1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History)
In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the “Sea Peoples” invaded Egypt. The pharaoh’s army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic …
Now a major motion picture starring Alicia Vikander and Kit HaringtonMuch of what we know and feel about the First World War we owe to Vera Brittain’s elegiac yet unsparing book, which set a standard for memoirists from Martha Gellhorn to Lillian Hellman. Abandoning her studies at Oxford in 1915 to enlist as a nurse in the armed …
Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction Winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Non-Fiction One of the world’s most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and …
Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. He now shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders, taking readers inside isolated American communities where some 40,000 Mormon Fundamentalists still practice polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt …
“Meticulous, comprehensive, indispensable. ‘I read the Koran so you don’t have to,’ Spencer writes—but even for those of us who have read the Koran, this is a richly illuminating work.”—Bruce Bawer, author of Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom and While Europe …
Sometime about 30,000 years ago, somebody stuck a sharp rock into a split stickand presto! The axe was born. Our inquisitive species just loves tinkering, testing, and pushing the limits, and this delightfully different book is a freewheeling reference to hundreds of customs, notions, and inventions that reflect human ingenuity throughout history.From hand tools to holidays to weapons …
The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all timeThe Proud Tower, the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Guns of August, and The Zimmerman Telegram comprise Barbara W. Tuchman’s classic histories of the First World War eraIn this landmark, Pulitzer Prize–winning account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War …
The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution
A companion to such acclaimed works as The Age of Wonder, A Clockwork Universe, and Darwin’s Ghosts—a groundbreaking examination of the greatest event in history, the Scientific Revolution, and how it came to change the way we understand ourselves and our world.We live in a world transformed by scientific discovery. Yet today, science and its practitioners have come …
A new gift edition of a modern classic, with supplemental photographs, speeches, letters, and essays Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir of life in Nazi death camps has riveted generations of readers. Based on Frankl’s own experience and the stories of his patients, the book argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, …