The Great Pyramid's eerily precise architecture has forcenturies both astounded and puzzled archaeologists and has givenrise to numerous modern fantasies concerning the so-called 'Mysteryof the Pyramids'. Sweeping away centuries of myth and confusion,John Romer describes for the first time exactly how the GreatPyramid was designed and built. He argues that the pyramid makersworked from a single plan whose existence has long been doubted andeven denied by scholars. Moreover, the Great Pyramid's uniquearchitecture is integral to the way it was built, and for itsbuilders the tasks of construction and design were not separate asthey are now. By placing this awesome monument in its genuinecontemporary context, this book underlines the extraordinarytalents and the originality of the ancient Egyptians at the time ofKing Khufu. Describes for the first time exactly how the Great Pyramid wasdesigned and built ? A product of the most recent research anddecades of personal study by an author who is very well

Sun Tzu's Art of War , compiled more than two thousand yearsago, is a study of the anatomy of organizations in conflict. It isperhaps the most prestigious and influential book of strategy inthe world today. Now, this unique volume brings together theessential versions of Sun Tzu's text, along with illuminatingcommentaries and auxiliary texts written by distinguishedstrategists. The translations, by the renowned translator ThomasCleary, have all been published previously in book form, except forThe Silver Sparrow Art of War, which is available here for thefirst time. This comprehensive collection contains: The Art of War: This edition of Sun Tzu's text includes theclassic collection of commentaries by eleven interpreters. Mastering the Art of War: Consisting of essays by two prominentstatesmen-generals of Han dynasty China, Zhuge Liang and Liu Ji,this book develops the strategies of Sun Tzu's classic into acomplete handbook of organization and leadership. It draws onepisodes from Chinese his

To understand Iraq, Charles Tripp's history is the book to read.Since its first appearance in 2000, it has become a classic in thefield of Middle East studies, read and admired by students,soldiers, policymakers and journalists. The book is now updated toinclude the recent American invasion, the fall and capture ofSaddam Hussein and the subsequent descent into civil strife. Whatis clear is that much that has happened since 2003 was foreshadowedin the account found in this book. Tripp's thesis is that thehistory of Iraq throughout the twentieth-century has made it whatit is today, but also provides alternative futures. Unless this isproperly understood, many of the themes explored in this book -patron-client relations, organized violence, sectarian, ethnic andtribal difference - will continue to exert a hold over the futureof Iraq as they did over its past.

The smog beast wafted into downtown Los Angeles on July 26,1943. Nobody knew what it was. Secretaries rubbed their eyes.Traffic cops seemed to disappear in the mysterious haze. WereJapanese saboteurs responsible? A reckless factory? The truth wasmuch worse--it came from within, from Southern California'sburgeoning car-addicted, suburban lifestyle. Smogtown is the story of pollution, progress, and how anoptimistic people confronted the epic struggle against airbornepoisons barraging their hometowns. With wit, verve, and a freshlook at history, California based journalists Chip Jacobs andWilliam J. Kelly highlight the bold personalities involved, thecorporate- tainted science, the terrifying health costs, theattempts at cleanup, and how the smog battle helped mold themodern-day culture of Los Angeles. There are scofflaws aplenty anddirty deals, plus murders, suicides, spiritual despair, and anever-present paranoia about mass disaster. Brimming with historic photographs, forgotten anecdotes, a

We were in the closet. We all had our weapons loaded. We sat there and waited for the doorbell to ring," said Salvatore Vitale, a slender New York mobster known as Good-Looking Sal. "We left the door open a smidge to look out." The ringing of the bell at the private social club’s entrance signaled the arrival of the first of the invited guests. Vito Rizzuto crouched low, peeking out from his vantage point. Through the swelling crowd and loud chatter from tough men all accustomed to having their say, Vito kept his eyes on one man, Gerlando Sciascia, a fellow Sicilian who was a long-time Rizzuto family friend. Breathing deeply beneath his mask, Vito watched for the secret signal that would draw him from the closet, a signal that came when Sciascia slowly ran the fingers of his lean, right hand through the silver hair on the side of his head. That simple act of preening brought mayhem to the social club and radically changed the balance of power. "Don’t anybody move. This is a holdup," V

At the end of the American Revolution, sixty thousandAmericans loyal to the British cause fled the United States andbecame refugees throughout the British Empire. This groundbreakingbook offers the first global history of the loyalist exodus toCanada, the Caribbean, Sierra Leone, India, and beyond. Followingextraordinary journeys like the one of Elizabeth Johnston, a youngmother from Georgia, who led her growing family to Britain,Jamaica, and Canada, questing for a home; black loyalists such asDavid George, who escaped from slavery in Virginia and went on tofound Baptist congregations in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone; andMohawk Indian leader Joseph Brant, who tried to find autonomy forhis people in Ontario, Liberty’s Exiles challengesconventional understandings about the founding of the United Statesand the shaping of the postrevolutionary world. Based on originalresearch on four continents, this book is at once an intimatenarrative history and a provocative new analysis—a story about thepast that

A unique guide to every UNESCO World Heritage site. The global list has proved a valuable tool in the battle to preserve the world's heritage. Managed by the World Heritage Committee with strict criteria, only the world's most spectacular and extraordinary sites making it onto the List. Major sites Details of all 878 UNESCO sites including!.the remarkable Dazu Rock Carving of China!!the last substantial expanse of monsoon forest in Thailand, the Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai Forest Complex!.Kilimanjaro National Park in Tanzania which contains the highest mountain in Africa one of the largest volcanoes in the world!.one of the greatest Mayan temples Tikal in Guatemala!the legendary Acropolis in Athens!..the ancient Nabataean city of Petra in Jordan!.the unique ecosystem of the Serengeti, Tanzania. / Over 650 colour photographs / De*ions of 878 UNESCO World Heritage sites / Location map for every 878 site Background The World Heritage List includes properties forming part of the cultural and natural heritage which the

THIS UNIQUE TIMECHART CELEB RATES THE 100 YEAR LEGEND OF HARLEY-DAVIDSON MOTORCYCLES 11-foot foldout chronological Timechart showing a full color illustrated history of Harley-Davidson.

The fifty most important speeches of all time: their context,history, and meaning for our world The speeches remembered by history are rarely remembered incontext; but it was almost always the context, not the speechitself, that made each address so significant. Terry Golway hasselected fifty speeches that changed the world through the sheerpower of their oratory. From Moses to Mandela and others fromacross time and around the world, Golway's selections are eachilluminated with an insightful essay setting the speech squarely inits historical contexts and detailing its impact and consequences.In doing so, Golway allows us to fully understand their importanceand effect. Including speeches from Jesus, Mohammed, Cicero, Pericles,Cromwell, Washington, Pope Urban II, John Winthrop, Kennedy,Emperor Hirohito, Barbara Jordan, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev,Robespierre, Patrick Henry, Queen Elizabeth I, Reagan, Mandela,FDR, Hitler, Churchill, Barack Obama and many more, this book is anhistoric achievement.

From Solon to Socrates is a magisterial narrativeintroduction to what is generally regarded as the most importantperiod of Greek history. Stressing the unity of Greek history andthe centrality of Athens, Victor Ehrenberg covers a rich anddiverse range of political, economic, military and cultural issuesin the Greek world, from the early history of the Greeks, includingearly Sparta and the wars with Persia, to the ascendancy of Athensand the Peloponnesian War.

With a flaming holographic cover, the new GWR 2011 edition explodes with new and updated records. There's 100% new photography and hot new categories and features including TV's 75th anniversary, eye popping 3-D cinema, the historic Space Shuttle and a 270 city record-breaking GPS World Tour.

Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empirecompresses thirteen turbulent centuries into an epic narrative shotthrough with insight, irony and incisive character analysis.Sceptical about Christianity, sympathetic to the barbarian invadersand the Byzantine Empire, constantly aware of how political leadersoften achieve the exact opposite of what they intend, Gibbon wasboth alert to the broad pattern of events and significant revealingdetails.

The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the ThirdReich is a story of courage and enduring triumph, of calamity andmiscalculation. In this first volume of the Liberation Trilogy,Rick Atkinson shows why no modern reader can understand theultimate victory of the Allied powers without a grasp of the greatdrama that unfolded in North Africa in 1942 and 1943. Beginningwith the daring amphibious invasion in November 1942, An Army atDawn follows the British and American armies as they fight theFrench in Morocco and Algeria, and then take on the Germans andItalians in Tunisia. Battle by battle, an inexperienced andsometimes poorly led army gradually becomes a superb fightingforce. Central to the tale are the extraordinary but falliblecommanders who come to dominate the battlefield: Eisenhower,Patton, Bradley, Montgomery and Rommel.

The Road to Serfdom remains one of the all-time classics of twentieth-century intellectual thought. For over half a century, it has inspired politicians and thinkers around the world, and has had a crucial impact on our political and cultural history. With trademark brilliance, Hayek argues convincingly that, while socialist ideals may be tempting, they cannot be accomplished except by means that few would approve of. Addressing economics, fascism, history, socialism and the Holocaust, Hayek unwraps the trappings of socialist ideology. He reveals to the world that little can result from such ideas except oppression and tyranny. Today, more than fifty years on, Hayek's warnings are just as valid as when The Road to Serfdom was first published.

Edward Gibbon's six-volume History of the Decline and Fall ofthe Roman Empire (1776-88) is among the most magnificent andambitious narratives in European literature. Its subject is thefate of one of the world's greatest civilizations over thirteencenturies - its rulers, wars and society, and the events that ledto its disastrous collapse. Here, in volumes three and four, Gibbonvividly recounts the waves of barbarian invaders under commanderssuch as Alaric and Attila, who overran and eventually destroyed theWest. He then turns his gaze to events in the East, where even theachievements of the Byzantine emperor Justinian and the campaignsof the brilliant military leader Belisarius could not conceal thefundamental weaknesses of their empire.

Since its first publication in 1945? Lord Russell's A History of Western Philosophy has been universally acclaimed as the outstanding one-volume work on the subject -- unparalleled in its comprehensiveness, its clarity, its erudition, its grace and wit. In seventy-six chapters he traces philosophy from the rise of Greek civilization to the emergence of logical analysis in the twentieth century. Among the philosophers considered are: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Atomists, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, Plotinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Benedict, Gregory the Great, John the Scot, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Utilitarians, Marx, Bergson, James, Dewey, and lastly the philosophers with whom Lord Russell himself is most closely associated -- Cantor, Frege, and

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, PulitzerPrize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the greatuntold stories of American history: the decades-long migration ofblack citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities,in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus ofalmost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkersoncompares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples inhistory. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gainedaccess to new data and official records, to write this definitiveand vividly dramatic account of how these American journeysunfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this storythrough the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, whoin 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi forChicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in oldage, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senateseat; sh

In the first two volumes of his bestselling LiberationTrilogy, Rick Atkinson recounted how the American-led coalitionfought through North Africa and Italy to the threshold of victory.Now he tells the most dramatic story of all - the titanic battlefor Western Europe. D-Day marked the commencement of the Europeanwar's final campaign, and Atkinson's riveting account of that boldgamble sets the pace for the masterly narrative that follows. Thebrutal fight in Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the disasterthat was Market Garden, the horrific Battle of the Bulge, andfinally the thrust to the heart of the Third Reich - all thesehistoric events and more come alive with a wealth of new materialand a mesmerizing cast of characters. With the stirring finalvolume of this monumental trilogy, Rick Atkinson's remarkableaccomplishment is manifest. He has produced the definitivechronicle of the war that unshackled a continent and preservedfreedom in the West.

Historian Roger Eatwell traces the late-19th-centuryroots of fascism and its rise in the years before the First WorldWar. Reviewing the post-World War II growth of racial violence, thewave of Holocaust denial material, and the surprising electoralgains of neofascist parties, Eatwell questions whether fascismcould re-emerge as a major force?.

Heritage has burgeoned over the past quarter of a century from asmall élite preoccupation into a major popular crusade. Everythingfrom Disneyland to the Holocaust Museum, from the Balkan wars tothe Northern Irish troubles, from Elvis memorabilia to the ElginMarbles bears the marks of the cult of heritage. In this acclaimedbook David Lowenthal explains the rise of this new obsession withthe past and examines its power for both good and evil.

Instead of the dying Old Regime, Schama presents an ebullientcountry, vital and inventive, infatuated with novelty andtechnology--a strikingly fresh view of Louis XVI's France. A NewYork Times bestseller in hardcover. 200 illustrations.

An epic history of a doomed civilization and a lostempire. The devastating struggle to the death between theCarthaginians and the Romans was one of the defining dramas of theancient world. In an epic series of land and sea battles, bothsides came close to victory before the Carthaginians finallysuccumbed and their capital city, history, and culture were almostutterly erased. Drawing on a wealth of new archaeological research, Richard Milesvividly brings to life this lost empire-from its origins among thePhoenician settlements of Lebanon to its apotheosis as the greatestseapower in the Mediterranean. And at the heart of the history ofCarthage lies the extraordinary figure of Hannibal-the scourge ofRome and one of the greatest military leaders, but a man who alsounwittingly led his people to catastrophe. The first full-scale history of Carthage in decades, CarthageMust Be Destroyed reintroduces modern readers to thelarger-than-life historical players and the ancient glory of thisalmost forgotten civili

A visually stunning collection that brings the soldiers'experience to vivid photographic life- includes a DVD. The Aviation Photographic Unit was a military unit unlike anyother in World War II. Founded and led by legendary photographerEdward Steichen, the photographers in this unit gave Americans onthe home front memorable and dramatic images of the people fightingthe Navy's battles in the Pacific theater. Beginning with just halfa dozen intrepid shutterbugs and expanding to ten battle-seasonedphotographers, the unit covered everything from early aircraftraids to amphibious landings to the surrender in Tokyo Bay. With anestimated 14,000 images in the collection of the National Archives,the work of this talented photographic unit is historicallysignificant not only as a visual record of the war, but also forits influence on generations of postwar photographers. Faces of Waris a tribute to the vision of Edward Steichen, as well as the menwho served under him, and most importantly to their subjects

Edward Gibbon's six-volume History of the Decline and Fall ofthe Roman Empire (1776-88) is among the most magnificent andambitious narratives in European literature. Its subject is thefate of one of the world's greatest civilizations over thirteencenturies - its rulers, wars and society, and the events that ledto its disastrous collapse. Here, in volumes one and two, Gibboncharts the vast extent and constitution of the Empire from thereign of Augustus to 395 ad. And in a controversial critique, heexamines the early Church, with fascinating accounts of the firstChristian and last pagan emperors, Constantine and Julian.

At the time this remarkable work was written, Neo-Platonism was only just beginning to regain intellectual favor. Today, of course, this brilliant book is celebrated as a classic example of New Age scholarship.