The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

Erik Larson · 608 pages

1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History

Charles Bracelen Flood · 521 pages

Historian-biographer Charles Bracelen Flood brings to life the drama of Lincoln's final year, in which he oversaw the last campaigns of the Civil War, was reelected as president, and laid out his majestic vision for the nation's future in a reunified South and in the expanding West. In that crucial year, the Civil War was far from won: as the year began, Lincoln had yet to appoint Ulysses S. Grant

The Rise Of Napoleon Bonaparte

Robert B. Asprey · 579 pages

A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent

Robert W. Merry · 576 pages

In a one-term presidency, Polk completed the story of America's Manifest Destiny -- extending its territory across the continent, from sea to sea, by threatening England and manufacturing a controversial and unpopular two-year war with Mexico that Abraham Lincoln, in Congress at the time, opposed as preemptive. Robert Merry tells this story through powerful debates and towering figures. - Jacket f

Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

Herbert P. Bix · 800 pages

Winner of the Pulitzer PrizeIn this groundbreaking biography of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, Herbert P. Bix offers the first complete, unvarnished look at the enigmatic leader whose sixty-three-year reign ushered Japan into the modern world. Never before has the full life of this controversial figure been revealed with such clarity and vividness. Bix shows what it was like to be trained from bir

American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

Ronald C. White Jr. · 845 pages

In his time, Ulysses S. Grant was routinely grouped with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the "Trinity of Great American Leaders." But the battlefield commander–turned–commander-in-chief fell out of favor in the twentieth century. In American Ulysses, Ronald C. White argues that we need to once more revise our estimates of him in the twenty-first. Based on seven years of research with prim

Napoleon: A Biography

Frank McLynn · 744 pages

Napoleon Bonaparte's character and achievements have always divided critics and historians. In this compelling biography, Frank McLynn draws on the most recent scholarship and throws a brilliant light on this most paradoxical of men -- as military leader, emperor, and lover. Tracing Napoleon's extraordinary career, the author examines the Promethean legend from his Corsican roots, through the year

The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941–1942

Nigel Hamilton

Napoleon Bonaparte

Alan Schom · 888 pages

Schom's one-volume life of Napoleon includes all facets of Napoleon's incredible career, from his childhood in Corsica to his death in exile on the island of St. Helena. It follows his many military campaigns and describes the great battles he won and lost from northern Italy to Egypt, Spain, Prussia, Austria, Poland, and Russia, to his final defeat at Waterloo. It illuminates his extensive polit

Winston's War: Churchill, 1940-1945

Max Hastings · 555 pages

A vivid and incisive portrait of Winston Churchill during wartime from acclaimed historian Max Hastings, Winston's War captures the full range of Churchill's endlessly fascinating character. At once brilliant and infuriating, self-important and courageous, Hastings's Churchill comes brashly to life as never before. Beginning in 1940, when popular demand elevated Churchill to the role of prime mini

Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill

Candice Millard · 381 pages

At age twenty-four, Winston Churchill was utterly convinced it was his destiny to become prime minister of England one day, despite the fact he had just lost his first election campaign for Parliament. He believed that to achieve his goal he must do something spectacular on the battlefield. Despite deliberately putting himself in extreme danger as a British Army officer in colonial wars in India a

Caesar: Life of a Colossus

Adrian Goldsworthy · 608 pages

The Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee

Robert E. Lee · 394 pages

His Excellency: George Washington

Joseph J. Ellis · 352 pages

The author of seven highly acclaimed books, Joseph J. Ellis has crafted a landmark biography that brings to life in all his complexity the most important and perhaps least understood figure in American history, George Washington. With his careful attention to detail and his lyrical prose, Ellis has set a new standard for biography.Drawing from the newly catalogued Washington papers at the Universi

Makers of Rome: Nine Lives

Plutarch · 366 pages

Nine selections from the Greek historian's famous Lives, spotlighting key Roman figures from the earliest years of the Republic to the beginning of the Empire.

Triumph and Tragedy

Winston S. Churchill · 768 pages

"Winston Churchill's monumental The Second World War, is a six volume account of the struggle between the Allied Powers in Europe against Germany and the Axis. Told by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, this book is also the story of one nation's heroic role in the fight against tyranny. Having learned a lesson at Munich they would never forget, the British refused to make peace with Hitler

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932

William Manchester · 896 pages

Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941

Ian Kershaw · 640 pages

In a mere nineteen months, from May 1940 to December 1941, the leaders of the world's six major powers made a series of related decisions that decided the course and outcome of World War II, cost the lives of millions, and profoundly shaped the course of human destiny from that point forward. How were these decisions made? What were the options facing these leaders as they saw them? What intellige

Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

James M. McPherson · 340 pages

James McPherson, a bestselling historian of the Civil War, illuminates how Lincoln worked with—and often against— his senior commanders to defeat the Confederacy and create the role of commander in chief as we know it. Though Abraham Lincoln arrived at the White House with no previous military experience (apart from a couple of months spent soldiering in 1832), he quickly established himself as th

Cleopatra: A Life

Stacy Schiff · 441 pages

From back cover: Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons; her supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order.

Alexander the Great

Robin Lane Fox · 568 pages

Tough, resolute, fearless, Alexander was a born warrior and ruler of passionate ambition who understood the intense adventure of conquest and of the unknown. When he died in 323 BC aged thirty-two, his vast empire comprised more than two million square miles, spanning from Greece to India. His achievements were unparalleled - he had excelled as leader to his men, founded eighteen new cities and st

Grant: A Biography

William S. McFeely · 608 pages

The story of the Ohioan who became the leader of the Union Army and later the president.

Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman--from World War to Cold War

Michael Dobbs · 418 pages

An account of the pivotal six-month period spanning the end of World War II, the dawn of the nuclear age, and the beginning of the Cold War.

Churchill

Paul Johnson