To America: Personal Reflections Of An Historian

Profiles in Leadership: Historians on the Elusive Quality of Greatness

Walter Isaacson · 336 pages

The best historians in the land consider examples of great leadership, well known and surprising, from Washington to Willkie and more. What made FDR a more successful leader during the Depression crisis than Hoover? Why was Eisenhower more effective as supreme commander during World War II than he was as president? Why was Grant one of the best presidents of his day, if not in all of American h

Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution

James M. McPherson · 173 pages

James McPherson offers a series of thoughtful and engaging essays on aspects of Lincoln and the war that have rarely been discussed in depth. McPherson displays his keen insight and sterling prose as he examines several critical themes in American history. He looks closely at the President's role as Commander-in-Chief of the Union forces, showing how Lincoln forged a national military strategy for

Downtown: My Manhattan

Pete Hamill · 312 pages

In Downtown, Pete Hamill leads us on an unforgettable journey through the city he loves, from the island's southern tip to Times Square, combining a moving memoir of his days and nights in New York with a passionate history of its most enduring places and people.

Why We Can't Wait

Martin Luther King Jr. · 159 pages

In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. launched the Civil Rights movement and demonstrated to the world the power of nonviolent direct action with this letter from Birmingham Jail. Why We Can't Wait recounts not only the Birmingham campaign, but also examines the history of the civil rights struggle and the tasks that future generations must accomplish to bring about full equali

The Collected What If? Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been

Robert Cowley · 827 pages

Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places

Colin Dickey · 320 pages

The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History

Robert Darnton · 298 pages

In this series of essays, Robert Darnton exhumes the strange and wonderful world views of the ordinary and extraordinary people inhabiting the cities, towns and countryside of France in what we like to call the age of enlightenment.

Stranger than we can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century

J.M.R. Higgs · 352 pages

The twentieth century should make sense. It's the period of history that we know the most about, an epic geo-political narrative that runs through World War One, the great depression, World War Two, the American century and the fall of the Berlin Wall. But somehow that story doesn't quite lead into the world we find ourselves in now, this bewildering twenty-first century, adrift in a network of co

The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States

Gordon S. Wood · 401 pages

A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history. In a series of elegant and illuminating essays, Wood explores the ideological origins of the revolution--from ancient Rome to the European Enlightenment--and the founders' attempts to forge an American democracy.

Meaning and History: The Rizal Lectures

Ambeth R. Ocampo · 121 pages

The Uses and Abuses of History

Margaret MacMillan · 194 pages

History can be a very useful tool in understanding why we and those we must deal with think and react in certain ways. But in the wrong hands it can be dangerous and used to foster a sense of grievance or a desire for revenge. Eminent historian Margaret MacMillan is fascinated by the power of history in our thinking. In The Uses and Abuses of History, she points out some of the traps that we can f

The Anne Boleyn Collection: The Real Truth about the Tudors

Claire Ridgway · 260 pages

The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival

John Bagot Glubb · 52 pages

Virtual History

Niall Ferguson · 548 pages

Speculates what may have happened if nine major events did not occur, asking such questions as, "What if there had been no American Revoultion?" and "What if John F. Kennedy had lived?"

Brave Companions

David McCullough · 240 pages

Portraits of men and women who have shaped the course of history or changed how we view the world.

The Frontier in American History

Frederick Jackson Turner · 375 pages

In this series of essays first published in 1920, the noted historian presents his ideas on the role of the frontier in shaping the American experience. The Frontier in American History examines the importance of the unsettled West as both idea and physical reality. Turner's essays explore the changing frontier as it moved progressively westward and discuss the contributions of the pioneers in eac

Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia

Mariusz Szczygiel · 248 pages

One of Europe's most preeminent investigative journalists travels to the Czech Republic--the Czech half of the former Czechoslovakia, the land that brought us Kafka--to explore the surreal fictions and the extraordinary reality of its twentieth century.

The Power of Art

Simon Schama · 448 pages

Taking eight famous painters and their great masterpieces, this book takes you back to the intense moment in history when these works were conceived and born. In each case the artist is backed into a corner, and given a chance to confound his rivals, enemies and critics.

A History of Reading

Alberto Manguel · 372 pages

At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. Noted essayist Alberto Manguel moves from this essential moment to explore the 6000-year-old conversation between words and that magician without whom th

Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Rebecca Solnit · 326 pages

"In Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit draws together many histories -- of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and sexual mores -- to create a portrait of the range of possibilities for this most basic act. Arguing that walking as history signifies walking for pleasure and for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit hones in o

At Home: A Short History of Private Life

Bill Bryson · 560 pages

"As I stood on the roof of my house, taking in this unexpected view, it struck me how glorious it was that this was exactly how this land must have looked to centuries of people, quietly going about their daily business – eating, sleeping, having sex, endeavouring to be amused – and it occurred to me, with the forcefulness of a thought experienced in 360 degrees, that that's really what history mo

The Wordy Shipmates

Sarah Vowell · 254 pages

From the New York Times–bestselling author of Assassination Vacation and The Partly Cloudy Patriot, an examination of the Puritans, their covenant communities, their deep-rooted idealism, their political and cultural relevance in today’s world, and their myriad oddities.In The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell travels once again through America’s past, this time to seventeenth-century New England. Fro

What If? 2: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been

James D. Bradley, Cecilia Holland, Alistair Horne, David Kahn, John Lukacs, William Hardy McNeill, Lance Morrow, Williamson Murray, Josiah Ober, Robert L. O'Connell, Caleb Carr, Geoffrey Parker, Theodore K. Rabb, Andrew Roberts, Roger Spiller, Geoffrey C. Ward, Tom Wicker, James Chace, Theodore F. C · 427 pages

In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam

Robert S. McNamara, Brian VanDeMark · 414 pages