Leading a Learning Revolution tells the compelling story of a learning revolution that took place within the U.S. Department of Defense. Written by practitioners who actually walked the walk, this account of the creation of Defense Acquisition University (DAU) provides a clear blueprint that others can follow. It shares, in detail, the best practices they developed, so that the thousands of training organizations worldwide striving to create premier corporate universities can catapult forward. Offering an insider s look at the process, the authors clearly explain how they transformed an outdated training provider into a world-class university. Step-by-step the book outlines the enduring principles that were pivotal to Defense Acquisition University s success and describes the environment, early victories, current methods, and subsequent results. The authors discuss how to establish a mission and vision, develop a performance-based strategic planning process, and tackle change initiative. They also expl

The remarkable life of Alexander the Great, one of thegreatest military geniuses of all time, vividly told by one of theworld's leading exp erts in Greek history. With all theintensity, insight, and narrative drive that made The Spartans sucha hit with critics and readers, Paul Cartledge's Alexander theGreat: glowingly illuminates the brief but iconic life of Alexander(356-323 BC), king of Macedon, conqueror of the Persian Empire, andfounder of a new world order. Cartledge, the distinguished scholarand historian long acknowledged as the leading internationalauthority on ancient Sparta and Greece, brilliantly evokesAlexander's remarkable political and military accomplishments,leads us along the geographical path of his victorious armies, andcompellingly charting the tremendous field of this warrior hero'sinfluence. Alexander's legacy has had an astounding impact onmilitary tacticians, scholars, and statesmen—in his own lifetimeand in ours. In various countries and at various times he has beenseen as

Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empirecompresses thirteen turbulent centuries into an epic narrative shotthrough with insight, irony and incisive character analysis.Sceptical about Christianity, sympathetic to the barbarian invadersand the Byzantine Empire, constantly aware of how political leadersoften achieve the exact opposite of what they intend, Gibbon wasboth alert to the broad pattern of events and significant revealingdetails.

More populous than any other country on earth, China alsooccupies a unique place in our modern world for the continuity ofits history and culture. In this sumptuously illustratedsingle-volume history, now in its second edition, noted historianPatricia Buckley Ebrey traces the origins of Chinese culture fromprehistoric times to the present. She follows its development fromthe rise of Confucianism, Buddhism, and the great imperialdynasties to the Mongol, Manchu, and Western intrusions and themodern communist state. Her scope is phenomenal - embracing Chinesearts, culture, economics, society and its treatment of women,foreign policy, emigration, and politics, including the keyuprisings of 1919 and 1989 in Tiananmen Square. Both acomprehensive introduction to an extraordinary civilization and anexpert exploration of the continuities and disjunctures of Chinesehistory, Professor Ebrey's book has become an indispensable guideto China past and present. This second edition includes a newchapter on China's rece

Edward Gibbon's six-volume History of the Decline and Fall ofthe Roman Empire (1776-88) is among the most magnificent andambitious narratives in European literature. Its subject is thefate of one of the world's greatest civilizations over thirteencenturies - its rulers, wars and society, and the events that ledto its disastrous collapse. Here, in volumes three and four, Gibbonvividly recounts the waves of barbarian invaders under commanderssuch as Alaric and Attila, who overran and eventually destroyed theWest. He then turns his gaze to events in the East, where even theachievements of the Byzantine emperor Justinian and the campaignsof the brilliant military leader Belisarius could not conceal thefundamental weaknesses of their empire.

A masterpiece o f the historian’s art, Hugh Thomas’s TheSpanish Civil War remains the best, most engrossing narrativeof one of the most emblematic and misunderstood wars of thetwentieth century. Revised and updated with significant newmaterial, including new revelations about atrocities perpetratedagainst civilians by both sides in this epic conflict, this"definitive work on the subject" (Richard Bernstein, The NewYork Times ) has been given a fresh face forty years after itsinitial publication in 1961. In brilliant, moving detail, Thomasanalyzes a devastating conflict in which the hopes, dreams, anddogmas of a century exploded onto the battlefield. Like no otheraccount, The Spanish Civil War dramatically reassembles theevents that led a European nation, in a continent on the brink ofworld war, to divide against itself, bringing into play themachinations of Franco and Hitler, the bloodshed of Guernica, andthe deeply inspiring heroics of those who rallied to the side ofdemocracy. Communists, an

Mann is well aware that much of the history he relates isnecessarily speculative, the product of pot-shard interpretationand precise scientific measurements that often end up beingradically revised in later decades. But the most compelling of hiseye-opening revisionist stories are among the best-founded: thestories of early American-European contact. To many of those whowere there, the earliest encounters felt more like a meeting ofequals than one of natural domination. And those who came later andfound an emptied landscape that seemed ripe for the taking, Mannargues convincingly, encountered not the natural and unchangingstate of the native American, but the evidence of a suddencalamity: the ravages of what was likely the greatest epidemic inhuman history, the smallpox and other diseases introducedinadvertently by Europeans to a population without immunity, whichswept through the Americas faster than the explorers who broughtit, and left behind for their discovery a land that held only ashadow of the

In her lauded biography England’s Mistress, Kate Williamspainted a vivid and intimate portrait of Emma Hamilton, the loverof English national hero Lord Horatio Nelson. Now, with the samekeen insight and gift for telling detail, Williams provides agripping account of Queen Victoria’s rise to the throne and herearly years in power—as well as the tragic, little-known story ofthe princess whose demise made it all possible. Toward the end of the eighteenth century,monarchies across Europe found themselves in crisis. With mad KingGeorge III and his delinquent offspring tarnishing the realm, theEnglish pinned their hopes on the only legitimate heir to thethrone: the lovely and prudent Princess Charlotte, daughter of thePrince of Wales and granddaughter of the king. Sadly, those dreamsfaded when, at age twenty-one, she died after a complicatedpregnancy and stillbirth. While a nation grieved, Charlotte’spower-hungry uncles plotted quickly to produce a new heir. Only theDuke of Kent proved successful

Instead of the dying Old Regime, Schama presents an ebullientcountry, vital and inventive, infatuated with novelty andtechnology--a strikingly fresh view of Louis XVI's France. A NewYork Times bestseller in hardcover. 200 illustrations.

An absorbing, revelatory, and definitive account ofone of the greatest tragedies in human history Adroitly blending narrative, de*ion, and analysis, RichardJ. Evans portrays a society rushing headlong to self-destructionand taking much of Europe with it. Interweaving a broad narrativeof the war's progress from a wide range of people, Evans revealsthe dynamics of a society plunged into war at every level. Thegreat battles and events of the conflict are here, but just astelling is Evans's re- creation of the daily experience of ordinaryGermans in wartime. At the center of the book is the Naziextermi?nation of the Jews. The final book in Richard J. Evan'sthree-volume history of Hitler's Germany, hailed "a masterpiece" by The New York Times, The Third Reich at War lays bare themost momentous and tragic years of the Nazi regime.

A groundbreaking book, this unprecedented study is theauthoritative account of the best-known intelligence organisationin theworld. Essential reading for anyone interested in the historyof espionage, the two world wars, modern British government and theconductof international relations in the first half of thetwentieth century, MI6:The History of the Secret IntelligenceService 1909-1949is a uniquely important examination of the roleand significance of intelligence in the modern world.

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

Amazon.com Review From primordial nothingness to this very moment, A Short Historyof Nearly Everything reports what happened and how humans figuredit out. To accomplish this daunting literary task, Bill Bryson useshundreds of sources, from popular science books to interviews withluminaries in various fields. His aim is to help people like him,who rejected stale school textbooks and dry explanations, toappreciate how we have used science to understand the smallestparticles and the unimaginably vast expanses of space. With hisdistinctive prose style and wit, Bryson succeeds admirably. ThoughA Short History clocks in at a daunting 500-plus pages and coversthe same material as every science book before it, it readssomething like a particularly detailed novel (albeit without aplot). Each longish chapter is devoted to a topic like the age ofour planet or how cells work, and these chapters are grouped intolarger sections such as "The Size of the Earth" and "Life Itself."Bryson chats with experts like Ri

Hailed on publication in 1957 as "probably the only book published this year that will outlive the century," this is a brilliant of the idea that there are fixed laws in history and that human beings are able to predict them.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National BookAward Based on hitherto unexamined sources: interviews with ex-slaves,diaries and accounts by former slaveholders, this "rich andadmirably written book" (Eugene Genovese, The New York TimesBook Review ) aims to show how, during the Civil War and afterEmancipation, blacks and whites interacted in ways that dramatizednot only their mutual dependency, but the ambiguities and tensionsthat had always been latent in "the peculiar institution."

The fifty most important speeches of all time: their context,history, and meaning for our world The speeches remembered by history are rarely remembered incontext; but it was almost always the context, not the speechitself, that made each address so significant. Terry Golway hasselected fifty speeches that changed the world through the sheerpower of their oratory. From Moses to Mandela and others fromacross time and around the world, Golway's selections are eachilluminated with an insightful essay setting the speech squarely inits historical contexts and detailing its impact and consequences.In doing so, Golway allows us to fully understand their importanceand effect. Including speeches from Jesus, Mohammed, Cicero, Pericles,Cromwell, Washington, Pope Urban II, John Winthrop, Kennedy,Emperor Hirohito, Barbara Jordan, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev,Robespierre, Patrick Henry, Queen Elizabeth I, Reagan, Mandela,FDR, Hitler, Churchill, Barack Obama and many more, this book is anhistoric achievement.

First published in 1946, History of Western Philosophy went onto become the best-selling philosophy book of the twentiethcentury. A dazzlingly ambitious project, it remains unchallenged tothis day as the ultimate introduction to Western philosophy.Providing a sophisticated overview of the ideas that have perplexedpeople from time immemorial, Russell's History of WesternPhilosophy offered a cogent précis of its subject. Of course thiscannot be the only reason it ended up the best selling philosophybook of the twentieth century. Russell's book was 'long on wit,intelligence and curmudgeonly scepticism', as the New York Timesnoted, and it is this, coupled with the sheer brilliance of itsscholarship, that has made Russell's History of Western Philosophyone of the most important philosophical works of all time.

In An Army at Dawn - winner of the Pulitzer Prize - RickAtkinson provided a dramatic and authoritative history of theAllied triumph in North Africa. Now, in The Day of the Battle, hefollows the strengthening American and British armies as theyinvade Sicily in July 1943 and then, mile by bloody mile, fighttheir way north. The Italian campaign's outcome was never certain;in fact, Roosevelt, Churchill and their military advisors engagedin heated debate about whether an invasion of the so-called softunderbelly of Europe was even a good idea. But once underway, thecommitment to liberate Italy from the Nazis never wavered, despitethe agonizingly high price. The battles at Salerno, Anzio, andMonte Cassino were particularly difficult and lethal, yet as themonths passed, the Allied forces continued to push the Germans upthe Italian peninsula. And with the liberation of Rome in June1944, ultimate victory at last began to seem inevitable. Drawing onan astonishing array of primary source material, written with greatd

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 Battle ofNormandy was the greatest offensive campaign the world had everseen. Millions of soldiers struggling for the control of Europewere thrust onto the front lines of a massive war unlike anyexperienced in history. But this greatest of clashes would prove tobe the crucible in which the outcome of World War II would bedecided. It began on D-Day. June 6, 1944-the day that the Allied Forceslaunched Operation Overlord: the great crusade to free Europe fromthe iron grip of Nazi Germany. But only when the troops were ashoredid the real battle begin. With Nazi defenders marshaling to stop the invaders, Hitler and hisgenerals schemed to counterattack. Tightly constricted hedgerowcountry and bitter German resistance held the Allied advance to acrawl. Suddenly the Allies broke through and trapped the Naziarmies. Yet within weeks of this stunning disaster, the Germanssmashed the most dangerous Allied offensive yet. How was this possible? In Normandy Crucible , noted authorJohn Prados offers a penetrating acco