The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkestyears of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before orsince. Timothy Egan's critically acclaimed account rescues thisiconic chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour deforce of historical reportage. Following a dozen families and theircommunities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells oftheir desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dustblizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantlycapturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, Egan does equaljustice to the human characters who become his heroes, "the stoic,long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgencyand respect" (New York Times). In an era that promises ever-greaternatural disasters, "The Worst Hard Time" is "arguably the bestnonfiction book yet" (Austin Statesman Journal) on the greatestenvironmental disaster ever to be visited upon our land and apowerful cautionary tale about the dangers of trifling withnature

The first authorized inside account of one of the mostdaring—and successful—military operations in recent history From the earliest days of his dictatorship, Saddam Hussein hadvowed to destroy Israel. So when France sold Iraq a top-of-the-linenuclear reactor in 1975, the Israelis were justifiablyconcerned—especially when they discovered that Iraqi scientists hadalready formulated a secret program to extract weapons-gradeplutonium from the reactor, a first critical step in creating anatomic bomb. The reactor formed the heart of a huge nuclear plantsituated twelve miles from Baghdad, 1,100 kilometers from Tel Aviv.By 1981, the reactor was on the verge of becoming “hot,” andIsraeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin knew he would have toconfront its deadly potential. He turned to Israeli Air Forcecommander General David Ivry to secretly plan a daring surgicalstrike on the reactor—a never-before-contemplated mission thatwould prove to be one of the most remarkable military operations ofall time. Written

A renowned historian contends "that the Americanwarrior, not technology, wins wars." (Patrick K. O'Donnell, authorof Give Me Tomorrow ) John C. McManus coverssix decades of warfare in which the courage of American troopsproved the crucial difference between victory and defeat. Based onyears of archival research and personal interviews with veterans,Grunts demonstrates the vital, and too often forgotten, importanceof the human element in protecting the American nation, andadvances a passionate plea for fundamental change in ourunderstanding of war.

“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

In Lone Star Nation , Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W.Brands demythologizes Texas’s journey to statehood and restores thegenuinely heroic spirit to a pivotal chapter in Americanhistory. From Stephen Austin, Texas’s reluctant founder, to the alcoholicSam Houston, who came to lead the Texas army in its hour of crisisand glory, to President Andrew Jackson, whose expansionistaspirations loomed large in the background, here is the story ofTexas and the outsize figures who shaped its turbulent history.Beginning with its early colonization in the 1820s and taking inthe shocking massacres of Texas loyalists at the Alamo and Goliad,its rough-and-tumble years as a land overrun by the Comanches, andits day of liberation as an upstart republic, Brands’ livelyhistory draws on contemporary accounts, diaries, and letters toanimate a diverse cast of characters whose adventures, exploits,and ambitions live on in the very fabric of our nation.

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.

What is fascism? Many authors have proposed definitions, butmost fail to move beyond the abstract. The esteemed historianRobert O. Paxton answers this question for the first time byfocusing on the concrete: what the fascists did, rather than whatthey said. From the first violent uniformed bands beating up“enemies of the state,” through Mussolini’s rise to power, toGermany’s fascist radicalization in World War II, Paxton showsclearly why fascists came to power in some countries and notothers, and explores whether fascism could exist outside theearly-twentieth-century European setting in which it emerged. The Anatomy of Fascism will have a lasting impact on ourunderstanding of modern European history, just as Paxton’s classicVichy France redefined our vision of World War II. Based on alifetime of research, this compelling and important book transformsour knowledge of fascism–“the major political innovation of thetwentieth century, and the source of much of its pain.”

A New York Times Editors Choice for Book of theYear Winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award Winner of the PEN West Creative Nonfiction Award "No one has evoked with greater power the marriage of land andsky that gives this country both its beauty and its terror. " --Washington Post Book World In 1909 maps still identified eastern Montana as the GreatAmerican Desert. But in that year Congress, lobbied heavily byrailroad companies, offered 320-acre tracts of land to anyone boldor foolish enough to stake a claim to them. Drawn by shamelesslyinventive brochures, countless homesteaders--many of themimmigrants--went west to make their fortunes. Most failed. In BadLand, Jonathan Raban travels through the unforgiving country thatwas the scene of their dreams and undoing, and makes their storycome miraculously alive. In towns named Terry, Calypso, and Ismay (which changed its nameto Joe, Montana, in an effort to attract football fans), and in thelandscape in betwee

Pliny's "Natural History" is an astonishingly ambitious workthat ranges from astronomy to art and from geography to zoology.Mingling acute observation with often wild speculation, it offers afascinating view of the world as it was understood in the firstcentury AD, whether describing the danger of diving for sponges,the first water-clock, or the use of asses' milk to removewrinkles. Pliny himself died while investigating the volcaniceruption that destroyed Pompeii in AD 79, and the natural curiositythat brought about his death is also very much evident in the"Natural History" - a book that proved highly influential right upuntil the Renaissance and that his nephew, Pliny the younger,described 'as full of variety as nature itself'.

Rome’s famed historian illuminates the twilight of the oldRoman Republic from 157 to 43 BC in succinct accounts of thegreatest politicians and statesmen of the classical period.

Two of the most influential figures in American history. Twoopposing political philosophies. Two radically different visionsfor America. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton were without question twoof the most important Founding Fathers. They were also the fiercestof rivals. Of these two political titans, it is Jefferson—–therevered author of the Declaration of Independence and our thirdpresident—–who is better remembered today. But in fact it isHamilton’s political legacy that has triumphed—–a legacy that hassubverted the Constitution and transformed the federal governmentinto the very leviathan state that our forefathers fought againstin the American Revolution. How did we go from the Jeffersonian ideal of limited governmentto the bloated imperialist system of Hamilton’s design? Acclaimedeconomic historian Thomas J. DiLorenzo provides the troublinganswer in Hamilton’s Curse. DiLorenzo reveals how Hamilton, first as a delegate to theConstitutional Convention and

Indispensible biographies of major figures in Romanhistory. A mathematician and philosopher, Plutarch was also an acclaimedbiographer and historian. Bringing together nine biographies fromhis Parallel Lives series, Rome in Crisis examines the lives ofsome of the most important people in the roman empire- TiberiusGracchus, Gaius Gracchus, Sertorius, Lucullus, Younger Cato,Brutus, Antony, Galba, and Otho, a reckless young noble whoconsorted with the tyrannical, debauched emperor Nero beforebriefly becoming emperor himself. Each biography is preceded by aninsightful introduction by the distinguished historian ChristopherPelling. Taken together, these portraits provide a wonderfullycompelling picture of the ancient world.

During World War Two, 131 German cities and towns weretargeted by Allied bombs, a good number almost entirely flattened.Six hundred thousand German civilians died—a figure twice that ofall American war casualties. Seven and a half million Germans wereleft homeless. Given the astonishing scope of the devastation, W.G. Sebald asks, why does the subject occupy so little space inGermany’s cultural memory? On the Natural History of Destructionprobes deeply into this ominous silence.

"A finely written, brave, and very personal book."-Orhan Pamuk In 2001, Christopher de Bellaiguewrote a story for The New York Review of Books , in which hebriefly discussed the killing and deportation of half a millionArmenians from Turkey in 1915. These massacres, he suggested, werebest understood as part of the struggles that attended the end ofthe Ottoman Empire. Upon publication, the Review wasbesieged with letters asserting that this was not war but genocide.How had he gotten it so wrong? De Bellaigue set out for Turkey'stroubled southeast to discover what really happened. What emergedis both an intellectual detective story and a reckoning with memoryand identity. Rebel Land unravels the enigma of the Turkishtwentieth century-a time that contains the death of an empire, thefounding of a nation, and the near extinction of a people.

At the end of 1618, a blazing green star soared across thenight sky over the northern hemisphere. From the Philippines to theArctic, the comet became a sensation and a symbol, a warning ofdoom or a promise of salvation. Two years later, as the Pilgrimsprepared to sail across the Atlantic on board the Mayflower, theatmosphere remained charged with fear and expectation. Men andwomen readied themselves for war, pestilence, or divineretribution. Against this background, and amid deep economicdepression, the Pilgrims conceived their enterprise of exile. Within a decade, despite crisis and catastrophe, they built athriving settlement at New Plymouth, based on beaver fur, corn, andcattle. In doing so, they laid the foundations for Massachusetts,New England, and a new nation. Using a wealth of new evidence fromlandscape, archaeology, and hundreds of overlooked or neglecteddocuments, Nick Bunker gives a vivid and strikingly originalaccount of the Mayflower project and the first decade of thePlymouth Colon

The epic story of the collision between one of nature’ssmallest organisms and history’s mightiest empire During the golden age of the Roman Empire, Emperor Justinianreigned over a territory that stretched from Italy to North Africa.It was the zenith of his achievements and the last of them. In 542AD, the bubonic plague struck. In weeks, the glorious classicalworld of Justinian had been plunged into the medieval and modernEurope was born. At its height, five thousand people died every day inConstantinople. Cities were completely depopulated. It was thefirst pandemic the world had ever known and it left its indeliblemark: when the plague finally ended, more than 25 million peoplewere dead. Weaving together history, microbiology, ecology,jurisprudence, theology, and epidemiology, Justinian’s Flea is aunique and sweeping account of the little known event that changedthe course of a continent.

If members of the History Book Club do not recognize the name Joy Hakim, grade school students know her as the grandmother who writes history. Hakim's widely acclaimed 10-volume A History of US has earned a place in classrooms across the nation. Now she aims to bring history into the nation's homes as well with a companion book for the upcoming PBS miniseries Freedom. She considers herself a storyteller, and indeed, she writes U.S. history from colonial times to the new millennium as the story of the march of liberty. As she recounts the struggles of women, workers, blacks, immigrants and other minorities to participate equally in American society and government, she reiterates the ideals of freedom of religion and speech, and the right to vote, to a fair trial and to education. Despite advertising claims that the book is "for families," Hakim seems to be writing for children. Young readers will like the personable characters, lively action and conversational style ("There's a whole lot more to this freedom s

The experience of war has affected every generation in thetwentieth and twenty-first centuries, and every soldier has a storyto tell. Since the year 2000, the Veteran's History Project, a newpermanent department of the Library of Congress, has beencollecting and preserving the memories of veterans. In addition tomore than 50,000 recorded oral histories, the Veteran's HistoryProject has amassed thousands of letters, photographs, scrapbooks,and invaluable mementos from nearly a century of warfare. In the first book to showcase the richness and depth of thiscollection, Voices of War tells a compelling, emotional, history ofthe experience of war, weaving together veterans' stories from inWorld Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf. Thestories are organized thematically into sections-from signing up tocoming home, generations of veterans recall individual experiencesthat together tell the extraordinary story of America at war.Letters, photographs, sketches and paintings enrich the compellingoral hi

A "full-dress history of the war by one of our mostdistinguished military writers" (NEW YORK TIMES), WORLD WAR I takesus from the first shots in Sarajevo to the signing of the peacetreaty in Versailles and through every bunker, foxhole, andminefield in between. General S.L.A. Marshall drew on his uniquefirsthand experience as a soldier and a lifetime of militaryservice to pen this forthright, forward-thinking history of whatpeople once believed would be the last great war. Newly introducedby the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, David M. Kennedy, WORLDWAR I is a classic example of unflinching military history that iscertain to inform, enrich, and deepen our understanding of thisgreat cataclysm.

This "New York Times" bestseller tells the harrowing true story of nine American airmen shot down over the Pacific. One of them, George H.W. Bush, was miraculously rescued. This edition features the same Afterword by the author that appeared in the trade paperback edition. 作者简介： James Bradley is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Flags of Our Fathers and the son of one of the men who raised the American flag on Iwo Jima. The story of the events on Chichi Jima was first brought to his attention after the publication of that book and involved several years of research, travel, and writing-including a return trip to Chichi Jima with President George H. W. Bush. This is Bradley's second book. He lives in New York.

Ben Macintyre’s Agent Zigzag was hailed as “rollicking,spellbinding” ( New York Times ), “wildly improbable butentirely true” ( Entertainment Weekly ), and, quite simply,“the best book ever written” ( Boston Globe ). In his newbook, Operation Mincemeat , he tells an extraordinary storythat will delight his legions of fans. In 1943, from a windowless basement office in London, two brilliantintelligence officers conceived a plan that was both simple andcomplicated— Operation Mincemeat. The purpose? To deceive the Nazisinto thinking that Allied forces were planning to attack southernEurope by way of Greece or Sardinia, rather than Sicily, as theNazis had assumed, and the Allies ultimately chose. Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 and the British naval intelligenceofficer Ewen Montagu could not have been more different.Cholmondeley was a dreamer seeking adventure. Montagu was anaristocratic, detail-oriented barrister. But together they were theperfect team and created an ingenious plan: Get a corp

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.

In 1940, as Hitler plotted to conquer Europe, only one nationposed a serious threat to the Third Reich's domination: France. TheGerman command was wary of taking on the most powerful armed forceon the continent. But three low-ranking generals-Eric von Manstein,Heinz Guderian, and Erwin Rommel-were about to change the face ofmodern warfare. By grouping tanks into juggernauts to slam through enemy lines,the blitzkrieg was born. With this aggressive, single-minded plan,the Nazis bypassed the supposedly impenetrable Maginot Line,charged into the heart of France, and alerted the world that thedeadly might of Germany could no longer be ignored.

“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.

Lawyer, philosopher, statesman and defender of Rome'sRepublic, Cicero was a master of eloquence, and his pure literaryand oratorical style and strict sense of morality have been apowerful influence on European literature and thought for over twothousand years in matters of politics, philosophy, and faith. Thisselection demonstrates the diversity of his writings, and includesletters to friends and statesmen on Roman life and politics; thevitriolic Second Philippic Against Antony; and, his two most famousphilosophical treatises, "On Duties" and "On Old Age" - acelebration of his own declining years. Written at a time of brutalpolitical and social change, Cicero's lucid ethical writings formedthe foundation of the Western liberal tradition in political andmoral thought that continues to this day.