Power History

Power lifts the mood. It motivates us to take charge and liberates us to be our authentic selves. It means wealth, ability, choice, fame, influence, dominance, authority, rank, and prestige. Powerlessness depresses the mood. It stifles the self by making it subservient to other people’s wills. It is at the core of many social ills - from poverty to anxiety, workplace problems to marital discord. The lack of power can damage our health - both mental and physical - and even shorten our lives.

Keen amateur dancers of the world: At last, a single authoritative book encapsulating everything necessary to move from social ballroom to performance and competitive DanceSport and on to the Olympics. Includes history, definitions, syllabi, dance notation, and the power of dance with its unique ability to change lives.

In a world where honor and passion collide, red-haired Dangereuse de l'Isle Bouchard believes her marriage to Viscount Aimery is her greatest achievement. But everything changes when she encounters William, Duke of Aquitaine—his court a whirlwind of music and revelry. Drawn into a secret affair, Dangereuse finds herself abducted to Poitiers, living in a tower designed just for her. As tensions rise with William's vengeful family, she takes charge, orchestrating a marriage that will change history. Witness the rise of a granddaughter destined to become the fierce Eleanor of Aquitaine. Love...

Cash Cassidy goes against her husband’s wishes and departs Wales for South America to seek El Dorado, the famed lost city of gold. When she’s pursued by authorities, robbed of a critical item, and abandoned by the smugglers who were her guides, it’s up to Cash to find her way to safety to El Dorado. Meanwhile, Cash’s husband is desperate to find her—he’ll do anything to save her from a terrible fate. Cash travels undercover on the odyssey of a lifetime through jungles, across mountains, and even across borders. After she meets a man who reveals more clues about the whereabouts ...

Soraya was just 15 when she was given the honor of presenting a bouquet of flowers to Colonel Gaddafi, the "Guide", on a visit he was making to her school the following week. This one meeting, a presentation of flowers, a pat on the head from Gaddafi, changed Soraya’s life forever. Soon afterwards, she was summoned to Bab al-Azizia, Gaddafi’s palatial compound near Tripoli, where she joined a number of young women who were violently abused, raped and degraded by Gaddafi.

For many years after its reform and opening in 1978, China maintained an attitude of false modesty about its ambitions. That role, reports Howard French, has been set aside. China has asserted its place among the global heavyweights, revealing its plans for pan-Asian dominance by building its navy, increasing territorial claims to areas like the South China Sea, and diplomatically bullying smaller players.

As a defender of national unity, a leader in war, and the emancipator of slaves, Abraham Lincoln lays ample claim to being the greatest of our presidents. This extraordinary biography by one of the most highly regarded historians on the subject examines Lincoln both as a rising politician and as president.

A generation of Americans came of age boycotting grapes, swept up in a movement that vanquished California's most powerful industry and accomplished the unthinkable: dignity and contracts for farm workers. Four decades later, Cesar Chavez's likeness graces postage stamps, and dozens of schools and streets have been renamed in his honor. But the real story of Chavez's farm workers' movement - both its historic triumphs and its tragic disintegration - has remained buried beneath the hagiography.

"Grand strategy" is one of the most widely used and abused concepts in the foreign policy lexicon. In this important book, Hal Brands explains why grand strategy is a concept that is so alluring - and so elusive - to those who make American statecraft. He explores what grand strategy is, why it is so essential, and why it is so hard to get right amid the turbulence of global affairs and the chaos of domestic politics.

Two ex-lovers. One cozy lodge. And a snowstorm they’ll never forget. Emberleigh: Covering a Christmas hockey game in Pine Ridge was supposed to be just another holiday assignment. But when a blizzard trapped me in a cozy lodge with the one man I never wanted to see again—Logan "Bear" McKenzie, coach of the Denver Warlords team—I knew this was more than just a storm. Our past is as frosty as the snow piling up outside, but there’s a fire between us that refuses to die. As the holiday lights twinkle and the world outside freezes, can I keep myself from falling once again for the man ...

Discover the books that have already changed the lives of millions. This unabridged guide to the literature of the spirit surveys 50 of the all-time classics, giving you their key ideas, insights, and applications - everything you need to know to start benefiting from these legendary works.

The lives of the sons of Eleanor of Aquitaine are the stuff of legend. Her daughters, however, are less well known, and the fascinating personalities of her daughters-in-law have been almost entirely overlooked, as have those of the daughters she bore Louis VII of France. The Families of Eleanor of Aquitaine redresses this balance and showcases the lives, travels, and careers of these ten very different women, who formed a great international network of political alliances that linked their parents, siblings, husbands, and children all across Europe and the Holy Land.

D-Day was bloody, chaotic and frequently terrifying. Its outcome was far from certain. And at its epicentre were tens of thousands of young men, many seeing their first active service. It was a single day that changed millions of lives. A critical turning point of the Second World War. Using audio interviews with British, American, Canadian and German veterans, as well as French civilians, this immersive new oral history describes what it was actually like to take part in the landings on 6 June 1944 and the weeks of ferocious fighting in Normandy that followed.

Ami Ayalon seeks input and perspective from Palestinians and Israelis whose experiences differ from his own. As head of the Shin Bet security agency, he gained empathy for "the enemy" and learned that when Israel carries out anti-terrorist operations in a political context of hopelessness, the Palestinian public will support violence, because they have nothing to lose. Researching and writing Friendly Fire, he came to understand that his patriotic life had blinded him to the self-defeating nature of policies that have undermined Israel's civil society.

What is the purpose of art in a world on fire? In this exhilarating and deeply inspiring work, Amber Massie-Blomfield considers the work of artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers—such as Gran Fury, Billie Holiday, Alexis Wright, Claude Cahun, Rick Lowe, and Joseph Beuys—alongside collectives, communities, and organizations that have used protest sites as their canvas and spearheaded political movements.

At stake in 1896 was the new idea that some landscapes should be collectively, permanently owned by a democratic government. Although many people today think of public lands as an American birthright, their very existence was then in doubt and dependent on a merger of the talents of these two men. Natural Rivals examines a time of environmental threat and political dysfunction not unlike our own and reveals the complex dynamic that gave birth to America’s rich public lands legacy.

To solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary computer. Then, attempting to break a Nazi code during World War II, he successfully designed and built one, thus ensuring the Allied victory. Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, but his work was cut short. As an openly gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England, he was convicted and forced to undergo a humiliating "treatment" that may have led to his suicide.

Congo is rich. Swaths of the war-torn African country lack basic infrastructure, and, after many decades of colonial occupation, its people are officially among the poorest in the world. But hidden beneath the soil are vast quantities of cobalt, lithium, copper, tin, tantalum, tungsten, and other treasures. Recently, this veritable periodic table of resources has become extremely valuable because these metals are essential for the global “energy transition”—the plan for wealthy nations to wean themselves off fossil fuels by shifting to sustainable forms of energy, such as solar and wind.

In this classic of social history, the author describes the lives of six obscure men and women of the Middle Ages. She draws on account books, records, letters, diaries, and wills to make the life of those times as concrete and comprehensible as our own.

Through decades of direct experience of the People’s Republic combined with extraordinary access to hundreds of hitherto unseen documents in communist party archives, the author of The People’s Trilogy offers a riveting account of China’s rise from the disaster of the Cultural Revolution. He takes us inside the country's unprecedented four-decade economic transformation--from rural villages to industrial metropoles and elite party conclaves--that vaulted the nation from 126t ­largest economy in the world to second ­largest.