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The INSTANT New York Times bestseller Instant Los Angeles Times bestseller “In Nuclear War: A Scenario , Annie Jacobsen gives us a vivid picture of what could happen if our nuclear guardians fail…Terrifying.”— Wall Street Journal There is only one scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end the world as we know it in a matter of hours: nuclear war. And one of the triggers for that war would be a nuclear missile inbound toward the United States.   Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds’ notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have.   Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch. It is essential reading, and unlike any other book in its depth and urgency. |
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A resource of information about the cultural, political and social conditions of urban life in the capital of medieval England during the 1300s. For the medieval period that was witness to a legion of political and natural disasters, the rise and fall of empires across the globe and one of the most devastating and greatest pandemics human kind has ever experienced, the fourteenth century was transformative. Peering through the looking-glass to focus on one of Europe’s largest medieval cities, and centre of an international melting pot on the global stage, this is a social history of England’s (in)famous capital and its multi-cultural residents in the first half of the fourteenth century. Using a rich variety of important sources that provide first-hand accounts of everyday life and personal interactions between loved ones, friends, foreigners and foes alike, such as the Assize of Nuisance, Coroners’ Rolls, wills, household accounts, inquisitions post mortem and many more, this chronicle begins at the start of the fourteenth century and works its way up to the first mass outbreak of the Black Death at the end of the 1340s. It is a narrative that builds a vivid, multi-layered picture of London’s inhabitants who lived in one of the most turbulent and exciting periods in European history. |
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A look at the early years of the Pacific conflict in World War II, by the New York Times –bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers .   Japan had mighty ambitions: to control the Western Pacific. The attack on Pearl Harbor devastated their primary obstacle—the American Pacific fleet—and they swept across the region. What ensued was a bitter struggle in which many thousands of soldiers lost their lives on both sides.   This is the first book in Paul Kennedy’s chronicle of the Pacific conflict in World War II, concluded in Pacific Victory . Featuring a new introduction by the author, this book provides a close, step-by-step narrative of the Japanese expansion into the Western Pacific during some of the most brutal years of World War II. Offering contemporary analysis of war strategy, it includes a riveting look at Japan’s tightening grip on Hong Kong, New Guinea, the Philippines, and other key strategic locations—and the Allies’ inexorable struggle against it. |
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A fascinating and often-funny look into Romans’ private (or not-so-private) lives, exploring the truth behind the empire’s salacious reputation.   From emperors to empresses, poets to prostitutes, slaves to plebs, ancient Rome was a wealth of different experiences and expectations—nowhere more so than around the subject of sex and sexuality. The image of ancient Rome that has come down to us is one of sexual excess: emperors gripped by perversion partaking in pleasure with whomever and whatever they fancied during weeklong orgies.   But how true are these tales of depravity? Was it really a sexual free-for-all? What were the laws surrounding sexual engagement? How did these vary according to gender and class? And what happened to those who transgressed the rules? We invite you to climb into bed with the Romans to discover some very odd contraceptive devices, gather top tips on how to attract a partner, and learn why you should avoid poets as lovers at all costs. Along the way we’ll stumble across potions and spells, emperors and their favorites, and some truly eye-popping interior decor choices. |
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A New York Times Bestseller The CNN host and best-selling author explores the revolutions—past and present—that define the polarized and unstable age in which we live. Populist rage, ideological fracture, economic and technological shocks, war, and an international system studded with catastrophic risk—the early decades of the twenty-first century may be the most revolutionary period in modern history. But it is not the first. Humans have lived, and thrived, through more than one great realignment. What are these revolutions, and how can they help us to understand our fraught world? In this major work, Fareed Zakaria masterfully investigates the eras and movements that have shaken norms while shaping the modern world. Three such periods hold profound lessons for today. First, in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, a fascinating series of transformations made that tiny land the richest in the world—and created politics as we know it today. Next, the French Revolution, an explosive era that devoured its ideological children and left a bloody legacy that haunts us today. Finally, the mother of all revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, which catapulted Great Britain and the US to global dominance and created the modern world. Alongside these paradigm-shifting historical events, Zakaria probes four present-day revolutions: globalization, technology, identity, and geopolitics. For all their benefits, the globalization and technology revolutions have produced profound disruptions and pervasive anxiety and our identity. And increasingly, identity is the battlefield on which the twenty-first century’s polarized politics are fought. All this is set against a geopolitical revolution as great as the one that catapulted the United States to world power in the late nineteenth century. Now we are entering a world in which the US is no longer the dominant power. As we find ourselves at the nexus of four seismic revolutions, we can easily imagine a dark future. But Zakaria proves that pessimism is premature. If we act wisely, the liberal international order can be revived and populism relegated to the ash heap of history. As few public intellectuals can, Zakaria combines intellectual range, deep historical insight, and uncanny prescience to once again reframe and illuminate our turbulent present. His bold, compelling arguments make this book essential reading in our age of revolutions. |
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«Моя борьба» (нем. Mein Kampf, транслит. «Майн кампф») — книга Адольфа Гитлера, сочетающая элементы автобиографии с изложением идей национал-социализма. Первый том книги (нем. «Eine Abrechnung») был опубликован 18 июля 1925 года. Второй том, «Национал-социалистическое движение» (нем. «Die nationalsozialistische Bewegung») — в 1926 году. Первоначально книга называлась «4,5 года борьбы против лжи, глупости и трусости». Издатель Макс Аманн, сочтя название слишком длинным, сократил его до двух слов: «Моя борьба». Гитлер диктовал текст книги Эмилю Морису во время своего заключения в тюрьме города Ландсберг и, позже, в июле 1924 года, Рудольфу Гессу. По утверждению издателя «Херст энд Блэкетт», доходы от второго издания «Майн кампф» пошли в пользу Красного Креста. В 1928 году было написано продолжение — «Вторая книга» или «Цвайтес Бух» (нем. Zweites Buch), не опубликованное при жизни Гитлера. |
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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania “Both terrifying and enthralling.”— Entertainment Weekly “ Thrilling, dramatic and powerful. ” —NPR “ Thoroughly engrossing. ” —George R.R. Martin On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack.  Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot -20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger’s U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small—hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more—all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history. It is a story that many of us think we know but don’t, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President Woodrow Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love.  Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster whose intimate details and true meaning have long been obscured by history. Finalist for the Washington State Book Award • One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Miami Herald, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, LibraryReads, Indigo |
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New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Foreign Affairs, and Kirkus Reviews Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction) Shortlisted for the Cundill Prize in Historical Literature Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) A San Francisco Chronicle Holiday Gift Guide Selection A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection A sweeping, "magisterial" history of the Roman Empire from one of our foremost classicists shows why Rome remains "relevant to people many centuries later" (Atlantic). In SPQR, an instant classic, Mary Beard narrates the history of Rome "with passion and without technical jargon" and demonstrates how "a slightly shabby Iron Age village" rose to become the "undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean" (Wall Street Journal). Hailed by critics as animating "the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life" (Economist) in a way that makes "your hair stand on end" (Christian Science Monitor) and spanning nearly a thousand years of history, this "highly informative, highly readable" (Dallas Morning News) work examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries. With its nuanced attention to class, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries, SPQR will to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come. |
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Now that there exist weapons capable of destroying humanity, our nation’s survival depends on our ability to find answers to two questions: What challenges should be resisted by force? How can they be resisted without brining disaster to our society? We must find a strategy which can support our diplomacy without being forced to risk our national substance on every issue. Otherwise we will increasingly face the grim alternative of total annihilation or total surrender. This book shows how our military strength can support our political objectives without excessive risk of all-out war. It discusses the diplomacy and the strategy necessary to deter aggression and to defeat it should it come. It makes clear that we require weapons as varied as the dangers confronting us. War can be avoided only by being ready for it. Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, though entirely Dr. Kissinger’s own book, grew out of his work over a period of eighteen months with a group of experts organized by the Council on Foreign Relations and led by Mr. Gordon Dean, former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. It deals primarily with the revolution produced by the development of nuclear weapons, and the effect which this revolution should have on our military strategy and foreign policy. Dr. Kissinger indicates that in all significant wars of the future, nuclear weapons are likely to be employed, but he shows that if proper doctrine is followed, the consequences need not be disastrous to our survival, as is often supposed. He then examines the implications of his new strategy for our relations with our allies and with the uncommitted countries of the world. And he analyzes the nature of the Soviet challenge in terms of ideology, diplomacy, and military policy. This book is of vital importance and certain to inspire serious thought. |
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How does a nation recover from fascism and turn toward a free society once more? This internationally acclaimed revelatory history— "filled with first-person accounts from articles and diaries" ( The New York Times)— of the transformational decade that followed World War II illustrates how Germany raised itself out of the ashes of defeat and reckoned with the corruption of its soul and the horrors of the Holocaust. Featuring over 40 eye-opening black-and-white photographs and posters from the period.   The years 1945 to 1955 were a raw, wild decade that found many Germans politically, economically, and morally bankrupt. Victorious Allied forces occupied the four zones that make up present-day Germany. More than half the population was displaced; 10 million newly released forced laborers and several million prisoners of war returned to an uncertain existence. Cities lay in ruins—no mail, no trains, no traffic—with bodies yet to be found beneath the towering rubble.   Aftermath received wide acclaim and spent forty-eight weeks on the best-seller list in Germany when it was published there in 2019. It is the first history of Germany's national mentality in the immediate postwar years. Using major global political developments as a backdrop, Harald Jähner weaves a series of life stories into a nuanced panorama of a nation undergoing monumental change. Poised between two eras, this decade is portrayed by Jähner as a period that proved decisive for Germany's future—and one starkly different from how most of us imagine it today. |
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Winner of the 2001 Whitbread Biography Award: Diana Souhami’s gripping true story of the man and the island that inspired Robinson Crusoe This action-filled biography follows Alexander Selkirk, an eighteenth-century Scottish buccaneer who sailed the South Seas plundering for gold. But an ill-fated expedition in 1703 led to shipwreck on remote Juan Fernández Island off the coast of Chile. Selkirk, the ship’s master, was accused of inciting mutiny and abandoned on the uninhabited island with nothing but his clothing, his pistol, a knife, and a Bible. Each day he searched the sea for a ship that would rescue him and prayed for help that seemed never to come.   In solitude and silence Selkirk gradually learned to adapt. He killed seals and goats for food and used their skin for clothing. He learned how to build a house, forage for food, create stores, plant seeds, light a fire, and tame cats. Then one day, a ship with wooden sails appeared on the horizon. The crew was greeted by a bearded savage, incoherent and fierce. Selkirk had been marooned for four years and four months. Now he was about to return to the world of men.   The story of a verdant, mysterious archipelago and its famous castaway is both a parable about nature and a remarkable account of the survival of a man cut off from civilization. “Souhami’s account is brief yet dense with catalogued arcana. Her speculations about Selkirk’s thoughts may be her own, but she brings the man and his shipmates to life. Literary history compressed into capsule-size that goes down like a charm.” — Kirkus Reviews Diana Souhami is the author of many highly acclaimed books:  Selkirk’s Island , winner of the 2001 Whitbread Biography Award;  The Trials of Radclyffe Hall , shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Biography and winner of the Lambda Literary Award; the bestselling  Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter , winner of the Lambda Literary Award and a New York Times Notable Book of 1997; Natalie and Romaine ;  Gertrude and Alice ;  Greta and Cecil ;  Gluck: Her Biography ; and others. She lives in London and Devon.  |
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The Instant New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller! Killing the Witches revisits one of the most frightening and inexplicable episodes in American history: the events of 1692 and 1693 in Salem Village, Massachusetts. What began as a mysterious affliction of two young girls who suffered violent fits and exhibited strange behavior soon spread to other young women. Rumors of demonic possession and witchcraft consumed Salem. Soon three women were arrested under suspicion of being witches--but as the hysteria spread, more than 200 people were accused. Thirty were found guilty, twenty were executed, and others died in jail or their lives were ruined. Killing the Witches tells the dramatic history of how the Puritan tradition and the power of early American ministers shaped the origins of the United States, influencing the founding fathers, the American Revolution, and even the Constitutional Convention. The repercussions of Salem continue to the present day, notably in the real-life story behind The Exorcist and in contemporary “witch hunts” driven by social media. The result is a compulsively readable book about good, evil, community panic, and how fear can overwhelm fact and reason. |
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Le livre qui a inspiré la série événement de Steven Spielberg et Tom Hanks 1942. L'Angleterre est seule contre l'Allemagne nazie. De jeunes Américains de tous milieux et de toutes origines, noirs ou blancs (étudiants de Harvard, paysans ou futures personnalités telles que Jimmy Stewart et Clark Gable), vont prêter main-forte aux Alliés pour vivre la grande aventure et traverser l'Atlantique à bord de leur avion. Souvent au péril de leur vie. La Seconde Guerre mondiale aurait-elle pu être gagnée sans l'aide de cette 8e Air Force ? Pas sûr. Car ces aviateurs qui sont arrivés aux portes de l'Allemagne nazie avant même les forces alliées ont usé de stratégies et de méthodes innovantes grâce auxquelles l'ennemi a pu être déstabilisé puis paralysé... Quand les Britanniques attaquaient la nuit, eux bombardaient en plein jour, détruisant au passage chemins de fer, raffineries de pétrole, gares de triage, usines... Mais la victoire a un prix, et cette unité a payé très cher sa contribution à la campagne alliée : 26 000 tués – plus que dans la marine américaine –, 10 561 avions perdus, 14 000 blessés et 33 000 prisonniers de guerre. S'appuyant à la fois sur des témoignages, des journaux intimes et des documents officiels, Miller retrace l'épopée de cette unité aérienne et nous plonge dans l'intimité de ses jeunes aviateurs, mettant l'accent sur leur courage face au danger et à la peur. Dans ce livre qui se lit comme un roman, l'auteur dresse un portrait touchant de ces héros de guerre, qui fut la plus meurtrière du XXe siècle. LE PLUS GRAND COMBAT AERIEN DE LA SECONDE GUERRE MONDIALE |
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Named one of Book Riot's BEST BIOGRAPHIES OF 2022 The extraordinary true story of a courageous school principal who saw the dangers of Nazi Germany and took drastic steps to save those in harm’s way.   In 1933, the same year Hitler came to power, schoolteacher Anna Essinger saved her small, progressive school from Nazi Germany. Anna had read Mein Kampf and knew the terrible danger that Hitler’s hate-fueled ideologies posed to her pupils, so she hatched a courageous and daring plan: to smuggle her school to the safety of England.   As the school she established in Kent, England, flourished despite the many challenges it faced, the news from her home country continued to darken. Anna watched as Europe slid toward war, with devastating consequences for the Jewish children left behind. In time, Anna would take in orphans who had given up all hope: the survivors of unimaginable horrors. Anna’s school offered these scarred children the love and security they needed to rebuild their lives.   Featuring moving firsthand testimony from surviving pupils, and drawing from letters, diaries, and present-day interviews, The School that Escaped the Nazis is a dramatic human tale that offers a unique perspective on Nazi persecution and the Holocaust. It is also the story of one woman’s refusal to allow her belief in a better world to be overtaken by hatred and violence. |
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A “provocative, colloquial and entertaining” (Carolyne Larrington, Times Literary Supplement) exploration of medieval thinking about women’s beauty, sexuality, and behavior. “A timely corrective…Ms. Janega’s witty but merciless dissection of medieval misogyny is a welcome challenge to us to stop recycling the same old prejudices.”—Elizabeth Lowry, Wall Street Journal What makes for the ideal woman? How should she look, love, and be? In this vibrant, high-spirited history, medievalist Eleanor Janega turns to the Middle Ages, the era that bridged the ancient world and modern society, to unfurl its suppositions about women and reveal what’s shifted over time—and what hasn’t. Enshrined medieval thinkers, almost always male, subscribed to a blend of classical Greek and Roman philosophy and Christian theology for their concepts of the sexes. For the height of female attractiveness, they chose the mythical Helen of Troy, whose imagined pear shape, small breasts, and golden hair served as beauty’s epitome. Casting Eve’s shadow over medieval women, they derided them as oversexed sinners, inherently lustful, insatiable, and weak. And, unless a nun, a woman was to be the embodiment of perfect motherhood. In contrast, drawing on accounts of remarkable and subversive medieval women like Eleanor of Aquitaine and Hildegard of Bingen, along with others hidden in documents and court cases, Janega shows us how real women of the era lived. While often mothers, they were industrious farmers, brewers, textile workers, artists, and artisans and paved the way for new ideas about women’s nature, intellect, and ability. In The Once and Future Sex, Janega unravels the restricting expectations on medieval women and the ones on women today. She boldly questions why, if our ideas of women have changed drastically over time, we cannot reimagine them now to create a more equitable future. |
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Les Berbères, Imazighen (Amazigh au singulier), constituent le fond ancien de la population d'une vaste partie de l'Afrique, depuis le delta du Nil à l'est, jusqu'à l'Atlantique - îles Canaries comprises -, à l'ouest, et de la Méditerranée jusqu'au Sahel. Fragmentés par une histoire complexe et mouvementée, ils ont vu leur horizon se rétracter sur des espaces de plus en plus morcelés.Les Berbères virent passer Grecs, Phéniciens, Carthaginois, Romains, Vandales et Byzantins. Au VIIe siècle, la conquête arabe eut pour résultat leur islamisation mais au Maghreb et en Libye, leur arabisation ne débuta qu'à partir du XIIe siècle, avec les invasions des tribus arabes Beni Hillal.Aujourd'hui, le tamazight , langue autochtone de toute l'Afrique du Nord n'est pas une langue morte face à l'arabe, langue liturgique et politique. Par-delà les querelles de chiffres, il est raisonnable d'estimer qu'aujourd'hui les berbérophones pourraient ainsi représenter environ 35 à 40 % de la population du Maroc, 25 % de celle de l'Algérie, 1 % de celle de la Tunisie, plus ou moins 10 % de celle de la Libye et moins de 1 % de celle de l'Égypte.Hier encore maîtres d'un immense espace recouvrant toute l'Afrique du Nord, qui sont donc les Berbères ? Quelle est leur longue histoire ? Comment se fit la « renaissance » berbère ? C'est à ces questions qu'est consacré ce livre. Bernard Lugan est universitaire. Il a publié aux éditions du Rocher Histoire de l'Afrique du Nord , Histoire de l'Égypte , Histoire de la Libye . Il dirige la revue par Internet L'Afrique Réelle . |
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How a German submarine sank a Canadian military hospital ship during the First World War and sparked outrage. On the evening of June 27, 1918, the Llandovery Castle — an unarmed, clearly marked hospital ship used by the Canadian military — was torpedoed off the Irish Coast by U-Boat 86, a German submarine. Sinking hospital ships violated international law. To conceal his actions, the U-86 commander had the submarine deck guns fire on survivors. One lifeboat escaped with witnesses to the atrocity. Global outrage over the attack ensued. The sinking of the Llandovery Castle was adjudicated at the Leipzig War Crimes Trials, an attempt to establish justice after hostilities ceased. The Llandovery Castle case resulted in a historic legal precedent that guided subsequent war crime prosecutions, including the Nuremberg Trials. Atrocity on the Atlantic explores the Llandovery Castle sinking, the people impacted by the attack, and the reasons why this wartime atrocity was largely forgotten. |
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SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER • From the award-winning historian and broadcaster comes an immersive, awe-inspiring tour of the ancient sites that kindle our imagination and afford us a glimpse into our shared history “This fascinating book is brimming with stories of people and places, all told with Bettany’s natural sense of wonder and adventure.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore, New York Times bestselling author of The World For millennia, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World have been known for their aesthetic sublimity, ingenious engineering, and sheer, audacious magnitude: The Great Pyramids of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis, the Statue of Zeus, the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Lighthouse at Alexandria. Echoing down time, each of these persists in our imagination as an emblem of the glory of antiquity, but beneath the familiar images is a surprising, revelatory history. Guiding us through it is historian Bettany Hughes, who has traveled to each of the sites to uncover the latest archaeological discoveries and bring these monuments and the distinct cultures that built them back to breathtaking life. Spellbinding, richly illustrated, and full of insight, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is a journey into the indomitable ambition and creativity of the human spirit. |
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The Devil’s Diary is the true account of the disappearance of Alfred Rosenberg’s journal of Nazi ideology that shaped the genesis of the Holocaust.   An influential figure in Adolf Hitler’s early inner circle, Alfred Rosenberg made his name spreading toxic ideas about the Jews throughout Germany, publishing a bestselling masterwork of Nazi thinking at the dawn of the Third Reich.   His diary was discovered hidden in a Bavarian castle at war’s end—five hundred pages providing a harrowing glimpse of the man whose ideas set the stage for the Holocaust. Prosecutors examined it during the Nuremberg war crimes trial, but after Rosenberg was convicted, sentenced, and executed, it mysteriously vanished.   New York Times bestselling author Robert K. Wittman, who as an FBI agent and private consultant specialized in recovering artifacts of historic significance, learned of the diary when the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s chief archivist informed him that someone was trying to sell it for upwards of a million dollars. A decade-long hunt led them to many people who handled and hid the book. From the crusading Nuremberg prosecutor who smuggled the diary out of Germany to the man who finally turned it over, everyone had reasons for hiding the truth.   Drawing on Rosenberg’s entries about his role in the seizure of priceless artwork and the brutal occupation of the Soviet Union, his conversations with Hitler and his rivalries with Göring, Goebbels, and Himmler, Wittman and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Kinney’s The Devil’s Diary offers vital historical insight of unprecedented scope into the innermost workings of the Nazi regime—and into the psyche of the man whose radical vision mutated into the Final Solution. |
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In this dazzling work of history, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author follows Benjamin Franklin to France for the crowning achievement of his career ● Michael Douglas stars in Franklin , premiering April 12 only on Apple TV+ In December of 1776 a small boat delivered an old man to France." So begins an enthralling narrative account of how Benjamin Franklin--seventy years old, without any diplomatic training, and possessed of the most rudimentary French--convinced France, an absolute monarchy, to underwrite America's experiment in democracy. When Franklin stepped onto French soil, he well understood he was embarking on the greatest gamble of his career. By virtue of fame, charisma, and ingenuity, Franklin outmaneuvered British spies, French informers, and hostile colleagues; engineered the Franco-American alliance of 1778; and helped to negotiate the peace of 1783. The eight-year French mission stands not only as Franklin's most vital service to his country but as the most revealing of the man. In A Great Improvisation , Stacy Schiff draws from new and little-known sources to illuminate the least-explored part of Franklin's life. Here is an unfamiliar, unforgettable chapter of the Revolution, a rousing tale of American infighting, and the treacherous backroom dealings at Versailles that would propel George Washington from near decimation at Valley Forge to victory at Yorktown. From these pages emerge a particularly human and yet fiercely determined Founding Father, as well as a profound sense of how fragile, improvisational, and international was our country's bid for independence. |
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A “beautifully written” history of the Scottish Borders—from the Ice Age to present day—by the author of Scotland: A History from Earliest Times ( Boston Sunday Herald ).   This is the story of the border: a place of beginnings and endings, of differences and similarities. It is the story of England and Scotland, told not from the remoteness of London or Edinburgh or in the tired terms of national histories, but up close and personal, toe to toe and eyeball to eyeball across the tweed, the Cheviots, the Esk, and the tidal races of the upper Solway. This is a tale told in blood, fun, and granite-hard memory. This is the story of an ancient place where hunter-gatherers penetrated into the virgin interior, where Celtic warlords ruled and the Romans came but could not conquer, where the glittering kingdom of Northumbria thrived, where David MacMalcolm raised great abbeys, and where Walter Scott sat at Abbotsford and brooded on the area’s rich and historic legacy.   “Highly readable—a lively, clear style.” — Northern History   “Quirky, learned and utterly absorbing.” —Allan Massie, award-winning author of The Royal Stuarts |
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A New York Times Bestseller A vital and urgent call to action about the precarious state of American democracy, charting its historical challenges and current threats, from one of our era’s most important and insightful historians. “Magisterial.” –The Washington Post “An excellent primer for anyone who needs the important facts of the last 150 years of American history–and how they got us to the sorry place we inhabit today.” –Guardian At a time when the very foundations of democracy seem under threat, the lessons of the past offer a roadmap for navigating a moment of political crisis. In Democracy Awakening , acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson delves into the tumultuous journey of American democracy, revealing how the roots of Donald Trump’s “authoritarian experiment” can be traced back through the earliest days of the republic. She examines the historical forces that have led to the current political climate, showing how modern conservatism has preyed upon a disaffected population, weaponizing language and promoting false history to consolidate power. With remarkable clarity and the same accessible voice that brings millions of readers to her newsletter, Letters from an American, Richardson wrangles a chaotic news feed into a coherent story that singles out what we should pay attention to and what possible paths lie ahead. Her command of history and trademark plainspoken prose allow her to pivot effortlessly from the Founders to the abolitionists to Reconstruction to Nixon to the January 6 insurrection, highlighting the political legacies of the New Deal, the lingering fears of socialism, the death of the liberal consensus, and the birth of “movement conservatism.”   An essential read for anyone concerned about the state of America, Democracy Awakening is more than a history book; it’s a call to action. Richardson reminds us that democracy is not a static institution but a living, evolving process that requires constant vigilance and participation from all of us. This powerful testament to the resilience of democratic ideals shows how we, as a nation, can take the lessons of the past to address today’s challenges and secure a more just and equitable future. |
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A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST "Extraordinary … A sweeping history of the Palestinian-Israeli conundrum … Highly readable and evocative." – The Washington Post The tale of a simple act of faith between two young people, one Israeli and one Palestinian, that symbolizes the hope for peace in the Middle East – with an updated afterword by the author. In 1967, Bashir Khairi, a twenty-five-year-old Palestinian, journeyed to Israel with the goal of seeing the beloved stone house with the lemon tree behind it that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family left Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next half century in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967. Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, demonstrating that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and transformation. |
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Nineteen-year-old Burmah Adams, a hairdresser and former Santa Ana High School student, spent her honeymoon on a crime spree. She and her husband of less than one week, White, an ex-con, robbed at least twenty people in and around downtown L.A. at gunpoint over an eight-week period. Blonde Rattlesnake reveals the events that brought Adams and White together and details the crime spree they committed in the sweltering hot days and nights of Los Angeles in the height of the Great Depression. |
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The phrase "The British are coming" is attributed to Paul Revere, a colonial Boston silversmith and patriot who was among several riders who sounded the alarm that the British Regulars were coming to attack the American colonies. On the night of April 18, 1775, Revere and William Dawes set out on horseback from Boston to warn the colonists that the British were planning to march on Concord to seize American military supplies. Revere rode through the countryside, waking sleeping towns and farms, and shouting his famous warning, "The British are coming! The British are coming!" remains an iconic symbol of American rebellion and a war cry to all American citizen soldiers.   Citizen Soldiers defend themselves and their homeland against a numerically superior and better-armed invading force or host governments and dictatorships gone crazy. While they might be outgunned in larger battles, Citizen Soldiers can create an advantage over the invaders[ce1] [HM2]  in smaller encounters with an intimate knowledge of the countryside, time to prepare defenses, and support from the local population.   The most critical mindset for a Citizen Soldier is preparation and relentless awareness of the threats to his homeland. Today’s civilian is tomorrow’s Citizen Soldier[ce3] [HM4] , and you can begin training to learn the necessary skills. From marksmanship to fieldcraft, camouflage, disguise, covert communications, cyber safety, escape routes, navigation, etc., the time to start learning is now.  [ce1]We should include both invaders or host governments gone bad so we appeal to the south American countries… maybe round our verbiage to Adversaries / Governments…  [HM2]Great point… I added to the text.  [ce3]Great BLUF  [HM4]Thank you |
