to avoid a protracted war against superiorcoalitions. He paints a fresh portrait of the run-up to the Marneand puts in dazzling relief the Battle of the Marne itself: theFrench resolve to win, and the crucial lack of coordination betweenGermany’s First and Second Armies. Herwig also provides stunningcameos of all the important players, from Germany’s Chief ofGeneral Staff Helmuth von Moltke to his rival, France’s JosephJoffre. Revelatory and riveting, this is the source on thisseminal event.

Robert V. Brulle, who flew seventy ground support missionswith the 366th Fighter Group, links his daily experiences in thecockpit not only with the battles in which he participated but alsowith events in the wider European theater. Combining anecdotes fromhis personal diary, research in US and German records, andinterviews with participants from both sides, Brulle details acombat career that began just after D-Day, when he flew columncover for Allied troops as they chased the German military out ofFrance. He then describes the brutal, six-week Hürtgen Forestcampaign, during which his fighter group lost 15 pilots and 18aircraft. He also tells how the otherwise bitterly fought Battle ofthe Bulge provided the 366th with an opportunity to successfullyengage 60 Luftwaffe airplanes in a dogfight directly over theirairfield. Angels Zero combines both personal and historical detail tovividly re-create a lesser-known aspect of the air war inEurope.

A war that started under questionable pretexts. A presidentwho is convinced of his country’s might and right. A military andpolitical stalemate with United States troops occupying a foreignland against a stubborn and deadly insurgency. The time is the 1840s. The enemy is Mexico. And the war is one ofthe least known and most important in both Mexican and UnitedStates history—a war that really began much earlier and whoseconsequences still echo today. Acclaimed historian David A. Clarypresents this epic struggle for a continent for the first time fromboth sides, using original Mexican and North Americansources. To Mexico, the yanqui illegals pouring into her territories ofTexas and California threatened Mexican sovereignty and security.To North Americans, they manifested their destiny to rule thecontinent. Two nations, each raising an eagle as her standard,blustered and blundered into a war because no one on either sidewas brave enough to resist the march into it. In Eagles and Empi

Encyclopedic and panoramic in its scope, this fascinating workchronicles the rich spiritual, political, and cultural institutionsof Arab history through 13 centuries.

Now in its third edition, this classic study has been updatedfor the first time in more than twenty years. Chaim Herzog, former President of Israel, was involved in everyconflict involving Israel and its Arab neighbors from before the1948 War of Independence. The Arab-Israeli Wars is Herzog’sacclaimed history of Israel’s fight since 1947 to preserve herexistence against repeated attacks. Revised after his death byfriend and colleague General Shomo Gazit, this new edition alsocovers the events of the past twenty years, including the pulloutfrom Lebanon, both intifadas, the first Gulf War, the Oslo Process,and beyond. Riveting, informative, and comprehensive, thisauthoritative account tells the story of Israel’s struggle tosurvive but gives a clear picture of the people and politics thatcontinue to shape the destiny of this crucial region.

The complete historical works of the greatest chronicler ofthe Roman Empire in a wholly revised and updated translation. A brilliant narrator and a master stylist, Tacitus served asadministrator and senator, a career that gave him an intimate viewof the empire at its highest levels, and of the dramatic, violent,and often bloody events of the first century. In the Annals, hewrites about Augustus Caesar’s death and observes the innerworkings of the courts of the emperors Tiberius and Nero. In theHistories, he describes an empire in tumult, four emperors reigningin one year, each overthrown by the next. The Agricola, a biographyof Tacitus’s father-in-law, Julius Agricola—the most celebratedgovernor of Roman Britain—is the first detailed account of theisland that would eventually rule over a quarter of the earth. Andin the Germania, the famed warrior-barbarians of ancient Germanycome richly to life.

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

Paul Kriwaczek begins this illuminating and immenselypleasurable chronicle of Yiddish civilization during the Romanempire, when Jewish culture first spread to Europe. We see theburgeoning exile population disperse, as its notable diplomats,artists and thinkers make their mark in far-flung cities and founda self-governing Yiddish world. By its late-medieval heyday, thiseconomically successful, intellectually adventurous, and self-awaresociety stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Kriwaczektraces, too, the slow decline of Yiddish culture in Europe andRussia, and highlights fresh offshoots in the New World.Combiningfamily anecdote, travelogue, original research, and a keenunderstanding of Yiddish art and literature, Kriwaczek gives us anexceptional portrait of a culture which, though nearlyextinguished, has an influential radiance still.

Only now can the full scope of the war in the Pacific be fullyunderstood. Historian Ronald Spector, drawing on newly declassifiedintelligence files, an abundance of British and American archivalmaterial. Japanese scholarship and documents, and research andmemoirs of scholarly and military men, has written a stunning,complete and up-to-date history of the conflict.

In AD 476 the Roman Empire fell–or rather, its western halfdid. Its eastern half, which would come to be known as theByzantine Empire, would endure and often flourish for anothereleven centuries. Though its capital would move to Constantinople,its citizens referred to themselves as Roman for the entireduration of the empire’s existence. Indeed, so did its neighbors,allies, and enemies: When the Turkish Sultan Mehmet II conqueredConstantinople in 1453, he took the title Caesar of Rome, placinghimself in a direct line that led back to Augustus. For far too many otherwise historically savvy people today, thestory of the Byzantine civilization is something of a void. Yet formore than a millennium, Byzantium reigned as the glittering seat ofChristian civilization. When Europe fell into the Dark Ages,Byzantium held fast against Muslim expansion, keeping Christianityalive. When literacy all but vanished in the West, Byzantium madeprimary education available to both sexes. Students debated themerits

Though it lasted for only six tense days in June, the 1967Arab-Israeli war never really ended. Every crisis that has rippedthrough this region in the ensuing decades, from the Yom Kippur Warof 1973 to the ongoing intifada, is a direct consequence of thosesix days of fighting. Michael B. Oren’s magnificent Six Days ofWar, an internationally acclaimed bestseller, is the firstcomprehensive account of this epoch-making event. Writing with a novelist’s command of narrative and a historian’sgrasp of fact and motive, Oren reconstructs both the lightning-fastaction on the battlefields and the political shocks thatelectrified the world. Extraordinary personalities—Moshe Dayan andGamal Abdul Nasser, Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin—rose andtoppled from power as a result of this war; borders were redrawn;daring strategies brilliantly succeeded or disastrously failed in amatter of hours. And the balance of power changed—in the MiddleEast and in the world. A towering work of history and anenthral

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 September 1944, the Allies believed that Hitler’s armywas beaten and expected the bloodshed to end by Christmas. Yet aseries of mistakes and setbacks, including the Battle of the Bulge,drastically altered this timetable and led to eight more months ofbrutal fighting. With Armageddon , the eminent militaryhistorian Max Hastings gives us memorable accounts of the greatbattles and captures their human impact on soldiers and civilians.He tells the story of both the Eastern and Western Fronts, raisingprovocative questions and offering vivid portraits of the greatleaders. This rousing and revelatory chronicle brings to life thecrucial final months of the twentieth century’s greatest globalconflict.

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.

In Patton, Montgomery, Rommel , one of Britain's mostaccomplished military scholars presents an unprecedented study ofthe land war in the North African and European theaters, as well astheir chief commanders—three men who also happened to be the mostcompelling dramatis personae of World War II. Beyond spellbinding depictions of pivotal confrontations at ElAlamein, Monte Cassino, and the Ardennes forest, author-scholarTerry Brighton illuminates the personal motivations and historicalevents that propelled the three men's careers: how Patton's,Montgomery's, and Rommel's Great War experiences helped to moldtheir style of command—and how, exactly, they managed to applytheir arguably megalomaniacal personalities (and hithertounrecognized political acumen and tact) to advance their careersand strategic vision. Opening new avenues of inquiry into the lives and careers of threemen widely profiled by scholars and popular historians alike,Brighton definitively answers numerous lingering and controversialquestion