Historical History

In the first full-scale biography of Mary Stuart in more than 30 years, John Guy creates an intimate and absorbing portrait of one of history's most famous women, depicting her world and her place in the sweep of history with stunning immediacy. Bringing together all surviving documents and uncovering a trove of new sources for the first time, Guy dispels the popular image of Mary Queen of Scots as a romantic leading lady - achieving her ends through feminine wiles - and establishes her as the intellectual and political equal of Elizabeth I.

It was 1905, in New Orleans, three years after Earl’s family escaped the KKK in Mississippi. People thought Betty Jones, a brothel madam, was a witch because of her bright blue eyes when she was young. Betty assumes the role of elder to Earl’s daughter Linda. Linda is like a sponge! Betty and Linda want to create a business no black person had ever tried, requiring a complex dangerous scheme just to get started. Failure would place both of them in harm’s way. Linda’s brother, Charlie, abandons his family to find respect but only creates enemies when he dares to cross the color ...

Pulitzer Prize winner Larry McMurtry crafts works synonymous with the grandeur and beauty of the American West. Here McMurtry turns his attention to George A. Custer, a complex man who has captivated historians for over a century. From graduating last in his class at West Point to leading the ill-fated 7th Cavalry in the attack at Little Bighorn, Custer forged a legacy - still very much alive today - as one of the West's most enduring historical figures.

In 1851, Olive Oatman was a 13-year-old pioneer traveling west toward Zion, with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her family was brutally killed by Yavapai Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohave, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own.

Born into a respected Irish-Anglo family in 1860, Charles loves his native land and its long-suffering but irrepressible people. As a healer, he travels the countryside dispensing traditional cures while soaking up stories and legends of bygone times - and witnessing the painful, often violent birth of land-reform measures destined to lead to Irish independence. At the age of 40, summoned to Paris to treat his dying countryman - the infamous Oscar Wilde - Charles experiences the fateful moment of his life.

History remembers Attila, the leader of the Huns, as the Romans perceived him: a savage barbarian brutally inflicting terror on whoever crossed his path. Following Attila and the Huns from the steppes of Kazakhstan to the court of Constantinople, Christopher Kelly portrays Attila in a compelling new light, uncovering an unlikely marriage proposal, a long-standing relationship with a treacherous Roman general, and a thwarted assassination plot.

A spellbinding storyteller, historian David O. Stewart traces the canny and charismatic Aaron Burr from the threshold of the presidency in 1800 to his duel with Alexander Hamilton. Stewart recounts Burr’s efforts to carve out an empire, taking listeners across the American West as the renegade vice president schemes with foreign ambassadors, the U.S. general-in-chief, and future presidents.

A narrative of exploration - full of strange landscapes and even stranger inhabitants - that explains the enduring fascination of France. While Gustave Eiffel was changing the skyline of Paris, large parts of France were still terra incognita. Even in the age of railways and newspapers, France was a land of ancient tribal divisions, prehistoric communication networks, and pre-Christian beliefs. French itself was a minority language.

MacKinlay Kantor, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and master storyteller, shows us how the South could have won the Civil War, how two small shifts in history (as we know it) in the summer of 1863 could have turned the tide for the Confederacy. What would have happened: to the Union, to Abraham Lincoln, to the people of the North and South, to the world?

At the beginning of 1940, Germany was at the pinnacle of its power. By May 1945, Hitler was dead and Germany had suffered a disastrous defeat. Hitler had failed to achieve his aim of making Germany a super power and had left her people to cope with the endless shame of the Holocaust. Despite Hitler's grand ambitions and the successful early stages of the Third Reich's advances into Europe, Frank McDonough convincingly argues that Germany was only ever a middle-ranking power and never truly stood a chance against the combined forces of the Allies.

The Hawaiian kingdom was tiny, and the big world was huge. The 19th century was the high water mark of Western imperialism, worldwide, and the great powers were planting their flags across the Pacific. Hawai'i was in their sights. By late in the century, two strong American currents were running: one east from the islands, one west from the continent. Sugar plantations had become Hawai'i's biggest moneymaker. And many of the biggest names in the business were of American blood - the sons of missionaries, devout capitalists.

For nearly a century, historians have depicted Germany as a rabidly nationalist land, born in a sea of aggression. Not so, says Helmut Walser Smith, who, in this groundbreaking 500-year history, challenges traditional perceptions of Germany's conflicted past, revealing a nation far more thematically complicated than 20th-century historians have imagined.

When the Civil War broke out, Clara Barton wanted more than anything to be a Union soldier, an impossible dream for a 39-year-old woman who stood a slender five feet tall. Determined to serve, she became a veritable soldier, a nurse, and a one-woman relief agency operating in the heart of the conflict. Now, award-winning author Stephen B. Oates, drawing on archival materials not used by her previous biographers, has written the first complete account of Clara Barton's active engagement in the Civil War.

In this dynamic and engaging biography, Anthony Everitt plunges us into the fascinating, scandal-ridden world of ancient Rome in its most glorious heyday. Accessible to us through his legendary speeches but also through an unrivaled collection of unguarded letters to his close friend Atticus, Cicero comes to life here as a witty and cunning political operator.

Sicily has always acted as a gateway between Europe and the rest of the world. Fought over by the Phoenicians and Greeks, the Romans, Goths and Byzantines, Arabs and Normans, Germans, and the Spanish and the French for thousands of years, Sicily became a unique melting pot where diverse traditions merged, producing a unique heritage and singular culture. In this fascinating account of the island from the earliest times to the present day, author and journalist Jamie Mackay leads us through this most elusive of places.

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization.

Told with the same old-fashioned narrative power as the novels of Herman Wouk, The Seamstress is the true story of Seren (Sara) Tuvel Bernstein and her survival during wartime. This powerful eyewitness account of survival, told with power and grace, will stay with listeners for years to come.

A History of Western Philosophy and Theology is the fruit of John Frame's 45 years of teaching philosophical subjects. No other survey of the history of Western thought offers the same invigorating blend of expositional clarity, critical insight, and biblical wisdom.

Saint Augustine's contributions to Christian theology are second to no other post-apostolic author in the whole sweep of church history. Yet along side his doctrinal treatises, Augustine tells a story of his life devoted to Christ as his only satisfaction. The Confessions is at once the autobiographical account of Augustine's life of Christian faith and at the same time a compelling theology of Christian spirituality for everyone.

Acclaimed author of biographical and historical fiction Irving Stone turns his magnificent talent to telling America's most colorful and exciting story - the opening of the Far West. Men to Match My Mountains is a true historical masterpiece, an unforgettable pageant of giants - men like John Sutter, whose dream of paradise was shattered by the California Gold Rush; Brigham Young and the Mormons, who tamed the desert with Bible texts; and the silver kings and the miners, who developed Nevada's Comstock Lode and settled the Rockies.