When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun chose to stay through the storm to protect his house and contracting business. After the storm, he traveled the flooded streets in a canoe, passing on supplies and helping...
Poison: An Illustrated History
Joel LevyFrom Greek philosophers to Russian spies, poisons have a long and colorful history. Easy to obtain and administer, they are often hard to detect or trace. They kill, but they also smooth wrinkles, calm nerves, provide visions, and cur...
Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes o...
Ian BurumaProvides a thought-provoking analysis of the stereotypes and misunderstandings about the Western world that ignite anti-Western political movements, tracing the roots and evolution of such phenomena and examining why they have found a...
The Freedom Line: The Brave Men and W...
Peter EisnerThe Freedom Line unfolds a surprising history of World War II, telling the gripping story of the men and women who risked their lives to save Allied airmen trapped behind enemy lines.When twenty-year-old American pilot Robert Grimes w...
Forever Free: The Story of Emancipati...
Eric FonerAnalyzes the post-Civil War era of Emancipation and Reconstruction with an emphasis on discovering the larger political and cultural meaning for contemporary America of the lives of the newly freed slaves and the rise of the Ku Klux K...
The Face of Battle: A Study of Aginco...
John KeeganWhat is it like to be in battle? John Keegan, a senior instructor at Sandhurst, the British Military Academy, speaks for soldiers who were present in the fray. For examples, Keegan selects Agincourt in 1415, Waterloo in 1815, and th...
On the eve of World War II, the Squalus, America's newest submarine, plunged to the bottom of the North Atlantic. Miraculously, thirty-three crew members still survived. While their loved ones waited in unbearable tension on shore, ...
1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina
Chris RoseDead in Attic is a collection of stories by Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose, recounting the first harrowing year and a half of life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Celebrated as a local treasure and heaped with national pr...
Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders a...
Michael R. BeschlossPresidential Courage is a brilliantly readable and inspiring saga about crucial times in American history when a courageous President dramatically changed our future. Like Beschloss's previous book, The Conquerors, it was a New York T...
The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and...
Michael R. BeschlossA New York Times bestseller, The Conquerors reveals how Franklin Roosevelt's and Harry Truman's private struggles with their aides and Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin affected the unfolding of the Holocaust and the fate of vanquis...
How Capitalism Saved America: The Unt...
Thomas J. DilorenzoWhether it’s Michael Moore or the New York Times, Hollywood or academia, a growing segment in America is waging a war on capitalism. We hear that greedy plutocrats exploit the American public; that capitalism harms consumers, th...
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold Hist...
Nancy IsenbergThe New York Times Besteller, with a new preface from the author"This estimable book rides into the summer doldrums like rural electrification. . . . It deals in the truths that matter."—Dwight Garner, The New York Times&q...
African Samurai: The True Story of Ya...
Thomas LockleyWarrior. Samurai. Legend. When Yasuke arrived in Japan in the late 1500s, he had already traversed much of the known world. Kidnapped as a child in Northeast Africa, he served as a bodyguard to the head of the Jesuits in Asia, trav...
Beethoven's Hair: An Extraordinary Hi...
Russell MartinLudwig van Beethoven lay dying in 1827, a young musician named Ferdinand Hiller came to pay his respects to the great composer. In those days, it was customary to snip a lock of hair as a keepsake, and this Hiller did a day after Beet...
The Lincolns in the White House: Four...
Jerrold M. PackardReveals how divisions within the Lincoln family during his presidency mirrored the struggles of the nation, describing First Lady Mary Lincoln's mental collapse in the wake of fierce distrust for her southern heritage, the death of el...
Standing Next to History: An Agent's ...
Joseph PetroThe personal story of a U.S. Secret Service special agent documents his twenty-three-year career during which he witnessed history-making moments and served, among other duties, as a personal bodyguard and confidant to President Reaga...
One Square Mile of Hell: The Battle f...
John WukovitsIn November 1943, the men of the 2nd Marine Division watched as bombardments destroyed the Japanese defenses on an islet in the Tarawa atoll. But when the Marines landed, the Japanese poured out of their protective bunkers and began o...
Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Deci...
Stephen E. AmbroseIn a narrative of steady fascination, Ambrose describes the political and military consequences behind General Dwight Eisenhower's decision to halt at the Elbe River and leave Berlin to the Red Army in the final months of World War II...
The Terror: The Merciless War for Fre...
David AndressAn incisive new interpretation of the French Revolution and its violent upheaval looks at troubling parallels between the Terror and the rise of today's political and religious fundamentalism, arguing that the violence of the French R...
The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily ...
Rick Atkinson"A triumph of narrative history, elegantly written, thick with unforgettable description and rooted in the sight and sounds of battle."—The New York TimesIn An Army at Dawn—winner of the Pulitzer Prize—Rick Atkinson pr...
A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy BookA GoodReads Reader's ChoiceIn One Summer Bill Bryson, one of our greatest and most beloved nonfiction writers, transports readers on a journey back to one amazing season in American life.The summer of ...
Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Jo...
Leslie CarrollA funny, raucous, and delightfully dirty 900-year history of the royal marriages of Europe's most famous-and infamous-monarchs. Since time immemorial, royal marriages have had little to do with love- and almost everything to do with...
Chilling real-life accounts of witches, from medieval Europe through colonial America From a manual for witch hunters written by King James himself in 1597, to court documents from the Salem witch trials of 1692, to newspaper covera...
A Higher Call: An Incredible True Sto...
Adam MakosFour days before Christmas 1943, a badly damaged American bomber struggled to fly over wartime Germany. At its controls was a 21-year-old pilot. Half his crew lay wounded or dead. It was their first mission. Suddenly, a sleek, dark sh...
The Tudors: The Complete Story of Eng...
G. J. MeyerNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERAcclaimed historian G. J. Meyer provides a fresh look at the fabled Tudor dynasty—and some of the most enigmatic figures ever to rule a country. In 1485, Henry Tudor, whose claim to the English throne was so...
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of A...
Kate MooreA New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal Bestseller!"the glowing ghosts of the radium girls haunt us still."―NPR Books The incredible true story of the women who fought America's Undark dangerThe Curies' newly ...
The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hop...
Miriam PawelThe rise, fall, and legacy of the inspirational United Farm Workers movement, and the untold story of iconic community organizer Cesar Chavez. A generation of Americans came of age boycotting grapes, swept up in a movement that vanqui...
A Chernobyl survivor and award-winning historian "mercilessly chronicles the absurdities of the Soviet system" in this "vividly empathetic" account of the worst nuclear accident in history (The Wall Street Journal)...
Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of t...
Ron PowersAs the Confederacy felt itself slipping beneath the Union juggernaut in late 1864, the South launched a desperate counteroffensive to shatter the U.S. economy and force a standoff. Its secret weapon? A state-of-the-art raiding ship wh...
The Great Depression and New Deal: A ...
Eric RauchwayThe New Deal shaped our nation's politics for decades, and was seen by many as tantamount to the 'American Way' itself. Now, in this superb compact history, Eric Rauchway offers an informed account of the New Deal and the Great Depres...