With the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, once againAmerica's men and women who have seen war close-up are suddenlyexpected to return seamlessly to civilian life. In Flashback, PennyColeman tells the cautionary and timely story of posttraumaticstress disorder in the hope that we can sensitively assist thoseveterans who return from combat in need of help, and the familiesstruggling to support them.

In this rich and engrossing account, John and Abigail Adamscome to life against the backdrop of the Republic’s tenuous earlyyears. Drawing on over 1,200 letters exchanged between the couple, Ellistells a story both personal and panoramic. We learn about the manyyears Abigail and John spent apart as John’s political career senthim first to Philadelphia, then to Paris and Amsterdam; theirrelationship with their children; and Abigail’s role as John’sclosest and most valued advisor. Exquisitely researched andbeautifully written, First Family is both a revealing portrait of amarriage and a unique study of America’s early years.

The story of Jason and the Argonauts and Homer’s tales ofUlysses are among the greatest ancient epics, but are they merelynautical legends or true stories? Mauricio Obregón has combed through classical texts, focusing onthe smallest details, and with his intimate knowledge of historicalnavigation, brilliantly reenacts the voyages the ancient heroesactually traveled. Using the clues embedded in these epic tales,Obregón deftly argues that many of the legends are not merelyfiction, but are, quite possibly, true adventures.

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.

Georges Duby, one of this century's great medieval historians,has brought to life with exceptional brilliance and imaginationWilliam Marshal, adviser to the Plantagenets, knightextraordinaire, the flower of chivalry. A marvel of historicalreconstruction, William Marshal is based on a biographical poemwritten in the thirteenth century, and offers an evocation ofchivalric life -- the contests and tournaments, the rites of war,the daily details of medieval existence -- unlike any we have everseen. An enchanting and profoundly instructive book....Owing in signalpart to the imaginative scholarship of Georges Duby, darkness ismore and more receding from the Dark Ages." George Steiner New Yorker "A small masterpiece of its genre....It is a splendid story andProfessor Duby tells it splendidly....Duby has reconstructed aliving picture of a particular sector of society at a crucialmoment, at the brink of great change. The vividness, the intimacy,and the historical perception with which he presents his picture ofth

In the waning days of Venice’s glory in the mid-1700s, AndreaMemmo was scion to one the city’s oldest patrician families. At theage of twenty-four he fell passionately in love withsixteen-year-old Giustiniana Wynne, the beautiful, illegitimatedaughter of a Venetian mother and British father. Because of theirdramatically different positions in society, they could not marry.And Giustiniana’s mother, afraid that an affair would ruin herdaughter’s chances to form a more suitable union, forbade them tosee each other. Her prohibition only fueled their desire and sobegan their torrid, secret seven-year-affair, enlisting the aid ofa few intimates and servants (willing to risk their own positions)to shuttle love letters back and forth and to help facilitate theirclandestine meetings. Eventually, Giustiniana found herselfpregnant and she turned for help to the infamous Casanova–himselfinfatuated with her. Two and half centuries later, the unbelievable story of thisstar-crossed couple is told in a

At the age of thirty-three, Ekow Eshun—born in London toAfrican-born parents—travels to Ghana in search of his roots. Hegoes from Accra, Ghana’s cosmopolitan capital city, to the storiedslave forts of Elmina, and on to the historic warrior kingdom ofAsante. During his journey, Eshun uncovers a long-held secret abouthis lineage that will compel him to question everything he knowsabout himself and where he comes from. From the London suburbs ofhis childhood to the twenty-first century African metropolis,Eshun’s is a moving chronicle of one man’s search for home, and ofthe pleasures and pitfalls of fashioning an identity in thesevibrant contemporary worlds.

Polk's Folly is William Polk's captivating investigation ofhis impressive family tree and of the broader American tale itnarrates. Growing up in Texas in the late 1930s, listening to hisgrandmother's memories of her childhood amidst the Civil War, Polkbecame fascinated by tales of his family's engagement in monumentalmoments of our nation's history. Beginning when Robert Pollok fledIreland in the 1680s, Polk's saga includes an Indian trader, anearly drafter of the Declaration of Independence, one of ourgreatest presidents, heroes and rascals on both sides of the CivilWar, Indian fighters, a World War I diplomat, and Polk's ownbrother, a journalist who reported on the Nuremberg Trials. Full ofstunning detail and based on primary historical documents, Polk'sFolly is a grand American chronicle that allows history to includethe lives that made it happen.

Part of the briefing included familiarizing the men with theenemy uniforms. Private Robert “Lightnin” Hayes had thisrecollection to add: “I remember the day we were assembled in atent for the first time and an officer told us where we were goingto jump. He then paused to watch our reactions. There was a sandtable near by with a facsimile of the terrain on which we weregoing to drop. There were tw...

September 17, 1944. Thousands of Screaming Eagles–101stAirborne Division paratroopers–descend from the sky over Holland,dropping deep behind German lines in a daring daylight mission toseize and secure the road leading north to Arnhem and the Rhine.Their success would allow the Allied army to advance swiftly intoGermany. The Screaming Eagles accomplish their initial objectiveswithin hours, but keeping their sections of “Hell’s Highway” opentakes another seventy-two days of fierce round-the-clock fightingagainst crack German troops and tank divisions. Drawing on interviews with more than six hundred paratroopers,George E. Koskimaki chronicles, with vivid firsthand accounts, thedramatic, never-before-told story of the Screaming Eagles’ valiantstruggle. Hell’s Highway also tellsof the Dutch citizens andmembers of the underground who were liberated after five years ofNazi oppression and never forgot America’s airborne heroes. Thisrenowned force risked their lives for the freedom of a

During the American Revolution, thousands of slaves fled fromtheir masters to find freedom with the British. Having emancipatedthemselves--and with rhetoric about the inalienable rights of freemen ringing in their ears--these men and women struggledtenaciously to make liberty a reality in their lives. This alternative narrative includes the stories of dozens ofindividuals--including Harry, one of George Washington'sslaves--who left America and forged difficult new lives infar-flung corners of the British Empire. Written in the besttradition of history from the bottom up, this pathbreaking workwill alter the way we think about the American Revolution.

On January 28, 1945, 121 hand-selected U.S. troops slippedbehind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March thirtyrugged miles to rescue 513 POWs languishing in a hellish camp,among them the last survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March. Arecent prison massacre by Japanese soldiers elsewhere in thePhilippines made the stakes impossibly high and left little time toplan the complex operation. In Ghost Soldiers Hampton Sides vividly re-creates thisdaring raid, offering a minute-by-minute narration that unfoldsalongside intimate portraits of the prisoners and their lives inthe camp. Sides shows how the POWs banded together to survive,defying the Japanese authorities even as they endured starvation,tropical diseases, and torture. Harrowing, poignant, and inspiring, Ghost Soldiers is the mesmerizing story of a remarkablemission. It is also a testament to the human spirit, an account ofenormous bravery and self-sacrifice amid the most tryingconditions.

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

When he was a student in Paris, Truong Nhu Tang met Ho ChiMinh. Later he fought in the Vietnamese jungle and emerged as oneof the major figures in the "fight for liberation" -- and one ofthe most determined adversaries of the United States. He became theVietcong's Minister of Justice, but at the end of the war he fledthe country in disillusionment and despair. He now lives in exilein Paris, the highest level official to have defected from Vietnamto the West. This is his candid, revealing and unforgettableautobiography.

Propelled by the discovery of an ancient book and a cache ofyellowing letters, a young woman plunges into a labyrinth where thesecrets of her family's past connect to an inconceivable evil: thedark reign of Vlad the Impaler and a time-defying pact that mayhave kept his awful work alive through the ages. The search for thethe truth becomes an adventure of monumental propportions, takingus from monasteries and dusty libraries to the captitals of EasternEurope - in a feat of storytelling so rich, so exciting, sosuspenseful that it has enthralled readers around he world.

Nathaniel Tripp grew up fatherless in a house full of women,and he arrived in Vietnam as a just-promoted second lieutenant inthe summer of 1968 with no memory of a man’s example to guide andsustain him. The father missing from Tripp’s life had gone off towar as well, in the navy in World War II, but the terrors were toomuch for him, he disgraced himself, and after the war ended hecould not bring himself to return to his wife and young son. Tripptells of how he learned as a platoon leader to become something ofa father to the men in his care, how he came to understand thestrange trajectory of his mentally unbalanced father’s life, andhow the lessons he learned under fire helped him in the raising ofhis own sons.