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#1 New York Times Bestseller: The definitive book on the sinking of the Titanic , based on interviews with survivors, by the author of The Miracle of Dunkirk .  At first, no one but the lookout recognized the sound. Passengers described it as the impact of a heavy wave, a scraping noise, or the tearing of a long calico strip. In fact, it was the sound of the world’s most famous ocean liner striking an iceberg, and it served as the death knell for 1,500 souls. In the next two hours and forty minutes, the maiden voyage of the Titanic became one of history’s worst maritime accidents. As the ship’s deck slipped closer to the icy waterline, women pleaded with their husbands to join them on lifeboats. Men changed into their evening clothes to meet death with dignity. And in steerage, hundreds fought bitterly against certain death. At 2:15 a.m. the ship’s band played “Autumn.” Five minutes later, the Titanic was gone. Based on interviews with sixty-three survivors, Lord’s moment-by-moment account is among the finest books written about one of the twentieth century’s bleakest nights. |
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Larry Kane was the only American to travel to every stop on the Beatles 1964 and 1965 tours of America and Canada. Ticket Ticket To Ride is the only insider's account ever published that takes the reader on the day-to-day adventure of the Beatles' historic tours. From the dressing rooms to the hotel rooms, on the airplanes, and in the concert hall, Larry Kane was close with the "boys", as they were called, and the non-stop drama that surrounded them. A witness to 61 concerts, the veteran radio newsman and of 37 years as an anchorman in Philadelphia, makes you a fly on the wall to the beginning of Beatlemania, and all the details of life surrounding it. Kane is the author of five books, including NY Times and LA Tiimes Best Seller "Lennon Revealed. |
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AN INSTANT  NEW YORK TIMES  BESTSELLER The “lively” ( The New Yorker) , “convincing” ( Forbes ), and “riveting pick-me-up we all need right now” ( People ) that proves humanity thrives in a crisis and that our innate kindness and cooperation have been the greatest factors in our long-term success as a species. If there is one belief that has united the left and the right, psychologists and philosophers, ancient thinkers and modern ones, it is the tacit assumption that humans are bad. It's a notion that drives newspaper headlines and guides the laws that shape our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed primarily by self-interest. But what if it isn't true? International bestseller Rutger Bregman provides new perspective on the past 200,000 years of human history, setting out to prove that we are hardwired for kindness, geared toward cooperation rather than competition, and more inclined to trust rather than distrust one another. In fact this instinct has a firm evolutionary basis going back to the beginning of Homo sapiens .  From the real-life Lord of the Flies to the solidarity in the aftermath of the Blitz, the hidden flaws in the Stanford prison experiment to the true story of twin brothers on opposite sides who helped Mandela end apartheid, Bregman shows us that believing in human generosity and collaboration isn't merely optimistic—it's realistic. Moreover, it has huge implications for how society functions. When we think the worst of people, it brings out the worst in our politics and economics. But if we believe in the reality of humanity's kindness and altruism, it will form the foundation for achieving true change in society, a case that Bregman makes convincingly with his signature wit, refreshing frankness, and memorable storytelling. "The Sapiens of 2020." — The Guardian " Humankind made me see humanity from a fresh perspective." —Yuval Noah Harari, author of the #1 bestseller Sapiens Longlisted for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction One of the  Washington Post 's 50 Notable Nonfiction Works in 2020   |
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NEW YORK TIMES  BESTSELLER • For the first time in decades comes a fresh look at the fabled Tudor dynasty, comprising some of the most enigmatic figures ever to rule a country. “A thoroughly readable and often compelling narrative . . . Five centuries have not diminished the appetite for all things Tudor.”—Associated Press In 1485, young Henry Tudor, whose claim to the throne was so weak as to be almost laughable, crossed the English Channel from France at the head of a ragtag little army and took the crown from the family that had ruled England for almost four hundred years. Half a century later his son, Henry VIII, desperate to rid himself of his first wife in order to marry a second, launched a reign of terror aimed at taking powers no previous monarch had even dreamed of possessing. In the process he plunged his kingdom into generations of division and disorder, creating a legacy of blood and betrayal that would blight the lives of his children and the destiny of his country. The boy king Edward VI, a fervent believer in reforming the English church, died before bringing to fruition his dream of a second English Reformation. Mary I, the disgraced daughter of Catherine of Aragon, tried and failed to reestablish the Catholic Church and produce an heir. And finally came Elizabeth I, who devoted her life to creating an image of herself as Gloriana the Virgin Queen but, behind that mask, sacrificed all chance of personal happiness in order to survive.  The Tudors  weaves together all the sinners and saints, the tragedies and triumphs, the high dreams and dark crimes, that reveal the Tudor era to be, in its enthralling, notorious truth, as momentous and as fascinating as the fictions audiences have come to love. BONUS: This edition contains a  The Tudors  discussion guide. Praise for  The Tudors “A rich and vibrant tapestry.” — The Star-Ledger “A thoroughly readable and often compelling narrative . . . Five centuries have not diminished the appetite for all things Tudor.” —Associated Press “Energetic and comprehensive . . . [a] sweeping history of the gloriously infamous Tudor era . . . Unlike the somewhat ponderous British biographies of the Henrys, Elizabeths, and Boleyns that seem to pop up perennially,  The Tudors  displays flashy, fresh irreverence [and cuts] to the quick of the action.” — Kirkus Reviews “[A] cheeky, nuanced, and authoritative perspective . . . brims with enriching background discussions.” — Publishers Weekly “[A] lively new history.” — Bloomberg |
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An entertaining and openhearted tale of a naïf eventually getting to understand a complex, glittering, beautiful and often cruel society - at least a little. When Simon Kuper left London for Paris in his early thirties, he wasn't planning to make a permanent move. Paris, however, had other plans. Kuper has grown middle-aged there, eaten the croissants, seen his American wife through life-threatening cancer, taken his children to countless football matches on freezing Saturday mornings in the city's notorious banlieues, and in 2015 lived through two terrorist attacks on their neighborhood. Over two decades of becoming something of a cantankerous Parisian himself, Kuper has watched the city change. This century, it has globalized, gentrified, and been shocked into realizing its role as the crucible of civilizational conflict. Sometimes it's a multicultural paradise, and sometimes it isn't. This decade, Parisians have lived through a sequence of shocks: terrorist attacks, record floods and heatwaves, the burning of Notre Dame, the storming of the city by gilets jaunes, and then the pandemic. Now, as the Olympics come to town, France is busy executing the "Grand Paris" project: the most serious attempt yet to knit together the bejewelled city with its neglected suburbs. This is a captivating memoir of the Paris of today, without the Parisian clichés. |
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Emperor Ferdinand II (1619–37) stands out as a crucial figure in the Counter-Reformation in central Europe, a leading player in the Thirty Years War, the most important ruler in the consolidation of the Habsburg monarchy, and the emperor who reinvigorated the office after its decline under his two predecessors. This is the first biography since a long-outdated one written in German in 1978 and the first ever in English. It looks at his reign as territorial ruler of Inner Austria from 1598 until his election as emperor and especially at the influence of his mother, the formidable Archduchess Maria, in order to understand his later policies as emperor. This book focuses on the consistency of his policies, the profound influence of religion throughout his career and follows the contest at court between those who favored consolidation of the Habsburg lands and those who aimed for expansion in the empire. |
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One of the world’s leading Egyptologists tells the rich and fascinating story of ancient Egypt’s last dynasty. Alexander the Great and Cleopatra may be two of the most famous figures from the ancient world, but the Egyptian era bookended by their lives—the Ptolemaic period (305–30 BC)—is little known. In The Last Dynasty, New York Times best-selling author Toby Wilkinson unravels the incredible story of this turbulent era, bringing to life three centuries’ worth of extraordinary moments and charismatic figures. Macedonian in origin and Greek-speaking, the Ptolemies presided over the final flourishing of pharaonic civilization. Wilkinson describes the extraordinary cultural reach displayed at the height of their power: how they founded new cities, including Alexandria, their great seaside residence and commercial capital; mined gold in the furthest reaches of Nubia; built spectacular new temples that are among the foremost architectural wonders of the Nile Valley; and created a dazzling civilization that produced astonishing works of sculpture, architecture, and literature. Stunningly, he also shows how such expansionist ambitions led to the era’s downfall. The Ptolemaic period was a time when ancient Egypt turned its gaze westward—in the process becoming the unwitting handmaid to the inexorable rise of Rome and the consequent loss of Egyptian independence. Featuring a superb blend of first-rate scholarship and evocative narrative history, The Last Dynasty provides fresh insights into this overlooked period of history and its legacy in shaping the world as we know it. |
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The New York Times bestseller that tells the story of an overheated stock market and the financial disaster that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s.   A riveting living history about Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929. Captures the era, the intoxicating expectancy, the hope that ruled men’s heart and minds before the bubble burst and the black despair of the decade that followed.   |
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“Mini-biographies of women from every walk of life and every corner of the globe . . . an informative, refreshing, and unique approach to the 16th century.” — Adventures of a Tudor Nerd This retelling of the sixteenth century introduces the reader to a gallery of amazing women from queens to commoners, who navigated the patriarchal world in memorable and life-changing ways all around the world. Amy Licence has scoured the records from Europe and beyond to compile this testament to female lives and achievements, telling the stories of mistresses and martyrs, witches and muses, pirates and jesters, doctors and astronomers, escapees and murderesses, colonists and saints. Read about the wife of astrologer John Dee, the women who inspired Michelangelo, the jester who saved the life of Henry IV of France, the beloved mistress of the Sultan Suleiman the Great, the wife of Ivan the Terrible, whose murder unleashed terror, set against the everyday lives of those women who did not make the history books. Introducing a number of new faces, including tales of women from Morocco, Nigeria, Japan, Chile, India and Turkey, this book will delight those who are looking to broaden their knowledge on the sixteenth century and celebrate the lost women of the past. |
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The first definitive history of Israel’s targeted killing programs, which have shaped the Israeli nation, the Middle East, and the larger world—from the man hailed by David Remnick as “arguably [Israel’s] best investigative reporter.” “An exceptional work, a humane book about an incendiary subject . . . full of shocking moments, surprising disturbances in a narrative full of fateful twists and unintended consequences.”— The New York Times WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD IN HISTORY • ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Economist, The New York Times Book Review, BBC History Magazine, Mother Jones The Talmud says: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” This instinct to take every measure, even the most aggressive, to defend the Jewish people is hardwired into Israel’s DNA. From the very beginning of its statehood in 1948, protecting the nation from harm has been the responsibility of its intelligence community and armed services, and there is one weapon in their vast arsenal that they have relied upon to thwart the most serious threats: Targeted assassinations have been used countless times, on enemies large and small, sometimes in response to attacks against the Israeli people and sometimes preemptively. In this page-turning, eye-opening book, journalist and military analyst Ronen Bergman—praised by David Remnick as “arguably [Israel’s] best investigative reporter”—offers a riveting inside account of the targeted killing programs: their successes, their failures, and the moral and political price exacted on the men and women who approved and carried out the missions. Bergman has gained the exceedingly rare cooperation of many current and former members of the Israeli government, including Prime Ministers Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as high-level figures in the country’s military and intelligence services: the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), the Mossad (the world’s most feared intelligence agency), Caesarea (a “Mossad within the Mossad” that carries out attacks on the highest-value targets), and the Shin Bet (an internal security service that implemented the largest targeted assassination campaign ever, in order to stop what had once appeared to be unstoppable: suicide terrorism). Including never-before-reported, behind-the-curtain accounts of key operations, and based on hundreds of on-the-record interviews and thousands of files to which Bergman has gotten exclusive access over his decades of reporting, Rise and Kill First brings us deep into the heart of Israel’s most secret activities. Bergman traces, from statehood to the present, the gripping events and thorny ethical questions underlying Israel’s targeted killing campaign, which has shaped the Israeli nation, the Middle East, and the larger world. |
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER  |  Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography | “Timely and long overdue... This book should be required reading.”―Tom O’Neill, author of Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties In this “gripping . . . spectacular piece of reporting” (Ken Burns), a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist examines Senator Frank Church, the man at the center of numerous investigations into the abuses of power within the American government.    For decades now, America’s national security state has grown ever bigger, ever more secretive and powerful, and ever more abusive. Only once did someone manage to put a stop to any of it. Senator Frank Church of Idaho was an unlikely hero. He led congressional opposition to the Vietnam War and had become a scathing, radical critic of what he saw as American imperialism around the world. But he was still politically ambitious, privately yearning for acceptance from the foreign policy establishment that he hated and eager to run for president. Despite his flaws, Church would show historic strength in his greatest moment, when in the wake of Watergate he was suddenly tasked with investigating abuses of power in the intelligence community. The dark truths that Church exposed—from assassination plots by the CIA, to links between the Kennedy dynasty and the mafia, to the surveillance of civil rights activists by the NSA and FBI—would shake the nation to its core, and forever change the way that Americans thought about not only their government but also their ability to hold it accountable. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews, thousands of pages of recently declassified documents, and reams of unpublished letters, notes, and memoirs, some of which remain sensitive today, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter James Risen tells the gripping, untold story of truth and integrity standing against unchecked power—and winning—in The Last Honest Man. An instant New York Times bestseller |
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Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer. Brilliant, brash, yet soulful, they were 100 percent Jewish and 100 percent American. They upended the restrained culture of their forebears and changed American life. They worked in different fields, and, apart from clinking glasses at parties now and then, they hardly knew one another. But they shared a historical moment and a common temperament. For all four, their Jewish heritage was electrified by American liberty. The results were explosive. As prosperity for Jews increased and anti-Semitism began to fade after World War II, these four creative giants stormed through the latter half of the twentieth century, altering the way people around the world listened to music, defined what was vulgar, comprehended the relations of men and women, and understood the American soul. They were not saints; they were turbulent and self-dissatisfied intellectuals who fearlessly wielded their own newly won freedom to charge up American culture. Celebratory yet candid, at times fiercely critical, David Denby presents these four figures as egotistical and generous—larger-than-life, all of them, yet vulnerable, even heartbreaking, in their ambition, ferocity, and pride. |
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Eugene Sledge became more than a legend with his memoir, With The Old Breed . He became a chronicler, a historian, a storyteller who turns the extremes of the war in the Pacific—the terror, the camaraderie, the banal and the extraordinary—into terms we mortals can grasp.”—Tom Hanks In The Wall Street Journal , Victor Davis Hanson named With the Old Breed one of the top five books on epic twentieth-century battles. Studs Terkel interviewed the author for his definitive oral history, The Good War . Now E. B. Sledge’s acclaimed first-person account of fighting at Peleliu and Okinawa returns to thrill, edify, and inspire a new generation. An Alabama boy steeped in American history and enamored of such heroes as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene B. Sledge became part of the war’s famous 1st Marine Division—3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. Even after intense training, he was shocked to be thrown into the battle of Peleliu, where “the world was a nightmare of flashes, explosions, and snapping bullets.” By the time Sledge hit the hell of Okinawa, he was a combat vet, still filled with fear but no longer with panic. Based on notes Sledge secretly kept in a copy of the New Testament, With the Old Breed captures with utter simplicity and searing honesty the experience of a soldier in the fierce Pacific Theater. Here is what saved, threatened, and changed his life. Here, too, is the story of how he learned to hate and kill—and came to love—his fellow man. “In all the literature on the Second World War, there is not a more honest, realistic or moving memoir than Eugene Sledge’s. This is the real deal, the real war: unvarnished, brutal, without a shred of sentimentality or false patriotism, a profound primer on what it actually was like to be in that war. It is a classic that will outlive all the armchair generals’ safe accounts of—not the ‘good war’—but the worst war ever.”—Ken Burns |
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This is the new Popular Reference edition of the fully-illustrated eBook, ISBN: 9781782122586. The bitter Battle of Stalingrad on the Eastern Front was the turning point of World War II. The relentless and unstoppable German advances that had seen the panzers sweep hundreds of miles into Russia was finally brought to a halt. The elite German 6th Army was first fought to a standstill, then surrounded and forced to surrender.  Over 1.5 million people lost their lives during the six months of fighting, many of them civilians caught up in the campaign. For the first time in the war, the German army had been defeated on the field of battle. Before Stalingrad the Russians never won; after Stalingrad they could not lose.  This book looks at the titanic struggle that ended in the total destruction of the second city of the Soviet Union, the greatest battle the world has ever seen. |
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A bilingual, multicultural, and multinational nation, Canada borders the United States, reaches into the Arctic, and stretches across six time zones. Drawing on Canadian history, politics, and literature, Donald Wright explores the Canadian story and identity, from the arrival of the first Indigenous peoples to contemporary climate politics. |
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From the alleyways of Soho to the medieval remains of Moorgate, the new book by Sunday Times bestselling author Jack Chesher takes you on a journey through London and its history, showing you its hidden corners.  Explore the fascinating history of the city with the creator of the ever-popular @LivingLondonHistory . Have you ever wondered where a notorious Victorian murderer was captured? Or in which backstreet you can find the pub that hid the masterminds behind the Great Train Robbery? Or perhaps which pocket park contains the remains of a great medieval monastery? Have your questions answered and let London: The Hidden Corners reveal the capital’s unique and shadowy mysteries. Illustrated throughout and complete with a selection of maps to help you discover your new favourite locations, London: The Hidden Corners promises to bring the city to life for intrepid explorers and local Londoners alike. Whether you are new to the city or a seasoned traveller,  London: The Hidden Corners is a must-have guide for anyone looking to uncover something beyond the familiar. So, in true @LivingLondonHistory style, turn the page and get ready to transform the city into the museum you never knew you had. |
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Winner of the 2018 Louise de Kiriline Lawrence Award for Nonfiction Longlisted for the 2018  RBC Taylor Prize Shortlisted for the 2018  Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction The sweeping, epic story of the mysterious land that came to be called “Canada” like it’s never been told before. Every map tells a story. And every map has a purpose--it invites us to go somewhere we've never been. It’s an account of what we know, but also a trace of what we long for. Ten Maps conjures the world as it appeared to those who were called upon to map it. What would the new world look like to wandering Vikings, who thought they had drifted into a land of mythical creatures, or Samuel de Champlain, who had no idea of the vastness of the landmass just beyond the treeline?   Adam Shoalts, one of Canada’s foremost explorers, tells the stories behind these centuries old maps, and how they came to shape what became “Canada.”  It’s a story that will surprise readers, and reveal the Canada we never knew was hidden. It brings to life the characters and the bloody disputes that forged our history, by showing us what the world looked like before it entered the history books. Combining storytelling, cartography, geography, archaeology and of course history, this book shows us Canada in a way we've never seen it before. |
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International Bestseller From the author of the international bestseller  Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind  comes an extraordinary new book that explores the future of the human species. Yuval Noah Harari, author of the bestselling  Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind , envisions a not-too-distant world in which we face a new set of challenges. In  Homo Deus , he examines our future with his trademark blend of science, history, philosophy and every discipline in between. Homo Deus  explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century – from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is  Homo Deus . War is obsolete You are more likely to commit suicide than be killed in conflict Famine is disappearing You are at more risk of obesity than starvation Death is just a technical problem Equality is out – but immortality is in What does our future hold? |
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Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The filters we apply to the past can make it seem like the 1800s was a time of elegance and romance, when in reality, it was a time of long hours spent doing menial labor for little pay. #2 The underbelly of Western culture in the 1800s to the 1900s was never discussed in terms of the medical issues and diseases that afflicted that era. However, those were the most important aspects of susceptibility and spread of illness. |
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER   Renowned activist and public intellectual David Graeber teams up with professor of comparative archaeology David Wengrow to deliver a trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution--from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state," political violence, and social inequality--and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike--either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could only be achieved by sacrificing those original freedoms, or alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. Graeber and Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself. Drawing on path-breaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what's really there. If humans did not spend 95% of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? What was really happening during the periods that we usually describe as the emergence of "the state"? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume. The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action. |
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Part of the CBC Massey Lectures Series In History’s People internationally acclaimed historian Margaret MacMillan gives her own personal selection of figures of the past, women and men, some famous and some little-known, who stand out for her. Some have changed the course of history and even directed the currents of their times. Others are memorable for being risk-takers, adventurers, or observers. She looks at the concept of leadership through Bismarck and the unification of Germany; William Lyon MacKenzie King and the preservation of the Canadian Federation; Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the bringing of a unified United States into the Second World War. She also notes how leaders can make huge and often destructive mistakes, as in the cases of Hitler, Stalin, and Thatcher. Richard Nixon and Samuel de Champlain are examples of daring risk-takers who stubbornly went their own ways, often in defiance of their own societies. Then there are the dreamers, explorers, and adventurers, individuals like Fanny Parkes and Elizabeth Simcoe who manage to defy or ignore the constraints of their own societies. Finally, there are the observers, such as Babur, the first Mughal emperor of India, and Victor Klemperer, a Holocaust survivor, who kept the notes and diaries that bring the past to life. History’s People is about the important and complex relationship between biography and history, individuals and their times. |
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With the building of the railroad and the settlement of the plains, the North West was opening up. The Klondike stampede was a wild interlude in the epic story of western development, and here are its dramatic tales of hardship, heroism, and villainy. We meet Soapy Smith, dictator of Skagway; Swiftwater Bill Gates, who bathed in champagne; Silent Sam Bonnifield, who lost and won back a hotel in a poker game; and Roddy Connors, who danced away a fortune at a dollar a dance. We meet dance-hall queens, paupers turned millionaires, missionaries and entrepreneurs, and legendary Mounties such as Sam Steele, the Lion of the Yukon. Pierre Berton's riveting account reveals to us the spectacle of the Chilkoot Pass, and the terrors of lesser-known trails through the swamps of British Columbia, across the glaciers of souther Alaska, and up the icy streams of the Mackenzie Mountains. It contrasts the lawless frontier life on the American side of the border to the relative safety of Dawson City. Winner of the Governor General's award for non-fiction, Klondike is authentic history and grand entertainment, and a must-read for anyone interested in the Canadian frontier. |
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**Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award** The definitive history of nuclear weapons— from the turn-of-the-century discovery of nuclear energy to J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project—this epic work details the science, the people, and the sociopolitical realities that led to the development of the atomic bomb. This sweeping account begins in the 19th century, with the discovery of nuclear fission, and continues to World War Two and the Americans’ race to beat Hitler’s Nazis. That competition launched the Manhattan Project and the nearly overnight construction of a vast military-industrial complex that culminated in the fateful dropping of the first bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reading like a character-driven suspense novel, the book introduces the players in this saga of physics, politics, and human psychology—from FDR and Einstein to the visionary scientists who pioneered quantum theory and the application of thermonuclear fission, including Planck, Szilard, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Teller, Meitner, von Neumann, and Lawrence. From nuclear power’s earliest foreshadowing in the work of H.G. Wells to the bright glare of Trinity at Alamogordo and the arms race of the Cold War, this dread invention forever changed the course of human history, and The Making of The Atomic Bom b provides a panoramic backdrop for that story. Richard Rhodes’s ability to craft compelling biographical portraits is matched only by his rigorous scholarship. Told in rich human, political, and scientific detail that any reader can follow, The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a thought-provoking and masterful work. |
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In the four years between 1881 and 1885, Canada was forged into one nation by the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Last Spike reconstructs the incredible story of how some 2,000 miles of steel crossed the continent in just five years — exactly half the time stipulated in the contract. Pierre Berton recreates the adventures that were part of this vast undertaking: the railway on the brink of bankruptcy, with one hour between it and ruin; the extraordinary land boom of Winnipeg in 1881–1882; and the epic tale of how William Van Horne rushed 3,000 soldiers over a half-finished railway to quell the Riel Rebellion. Dominating the whole saga are the men who made it all possible — a host of astonishing characters: Van Horne, the powerhouse behind the vision of a transcontinental railroad; Rogers, the eccentric surveyor; Onderdonk, the cool New Yorker; Stephen, the most emotional of businessmen; Father Lacombe, the black-robed voyageur; Sam Steele, of the North West Mounted Police; Gabriel Dumont, the Prince of the Prairies; more than 7,000 Chinese workers, toiling and dying in the canyons of the Fraser Valley; and many more — land sharks, construction geniuses, politicians, and entrepreneurs — all of whom played a role in the founding of the new Canada west of Ontario. |
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Experience “one of the best adventure books ever written” ( Wall Street Journal ) in this  New York Times  bestseller: the harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole. In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization. In Endurance , the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age. |
