This New York Times bestseller is the hilarious philosophy course everyone wishes they d had in school Outrageously funny, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . . has been a breakout bestseller ever since authors and born vaudevillians Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein did their schtick on NPR s Weekend Edition . Lively, original, and powerfully informative, Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar . . . is a not-so-reverent crash course through the great philosophical thinkers and traditions, from Existentialism ( What do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common? ) to Logic ( Sherlock Holmes never deduced anything ). Philosophy 101 for those who like to take the heavy stuff lightly, this is a joy to read and finally, it all makes sense! Watch a QuickTime trailer for this book. ,

The "dean of Cold War historians" ( The New York Times )now presents the definitive account of the global confrontationthat dominated the last half of the twentieth century. Drawing onnewly opened archives and the reminiscences of the major players,John Lewis Gaddis explains not just what happened but why —from the months in 1945 when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.went from alliance to antagonism to the barely averted holocaust ofthe Cuban Missile Crisis to the maneuvers of Nixon and Mao, Reaganand Gorbachev. Brilliant, accessible, almost Shakespearean in itsdrama, The Cold War stands as a triumphant summation of theera that, more than any other, shaped our own.

Long before Rosa Parks became famous for resisting Jim Crowlaws, she was engaged in advocating for social justice for blackwomen who were the victims of sexual violence at the hands of whitemen. Historian McGuire aims to rewrite the history of the civilrights movement by highlighting sexual violence in the broadercontext of racial injustice and the fight for freedom. Parks workedas an investigator for the NAACP branch office in Montgomery,Alabama, specializing in cases involving black women who had beensexually assaulted by white men––cases that often went untried andwere the political opposite of the allegations of black men rapingwhite women ending in summary lynching with or without trials.McGuire traces the history of several rape cases that triggeredvehement resistance by the NAACP and other groups, including the1975 trial of Joan Little, who killed a white jailer who sexuallyassaulted her. Despite the long tradition of dismissing chargesbrought by blacks against whites, several of the cases e

The ideas of US Air Force Colonel John Boyd have transformedAmerican military policy and practice. A first-rate fighter pilotand a self-taught scholar, he wrote the first manual on jet aerialcombat; spearheaded the design of both of the Air Force's premierfighters, the F-15 and the F-16; and shaped the tactics that savedlives during the Vietnam War and the strategies that won the GulfWar. Many of America's best-known military and political leadersconsulted Boyd on matters of technology, strategy, andtheory. In The Mind of War, Grant T. Hammond offers the first completeportrait of John Boyd, his groundbreaking ideas, and his enduringlegacy. Based on extensive interviews with Boyd and those who knewhim as well as on a close analysis of Boyd's briefings, thisintellectual biography brings the work of an extraordinary thinkerto a broader public.

In retrospect, writes David Halberstam, "the pace of thefifties seemed slower, almost languid. Social ferment, however, wasbeginning just beneath this placid surface." He shows how theUnited States began to emerge from the long shadow of FDR's 12-yearpresidency, with the military-industrial complex and the Beatmovement simultaneously growing strong. Television brought not onlysituation comedies but controversial congressional hearings intomillions of living rooms. While Alfred Kinsey was studying people'ssex lives, Gregory Pincus and other researchers began work on apill that would forever alter the course of American reproductivepractices. Halberstam takes on these social upheavals and more,charting a course that is as easy to navigate as it iswide-ranging.

For nearly twenty years, Aaron David Miller has played acentral role in U.S. efforts to broker Arab-Israeli peace as anadvisor to presidents, secretaries of state, and national securityadvisors. Without partisanship or finger-pointing, Miller recordswhat went right, what went wrong, and how we got where we aretoday. Here is a look at the peace process from a place at thenegotiation table, filled with behind-the-scenes strategy, colorfulanecdotes and equally colorful characters, and new interviews withpresidents, secretaries of state, and key Arab and Israelileaders. Honest, critical, and often controversial, Miller’s insider’saccount offers a brilliant new analysis of the problem ofArab-Israeli peace and how it still might be solved.

One overcast April morning in 1943, a fisherman notices a corpsefloating in the sea off the coast of Spain. When the body isbrought ashore, it is identified as a British soldier, MajorWilliam Martin of the Royal Marines. A leather attache case,secured to his belt,reveals an intelligence gold mine: top-secretAllied invasion plans.

Despite all that has already been written on Franklin DelanoRoosevelt, Joseph Persico has uncovered a hitherto overlookeddimension of FDR's wartime leadership: his involvement inintelligence and espionage operations. Roosevelt's Secret War is crowded with remarkablerevelations: -FDR wanted to bomb Tokyo before Pearl Harbor -A defector from Hitler's inner circle reported directly to theOval Office -Roosevelt knew before any other world leader of Hitler's plan toinvade Russia -Roosevelt and Churchill concealed a disaster costing hundreds ofBritish soldiers' lives in order to protect Ultra, the Britishcodebreaking secret -An unwitting Japanese diplomat provided the President with adirect pipeline into Hitler's councils Roosevelt's Secret War also describes how much FDR had beentold--before the Holocaust--about the coming fate of Europe's Jews. And Persico also provides a definitive answer to the perennialquestion Did FDR know in advance about the attack on PearlHarbor? By temperament and chara

Locked in the Cabinet is a close-up view of the way thingswork, and often don't work, at the highest levels ofgovernment--and a uniquely personal account by the man whose ideasinspired and animated much of the Clinton campaign of 1992 and whobecame the cabinet officer in charge of helping ordinary Americansget better jobs. Robert B. Reich, writer, teacher, socialcritic--and a friend of the Clintons since they were all in theirtwenties--came to be known as the "conscience of the Clintonadministration and one of the most successful Labor Secretaries inhistory. Here is his sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignantchronicle of trying to put ideas and ideals into practice. With wit, passion, and dead-aim honesty, Reich writes of those inWashington who possess hard heads and soft hearts, and those withexactly the opposite attributes. He introduces us to the careerbureaucrats who make Washington run and the politicians who, onoccasion, make it stop; to business tycoons and labor leaders whoclash by day an

The political memoiras rousing adventure story—a sizzling account of a life lived inthe thick of every important struggle of the era. April 1973: snow falls thick and fast on the Badlands ofSouth Dakota. It has been more than five weeks since protestingSioux Indians seized their historic village of Wounded Knee, andthe FBI shows no signs of abandoning its siege. When Bill Zimmermanis asked to coordinate an airlift of desperately needed food andmedical supplies, he cannot refuse; flying through gunfire and amechanical malfunction, he carries out a daring dawn raid andsuccess?0?2fully parachutes 1,500 pounds of food into the village.The drop breaks the FBI siege, and assures an Indian victory. This was not the first—or last—time Bill Zimmerman put his life atrisk for the greater social good. In this extraordi?0?2nary memoir,Zimmerman takes us into the hearts and minds of those making thesocial revolution of the sixties. He writes about registering blackvoters in deepest, most racist Mississippi; marc

Barack Obama's first book, Dreams from My Father, was a compelling and moving memoir focusing on personal issues of race, identity, and community. With his second book The Audacity of Hope, Obama engages themes raised in his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, shares personal views on faith and values and offers a vision of the future that involves repairing a "political process that is broken" and restoring a government that has fallen out of touch with the people. We had the opportunity to ask Senator Obama a few questions about writing, reading, and politics, see his responses below. --Daphne Durham

Winston Churchill's six-volume history of the cataclysm thatswept the world remains the definitive history of the Second WorldWar. Lucid, dramatic, remarkable both for its breadth and sweep andfor its sense of personal involvement, it is universallyacknowledged as a magnificent reconstruction and is an enduring,compelling work that led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize forliterature. The Grand Alliance recounts the momentous events of1941 surrounding America's entry into the War and Hitler's march onRussia the continuing onslaught on British civilians during theBlitz, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the alliance betweenBritain and America that shaped the outcome of the War.

On August 28, 1963, over a quarter-million people—two-thirdsblack and one-third white—held the greatest civil rightsdemonstration ever. In this major reinterpretation of the GreatDay—the peak of the movement—Charles Euchner brings back thetension and promise of the march. Building on countless interviews,archives, FBI files, and private recordings, this hour-by-houraccount offers intimate glimpses into the lives of those keyplayers and ordinary people who converged on the National Mall tofight for civil rights in the March on Washington.

The Politics of Upheaval, 1935-1936, volume three of PulitzerPrize-winning historian and biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr."sAge of Roosevelt series, concentrates on the turbulent concludingyears of Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term. A measure of economicrecovery revived political conflict and emboldened FDR's critics todenounce "that man in the White house." To his left were demagoguesHuey Long, Father Coughlin, and Dr. Townsend. To his right were thechampions of the old order ex-president Herbert Hoover, theAmerican Liberty League, and the august Supreme Court. For a time,the New Deal seemed to lose its momentum. But in 1935 FDR ralliedand produced a legislative record even more impressive than theHundred Days of 1933 a set of statutes that transformed the socialand economic landscape of American life. In 1936 FDR coasted toreelection on a landslide. Schlesinger has his usual touch withcolorful personalities and draws a warmly sympathetic portrait ofAlf M. Landon, the Republican candidate of 1936.

Burke's seminal work was written during the early months ofthe French Revolution, and it predicted with uncanny accuracy manyof its worst excesses, including the Reign of Terror. A scathingattack on the revolution's attitudes to existing institutions,property and religion, it makes a cogent case for upholdinginherited rights and established customs, argues for piecemealreform rather than revolutionary change - and deplores theinfluence Burke feared the revolution might have in Britain."Reflections on the Revolution in France" is now widely regarded asa classic statement of conservative political thought, and is oneof the eighteenth century's great works of political rhetoric.

Describes and assesses the activities of the National SecurityAgency, the nation's most secret government agency--established insecrecy, many times larger than the CIA, and in control of a hugebudget and a vast technology.

"In wartime," Winston Churchill wrote, "truth is so preciousthat she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." ForBritain's counterintelligence operations, this meant finding theunlikeliest agent imaginable-a history professor named AlfredVicary, handpicked by Churchill himself to expose a highlydangerous, but unknown, traitor. The Nazis, however, have alsochosen an unlikely agent: Catherine Blake, a beautiful widow of awar hero, a hospital volunteer-and a Nazi spy under direct ordersfrom Hitler to uncover the Allied plans for D-Day...

Reagan’s War is the story of Ronald Reagan’s personaland political journey as an anti-communist, from his early days asan actor to his years in the White House. Challenging popularmisconceptions of Reagan as an empty suit who played only a passiverole in the demise of the Soviet Union, Peter Schweizer detailsReagan’s decades-long battle against communism. Bringing to light previously secret information obtained fromarchives in the United States, Germany, Poland, Hungary, andRussia—including Reagan’s KGB file—Schweizer offers a compellingcase that Reagan personally mapped out and directed his war againstcommunism, often disagreeing with experts and advisers. Anessential book for understanding the Cold War, Reagan’s War should be read by open-minded readers across the politicalspectrum.

Since it was first published in 1952, Lincoln and HisGenerals has remained one of the definitive accounts ofLincoln’s wartime leadership. In it T. Harry Williams dramatizesLincoln’s long and frustrating search for an effective leader ofthe Union Army and traces his transformation from a politician withlittle military knowledge into a master strategist of the CivilWar. Explored in depth are Lincoln’s often fraught relationshipswith generals such as McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, Fremont,and of course, Ulysses S. Grant. In this superbly writtennarrative, Williams demonstrates how Lincoln’s persistent“meddling” into military affairs was crucial to the Northern wareffort and utterly transformed the president’s role ascommander-in-chief.