The diplomatic origins, so-called, of the War are only thefever chart of the patient; they do not tell us what caused thefever. To probe for underlying causes and deeper forces one mustoperate within the framework of a whole society and try to discoverwhat moved the people in it. --Barbara W. Tuchman The fateful quarter-century leading up to the World War I was atime when the world of Privilege still existed in Olympian luxuryand the world of Protest was heaving in its pain, its power, andits hate. The age was the climax of a century of the mostaccelerated rate of change in history, a cataclysmic shaping ofdestiny. In The Proud Tower, Barbara Tuchman concentrates on societyrather than the state. With an artist's selectivity, Tuchman bingsto vivid life the people, places, and events that shaped the yearsleading up to the Great War: the Edwardian aristocracy and the endof their reign; the Anarchists of Europe and America, who voicedthe protest of the oppressed; Germany, as portrayed thr
"It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us intotrouble," nineteenth-century humorist Josh Billings remarked. "It’sthe things we know that just ain’t so." In this bold New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author andtalk-radio host Michael Medved zeroes in on ten of the biggestfallacies that millions of Americans believe about our country–inspite of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. The Big Lies exposed and dissected include: ? America was founded on genocide against Native Americans. ? The United States is uniquely guilty for the crime of slaveryand built its wealth on stolen African labor. ? Aggressive governmental programs offer the only remedy foreconomic downturns and poverty. ? The Founders intended a secular, not Christian, nation. Each of the ten lies is a grotesque, propagandisticmisrepresentation of the historical record. Medved’s witty,well-documented rebuttal supplies the ammunition necessary to fireback the next time
In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched throughSanta Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territoriesclaimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “ManifestDestiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battlebetween the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistantrulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.In Bloodand Thunder , Hampton Sides gives us a magnificent history ofthe American conquest of the West. At the center of this sweepingtale is Kit Carson, the trapper, scout, and soldier whoseadventures made him a legend. Sides shows us how this illiteratemountain man understood and respected the Western tribes betterthan any other American, yet willingly followed orders that wouldultimately devastate the Navajo nation. Rich in detail and spanningmore than three decades, this is an essential addition to ourunderstanding of how the West was really won.
“Reads like a novel. A fast-paced page-turner, it haseverything: sex, wit, humor, and adventures. But it is animpressively researched and important story.” —David Fromkin, author of Europe’s Last Summer Vienna, 1814 is an evocative and brilliantly researched accountof the most audacious and extravagant peace conference in modernEuropean history. With the feared Napoleon Bonaparte presumablydefeated and exiled to the small island of Elba, heads of some 216states gathered in Vienna to begin piecing together the ruins ofhis toppled empire. Major questions loomed: What would be done withFrance? How were the newly liberated territories to be divided?What type of restitution would be offered to families of thedeceased? But this unprecedented gathering of kings, dignitaries,and diplomatic leaders unfurled a seemingly endless stream ofpersonal vendettas, long-simmering feuds, and romanticentanglements that threatened to undermine the crucial work athand, even as their hard-fought policy dec
This book traces the history of Europe from the end of WorldWar II to 1992, the scheduled reunification of Western Europe. Itexamines the East European revolution of 1989 and the changes inthe Soviet Union, as well as assessing the aftermath of the ColdWar, the post-war period that most commentators feel has come to anend. The unification of Western Europe and the disintegration ofthe Soviet empire, the author argues, doesn't mark the end ofhistory, as some claim, but the beginning of another era, of a newEurope, one quite unlike, yet in some ways parallel to the Europethat presided over the world at the end of the previouscentury.
American history has never seen a more tumultuous or moresignificant year than 1863. During this crucial time the tide ofthe Civil War turned inexorably from the Confederacy to the Union,with momentous consequences that are still being felt today. It wasa year of upheaval unparalleled in our national experience: twelvemonths of searing brutality and ennobling sacrifice, 365 stirring,dramatic days that changed our country forever. Integrating the events of this epochal year into a panoramicnarrative, Joseph E. Stevens presents a grand portrait of the Unionand Confederacy at war. He captures two nations struggling todefine the American experiment and create a new understanding offreedom on the bloody battlefields of Stones River,Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, andChattanooga. He also traces the astonishing political, economic,and social transformations that marked 1863 as a watershed. 1863 features a remarkable cast of characters: larger-than-lifeleaders li
《宅兹中国：宝鸡出土青铜器与金文精华》是一部有关陕西鸡宝出土的青铜器与金文的作品，分“吉金文字、交相辉映”“鸿功令德、铭传万世”“天人之际、智慧存焉”三个单元，从人文、历史、艺术、信仰等不同角度解读上古遗存，引导大家走进神秘奇谲、波澜壮阔的青铜器与金文世界，欣赏生动有趣、仪态万方的金文艺术，解读扣人心弦、引人入胜的金文故事，领略格物致知、穷理尽性的金文智慧。
Studies of dental and skeletal growth and development haveoften been treated as independent disciplines within theliterature. Human Growth in the Past, first published in 1999,brings together these two related fields of enquiry in a singlevolume whose purpose is to place methodological issues of growthand development in past populations within a strong theoreticalframework. Contributions examine a variety of aspects of humangrowth in the past, drawing from both palaeoanthropological andbioarchaeological data. The book covers a wide spectrum of topics,from patterns of growth in humans and their close relatives,innovative methods and applications of techniques and models forthe study of growth, to estimation of age-at-death in subadults andinfant mortality in archaeological samples. Human Growth in thePast will be of interest to biological anthropologists, and thosein the related fields of dental anatomy, evolutionary biology anddevelopmental biology.
A gripping intellectual adventure story, Sailing fromByzantium sweeps you from the deserts of Arabia to the dark forestsof northern Russia, from the colorful towns of Renaissance Italy tothe final moments of a millennial city under siege…. Byzantium: the successor of Greece and Rome, this magnificentempire bridged the ancient and modern worlds for more than athousand years. Without Byzantium, the works of Homer andHerodotus, Plato and Aristotle, Sophocles and Aeschylus, wouldnever have survived. Yet very few of us have any idea of theenormous debt we owe them. The story of Byzantium is a real-life adventure of electrifyingideas, high drama, colorful characters, and inspiring feats ofdaring. In Sailing from Byzantium, Colin Wells tells of themissionaries, mystics, philosophers, and artists who against greatodds and often at peril of their own lives spread Greek ideas tothe Italians, the Arabs, and the Slavs. Their heroic efforts inspired the Renaissance, the golden age ofIslamic lear
National Bestseller New York Times Editors’ Choice Winner of the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize Silver Medalist for the Arthur Ross Book Award of the Council on Foreign Relations Finalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award For six months in 1919, after the end of “the war to end allwars,” the Big Three—President Woodrow Wilson, British primeminister David Lloyd George, and French premier GeorgesClemenceau—met in Paris to shape a lasting peace. In this landmarkwork of narrative history, Margaret MacMillan gives a dramatic andintimate view of those fateful days, which saw new politicalentities—Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Palestine, among them—born out ofthe ruins of bankrupt empires, and the borders of the modern worldredrawn.
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
Advance praise for The Memoirs of Catherine the Great “Superb. The translation of the Memoirs is fluid, accessible, andidiomatic, while remaining accurate and as delightful as theoriginal. Students will heartily enjoy this excursion into thehistorical and literary world of the great empress.” –Cynthia Hyla Whittaker, professor and chair, Department ofHistory, Baruch College/CUNY “Several translations of the memoirs of Catherine the Great havebeen published before, but none of them can compare with thislatest edition. Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom have produced amasterpiece. Their translation fairly sings, capturing withstunning virtuosity all the beguiling wit and charm that make thesememoirs one of the most fascinating works ever penned by a Europeanmonarch.” –Douglas Smith, editor and translator of Love and Conquest:Personal Correspondence of Catherine the Great and Prince GrigoryPotemkin “Catherine the Great’s memoirs are a classic
In 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi’s “Emergency,” V. S.Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left onehundred years earlier. Out of that journey he produced this concisemasterpiece: a vibrant, defiantly unsentimental portrait of asociety traumatized by centuries of foreign conquest and immured ina mythic vision of its past. Drawing on novels, news reports, political memoirs, and his ownencounters with ordinary Indians–from a supercilious prince to anengineer constructing housing for Bombay’s homeless–Naipaulcaptures a vast, mysterious, and agonized continent inaccessible toforeigners and barely visible to its own people. He sees both theburgeoning space program and the 5,000 volunteers chanting mantrasto purify a defiled temple; the feudal village autocrat and theNaxalite revolutionaries who combined Maoist rhetoric with ritualmurder. Relentless in its vision, thrilling in the keenness of itsprose, India: A Wounded Civilization is a work of astonishinginsight an
The book that established Thomas Carlyle’s reputation whenfirst published in 1837, this spectacular historical masterpiecehas since been accepted as the standard work on the subject. Itcombines a shrewd insight into character, a vivid realization ofthe picturesque, and a singular ability to bring the past toblazing life, making it a reading experience as thrilling as anynovel. As John D. Rosenberg observes in his Introduction, TheFrench Revolution is “one of the grand poems of [Carlyle’s]century, yet its poetry consists in being everywhere scrupulouslyrooted in historical fact.” This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition, complete andunabridged, is unavailable anywhere else.
They Came Before Columbus reveals a compelling,dramatic, and superbly detailed documentation of the presence andlegacy of Africans in ancient America. Examining navigation andshipbuilding; cultural analogies between Native Americans andAfricans; the transportation of plants, animals, and textilesbetween the continents; and the diaries, journals, and oralaccounts of the explorers themselves, Ivan Van Sertima builds apyramid of evidence to support his claim of an African presence inthe New World centuries before Columbus. Combining impressivescholarship with a novelist’s gift for storytelling, Van Sertimare-creates some of the most powerful scenes of human history: thelaunching of the great ships of Mali in 1310 (two hundred masterboats and two hundred supply boats), the sea expedition of theMandingo king in 1311, and many others. In They Came BeforeColumbus, we see clearly the unmistakable face and handprint ofblack Africans in pre-Columbian America, and their overwhelmingimpact on the civilizatio
In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte, only twenty-eight, set sail forEgypt with 335 ships, 40,000 soldiers, and a collection ofscholars, artists, and scientists to establish an eastern empire.He saw himself as a liberator, freeing the Egyptians fromoppression. But Napoleon wasn’t the first—nor the last—whotragically misunderstood Muslim culture. Marching across seeminglyendless deserts in the shadow of the pyramids, pushed to the limitsof human endurance, his men would be plagued by mirages, suicides,and the constant threat of ambush. A crusade begun in honor woulddegenerate into chaos. And yet his grand failure also yielded atreasure trove of knowledge that paved the way for modernEgyptology—and it tempered the complex leader who believed himselfdestined to conquer the world.
In this intimate narrative journey, Hoffman returns to herPolish homeland and five other countries--Hungary, Romania,Bulgaria, and the two nations of the former Czechoslovakia--tovividly portray a landscape in the midst of change. "Alert andintuitive."--The Washington Post. Author readings.
"In A Grave in Gaza, Omar Yussef and his boss, Magnus Wallender,travel to the Gaza Strip for a routine inspection of the UN schoolsin the Gaza refugee camps.Upon their arrival they meet James Cree,the UN security officer for Gaza, who informs them that a teacherat one of their schools has been accused of spying and imprisoned.As they try to free the teacher and keep a lid on an explosivepolitical situation, they are pulled into a confrontation withGaza's warring government factions and the criminal gangs withwhich they are connected.Omar Yussef confronts the dark elements ofGaza--dirty politics, bribery, assassination, and kidnapping--inhis struggle to free the innocent and honor the dead.
Includes a complete copy of the Constitution.Fifty-five menmet in Philadelphia in 1787 to write a document that would create acountry and change a world. Here is a remarkable rendering of thatfateful time, told with humanity and humor. "The best popularhistory of the Constitutional Convention available."--LibraryJournal From the Paperback edition.
Africa has witnessed the birth of many important developmentsin history. Human evolution, including the use of fire, foodproduction via plant cultivation and animal domestication, as wellas the creation of sophisticated tools and hunting weapons fromiron took place in Africa. Other historical events such as theslave trade, which played a critical role in Western economicpower, the rise of Islam as one of the world's dominant religions,and colonization and struggles for independence occurred on Africansoil. Africans and Their History chronicles in fascinating detailAfrican history from prehistoric times through the present. Thisconcise and authoritative overview of the diverse peoples andsocieties of Africa now covers recent events, including theemergence of a free South Africa and its landmark enactment of aconstitution that recognizes even more rights than the Americanconstitution. The dynamic history and the relationship Africanshave with the rest of the world is revealed in Africans and TheirHistory
