In 1963, Samuel Eliot Morison, long one of our most distinguished historians, was awarded the first Balzan Prize in History, a prize that rivals the Nobel Prize in splendor and munificence. To receive the award, Admiral Morison had to...

Douglas MacArthur famously said there is no substitute for victory . . . As a United States general, he had an unparalleled genius for military strategy, and it was under his leadership that Japan was rebuilt into a democratic ally af...

It was seven years ago that Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil achieved a record-breaking four-year run on the New York Times bestseller list. John Berendt's inimitable brand of nonfiction brought the dark mystique of Savannah so...

In his celebrated bestsellers Agent Zigzag and Operation Mincemeat, Ben Macintyre told the dazzling true stories of a remarkable WWII double agent and of how the Allies employed a corpse to fool the Nazis and assure a decisive vict...

David McCullough tells the story of the American artists and scientists who studied in Paris, and changed America through what they learned there.

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear. Our current climate of partisan fu...

In the early 1770s, the men who invented America were living quiet, provincial lives in the rustic backwaters of the New World, devoted primarily to family, craft, and the private pursuit of wealth and happiness. None set out to becom...

Already acclaimed in England as "first-rate" (The Sunday Times); "a model of meticulous, courageous and path-breaking scholarship"(Literary Review); and "absorbing and thoroughly gripping… deserves a lasting...

The companion volume to the new Ken Burns film: a magnificently illustrated history of the American National Park System.In a rich, evocative, deeply informative narrative, Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns examine how each new park was bro...

A classic, firsthand account of the U.S. Marines' relentless drive from Guadalcanal to Okinawa during World War II.

An account of the evacuation of Dunkirk in May 1940 based on interviews with participants, official correspondence and archive material.

On November 5, 1942, a U.S. cargo plane slammed into the Greenland ice cap. Four days later, a B-17 on the search-and-rescue mission also crashed. Miraculously, all nine men on the B-17 survived. The U.S. military launched a second da...

HISTORY AS IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE TOLD: TRUE AND THRILLING. Thomas Edison was a bad guy— and bad guys usually lose in the end. World War II radio host "Tokyo Rose" was branded as a traitor by the U.S. government and served ti...

Unabridged CDs • 14 CDs, 18 hours The definitive account of the Normandy invasion by the bestselling author of Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin 1945.

From Mark Bowden, the preeminent chronicler of our military and special forces, comes The Finish, a gripping account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. With access to key sources, Bowden takes us inside the rooms where decisions were ma...

From the inimitable and bestselling author Thomas Cahill, another popular history, focusing on the Renaissance and Reformation and how this innovative period changed the Western world.  In Volume VI of his acclaimed Hinges of History...

An entertaining exploration into the varied ways we remember and memorialize the American presidents. In Dead Presidents, NPR host Brady Carlson takes readers to presidential gravesites, monuments, and memorials to tell the death stor...

A portrait of the American abolitionist offers insight into his enigmatic personality, covering such topics as his friendships with African-American contemporaries, his twenty children by two wives, and his willingness to resort to ex...

By bestselling author Jenny Conant, a stunning account of Julia Child's early life as an OSS agent in the Far East.

A brilliant new theory of how and why some nations recover from trauma and others don't, by the author of the landmark bestsellers Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse.In his earlier bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jare...

A distinctive portrait of the crescendo moment in American history from the Pulitzer-winning American historian, Joseph Ellis. The summer months of 1776 witnessed the most consequential events in the story of our country's founding. W...

From Pulitzer Prize–winning American historian Joseph J. Ellis, the unexpected story of why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselve...

A magisterial account of the wars that engulfed Europe during the rise and fall of Napoleon.

The must-have companion to Bill O'Reilly's historical docudrama Legends and Lies: The Patriots, an exciting and eye-opening look at the Revolutionary War through the lives of its leadersThe American Revolution was neither inevitable n...

A groundbreaking history of the Panama Canal offers a revelatory workers-eye view of the momentous undertaking and shows how it launched the American century

In this thrilling narrative account of the first devastating battle of the Civil War, gifted storyteller Winston Groom paints vivid portraits of the key players and epic moments immortalized at Shiloh; moments that would forever chan...

The explosive, dark secrets behind America's post-WWII science programs from the author of the New York Times bestseller Area 51. In the chaos following WWII, some of the greatest spoils of Germany's resources were the Third Reich's...

In an astonishing work of scholarship that reads like an adventure thriller, historian Buddy Levy records the last days of the Aztec empire and the two men at the center of an epic clash of cultures.

In this updated version of the classic of popular Egyptology, Barbara Mertz reveals herself to be the perfect guide to ancient Egypt for the student, the layman, and those who plan to visit---or have visited---the Nile Valley.

Hosts and listeners select their favorite stories from the National Public Radio archives, celebrating life, love, hope—and baby ducks.Every NPR listener has had at least one "driveway moment" and probably more. You're so ...