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.

Ernest Furgurson, author of Ashes of Glory and Chancellorsville 1863 , brings his talents to a pivotal andoften neglected Civil War battle–the fierce, unremitting slaughterat Cold Harbor, Virginia, which ended the lives of 10,000 Unionsoldiers. In June of 1864, the Army of the Potomac attacked heavilyentrenched Confederate forces outside of Richmond, hoping to breakthe strength of Robert E. Lee and take the capital. Facing almostcertain death, Union soldiers pinned their names to their uniformsin the forlorn hope that their bodies would be identified andburied. Furgurson sheds new light on the personal conflicts thatled to Grant’s worst defeat and argues that it was a watershedmoment in the war. Offering a panorama rich in detail and revealinganecdotes that brings the dark days of the campaign to life, NotWar But Murder is historical narrative as compelling as anynovel.

My Detachment is a war story like none you have ever readbefore, an unromanticized portrait of a young man coming of age inthe controversial war that defined a generation. In anastonishingly honest, comic, and moving account of his tour of dutyin Vietnam, master storyteller Tracy Kidder writes for the firsttime about himself. This extraordinary memoir is destined to becomea classic. Kidder was an ROTC intelligence officer, just months out ofcollege and expecting a stateside assignment, when his ordersarrived for Vietnam. There, lovesick, anxious, and melancholic, hetried to assume command of his detachment, a ragtag band of eightmore-or-less ungovernable men charged with reporting on enemy radiolocations. He eventually learned not only to lead them but to laugh anddrink with them as they shared the boredom, pointlessness, and fearof war. Together, they sought a ghostly enemy, homing in on radiotransmissions and funneling intelligence gathered by others. Kidderrealized that he would spend hi

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

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.

With a post* describing SEAL efforts in Afghanistan,The Warrior Elite takes you into the toughest, longest, and mostrelentless military training in the world. What does it take to become a Navy SEAL? What makes talented,intelligent young men volunteer for physical punishment, coldwater, and days without sleep? In The Warrior Elite, former NavySEAL Dick Couch documents the process that transforms young meninto warriors. SEAL training is the distillation of the humanspirit, a tradition-bound ordeal that seeks to find men withcharacter, courage, and the burning desire to win at all costs, menwho would rather die than quit.

In his writing, Borges always combined high seriousness with awicked sense of fun. Here he reveals his delight in re-creating (ormaking up) colorful stories from the Orient, the Islamic world, andthe Wild West, as well as his horrified fascination with knifefights, political and personal betrayal, and bloodthirsty revenge.Spark-ling with the sheer exuberant pleasure of story-telling, thiscollection marked the emergence of an utterly distinctive literaryvoice.

Forever a Soldier captures the personal side of war in 37extraordinary narratives that bear eloquent witness to both thelife-changing experience of battle and to the unflagging spiritthat sustained countless ordinary Americans plunged into the bloodyconflicts of the deadliest, most destructive century in humanhistory. Culled from letters, diaries, private memoirs, and oralhistories collected by the Library of Congress Veterans HistoryProject, their stories paint an unforgettable group portrait of ourcountry's armed forces. Some tell of frontline action: a doughboy's 1918 baptism of fire: abattleship gunner's grim duel with Japanese planes; a femalefighter pilot's capture by Iraqis during the Gulf War. Others evokemoments of relief and reflection, or recall deeply moving episodes:two wounded soldiers—one German, one American—clasping hands in thewordless brotherhood of pain; a POW whose faith gave him thestrength to endure torture in the notorious "Hanoi Hilton;" a GI'slifelong grief for a buddy killed o

In the fall of 1965 the Israeli newspaper Haaretz sent a youngjournalist named Elie Wiesel to the Soviet Union to report on thelives of Jews trapped behind the Iron Curtain. “I would approachJews who had never been placed in the Soviet show window by Sovietauthorities,” wrote Wiesel. “They alone, in their anonymity, coulddescribe the conditions under which they live; they alone couldtell whether the reports I had heard were true or false—and whethertheir children and their grandchildren, despite everything, stillwish to remain Jews. From them I would learn what we must do tohelp . . . or if they want our help at all.” What he discovered astonished him: Jewish men and women, young andold, in Moscow, Kiev, Leningrad, Vilna, Minsk, and Tbilisi,completely cut off from the outside world, overcoming their fear ofthe ever-present KGB to ask Wiesel about the lives of Jews inAmerica, in Western Europe, and, most of all, in Israel. They havescant knowledge of Jewish history or current events; they celebrat

Before writing his award-winning Going After Cacciato ,Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year asa foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him toexperience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk theminefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and toexplore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war goneterribly wrong. Beautifully written and searingly heartfelt, IfI Die in a Combat Zone is a masterwork of its genre.

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

Few historians have ever captured the drama, excitement, andtragedy of the Civil War with the headlong elan of Edwin Bearss,who has won a huge, devoted following with his extraordinarybattlefield tours and eloquent soliloquies about the heroes,scoundrels, and little-known moments of a conflict that stillfascinates America. Antietam, Shiloh, Gettysburg: these hallowedbattles and more than a dozen more come alive as never before, richwith human interest and colorful detail culled from a lifetime ofstudy. Illustrated with detailed maps and archival images, this 448-pagevolume presents a unique narrative of the Civil War's most criticalbattles, translating Bearss' inimitable delivery into print. As heguides readers from the first shots at Fort Sumter to Gettysburg'sbloody fields to the dignified surrender at Appomattox, hisengagingly plainspoken but expert account demonstrates why hestands beside Shelby Foote, James McPherson, and Ken Burns in thefront rank of modern chroniclers of the Civil War, as

Anyone who loves scandal, particularly the juicy dish onroyalty, will inhale this gossipy account by British writer Shaw(The Mammoth Book of Tasteless Lists). In a style reminiscent oflow-end tabloids, the author presents a litany of negative andsometimes disgusting details about the personal lives of the menand women who ruled Britain, Germany, Russia, Belgium, Spain,Portugal, Poland and Austria. Leaving the late 20th century mostlybehind (his only mention of Charles and Diana is in theintroduction), the author concentrates instead on royal misbehaviorback to the 1700s. Entertaining overall, many entries areindisputably not for the faint of heart, such as the truly grossstory of Russia's Peter the Great ("`Great' was generally arecognition of power or brute strength, no matter how they lived,how many people they had killed or how repulsive they were"),described by Shaw as a "paranoid sadist." This tsar was analcoholic who tortured people for fun and once forced an attendantto bite into the flesh of a

John Keegan, widely considered the greatest military historianof our time and the author of acclaimed volumes on ancient andmodern warfare--including, most recently, The First World War, anational bestseller--distills what he knows about the why’s andhow’s of armed conflict into a series of brilliantly conciseessays. Is war a natural condition of humankind? What are the origins ofwar? Is the modern state dependent on warfare? How does war affectthe individual, combatant or noncombatant? Can there be an end towar? Keegan addresses these questions with a breathtaking knowledgeof history and the many other disciplines that have attempted toexplain the phenomenon. The themes Keegan concentrates on in thisshort volume are essential to our understanding of why war remainsthe single greatest affliction of humanity in the twenty-firstcentury, surpassing famine and disease, its traditionalcompanions.

Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters wasplaying cards in Boston's North End when they heard a tremendouscrash. It was like roaring surf, one of them said later. Like arunaway two-horse team smashing through a fence, said another. Athird firefighter jumped up from his chair to look out a window-"Ohmy God!" he shouted to the other men, "Run!" A 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons ofmolasses had just collapsed on Boston's waterfront, disgorging itscontents as a 15-foot-high wave of molasses that at its outsettraveled at 35 miles an hour. It demolished wooden homes, even thebrick fire station. The number of dead wasn't known for days. Itwould be years before a landmark court battle determined who wasresponsible for the disaster.