von Bruce Catton

A perfect introduction and "the best single-volume treatment of the Civil War" (Chicago Sun-Times) that captures the dramatic scope and intimate experience of that epic struggle from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Army of the Potomac Trilogy.Covering events from the prelude of the conflict to the death of Lincoln, Bruce Catton blends a gripping narrative with deep, yet unassuming, scholarship to bring the war alive on the page in an almost novelistic way. It is this gift for narrative that led contemporary critics to compare this book to War and Peace, and call it a “modern Iliad.” Now over fifty years old, This Hallowed Ground remains one of the best-loved and admired general Civil War books: a perfect introduction to readers beginning their exploration of the conflict, as well as a thrilling analysis and reimagining of its events for experienced students of the war.Includes maps.

von Ben Kiernan

For thirty years Ben Kiernan has been deeply involved in the study of genocide and crimes against humanity. He has played a key role in unearthing confidential documentation of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. His writings have transformed our understanding not only of twentieth-century Cambodia but also of the historical phenomenon of genocide. This new book—the first global history of genocide and extermination from ancient times—is among his most important achievements. Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. He identifies connections, patterns, and features that in nearly every case gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and cults of antiquity and agrarianism. The ideologies that have motivated perpetrators of mass killings in the past persist in our new century, says Kiernan. He urges that we heed the rich historical evidence with its telltale signs for predicting and preventing future genocides.

von David Graeber

For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a reaction to indigenous critiques of European society, and why they are wrong. In doing so, they overturn our view of human history, 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 begin to see what's really there. If humans did not spend 95 per cent 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? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful possibilities than we tend to assume.

von Neil Price

The Viking Age - Between 750 And 1050 - Saw An Unprecedented Expansion Of The Scandinavian Peoples. As Traders And Raiders, Explorers And Colonists, They Reshaped The World Between Eastern North America And The Asian Steppe. For A Millennium, Though, Their History Has Largely Been Filtered Through The Writings Of Their Victims. Based On The Latest Archaeological And Textual Evidence, Children Of Ash And Elm Tells The Story Of The Vikings On Their Own Terms- Their Politics, Their Cosmology, Their Art And Culture. From Bj?rn Ironside, Who Led An Expedition To Sack Rome, To Gudrid Thorbjarnard?ttir, The Most Travelled Woman In The World, Price Shows Us The Real Vikings, Not The Caricatures They Have Become In Popular Culture And History.

von Andrew Marr

Fresh, exciting and vividly readable, this is popular history at its very best.Our understanding of world history is changing, as new discoveries are made on all the continents and old prejudices are being challenged. In this truly global journey, political journalist Andrew Marr revisits some of the traditional epic stories, from classical Greece and Rome to the rise of Napoleon, but surrounds them with less familiar material, from Peru to the Ukraine, China to the Caribbean. He looks at cultures that have failed and vanished, as well as the origins of today’s superpowers, and finds surprising echoes and parallels across vast distances and epochs. A History of the World is a book about the great change-makers of history and their times, people such as Cleopatra, Genghis Khan, Galileo and Mao, but it is also a book about us. For ‘the better we understand how rulers lose touch with reality, or why revolutions produce dictators more often than they produce happiness, or why some parts of the world are richer than others, the easier it is to understand our own times.’

von Wilcomb E. Washburn

Surveys the full history of the American Indians, examining Indian personal, social, religious, and cultural characteristics and conduct, their relationships with whites, and emerging new roles, identities, and goals.

von Kevin Starr

The sixth volume in one of the great ongoing works of American cultural history—Kevin Starr's monumental Americans and the California Dream—Embattled Dreams is a peerless work of cultural history following California in the years surrounding World War II. During the 1940s California ascended to a new, more powerful role in the nation. Starr describes the vast expansion of the war industry and California's role as the "arsenal of democracy" (especially the significant part women played in the aviation industry). He examines the politics of the state: Earl Warren as the dominant political figure, the anti-Communist movement and "red baiting," and the early career of Richard Nixon. He also looks at culture, ranging from Hollywood to the counterculture, to film noir and detective stories. And he illuminates the harassment of Japanese immigrants and the shameful treatment of other minorities, especially Hispanics and blacks. In Embattled Dreams, Starr again provides a spellbinding account of the Golden State, narrating California's transformation from a regional power to a dominant economic, social, and cultural force. "With a novelist's eye for the telling detail, and a historian's grasp of the sweep of grand events.... [Starr's] got it all down.... I read the book with absorbed admiration."—Herman Wouk, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Caine Mutiny and The Winds of War "The scope of Starr's scholarship is breathtaking."—Atlantic Monthly "A magnificent accomplishment."—Los Angeles Times Book Review "Brilliant and epic social and cultural history."—Business Week "Ebullient, nuanced, interdisciplinary history of the grandest kind."—San Francisco Chronicle

von Jonathan Rose

This is a landmark intellectual history of Britain's working classes from the preindustrial era to the twentieth century. Drawing on workers' memoirs, social surveys, library registers, and more, Jonathan Rose uncovers which books people read, how they educated themselves, and what they knew. A new preface addresses the continuing relevance of the book amidst the upheavals of the present day. "An astonishing book."--Ian Sansom, The Guardian "A passionate work of history. . . . Rose has written a work of staggering ambition."--Daniel Akst, Wall Street Journal Winner of the SHARP Book History Prize, the American Philosophical Society's Jacques Barzun Prize, and the British Council Prize cowinner of the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Prize for 2001; named one of the finest books of 2001 by The Economist.

von H. W. F. Saggs

Written by Assyriologist H. W. F. Saggs. It illustrates the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Saggs spent half of his life studying the ancient Assyrians, before he wrote this book. - from Wikipedia

von K. Theodore Hoppen

This, the third volume to appear in the New Oxford History of England, covers the period from the repeal of the Corn Laws to the dramatic failure of Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill. In his magisterial study of the mid-Victorian generation, Theo Hoppen identifies three defining themes. The first he calls 'established industrialism' - the growing acceptance that factory life and manufacturing had come to stay. It was during these four decades that the balance of employment shifted irrevocably. For the first time in history, more people were employed in industry than worked on the land. The second concerns the 'multiple national identities' of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. Dr Hoppen's study of the histories of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the Empire reveals the existence of a variety of particular and overlapping national traditions flourishing alongside the increasingly influential structure of the unitary state. The third defining theme is that of 'interlocking spheres' which the author uses to illuminate the formation of public culture in the period. This, he argues, was generated not by a series of influences operating independently from each other, but by a variety of intermeshed political, economic, scientific, literary and artistic developments. This original and authoritative book will define these pivotal forty years in British history for the next generation.