From the world's greatest science writer, a history of the world from the Big Bang to 1945, told in irresistible short takes and highlighted by a timeline.Author To list Isaac Asimov's honors, as to list his books, would be excessive. Let it simply be noted that Isaac Asimov was the most famous, most honored, most widely read, and most beloved science fiction author of all time. In his five decades as an author, he wrote more than four hundred books, won every award his readers and colleagues could contrive to give him, and provided pleasure and insight to millions. He died in 1992, still at work.

A perfect companion to CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, this is a definitive history of the DC Universe based on the consequences of that epic tale. Narrated by Harbinger, a central figure in the Crisis storyline, the reader is brought through the new history of the world and its heroes. Featuring virtually every character in the DC Universe, including Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, and the Flash, this tale takes us from the dawn of creation to the end of recorded history and lays the foundation for adventures to come. Featuring spectacular artwork by George Perez, illustrator of FINAL CRISIS: LEGION OF THREE WORLDS, this trip through the DC Universe is not to be missed."

This brilliant and highly readable history of modern Europe in its international setting explores the heritage of the West since the Renaissance, closely relating the trajectories of individual nations to European civilization as a whole.For this eighth edition, Professors Palmer and Colton have revised their classic account in light of recent momentous events (the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, the near-demise of communism, the reunification of Germany) and the transformed world that has emerged in their wake. On the brink of the twenty-first century, this world faces new challenges - among them, the fragile environment and the population explosion. By means of its incomparable depth and scope, this volume provides a superior context for understanding the past, negotiating the present and preparing for the future.

This volume offers the first, in-depth comparison of the Holocaust and new world slavery. Providing a reliable view of the relevant issues, and based on a broad and comprehensive set of data and evidence, Steven Katz analyzes the fundamental differences between the two systems and re-evaluates our understanding of the Nazi agenda. Among the subjects he examines are: the use of black slaves as workers compared to the Nazi use of Jewish labor; the causes of slave demographic decline and growth in different New World locations; the main features of Jewish life during the Holocaust relative to slave life with regard to such topics as diet, physical punishment, medical care, and the role of religion; the treatment of slave women and children as compared to the treatment of Jewish women and children in the Holocaust. Katz shows that slave women were valued as workers, as reproducers of future slaves, and as sexual objects, and that slave children were valued as commodities. For these reasons, neither slave women nor children were intentionally murdered. By comparison, Jewish slave women and children were viewed as the ultimate racial enemy and therefore had to be exterminated. These and other findings conclusively demonstrate the uniqueness of the Holocaust compared with other historical instances of slavery

Opened in April 1993, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., summons all who enter its portals to rise to an important and extraordinary challenge: to remember and immortalize the 6 million Jews and millions of other Nazi victims of World War II - Gypsies, Poles, homosexuals, the handicapped, Jehovah's Witnesses, political and religious dissidents, Soviet prisoners of war - who were murdered in the most horrifying event of our time: the Holocaust. 'The World Must Know' depicts the evolution of the Holocaust comprehensively, as it is presented in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - the living memorial to the victims of the Holocaust that tells a story the world must know in the most moving and powerful visual and verbal way." "Drawing on the museum's artifacts and its extensive eyewitness testimony collection, the second largest in the world, and including over 200 photographic images from the museum's collections, 'The World Must Know' details the four major historical participants: the perpetrator, the bystander, the rescuer, and, above all, the victim. The 'World Must Know' journeys back to a time when Jewish culture thrived in Europe, to family Shabbat dinners and joyous Passover celebrations where the lighting of the candles was done before unshuttered windows, and proceeds to that point when the most unspeakable evil in history began, and then bears witness to the most horrifying shattering of innocent lives. Starting with the rise of nazism, The 'World Must Know' reveals the human stories of the Holocaust, documenting the range of psychological extremes from the evil of the Nazi doctors who staffed the death camps and determined "who shall live and who shall die," to the nobility of ordinary citizens, like those in the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, who risked their own lives by offering their homes as havens to refugee Jews, to the horror of entire families as they received sudden orders to pack up only what they could carry, leave their homes, and report to a train station for "resettlement in the East," a euphemism for deportation to Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and other death or concentration camps. The powerful and evocative images in 'The World Must Know' tell the stories of hope and death - the grim reality of the ghettos, the mass murders of the mobile killing units, the concentration camps, and the death camps, as well as the brave and heart-wrenching stories of resistance and rescue, through which we see the human necessity for - and the ultimate power of - personal choice." "More than a catalogue of the museum's exhibit, 'The World Must Know' is a study and exploration of the Holocaust that fulfills the commandment from those who perished, which seared the souls of those who survived: Remember. Do not let the world forget. This is a significant contribution to our understanding of the history of the Holocaust that will not only memorialize the past by educating the generations that follow but also transform the future by sensitizing those who will shape it. That is the challenge to, and the responsibility of, all survivors everywhere."

The New York Times bestselling author of Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football “knocks it out of the park” ( Vanity Fair ) in this captivating blend of sports reportage and memoir, exploring the history of the 2016 World Series champions, the Chicago Cubs. When Rich Cohen was eight years old, his father took him to see a Cubs game. On the way out of the park, his father asked him to make a promise. “Promise me you will never be a Cubs fan. The Cubs do not win,” he explained, “and because of that, a Cubs fan will have a diminished life determined by low expectations. That team will screw up your life.” Cohen became not just a Cubs fan but one of the biggest Cubs fans in the world. In this book, he captures the story of the team, its players and crazy days. Billy Sunday and Ernie Banks, Three Finger Brown and Ryne Sandberg, Bill Buckner, the Bartman Ball, Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo—the early dominance followed by a 107 year trek across the wilderness. It’s all here, in The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse —not just what happened, but what it felt like and what it meant. Featuring extensive interviews with players, owners, and coaches, this mix of memoir, reporting, history, and baseball theology—forty years in the making—has never been written because it never could be. Only with the 2016 World Series can the true arc of the story finally be understood.

"Google. Facebook. Twitter. Repeat. We live in a world unimaginable even a few decades ago, one like no other in human history. It's a parallel world where we can be on the move in the real world, yet always hooked into an alternative time and place. And although it's a two-dimensional world of sight and sound, it offers instant information, connected identities, and constant novelty. In this world, our screen technologies are increasingly where we work, where we unwind, where we relieve our boredom and where we learn. The subsequent transformation in how we live and think is a vitally important issue, perhaps even the most important issue of our time. When toddlers are given iPads, and adults spend ten hours a day staring at a screen, can we afford to assume that our brave new screen technologies are harmless tools? Blending a wide range of scientific studies, news events, and cultural criticism with brio and verve, Mind Change presents an incisive snapshot of the global 'now.' Greenfield examines how the dawn of the Digital Age has already altered our cultural landscape, fueled an epidemic of oversharing, and transformed how we learn, remember and spread information -- and how these innovations are changing our physical brains. A warning cry, a shot across the bow, and a call to action, Mind Change explores the social, cultural and physiological ramifications of our new digital lifestyle"--

"Son of the Midwest, movie star, and mesmerizing politician--America's fortieth president comes to three-dimensional life in this gripping and profoundly revisionist biography. In this "monumental and impressive" biography, Max Boot, the distinguished political columnist, illuminates the untold story of Ronald Reagan, revealing the man behind the mythology. Drawing on interviews with over one hundred of the fortieth president's aides, friends, and family members, as well as thousands of newly available documents, Boot provides "the best biography of Ronald Reagan to date" (Robert Mann). The story begins not in star-studded Hollywood but in the cradle of the Midwest, small-town Illinois, where Reagan was born in 1911 to Nelle Clyde Wilson, a devoted Disciples of Christ believer, and Jack Reagan, a struggling, alcoholic salesman. Boot vividly creates a portrait of a handsome young man, indeed a much-vaunted lifeguard, whose early successes mirrored those of Horatio Alger. And contextualizing Reagan's life against American history, Boot re-creates the world in which Reagan transitioned from local Iowa sportscaster to budding screen actor. The world of Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1950s would prove significant, not only in Reagan's coming-of-age in such classics as Knute Rockne and Kings Row but during the twilight of his film career, when he played opposite a chimpanzee in Bedtime for Bonzo, and then his eventual emergence as a television host of General Electric Theater, which established his bona fides as one of the leading conservative voices of the time. Indeed, the leap to California governor in 1966 seemed almost preordained, in which Reagan became a bellwether for a nation in the throes of a generational shift. Reagan's 1980 presidential election augured a shift that continues into this century. Boot writes not as a partisan but as a historian seeking to set the story straight. He explains how Reagan was an ideologue but also a supreme pragmatist who signed pro-abortion and gun control bills as governor, cut deals with Democrats in both Sacramento and Washington, and befriended Mikhail Gorbachev to end the Cold War. A master communicator, Reagan revived America's spirits after the traumas of Vietnam and Watergate. But Boot also shows how Reagan was armored in obliviousness. He traces Reagan's opposition to civil rights over forty years, reveals how he neglected the exploding AIDS epidemic, and details how America experienced a level of income inequality not seen since the Gilded Age. With its revelatory insights, Reagan: His Life and Legend is no apologia, depicting a man with a good-versus-evil worldview derived from his moralistic upbringing and Hollywood westerns. Providing fresh examinations of "trickle-down economics," the Cold War's end, the Iran-Contra affair, as well as a nuanced portrait of Reagan's family, this definitive biography is as compelling a presidential biography as any in recent decades."--

"Consider the most famous music group in history. What would the world be like if the Beatles never existed? This was the question posed by the playful, thought-provoking 2019 film Yesterday, in which a young, completely unknown singer starts performing Beatles hits to a world that has never heard them. Would the Fab Four's songs be as phenomenally popular as they are in our own Beatle-infused world? The movie asserts that they would, but is that true? Was the success of the Beatles essentially inevitable due to their amazing, matchless talent? Maybe. It's hard to imagine our world without its stars and celebrity geniuses-they become a part of our culture and history, seeming permanent and preordained. But as Harvard law professor (and passionate Beatles fan) Cass Sunstein shows in this startling book, that is far from the case. Focusing on both famous and forgotten (or simply overlooked) artists and luminaries in music, literature, business, science, politics, and other fields, he explores why some individuals become famous and others don't and offers a new understanding of the role of greatness, luck, and contingency in the achievement of fame. First, Sunstein examines recent research-on informational cascades, power laws, network effects, and group polarization-to probe the question of how people become famous. He explores what ends up in the history books, in the great religious texts, and in the literary canon-and how that changes radically over time. He delves into the rich and entertaining stories of a diverse cast of famous characters, from John Keats, William Blake, and Jane Austen to Bob Dylan, Ayn Rand, and Stan Lee-as well as John, Paul, George, and Ringo. How to Become Famous takes you on a fun, captivating, and at times profound journey that will forever change your perspective on the latest celebrity's "fifteen minutes," the nature of memory, success and failure in business, and our enduring fascination with fame"--

The quintessential depiction of 1980s New York and the downtown scene from the artist, actor, musician, and composer John Lurie “A picaresque roller coaster of a story, with staggering amounts of sex and drugs and the perpetual quest to retain some kind of artistic integrity.”— The New York Times In the tornado that was downtown New York in the 1980s, John Lurie stood at the vortex. After founding the band The Lounge Lizards with his brother, Evan, in 1979, Lurie quickly became a centrifugal figure in the world of outsider artists, cutting-edge filmmakers, and cultural rebels. Now Lurie vibrantly brings to life the whole wash of 1980s New York as he developed his artistic soul over the course of the decade and came into orbit with all the prominent artists of that time and place, including Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry, Boris Policeband, and, especially, Jean-Michel Basquiat, the enigmatic prodigy who spent a year sleeping on the floor of Lurie’s East Third Street apartment. It may feel like Disney World now, but in The History of Bones , the East Village, through Lurie’s clear-eyed reminiscence, comes to teeming, gritty life. The book is full of grime and frank humor—Lurie holds nothing back in this journey to one of the most significant moments in our cultural history, one whose reverberations are still strongly felt today. History may repeat itself, but the way downtown New York happened in the 1980s will never happen again. Luckily, through this beautiful memoir, we all have a front-row seat.

Product Description Both an enhanced digital edition―the first edited specifically for undergraduates―and a handsome print volume, The Norton Shakespeare, Third Edition, provides a freshly edited text, acclaimed apparatus, and an unmatched value. The attractive print and digital bundle offers students a great reading experience at an affordable price in two ways―a hardcover volume for their dorm shelf and lifetime library, and a digital edition ideal for in-class use. Students can access the ebook from their computer, tablet, or smartphone via the registration code included in the print volume at no additional charge. As one instructor summed it up, “It’s a long overdue step forward in the way Shakespeare is taught.” Book Description with The Norton Shakespeare Digital Edition registration card About the Author Stephen Greenblatt (Ph.D. Yale) is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. Also General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, he is the author of eleven books, including Tyrant, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story that Created Us, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (winner of the 2011 National Book Award and the 2012 Pulitzer Prize); Shakespeare's Freedom; Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare; Hamlet in Purgatory; Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World; Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture; and Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. He has edited seven collections of criticism, including Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, and is a founding coeditor of the journal Representations. His honors include the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Prize, for both Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England and The Swerve, the Sapegno Prize, the Distinguished Humanist Award from the Mellon Foundation, the Wilbur Cross Medal from the Yale University Graduate School, the William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre, the Erasmus Institute Prize, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of California, Berkeley. He was president of the Modern Language Association of America and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Walter Cohen (Ph.D. Berkeley) is Professor of English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Professor of Comparative Literature Emeritus at Cornell University, where he received the Clark Distinguished Teaching Award. He is the author of Drama of a Nation: Public Theater in Renaissance England and Spain, as well as numerous journal articles on Renaissance literature, literary criticism, the history of the novel, and world literature. He has recently completed a critical study entitled A History of European Literature: The West and the World from Antiquity to the Present. Jean E. Howard (Ph.D., Yale) is the George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. A past president of the Shakespeare Association of America, she is the author of numerous books on Renaissance drama, including Shakespeare’s Art of Orchestration: Stage Technique and Audience Response (1984), The Stage and Social Struggle (1994), Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s English Histories, with Phyllis Rackin (1997), Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy 1598–1642 (2007), and Marx and Shakespeare with Crystal Bartolovich (2012). She is at work on a book about the English history play from Shakespeare to Caryl Churchill and another on the invention of Renaissance tragedy. Katharine Eisaman Maus (Ph.D. Johns Hopkins) is James Branch Cabell Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Being and Having in Shakespeare; Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance; and Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind; editor of a volume of Renaissance tragedies; an

Since the crime explosion of the 1960s, the prison population in the United States has multiplied fivefold, to one prisoner for every hundred adults--a rate unprecedented in American history and unmatched anywhere in the world. Even as the prisoner head count continues to rise, crime has stopped falling, and poor people and minorities still bear the brunt of both crime and punishment. When Brute Force Fails explains how we got into the current trap and how we can get out of it: to cut both crime and the prison population in half within a decade. Mark Kleiman demonstrates that simply locking up more people for lengthier terms is no longer a workable crime-control strategy. But, says Kleiman, there has been a revolution--largely unnoticed by the press--in controlling crime by means other than brute-force incarceration: substituting swiftness and certainty of punishment for randomized severity, concentrating enforcement resources rather than dispersing them, communicating specific threats of punishment to specific offenders, and enforcing probation and parole conditions to make community corrections a genuine alternative to incarceration. As Kleiman shows, "zero tolerance" is nonsense: there are always more offenses than there is punishment capacity. But, it is possible--and essential--to create focused zero tolerance, by clearly specifying the rules and then delivering the promised sanctions every time the rules are broken. Brute-force crime control has been a costly mistake, both socially and financially. Now that we know how to do better, it would be immoral not to put that knowledge to work.

David Brion Davis has long been recognized as the leading authority on slavery in the Western World. His books have won every major history award--including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award--and he has been universally praised for his prodigious research, his brilliant analytical skill, and his rich and powerful prose. Now, in Inhuman Bondage, Davis sums up a lifetime of insight in what Stanley L. Engerman calls "a monumental and magisterial book, the essential work on New World slavery for several decades to come."Davis begins with the dramatic Amistad case, which vividly highlights the international character of the Atlantic slave trade and the roles of the American judiciary, the presidency, the media, and of both black and white abolitionists. The heart of the book looks at slavery in the American South, describing black slaveholding planters, the rise of the Cotton Kingdom, the daily life of ordinary slaves, the highly destructive internal, long-distance slave trade, the sexual exploitation of slaves, the emergence of an African-American culture, and much more. But though centered on the United States, the book offers a global perspective spanning four continents. It is the only study of American slavery that reaches back to ancient foundations (discussing the classical and biblical justifications for chattel bondage) and also traces the long evolution of anti-black racism (as in the writings of David Hume and Immanuel Kant, among many others). Equally important, it combines the subjects of slavery and abolitionism as very few books do, and it illuminates the meaning of nineteenth-century slave conspiracies and revolts, with a detailed comparison with 3 major revolts in the British Caribbean. It connects the actual life of slaves with the crucial place of slavery in American politics and stresses that slavery was integral to America's success as a nation--not a marginal enterprise.A definitive history by a writer deeply immersed in the subject, Inhuman Bondage offers a compelling narrative that links together the profits of slavery, the pain of the enslaved, and the legacy of racism. It is the ultimate portrait of the dark side of the American dream. Yet it offers an inspiring example as well--the story of how abolitionists, barely a fringe group in the 1770s, successfully fought, in the space of a hundred years, to defeat one of human history's greatest evils.

'The most timely of alternate history novels. Ben Winters has created a spellbinding world that forces the reader to look around-and to look within. This is a thriller not to be missed and one that will not be easily forgotten.' Hugh Howey It is the present-day, and the world is as we know it. Except for one thing- slavery still exists. Victor has escaped his life as a slave, but his freedom came at a high price. Striking a bargain with the government, he has to live his life working as a bounty hunter. And he is the best they've ever trained. A mystery to himself, Victor tries to suppress his memories of his own childhood and convinces himself that he is just a good man doing bad work, unwilling to give up the freedom he is desperate to preserve. But in tracking his latest target, he can sense that that something isn't quite right. For this fugitive is a runaway holding something extraordinary. Something that could change the state of the country forever. And in his pursuit, Victor discovers secrets at the core of his country's arrangement with the system that imprisoned him, secrets that will be preserved at any cost. 'It is a rare thing when a writer has a fresh new provocative idea - and then executes it beautifully. This is what Ben H. Winters has done in his novel Underground Airlines. Imagine an America in which slavery still exists. Now imagine a dramatic telling of the story.' James Patterson

"New York Times bestselling author Seth Grahame-Smith returns with the follow-up to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter--a sweeping, alternate history of 20th Century America as seen through the eyes of vampire Henry Sturges. THE LAST AMERICAN VAMPIRE In Reconstruction-era America, vampire Henry Sturges is searching for renewed purpose in the wake of his friend Abraham Lincoln's shocking death. It will be an expansive journey that will first send him to England for an unexpected encounter with Jack the Ripper, then to New York City for the birth of a new American century, the dawn of the electric era of Tesla and Edison, and the blazing disaster of the 1937 Hindenburg crash. Along the way, Henry goes on the road in a Kerouac-influenced trip as Seth Grahame-Smith ingeniously weaves vampire history through Russia's October Revolution, the First and Second World Wars, and the JFK assassination. Expansive in scope and serious in execution, THE LAST AMERICAN VAMPIRE is sure to appeal to the passionate readers who made Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter a runaway success"--

George Herman Ruth was the Babe. Lou Gehrig was the Iron Horse. Joe DiMaggio was the Yankee Clipper. George Steinbrenner is the Boss. On a rainy January morning, 1973, a press conference is called that will change the face of the Yankees forever. A young Cleveland Industrialist by the name of Steinbrenner stands at New York's famed 21 Club and announces his new ownership of the Yankees. And so begins the Steinbrenner era, the era of the Boss. Now with five World Championships to his name, Steinbrenner is not only the owner of one of the past century's winningest baseball teams, but a legendary figure in his own right. Both eccentric and egocentric, Steinbrenner's unique approach to the game turned a not-so-good 1973 Yankees squad into World Champions just five years later. As integral to the history of the Yankees as DiMaggio or Ruth, All Road Lead to October examines the team under Steinbrenner's reign. Having covered the Yankees since Steinbrenner came aboard, acclaimed sports journalist and noted author Maury Allen examines the complex and often fiery relationships the owner had with the likes of Billy Martin, Reggie Jackson, Yogi Berra, Joe Torre, Darryl Strawberry and many others. Here are the first hand, insider's accounts of the pivotal events in the Yankees rise to power. Covering both off the field and on the field controversies like Yankees pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich's wife swapping, the angry tirades, fights and often brilliant coaching moves of the misunderstood Billy Martin, the inside story of the signing of Reggie Jackson whose ego was as big as his bat, and the Yankees rise to baseball dominance with the likes of Jeter, Williams, El Duque, Clemens, Rivera and Torre, Maury Allen give an exclusive look at all the action. Allen was there through it all, from Steinbrenner's first press conference, through the death of Catfish Hunter, the World Series wins, the controversial trades and firings, and even when a drunk Billy Martin banged on his hotel room door one night madder than hell. This is the definitive look at not only the Boss, the but the New York Yankees, the most celebrated team of the twentieth century.

World War I stands as one of history's most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. In his riveting narrative, Hochschild brings it to life as never before while focusing on the long-ignored moral drama of the war's critics, alongside its generals and heroes

How did the Virgin Mary, about whom very little is said in the Gospels, become one of the most powerful and complex religious figures in the world? To arrive at the answers to this far-reaching question, one of our foremost medieval historians, Miri Rubin, investigates the ideas, practices, and images that have developed around the figure of Mary from the earliest decades of Christianity to around the year 1600. Drawing on an extraordinarily wide range of sources—including music, poetry, theology, art, scripture, and miracle tales—Rubin reveals how Mary became so embedded in our culture that it is impossible to conceive of Western history without her. In her rise to global prominence, Mary was continually remade and reimagined by wave after wave of devotees. Rubin shows how early Christians endowed Mary with a fine ancestry; why in early medieval Europe her roles as mother, bride, and companion came to the fore; and how the focus later shifted to her humanity and unparalleled purity. She also explores how indigenous people in Central America, Africa, and Asia remade Mary and so fit her into their own cultures. Beautifully written and finely illustrated, this book is a triumph of sympathy and intelligence. It demonstrates Mary’s endless capacity to inspire and her profound presence in Christian cultures and beyond.

Now more than ever, a clear historical understanding of the conflicts that have engulfed the world is essential. In The First World War, one of the most respected historians of his generation offers a brief but hugely readable narrative account of WWI, its causes and consequences, and the many historical controversies surrounding the origin and conduct of the war. Karl von Clausewitz wrote that war is a trinity composed of the policy of the government, the activities of the military, and the passions of the people. Michael Howard argues that "each of these must be taken into account if we are to understand both why the war happened and why it took the course it did." In nine brisk chapters, Howard lays out the historical situation in Europe in 1914, the dispositions of the major belligerents prior to the war, the causes of war, the major campaigns, the entrance of the United States, the crisis, victory, and settlement of the war. Along the way, he offers compelling insights into the political motivations, military actions, and the "passions of the people" that contributed most strongly to the outcome of the war. There is no other short history of WWI on the market today written by a historian of Michael Howard's stature. For anyone wishing to gain a quick but authoritative understanding of one of the most crucial events of the twentieth century, The First World War is the best place to begin.

"The never-before-told inside story of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center - an epic tale of business, politics, and engineering by the man who spent two decades working to make it happen. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11 destroyed the World Trade Center, New Yorkers and Americans faced a critical set of questions: What should be done with the site? Could the towers be replaced? And how best to memorialize those lost on that day? For Larry Silverstein, a lifelong New Yorker who had signed a lease for the properties just a few months before the attacks, the answer was clear: America had to rebuild as quickly as possible. In The Rising, Silverstein recounts in vivid detail his long battle to construct a new World Trade Center complex and to revitalize the surrounding neighborhood while also memorializing the victims of the attacks. Silverstein made history in 2001 when he signed a 99-year lease on the 10.6 million square foot World Trade Center for $3.25 billion. For the next twenty years, he navigated warring political interests, byzantine city bureaucracies, and resistant insurance companies, as well as the many challenges of designing, engineering, and constructing several new towers in the heart of downtown Manhattan. More than once the entire project almost folded, but today the buildings are nearly complete and the neighborhood is once again a thriving hub that draws hundreds of thousands of people a day. The Rising is a vibrant portrait of the inner workings of New York City in the wake of its most profound tragedy, but it is also a master class in how to succeed in business despite all odds. Full of outsize characters and relentless adversity, this is a riveting book about a remarkable feat of vision and determination"--