A unique look at the complex relationship between two ofAmerica?’s foremost World War II leaders The first book ever to explore the relationship between GeorgeMarshall and Dwight Eisenhower, Partners in Command eloquentlytackles a subject that has eluded historians for years. As MarkPerry charts the crucial impact of this duo on victory in World WarII and later as they lay the foundation for triumph in the ColdWar, he shows us an unlikely, complex collaboration at the heart ofdecades of successful American foreign policy?—and shatters many ofthe myths that have evolved about these two great men and theissues that tested their alliance. As exciting to read as it isvitally informative, this work is a signal accomplishment.

In this widely praised history of an infamous institution,award-winning scholar Marcus Rediker shines a light into thedarkest corners of the British and American slave ships of theeighteenth century. Drawing on thirty years of research in maritimearchives, court records, diaries, and firsthand accounts, TheSlave Ship is riveting and sobering in its revelations,reconstructing in chilling detail a world nearly lost to history:the “floating dungeons” at the forefront of the birth of AfricanAmerican culture.

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

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 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.

Military historian Alexander ( Lost Victories et al.)offers a well-reasoned brief that lays the blame for theConfederate defeat in the Civil War primarily on PresidentJefferson Davis and Gen. Robert E. Lee, and their war-longinsistence on conducting toe-to-toe frontal assaults against themuch-stronger Union Army. Alexander argues that had Davis and Leelistened to Gen. Stonewall Jackson, things very well could haveturned out differently. Jackson—and like-minded generals Joseph E.Johnston, Pierre G.T. Beauregard and James Longstreet—warnedagainst conducting an offensive war against the North. Instead,they advocated waging unrelenting war against undefended factories,farms, and railroads north of the Mason-Dixon line, bypassing theUnion Army and winning indirectly by assaulting the Northernpeople's will to pursue the war. While Alexander convincinglyargues that there was nothing inevitable about a Southern defeat,he is no Lost Cause advocate. Instead, he presents well-drawn andclear-eyed tactical and strat

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.

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.

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.

On General Douglas MacArthur's orders, a force of 12,000 U.S.Marines were marching north to the Yalu river in late November1950. These three regiments of the 1st Marine Division--strung outalong eighty miles of a narrow mountain road--soon found themselvescompletely surrounded by 60,000 Chinese soldiers. Despite beinggiven up for lost by the military brass, the 1st Marine Divisionfought its way out of the frozen mountains, miraculously takingthier dead and wounded with them as they ran the gauntlet ofunceasing Chinese attacks. This is the gripping story that Martin Russ tells in hisextraordinary book. Breakout is an unforgettable portrayal of theterror and courage of men as they face sudden death, making thebloody battles of the Korean hills and valleys come alive as theynever have before. "Magnificent . . . [Russ] seamlessly weaves the stories of manymen, units and battles, day and night, into a coherentpicture."--Chicago Tribune "Engrossing . . . Vivid, at times

Upon its original publication, Plagues and Peoples wasan immediate critical and popular success, offering a radically newinterpretation of world history as seen through the extraordinaryimpact--political, demographic, ecological, and psychological--ofdisease on cultures. From the conquest of Mexico by smallpox asmuch as by the Spanish, to the bubonic plague in China, to thetyphoid epidemic in Europe, the history of disease is the historyof humankind. With the identification of AIDS in the early 1980s,another chapter has been added to this chronicle of events, whichWilliam McNeill explores in his new introduction to this updatedediton. Thought-provoking, well-researched, and compulsively readable, Plagues and Peoples is that rare book that is as fascinatingas it is scholarly, as intriguing as it is enlightening. "Abrilliantly conceptualized and challenging achievement" (KirkusReviews), it is essential reading, offering a new perspective onhuman history.

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

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.

Mann is well aware that much of the history he relates isnecessarily speculative, the product of pot-shard interpretationand precise scientific measurements that often end up beingradically revised in later decades. But the most compelling of hiseye-opening revisionist stories are among the best-founded: thestories of early American-European contact. To many of those whowere there, the earliest encounters felt more like a meeting ofequals than one of natural domination. And those who came later andfound an emptied landscape that seemed ripe for the taking, Mannargues convincingly, encountered not the natural and unchangingstate of the native American, but the evidence of a suddencalamity: the ravages of what was likely the greatest epidemic inhuman history, the smallpox and other diseases introducedinadvertently by Europeans to a population without immunity, whichswept through the Americas faster than the explorers who broughtit, and left behind for their discovery a land that held only ashadow of the thrivi

In his first three Commanders books, Tom Clancy teamed withGenerals Fred Franks, Jr., Chuck Horner, and Carl Stiner to providemasterful blends of history, biography, you-are-there narrative,insight into the practice of leadership, and plain, old-fashionedstorytelling. Battle Ready is all of that-and it is also somethingmore. Marine General Tony Zinni was known as the "Warrior Diplomat"during his nearly forty years of service. As a soldier, hiscredentials were impeccable, whether leading troops in Vietnam,commanding hair-raising rescue operations in Somalia, or-asCommander in Chief of CENTCOM-directing strikes against Iraq and AlQaeda. But it was as a peacemaker that he made just as great amark-conducting dangerous troubleshooting missions all over Africa,Asia, and Europe; and then serving as Secretary of State ColinPowell's special envoy to the Middle East, before disagreementsover the 2003 Iraq War and its probable aftermath caused him toresign. Battle Ready follows the evolution of both G

A useful, important book that reminds us, at the right time,how hard [European unity] has been, and how much care must be takento avoid the terrible old temptations. --Los Angeles Times Dark Continent provides an alternative history of the twentiethcentury, one in which the triumph of democracy was anything but aforgone conclusion and fascism and communism provided rivalpolitical solutions that battled and sometimes triumphed in aneffort to determine the course the continent would take. Mark Mazower strips away myths that have comforted us since WorldWar II, revealing Europe as an entity constantly engaged in abloody project of self-invention. Here is a history not ofinevitable victories and forward marches, but of narrow squeaks andunexpected twists, where townships boast a bronze of Mussolini onhorseback one moment, only to melt it down and recast it as a pairof noble partisans the next. Unflinching, intelligent, DarkContinent provides a provocative vision of Europ's past, present,and fut

Named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review Almost a decade in the making , this much-anticipated grandhistory of postwar Europe from one of the world’s most esteemedhistorians and intellectuals is a singular achievement. Postwar is the first modern history that covers all ofEurope, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages tosweep readers through thirty-four nations and sixty years ofpolitical and cultural change—all in one integrated, enthrallingnarrative. Both intellectually ambitious and compelling to read,thrilling in its scope and delightful in its small details, Postwar is a rare joy. * A Time and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book ofthe Year * Maps, photos, and cartoons throughout

Encyclopedic and panoramic in its scope, this fascinating workchronicles the rich spiritual, political, and cultural institutionsof Arab history through 13 centuries.

Mark Kurlansky, the bestselling author of Cod and The Basque History of the World , here turns his attention toa common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt.The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the verybeginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part ofthe history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served ascurrency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes andcities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspiredrevolutions. Populated by colorful characters and filled with anunending series of fascinating details, Kurlansky's kaleidoscopichistory is a supremely entertaining, multi-layered masterpiece.

Handsome, accomplished, and charming, Henry Stuart, LordDarnley, staked his claim to the English throne by marrying MaryStuart, who herself claimed to be the Queen of England. It was notlong before Mary discovered that her new husband was interestedonly in securing sovereign power for himself. Then, on February 10,1567, an explosion at his lodgings left Darnley dead; the intriguethickened after it was discovered that he had apparently beensuffocated before the blast. After an exhaustive reevaluation ofthe source material, Alison Weir has come up with a solution tothis enduring mystery. Employing her gift for vividcharacterization and gripping storytelling, Weir has written one ofher most engaging excursions yet into Britain’s bloodstained,power-obsessed past.

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.