World History

This Kind of War is a monumental study of the conflict that began in June 1950. Successive generations of U.S. military officers have considered this book an indispensable part of their education. T. R. Fehrenbach's narrative brings to life the harrowing and bloody battles that were fought up and down the Korean Peninsula.

For almost three decades at the end of the fifth century BC the ancient world was torn apart in a conflict that was, within its historical context, as dramatic, divisive, and destructive as the great world wars of the 20th century. The Peloponnesian War pitted Greek against Greek: the Athenians, with their glorious empire, rich legacy of democracy and political rights, and extraordinary cultural achievement, against the militaristic, oligarchic Spartan state.

This national best seller is an entertaining, informative, and sometimes shocking expose of the way history is taught to American students. Lies My Teacher Told Me won the American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship.

Through the stories of 12 clocks, About Time brings pivotal moments from the past vividly to life. Historian and lifelong clock enthusiast David Rooney takes us from the unveiling of al-Jazari’s castle clock in 1206, in present-day Turkey; to the Cape of Good Hope observatory at the southern tip of Africa, where 19th-century British government astronomers moved the gears of empire with a time ball and a gun; to the burial of a plutonium clock now sealed beneath a public park in Osaka, where it will keep time for 5,000 years.

Brunelleschi's Dome is the story of how a Renaissance genius bent men, materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder we continue to marvel at today. Denounced at first as a madman, Brunelleschi was celebrated at the end as a genius. He engineered the perfect placement of brick and stone, built ingenious hoists and cranes to carry an estimated 70 million pounds hundreds of feet into the air, and designed the workers' platforms and routines so carefully that only one man died during the decades of construction.

Arab stereotype portrays the Jew as a brutal, violent coward. The Jewish stereotype portrays the Arab as a primitive creature of animal vengeance and cruel desires. In this monumental Pulitzer Prize-winning work, revised in 2002, David Shipler delves into the origins of these prejudices that have been intensified by war, terrorism, and nationalism. Shipler examines the process of indoctrination, the far-ranging effects of socioeconomic differences, and the historical conflicts between Islam and Judaism.

Our Mothers' War is an eye-opening and moving portrait of women during World War II, a war that forever transformed the way women participate in American society. Never before has the vast range of women's experiences during this pivotal era been brought together in one book.

This is the story of the greatest empire the world has ever known. Simon Baker charts the rise and fall of the world's first superpower, focusing on six momentous turning points that shaped Roman history. Welcome to Rome as you've never seen it before - awesome and splendid, gritty and squalid. From the conquest of the Mediterranean beginning in the third century BC to the destruction of the Roman Empire at the hands of barbarian invaders some seven centuries later, we discover the most critical episodes in Roman history.

Alongside Waterloo and Gettysburg, the Battle of Verdun during World War I stands as one of history’s greatest clashes. Yet it is also one of the most complex and misunderstood. Conventional wisdom holds that the battle began in February 1916 and lasted until December, when the victorious French wrested all the territory they had lost back from the Germans. In fact, says historian John Mosier, from the very beginning of the war until the armistice in 1918, no fewer than eight distinct battles were waged for the possession of Verdun.

"Fascists", "Brownshirts", "jackbooted stormtroopers" - such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?

From the author of the acclaimed The Great Sea, David Abulafia's new book guides listeners along the world's greatest bodies of water to reveal their primary role in human history. The main protagonists are the three major oceans - the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian - which together comprise the majority of the earth's water and cover over half of its surface. These waterways carried goods, plants, livestock, and, of course, people across vast expanses, transforming and ultimately linking irrevocably the economies and cultures of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

Anyone living in Rhodesia during the 1960s and 1970s would have had a father, husband, brother, or son called up in the defense of the war-torn, landlocked little country. A few of these brave men would have been members of the elite and secretive unit that struck terror into the hearts of the ZANLA and ZIPRA guerrillas infiltrating the country at that time - the Selous Scouts.

At last, here is a book that tells the full story of the turning point in World War II's Battle of the Bulge - the story of five crucial days in which small groups of American soldiers, some outnumbered 10 to 1, slowed the German advance and allowed the Belgian town of Bastogne to be reinforced. Alamo in the Ardennes provides a compelling, day-by-day account of this pivotal moment in America's greatest war.

An almost limitless archive of our history lies hidden inside our bodies, and this book traces the ancient story of Scotland from that scientific viewpoint. The mushrooming of genetic studies, of DNA analysis, is rewriting history in spectacular fashion. In Scotland: A Genetic Journey, Alistair Moffat explores the history that is printed on our genes, and in a remarkable new approach, uncovers the detail of where Scots are from, where they have journeyed, and who they are - and in so doing, vividly colors in a DNA map of Scotland.

The Red Army had much to avenge when it finally reached the frontiers of the Third Reich in January 1945. Frenzied by their terrible experiences with Wehrmacht and SS brutality, they wreaked havoc - tanks crushing refugee columns, mass rape, pillage, and unimaginable destruction. Hundreds of thousands of women and children froze to death or were massacred; more than seven million fled westward from the fury of the Red Army. It was the most terrifying example of fire and sword ever known.

In their own words, recorded in the famous journals of Lewis and Clark, the members of the Corps of Discovery tell their story with an immediacy and power missing from secondhand accounts. All of their triumphs and terrors are here: the thrill of seeing the vast herds of bison, the fear the captains felt when Sacagawea fell ill, the ordeal of crossing the Continental Divide, the misery of cold and hunger, and the kidnapping and rescue of Lewis' dog, Seaman.

From influential British historian A. J. P. Taylor comes the audio edition of The Origins of the Second World War. Controversial for its thesis that Hitler was an opportunist with no thorough plan, The Origins of the Second World War is an extensive exploration of the international politics and foreign policy that led up to the one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 20th century.

Under the leadership of her fearless skipper, Captain Gene Fluckey, the Barb sank the greatest tonnage of any American sub in World War II. At the same time, the Barb did far more than merely sink ships-she changed forever the way submarines stalk and kill their prey.

This is a gripping adventure chock-full of "you-are-there" moments. Fluckey has drawn on logs, reports, letters, interviews, and a recently discovered illegal diary kept by one of his torpedomen.

A total of 305,000 enslaved Africans arrived in the New World aboard American vessels over a span of two hundred years as American merchants and mariners sailed to Africa and to the Caribbean to acquire and sell captives. Using exhaustive archival research, including many collections that have never been used before, historian Sean M. Kelley argues that slave trading needs to be seen as integral to the larger story of American slavery.

Tantor Audio presents the complete audio version of the long awaited one-volume campaign history from the leading experts of the decisive clash of Nazi and Soviet forces at Stalingrad. Stalingrad is an abridged edition of the five-volume Stalingrad Trilogy.