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

As a young boy he re-enacted historic battles with toysoldiers, as a soldier he saw action on three continents, and asthe Prime Minister only a direct edict from King George VI couldkeep him from joining the troops on D-Day. Churchill's War Lab reveals how Churchill's passion for militaryhistory, his unique leadership style, and his patronization ofradical new ideas would lead to new technology and new tactics thatwould save lives and enable an Allied victory. No war generatedmore incredible theories, more technical advances, more scientificleaps, or more pioneering work that lay the foundation for thepost-war computer revolution. And it was Churchill's doggeddetermination and enthusiasm for revolutionary ideas that fuelledthis extraordinary outpouring of British genius. From the coauthorof Cold War comes an exciting new take on Churchill's warleadership and the story of a complex, powerful and inventive warleader.

Nominated for the National Book Award, this book is set incolonial Massachusetts where, in 1704, a French and Indian warparty descended on the village of Deerfield, abducting a Puritanminister and his children. Although John Williams was eventuallyreleased, his daughter horrified the family by staying with hercaptors and marrying a Mohawk husband.

"Brilliant . . . Indispensable." LosAngeles Times Here is the story of the rise and fall of the notorious Bonannocrime family of New York as only best-selling author Gay Talesecould tell it.

In the tradition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, the authorof the highly acclaimed The Winter People tells the moving, searingstory of the betrayal and brutal dispossession of the CherokeeNation. "(A) beautifully written and emotionally mature book . . .a must."--New York Newsday.

On 8 March 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. The ships, some nearly five hundred feet long, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di’s loyal eunuch admirals. Their orders were ‘to proceed all the way to the end of the earth’. The voyage would last for two years and by the time the fleet returned, China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. And so the great ships were left to rot, and the records of their journey destroyed. And with them, the knowledge that the Chinese had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan, reached America seventy years before Columbus, and Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook. The result of fifteen years research, 1421 is Gavin Menzies’ enthralling account of this remarkable journey, of his discoveries and persuasive evidence to support them: ancient maps, precise navigational knowledge, astronomy, surviving accounts of Chinese explorers and later Europ

Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of Rome (27 BC AD 14),brought peace and prosperity to his city after decades of savagecivil war. This selection from Cassius Dio's Roman History givesthe fullest de*ion of that long struggle and ultimate triumphdetailing the brutal battles and political feuds that led to thecollapse of Rome's 400-year-old republic, and Augustus' subsequentreign as emperor. Included are accounts of military campaigns fromEthiopia to Yugoslavia, and of long conflict with Antony andCleopatra. With skill and artistry, Dio brings to life manyspeeches from the era among them Augustus' damning indictment ofAntony's passion for the Egyptian queen and provides a fascinatingaccount of the debate between the great general Agrippa andMaecenas on the virtues of republicanism and monarchy.

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 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

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.

Case one: A little girl goes missing in the night. Case two: A beautiful young office worker falls victim to amaniac's apparently random attack. Case three: A new mother finds herself trapped in a hell of herown making - with a very needy baby and a very demanding husband -until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape. Thirty years after the first incident, as private investigatorJackson Brodie begins investigating all three cases, startlingconnections and discoveries emerge . . .

World War II: A Photographic History charts the world's first truly globalconflict, from the pre-war tensions to the final reckoning of those guilty of war crimes. The narrative, capturing the heroism and the sacrifices people made, is told through remarkable photographs from theDaily Mail archive, many seen here for the first time.

Each year, the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps selects onebook that he believes is both relevant and timeless for reading byall Marines. The Commandant's choice for 1993 was We Were SoldiersOnce . . . and Young. In November 1965, some 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry,under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, were dropped by helicopterinto a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley. They were immediatelysurrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Three days later,only two and a half miles away, a sister battalion was chopped topieces. Together, these actions at the landing zones X-Ray andAlbany constituted one of the most savage and significant battlesof the Vietnam War. How these men persevered--sacrificed themselves for theircomrades and never gave up--makes a vivid portrait of war at itsmost inspiring and devastating. General Moore and Joseph Galloway,the only journalist on the ground throughout the fighting, haveinterviewed hundreds of men who fought there, including the Nort

The Roman Empire did not meet its end when barbarians sackedthe City of Seven Hills, but rather a thousand years later with thefall of Constantinople, capital of the surviving Eastern Empire.The Ottoman Turks who conquered the city aslo known to us asByzantium would force a tense centruy of conflict in theMediterranean culminating in the famous Battle of Lepanto. Thefirst book in a triptych depicting this monumental confrontationbetween a Muslim empire and Christendom, The Fall of Constantinoplebrilliantly captures a defning moment in the two creeds' historytoo often eclipsed by the Crusades.

When the British wrested New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664,the truth about its thriving, polyglot society began to disappearinto myths about an island purchased for 24 dollars and acartoonish peg-legged governor. But the story of the Dutch colonyof New Netherland was merely lost, not destroyed: 12,000 pages ofits records–recently declared a national treasure–are now beingtranslated. Drawing on this remarkable archive, Russell Shorto hascreated a gripping narrative–a story of global sweep centered on awilderness called Manhattan–that transforms our understanding ofearly America. The Dutch colony pre-dated the “original” thirteen colonies, yetit seems strikingly familiar. Its capital was cosmopolitan andmulti-ethnic, and its citizens valued free trade, individualrights, and religious freedom. Their champion was a progressive,young lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck, who emerges in thesepages as a forgotten American patriot and whose political visionbrought him into conflict with Pete

In this deeply researched and clearly written book, thePulitzer Prize–winning historian Alan Taylor tells the rivetingstory of a war that redefined North America. During the earlynineteenth century, Britons and Americans renewed their struggleover the legacy of the American Revolution. Soldiers, immigrants,settlers, and Indians fought in a northern borderland to determinethe fate of a continent. Would revolutionary republicanism sweepthe British from Canada? Or would the British empire contain,divide, and ruin the shaky American republic? In a world of double identities, slippery allegiances, and porousboundaries, the leaders of the republic and of the empire struggledto control their own diverse peoples. The border dividedAmericans—former Loyalists and Patriots—who fought on both sides inthe new war, as did native peoples defending their homelands.Serving in both armies, Irish immigrants battled one another,reaping charges of rebellion and treason. And dissident Americansflirted with seces

Henry David Thoreau was just a few days short of histwenty-eighth birthday when he built a cabin on the shore of WaldenPond and began one of the most famous experiments in living inAmerican history. Apparently, he did not originally intend to writea book about his life at the pond, but nine years later, in Augustof 1854, Houghton Mifflin's predecessor, Ticknor and Fields,published Walden;or, a Life in the Woods. At the time the book waslargely ignored, and it took five years to sell out the firstprinting of two thousand copies. It was not until 1862, the year ofThoreau's death, that the book was brought back into print. Sincethen it has never been out of print. Published in hundreds ofeditions and translated into virtually every modern language,it hasbecome one of the most widely read and influential books everwritten, not only in this country but throughout the world. On the one hundred and fiftiethanniversary of the original publication of Walden, Houghton Mifflinis proud to present the most bea

In 1863, after surviving the devastating Battle of Corinth,Newton Knight, a poor farmer from Mississippi, deserted theConfederate Army and began a guerrilla battle against theConfederacy. For two years he and other residents of Jones Countyengaged in an insurrection that would have repercussions far beyondthe scope of the Civil War. In this dramatic account of an almostforgotten chapter of American history, Sally Jenkins and JohnStauffer upend the traditional myth of the Confederacy as a heroicand unified Lost Cause, revealing the fractures within Civil-Warera Southern society. No man better exemplified these complexitiesthan Newton Knight, a pro-Union sympathizer in the deep South whorefused to fight a rich man’s war for slavery and cotton.

In the 1930s Orwell was sent by a socialist book club toinvestigate the appalling mass unemployment in the industrial northof England. He went beyond his assignment to investigate theemployed as well-”to see the most typical section of the Englishworking class.” Foreword by Victor Gollancz.