From a master chronicler of Spanish history comes amagnificent work about the pivotal years from 1522 to 1566, whenSpain was the greatest European power. Hugh Thomas has written arich and riveting narrative of exploration, progress, and plunder.At its center is the unforgettable ruler who fought the French andexpanded the Spanish empire, and the bold conquistadors who werehis agents. Thomas brings to life King Charles V—first as a ganglyand easygoing youth, then as a liberal statesman who exceeded allhis predecessors in his ambitions for conquest (while making sureto maintain the humanity of his new subjects in the Americas), andfinally as a besieged Catholic leader obsessed with Protestantheresy and interested only in profiting from those he presidedover. The Golden Empire also presents the legendary men whom KingCharles V sent on perilous and unprecedented expeditions: HernánCortés, who ruled the “New Spain” of Mexico as an absolutemonarch—and whose rebuilding of its capital, Tenochti

On 22 June 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union, onehundred fifty divisions advancing on three axes in a surpriseattack that overwhelmed and destroyed whatever opposition theRussians were able to muster. The German High Command was under theimpression that the Red Army could be destroyed west of the DneprRiver and that there would be no need for conducting operations incold, snow, and mud. They were wrong. In reality, the extreme conditions of the German war in Russiawere so brutal that past experiences simply paled before them.Everything in Russia--the land, the weather, the distances, andabove all the people--was harder, harsher, more unforgiving, andmore deadly than anything the German soldier had ever facedbefore. Based on the recollections of four veteran German commanders ofthose battles, FIGHTING IN HELL describes in detail what happenedwhen the world's best-publicized "supermen" met the world's mostbrutal fighting. It is not a tale for the squeamish.

This brief and illuminating account of the ideas of worldorder prevalent in the Elizabethan age and later is anindispensable companion for readers of the great writers of thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries—Shakespeare and the Elizabethandramatists, Donne and Milton, among many others. The basic medievalidea of an ordered Chain of Being is studied by Professor Tillyardin the process of its various transformations by the dynamic spiritof the Renaissance. Among his topics are: Angels; the Stars andFortunes; the Analogy between Macrocosm and Microcosm; the FourElements; the Four Humours; Sympathies; Correspondences; and theCosmic Dance—ideas and symbols which inspirited the minds andimaginations not only of the Elizabethans but of all men of theRenaissance.

In a journey across four continents, acclaimed science writerSteve Olson traces the origins of modern humans and the migrationsof our ancestors throughout the world over the past 150,000 years.Like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, Mapping Human Historyis a groundbreaking synthesis of science and history. Drawing on awide range of sources, including the latest genetic research,linguistic evidence, and archaeological findings, Olson reveals thesurprising unity among modern humans and "demonstrates just hownaive some of our ideas about our human ancestry have been"(Discover).Olson offers a genealogy of all humanity, explaining,for instance, why everyone can claim Julius Caesar and Confucius asforebears. Olson also provides startling new perspectives on theinvention of agriculture, the peopling of the Americas, the originsof language, the history of the Jews, and more. An engaging andlucid account, Mapping Human History will forever change how wethink about ourselves and our relations with others.

Dazzling in its originality, witty and perceptive inunearthing patterns of behavior that history has erased, RITES OFSPRING probes the origins, the impact, and the aftermath of WorldWar I -- from the premiere of Stravinsky's ballet The Rite ofSpring in 1913 to the death of Hitler in 1945. "The Great War," asModris Eksteins writes, "was the psychological turning point . . .for modernism as a whole. The urge to create and the urge todestroy had changed places." In this "bold and fertile book"(Atlantic Monthly), Eksteins goes on to chart the seismic shifts inhuman consciousness brought about by this great cataclysm throughthe lives and words of ordinary people, works of literature, andsuch events as Lindbergh's transatlantic flight and the publicationof the first modern bestseller, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT.RITES OF SPRING is a remarkable and rare work, a cultural historythat redefines the way we look at our past and toward ourfuture.

FREDERICKSBURG TO MERIDIAN "Gettysburg...is described with such meticulous attention toaction, terrain, time, and the characters of the various commandersthat I understand, at last, what happened in that battle.... Mr.Foote has an acute sense of the relative importance of events and anovelist's skill in directing the reader's attention to the men andthe episodes that will influence the course of the whole war,without omitting items which are of momentary interest. Hisorganization of facts could hardly bebetter."-- Atlantic

More dramtatic than fiction...THE GUNS OF AUGUST is amagnificent narrative--beautifully organized, elegantly phrased,skillfully paced and sustained....The product of painstaking andsophisticated research. CHICAGO TRIBUNE Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman hasbrought to life again the people and events that led up to Worl WarI. With attention to fascinating detail, and an intense knowledgeof her subject and its characters, Ms. Tuchman reveals, for thefirst time, just how the war started, why, and why it could havebeen stopped but wasn't. A classic historical survey of a time anda people we all need to know more about, THE GUNS OF AUGUST willnot be forgotten.

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.

The author of the New York Times bestseller This Is Your Brain on Music reveals music's role in the evolution of human culture-and "will leave you awestruck" (The New York Times) Daniel J. Levitin's astounding debut bestseller, This Is Your Brain on Music, enthralled and delighted readers as it transformed our understanding of how music gets in our heads and stays there. Now in his second New York Times bestseller, his genius for combining science and art reveals how music shaped humanity across cultures and throughout history. Dr. Levitin identifies six fundamental song functions or types-friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge, and love-then shows how each in its own way has enabled the social bonding necessary for human culture and society to evolve. He shows, in effect, how these "six songs" work in our brains to preserve the emotional history of our lives and species. Dr. Levitin combines cutting-edge scientific research from his music cognition lab at McGill University and work i

For this rousing,revisionist history, the former head of exhibitions at England'sNational Maritime Museum has combed original documents and recordsto produce a most authoritative and definitive account of piracy's"Golden Age." As he explodes many accepted myths (i.e. "walking theplank" is pure fiction), Cordingly replaces them with a truth thatis more complex and often bl... (展开全部) For this rousing, revisionist history, the formerhead of exhibitions at England's National Maritime Museum hascombed original documents and records to produce a mostauthoritative and definitive account of piracy's "Golden Age." Ashe explodes many accepted myths (i.e. "walking the plank" is purefiction), Cordingly replaces them with a truth that is more complexand often bloodier. 16 pp. of photos. Maps. From the Hardcover edition.

Book De*ion Marco Polo?s account of his journey throughout the East in thethirteenth century was one of the earliest European travelnarratives, and it remains the most important. Themerchant-traveler from Venice, the first to cross the entirecontinent of Asia, provided us with accurate de*ions of lifein China, Tibet, India, and a hundred other lands, and recordedcustoms, natural history, strange sights, historical legends, andmuch more. From the dazzling courts of Kublai Khan to the perilousdeserts of Persia, no book contains a richer magazine of marvelsthan the Travels. This edition, selected and edited by the great scholar ManuelKomroff, also features the classic and stylistically brilliantMarsden translation, revised and corrected, as well as Komroff?sIntroduction to the 1926 edition. Book Dimension length: (cm)19.7 width:(cm)12.8

The heartwarming New York Times bestseller by the author ofThe Greatest Generation "When I wrote about the men and women who came out of theDepression, who won great victories and made lasting sacrifices inWorld War II and then returned home to begin building the world wehave today ... it was my way of saying thank you. I was notprepared for the avalanche of letters and responses touched off bythat book. "I had written a book about America, and now America was writingback." Tom Brokaw touched the heart of the nation with his towering #1bestseller The Greatest Generation, a moving tribute to those whogave the world so much -- and who left an enduring legacy ofheroism and grace. The Greatest Generation Speaks was born out ofthe vast outpouring of letters Brokaw received from people eager toshare their personal memories and experiences of a momentous timein America's history. These letters and reflections cross time, distance, andgenerations as they give voice to lives forever chan

Throughout history, the Balkans have been a crossroads, a zoneof endless military, cultural, and economic mixing and clashingbetween Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, Catholicism andOrthodoxy. In this highly acclaimed short history, Mark Mazowersheds light on what has been called the tinderbox of Europe, whosetroubles have ignited wider wars for hundreds of years. Focusing onevents from the emergence of the nation-state onward, The Balkansreveals with piercing clarity the historical roots of currentconflicts and gives a landmark reassessment of the region’shistory, from the world wars and the Cold War to the collapse ofcommunism, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and the continuingsearch for stability in southeastern Europe.

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

I have never read a better, more vivid, more understandableaccount of the savage battling between Grant's and Lee's armies....Foote stays with the human strife and suffering, and unlike mostSouthern commentators, he does not take sides. In objectivity, inrange, in mastery of detail in beauty of language and feeling forthe people involved, this work surpasses anything else on thesubject.... It stands alongside the work of the best ofthem.-- New Republic

More than 600,000 soldiers lost their lives in the AmericanCivil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would besix million. In This Republic of Suffering , Drew GilpinFaust reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not onlyindividual lives but the life of the nation, describing how thesurvivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religiousculture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with itsbelief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers andtheir families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons,nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us avivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widelyshared reality.

在线阅读本书 When Adela and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indiantown of Chandrapore, they quickly feel trapped by its insular andprejudiced British community. Determined to explore the realIndia', they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial DrAziz, a cultivated Indian Muslim. But a mysterious incident occurswhile they are exploring the Marabar caves with Aziz, and thewell-respected doctor soon finds himself at the centre of a scandalthat rouses violent passions among both the British and theirIndian subjects. A masterly portrait of a society in the grip ofimperialism, A Passage to India compellingly depicts the fate ofindividuals caught between the great political and culturalconflicts of the modern world.

This stimulating book asks key questions about the twentiethcentury's leading American generals and, by analysing theircharacter and personality, outlines the qualities which went intomaking officers such as Patton, Eisenhower and Schwarzkopfdistinctive and successful in combat. Based on frank discussionsand interviews with American generals and their staffs, and adetailed analytical study of official records and personalrecollections, American Generalship pinpoints how well eachparticular general responded to the demands of war in World War II,Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War. Edgar Puryear examines how eachcommander stood up to the heavy responsibility of command, overcamethe rigours of campaign and performed on the field of battle. Heconcludes that, despite different techniques and conditions,outstanding American generals all had 'character' in common andshone because of their personal qualities and strength ofpersonality.

Award-winning historian Mary Beth Norton reexamines the Salemwitch trials in this startlingly original, meticulously researched,and utterly riveting study. In 1692 the people of Massachusetts were living in fear, and notsolely of satanic afflictions. Horrifyingly violent Indian attackshad all but emptied the northern frontier of settlers, and manytraumatized refugees—including the main accusers of witches—hadfled to communities like Salem. Meanwhile the colony’s leaders,defensive about their own failure to protect the frontier, ponderedhow God’s people could be suffering at the hands of savages. Struckby the similarities between what the refugees had witnessed andwhat the witchcraft “victims” described, many were quick to see avast conspiracy of the Devil (in league with the French and theIndians) threatening New England on all sides. By providing thisessential context to the famous events, and by casting her net wellbeyond the borders of Salem itself, Norton sheds new light on oneof the most pe

Gibbon’s masterpiece, which narrates the history of the RomanEmpire from the second century a.d. to its collapse in the west inthe fifth century and in the east in the fifteenth century, iswidely considered the greatest work of history ever written. Thisabridgment retains the full scope of the original, but in a compassequivalent to a long novel. Casual readers now have access to thefull sweep of Gibbon’s narrative, while instructors and studentshave a volume that can be read in a single term. This uniqueedition emphasizes elements ignored in all other abridgments—inparticular the role of religion in the empire and the rise ofIslam.

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

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