Throughout Western history, there have been those who felt compelled to share a dissenting opinion on public matters, while still hoping to avoid the social, political, and even criminal consequences for exercising free speech. In this collection of...

While some of the last battles of WWII were being fought, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin―the so-called “Big Three”―met from February 4-11, 1945, in the Crimean resort town of...

How Enlightenment Europe rediscovered its identity by measuring itself against the great civilizations of AsiaDuring the long eighteenth century, Europe's travelers, scholars, and intellectuals looked to Asia in a spirit of puzzlement, irony, and...

A lively yet historically accurate guide: how to dress like a pirate, what to expect of life on the high seas, and how to capture treasurePirate: The Buccaneer’s (Unofficial) Manual is a witty, informative, and highly entertaining guide to how to be a...

William H. McNeill is known for his ability to portray the grand sweep of history. The Global Condition is a classic work for understanding the grand sweep of world history in brief compass. Now with a new foreword by J. R. McNeill, this book brings...

An intellectual history of scurvy in the eighteenth centuryScurvy, a disease often associated with long stretches of maritime travel, generated sensations exceeding the standard of what was normal. Eyes dazzled, skin was morbidly sensitive, emotions...

An extensively revised edition of Tim Jeal's classic biography of the great explorer David LivingstoneDavid Livingstone (1813–1873) is revered as one of history’s greatest explorers and missionaries, the first European to cross Africa, and the first to...

President Franklin D. Roosevelt coined the slogan "The Arsenal of Democracy" to describe American might during the grim years of World War II. The man who financed that arsenal was his Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr. This is the first...

As Diane Ackerman writes in her brilliant new book, The Human Age, "our relationship with nature has changed…radically, irreversibly, but by no means all for the bad. Our new epoch is laced with invention. Our mistakes are legion, but our talent is...

How rulers in ancient and medieval Europe expressed their power through cities, buildings, and sitesThe Power of Place explores the nature of power―the power of kings, emperors, and popes―through the places that these rulers created or developed,...

A sweeping history of Islam and the West from the seventh century to todayEurope and the Islamic World sheds much-needed light on the shared roots of Islamic and Western cultures and on the richness of their inextricably intertwined histories, refuting...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and hailed as “the best history of oil ever written” by Business Week, Daniel Yergin’s “spellbinding…irresistible” (The New York Times) account of the global pursuit of oil, money, and power addresses the ongoing energy...

In its two thousand years of history, London has ruled a rainy island and a globe-spanning empire, it has endured plague and fire and bombing, it has nurtured and destroyed poets and kings, revolutionaries and financiers, geniuses and visionaries of...

Seeks to establish a connection between industrial and technological progress and violence in the modern era, arguing that the twentieth century has been the most violent period in history in spite of unprecedented achievements. By the author of Paper...