Best History Books

In February 1917, in the midst of bloody war, Russia was still an autocratic monarchy: nine months later, it became the first socialist state in world history.

A sweeping and original work of economic history by Michael Lind, one of Americas leading intellectuals, Land of Promise recounts the epic story of Americas rise to become the worlds dominant economy.

New York Times Bestseller Edgar Award winner for Best Fact CrimeThe Day of the Locust meets The Devil in the White City and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in this juicy, untold Hollywood story: an addictive true tale of ambition, scandal, intrigue, murder, and the…

Packed With Magnificent Material On Southern California's Galaxy of Person Alities, This Book Provides Insights Into Subjects Ranging From The Origins Hollywood To The Flowering of InternationalStyle Architecture,.

Now a special 30thanniversary edition in both hardcover and paperback, the classic bestselling history The New York Times called "Original, remarkable, and finally heartbreaking...Impossible to put down."Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented…

Spufford cunningly maps out a literary genre of his own . . . Freewheeling and fabulous. The Times (London)Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale.

The Rise of the West, winner of the National Book Award for history in 1964, is famous for its ambitious scope and intellectual rigor.

A biography of the only president to be elected to nonconsecutive terms reveals a tough, honest, courageous leader who took responsibility for his actions and wasn't afraid to take on corruption where he saw it.

The neverbeforetold story of the computer scientists and the NSA, Pentagon, and White House policymakers who invented and employ the wars of the present and future the cyber wars where every country can be a major power player and every hacker a mass destroyer, as reported by a…

The Kim dynasty has ruled North Korea for over 60 years. Most of that period has found the country suffering under mature Stalinism characterized by manipulation, brutality and tight social control.

Few stories from the "greatest generation" are as unforgettable or as little known as that of the 10th Mountain Division. Today a versatile light infantry unit deployed around the world, the 10th began in 1941 as a crew of civilian athletes with a passion for mountains and snow.

"The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of the New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C." H. R.

Secret conversations at Hitler's headquarters from July 1941 to November 1944 were all recorded for posterity. This book documents those conversations where Hitler talked freely of his aims, his early life, and his plans for world conquest.

Joseph J. Ellis follows his subject from the drafting of the Declaration to retirement at Monticello in steady, narrative prose that blends intellectual portraiture with political chronology. The book’s chief value is its attention to moral and political tension—public republicanism set against private practice—and how those tensions shaped the early republic. Its usefulness lies in clear vignettes and connective historical context; its main limitation is occasional overreliance on inferred motives and long stretches of archival detail that test reader patience.

In this lavishly illustrated book bestselling author Christopher Winn takes you on a captivating journey around London. Travelling through the villages and districts that made up the world's must dynamic metropolis, I Never Knew That About London unearths the hidden gems of…

Soccer is much more than a game, or even a way of life. It is a perfect window into the crosscurrents of today's world, with all its joys and its sorrows.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Paris was known for isolated monuments but had not yet put its brand on urban space. Like other European cities, it was still emerging from its medieval past.

The French Revolution is an historical event unlike any other. It is more than just a topic of intellectual interest: it has become part of a moral and political heritage.

To this day, Japan's modern ascendancy challenges many assumptions about world history, particularly theories regarding the rise of the west and why the modern world looks the way it does. In this engaging new history, Brett L.

A graphic adaptation of a 100yearold diary brings World War I history to lifeOne winter morning, Barroux was walking down a street in Paris when he made an extraordinary find: the real diary of a soldier in World War I.

"Takes readers into the maelstrom and shows nature's splendid and dangerous havoc at its utmost".October 1991. It was "the perfect storm"a tempest that may happen only once in a centurya nor'easter created by so rare a combination of factors that it could not possibly have been…

Since its publication in 1996, Holy Land has become an American classic. In "quick, translucent prose" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times) that is at once lyrical and unsentimental, D. J. Waldie recounts growing up in Lakewood, California, a prototypical postWorld War II suburb.

During World War II a community called Manzanar was created in the high mountain desert country of California. Its purpose was to house thousands of Japanese Americans.

With a thrilling, fastpaced narrative, awardwinning journalist Douglas Perry vividly captures the sensationalized circus atmosphere that gave rise to the concept of the celebrity criminal and gave Chicago its most famous story.

I couldn't play on the same playground as the white kids. I couldn't go to their schools. I couldn't drink from their water fountains. There were so many things I couldn't do.

For the past 140 years, Germany has been the central power in continental europe. Twentyfive years ago a new German state came into being.

In August 1945 Great Britain, France, the USSR, and the United States established a tribunal at Nuremberg to try military and civilian leaders of the Nazi regime. G.M.

Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first African American child to integrate a New Orleans school with this story of living legend and civil rights activist Ruby Bridges!The year is 1960, and sixyearold Ruby Bridges and her family have recently moved from Mississippi to New…

Winner of the GuggenheimLehrman Prize in Military HistoryThe Society of Military History 2015 Distinguished Book Award RecipientWinner of the Wolfson History PrizeBritish Army Military Book of the Year For Germany and AustriaHungary the First World War started with high hopes…

Based on Evan Wright's National Magazine Awardwinning story in Rolling Stone, this is the raw, firsthand account of the 2003 Iraq invasion that inspired the HBO(R) original miniseries.

This is the story of Jane Addams, the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, who transformed a poor neighborhood in Chicago by opening up her house as a community center.This title has Common Core connections.

?During the first two months of 1917 Russia was still a Romanov monarchy. Eight months later the Bolsheviks stood at the helm. They were little known to anybody when the year began, and their leaders were still under indictment for state treason when they came to power.

The former editorinchief of Details and Star adventures into the fascinating "brave new world" of cannabis, tracing its history and possible future as he investigates the social, medical, legal, and cultural ramifications of this surprisingly versatile plant.Pot. Weed. Grass.

Through concise text and richly detailed black and white illustrations we come to know the philosophy of life and death in ancient Egypt.

Greenland: a remote, mysterious island five times the size of California but with a population of just 56,000. The ice sheet that covers it is 700 miles wide and 1,500 miles long, and is composed of nearly three quadrillion tons of ice.

Reyner Banham examined the built environment of Los Angeles in a way no architectural historian before him had done, looking with fresh eyes at its manifestations of popular taste and industrial ingenuity, as well as its more traditional modes of residential and commercial…

In a stirring chronicle, Doreen Rappaport brings to light the courage of countless Jews who organized to sabotage the Nazis and help other Jews during the Holocaust.Under the noses of the military, Georges Loinger smuggles thousands of children out of occupied France into…

Somme, July 1916. For almost seventy years the very name of the battle has epitomised all the horror and hardship of the First World War.

With a postscript describing SEAL efforts in Afghanistan, The Warrior Elite takes you into the toughest, longest, and most relentless military training in the world.What does it take to become a Navy SEAL What makes talented, intelligent young men volunteer for physical…

The Corpse Walker introduces us to regular men and women at the bottom of Chinese society, most of whom have been battered by life but have managed to retain their dignity: a professional mourner, a human trafficker, a public toilet manager, a leper, a grave robber, and a Falung…

In this unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history, James Bradley has captured the glory, the triumph, the heartbreak, and the legacy of the six men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima.

Making use of every possible contemporary source diaries, memoirs, advice books, government papers, almanacs, even the Register of Patents Liza Picard presents an enthralling picture of how life in London was really lived in the 1600s: the houses and streets, gardens and parks,…

This is the first volume in a bold new series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still giving weight to the characteristics of each country.

To some it's the classic "gateway drug," to others it is a harmless way to relax, or provide relief from pain. Some fear it is dangerous and addictive, while others feel it should be decriminalized.

From Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis, authors of the PEN Center USA awardwinning Dallas 1963, comes a madcap narrative about Timothy Leary's daring prison escape and run from the law. On the moonlit evening of September 12, 1970, an exHarvard professor with a genius I.Q.

"The most important book by one of the outstanding military authorities of our time." ? Library Journal This is the classic book on war as we know it. During his long life, Basil H.

More American children recognize Super Mario, the hero of one of Nintendo's video games, than Mickey Mouse. The Japanese company has come to earn more money than the big three computer giants or all Hollywood movie studios combined.

Paul Revere's midnight ride is a legendary event in American history yet it has been largely ignored by scholars, and left to patriotic writers and debunkers.

On April 24, 1895, Captain Joshua Slocum set out on a threeyear journey to circumnavigate the world alone by boat. Crossing the Pacific and Atlantic oceans in his sloop, the Spray, Slocum visited South Africa, South America, and Australia before returning home as the first man…

An important new translation of a fundamental work of Brazilian literatureWritten by a former army lieutenant, civil engineer, and journalist, Backlands is Euclides da Cunha's vivid and poignant portrayal of Brazil's infamous War of Canudos.

Emma Donoghue examines how desire between women in English literature has been portrayed, from schoolgirls and vampires to runaway wives, from crossdressing knights to contemporary murder stories.

Originally published in 1961, this classic work remains the most comprehensive history of the many and important roles played by African Americans during the American Revolution.

The New York Times best selling book that takes you inside SEAL Team Six ? the covert squad that killed Osama Bin Laden. SEAL Team Six is a secret unit tasked with counterterrorism, hostage rescue, and counterinsurgency.

Most Australians live in cities and cling to the coastal fringe, yet our sense of what an Australian is ? or should be ? is drawn from the vast and varied inland called the bush.

The first collection of seminal writings on a movement that is rapidly changing the face of American politics, The Libertarian Reader links some of the most fertile minds of our time to a centuriesold commitment to freedom, selfdetermination, and opposition to intrusive…

Mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel have touted and promoted Chicago as a "world class city." The skyscrapers kissing the clouds, the billiondollar Millennium Park, Michelinrated restaurants, pristine lake views, fabulous shopping, vibrant theater scene, downtown flower…