Nelson Runger
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The Battle of Antietam, fought on September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest single day in American history, with more than 6,000 soldiers killed--four times the number lost on D-Day, and twice the number killed in the September 11th terrorist attacks. In Crossroads of Freedom, America's most eminent Civil War historian, James M. McPherson, paints a masterful account of this pivotal battle, the events that led up to it, and its aftermath. As McPherson...
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Six months after the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution was all but lost. A powerful British force had routed the Americans at New York, occupied three colonies, and advanced within sight of Philadelphia. Yet, as David Hackett Fischer recounts in this riveting history, George Washington--and many other Americans--refused to let the Revolution die. On Christmas night, as a howling nor'easter struck the Delaware Valley, he led his...
6) John Adams
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Chronicles the life of the second president, John Adams, describing the many conflicts--including international exploits--he faced during his long political career and exploring the love story that was his marriage to Abigail and the complexity of his friendship with Thomas Jefferson.
7) The prince
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The world-renowned philosopher's classic treatise reveals the techniques and strategies for gaining and keeping political control. "How we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation. Therefore, it is necessary to learn how not to be good, " wrote Machiavelli.
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Thirty years ago, the theory that continents are comprised of drifting plates-plate tectonics-evoked more scorn than serious research. Today, this revolutionary theory continues to dazzle and challenge geologists and laymen alike. Assembling California explores an area uniquely demonstrative of the plate tectonic theory: California, which according to "tectonicists," is breaking apart at its seams.
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To geologists, rocks are beautiful, roadcuts are windowpanes, and the earth is alive-a work in progress. The cataclysmic movement that gives birth to mountains and oceans is ongoing and can still be seen at certain places on our planet. One of these is the Basin and Range region centered in Nevada and Utah. In this first book of a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, the author crosses the spectacular Basin and Range with geology professor Kenneth Deffeyes...
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The United States of 1940, an isolationist country divided along class lines, still suffering the ravages of a decade-long depression, and woefully unprepared for war, was unified by a common threat and by the extraordinary leadership of Franklin Roosevelt to become, only five years later, the preeminent economic and military power in the world. At the center of the country's transformation was the complex partnership of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt....
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With an outstanding blend of brilliant scholarship and entertaining style, Professor Stephen B. Oates brings us closer than ever before to knowing the real Abraham Lincoln. Here is Lincoln as he really was-a gentle, determined man obsessed with death yet filled with life, troubled with bouts of melancholy yet blessed with a witty nature, and gifted with a talent for literary expression. With Malice Toward None reads like an enthralling novel while...
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Noted biographer Jean Strouse has won the Bancroft Prize and received fellowships from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowments for the Humanities and Arts. Her work has appeared in major magazines including The New Yorker and Newsweek. In Morgan, she creates the first complete portrait of a man who defined American commerce and banking. Contemporaries described J. Pierpoint Morgan as "the financial Moses of the New World." He...
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Modern Library chronicles volume 12
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LA Times Book Award winner and expert on the past and present Japan, Ian Buruma examines the transformation of a country. Following Japan's history from its opening to the West in 1853 to its hosting of the 1964 Olympics, Buruma focuses on how figures such as Commodore Matthew Perry, Douglas MacArthur, and Emperor Mitsushito helped shape this complex country.