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An expert on American authoritarianism offers a searing rebuke to the "exceptional" narrative that dominates our understanding of US history. In 12 lessons, On Fascism exposes the divisive rhetoric, strongman tactics, violent othering, and mainstream attitudes that continue to through American history and compete with our egalitarian, democratic aspirations.
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"The invention of numerals is perhaps the greatest abstraction the human mind has ever created. Virtually everything in our lives is digital, numerical, or quantified. The story of how and where we got these numerals, which we so depend on, has for thousands of years been shrouded in mystery. Finding Zero is an adventure filled saga of Amir Aczel's lifelong obsession: to find the original sources of our numerals. Aczel has doggedly crisscrossed the...
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The definitive account of the illustrious and controversial history of America's most elite Special Operations fighting force-the US Navy SEALs The legend was forged in the fires of World War II, when special units of elite navy frogmen were entrusted with dangerous covert missions in the brutal global conflict. These Underwater Demolition Teams, as they were then called, soon became known for their toughness and fearlessness, and their remarkable...
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"Religious historian and sociologist Rodney Stark has spent his career engaging with that very question. Indeed, after thirty highly regarded books on the matter, he has created a true master course in Christian history. Now, for the first time, he distills his research to just the most important and interesting episodes--the seminal moments in the story that, he now believes, demand new perspectives. Stark gets right to the events of greatest interest,...
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Sisters is the first major history of the pivotal role played by nuns in the building of American society. Nuns were the first feminists, argues Fialka. They became the nation's first cadre of independent, professional women. Some nursed, some taught, and many created and managed new charitable organizations, including large hospitals and colleges.
In the 1800s nuns moved west with the frontier, often starting the first hospitals and schools in...
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From religion, to language, to the stories rooted in our faith and history books, the Nile River has proven to be a constant fixture in mankind's tales. In this dazzling, idiosyncratic journey from ancient times to the Arab Spring, Red Nile navigates a meandering course through the history of the world's greatest river, exploring this unique breeding ground for creativity, power clashes, and constant change.
Seasoned historical writer Robert Twigger...
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The history of Alaska is filled with stories of new land and new riches -- and ever present are new people with competing views over how the valuable resources should be used: Russians exploiting a fur empire; explorers checking rival advances; prospectors stampeding to the clarion call of "Gold!"; soldiers battling out a decisive chapter in world war; oil wildcatters looking for a different kind of mineral wealth; and always at the core of these...
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The extent to which remarkable things can happen on a baseball field is virtually limitless. Bats break, balls carom wildly, personalities clash, and playing fields are invaded by uninvited guests.
Mudville Madness is for baseball fans who seek something beyond the standard boxscores-something new or rarely encountered. This book is a jaunt into the realm of the extraordinary and (at times) outright bizarre. The most uncommon events in three centuries...
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"A valuable window into a long-underreported dimension of African American history."-Newsday
An engaging social history that reveals the critical role Pullman porters played in the struggle for African American civil rights
When George Pullman began recruiting Southern blacks as porters in his luxurious new sleeping cars, the former slaves suffering under Jim Crow laws found his offer of a steady job and worldly experience irresistible. They quickly...
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Memphis, Tennessee. The early 1950s. The Mississippi rolls by, and there's a train in the night. Down on Beale Street there's hard-edged blues, on the outskirts of town they're pickin' hillbilly boogie.
At Sam Phillips' Sun Records studio on Union Avenue, there's something different going on. "Shake it, baby, shake it!" "Go, cat, go!" "We're gonna rock..."
This is where rock 'n' roll was born-the record company that launched Elvis Presley, Jerry...
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In 1637, Anne Hutchinson, a forty-six-year-old midwife who was pregnant with her sixteenth child, stood before forty male judges of the Massachusetts General Court, charged with heresy and sedition. In a time when women could not vote, hold public office, or teach outside the home, the charismatic Hutchinson wielded remarkable political power. Her unconventional ideas had attracted a following of prominent citizens eager for social reform. Hutchinson...
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New York Times Bestseller: "A sprawling action-packed novel" of Israel by the author of The Hope (The Philadelphia Inquirer).
This follow-up to The Hope plunges immediately into the violence and upheaval of the Six-Day War of 1967 and continues the stories of its multiple characters and of Israel's dramatic struggle for survival across the years. The Glory takes readers through the terrors of the Yom Kippur War, the famous Entebbe operation, and...
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"In A History of America in Thirty-six Postage Stamps, Chris West (author of A History of Britain in Thirty-six Postage Stamps) makes the leap across the Atlantic to take on America's own rich philatelic history. From George Washington's dour gaze to thecharging buffalo of the western frontier, to Lindbergh's soaring biplane, American stamps are a vivid window into our country's extraordinary and distinctive past. With the always accessible and spirited...
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Between 1846 and 1851, more than one-million people--the potato famine emigrants--sailed from Ireland to America. Now, 150 years later, The Famine Ships tells of the courage and determination of those who crossed the Atlantic in leaky, overcrowded sailing ships and made new lives for themselves, among them the child Henry Ford and the twenty-six-year-old Patrick Kennedy, great-grandfather of John F. Kennedy. Edward Laxton conducted five years of research...
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This long out-of-print and hard-to-find classic tells the story of the Texas invasion of New Mexico during the American Civil War. In early 1862, Confederate General Henry Hopkins Sibley marched thirty-four hundred coarse Texas farmboys, cowhands, and frontiersmen into New Mexico and up the Rio Grande Valley. Although seriously bloodied, they repulsed Union troops at the Battle of Valverde. As the poorly supplied Texans pushed northward, New Mexicans...
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"Anexotic and instructive tale, told with life, learning and just the right measure of laughter on every page. O'Donnell combines a historian's mastery of substance with a born storyteller's sense of style to create a magnificent work of art." - Madeleine K. Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State
The dream Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar shared of uniting Europe, the Medi-terranean, and the Middle East in a single community shuddered and...
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London, 1788: a group of British gentlemen---geographers, scholars, politicians, humanitarians, and traders---decide it is time to solve the mysteries of Africa's unknown interior regions. Inspired by the Enlightenment quest for knowledge, they consider it a slur on the age that the interior of Africa still remains a mystery, that maps of the "dark continent" are populated with mythical beasts, imaginary landmarks, and fabled empires. As well, they...
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