In How Few Remain, Harry Turtledove set the stage for his alternate history of World War I. Now, with The Great War: American Front, he carries this epic into the early twentieth century in a re-imagining of the fateful war that hurtled humanity into the modern age. Envision a divided America - one camp led by Theodore Roosevelt, the other by Woodrow Wilson - in the most explosive conflict humankind has seen, where global war is waged with sophisticated weaponry on American soil for the first time in history. When the Great War engulfed Europe in 1914, the United States and the Confederate States of America, bitter enemies for five decades, entered the fray on opposite sides: the United States aligned with the newly strong Germany, while the Confederacy joined forces with their allies, Britain and France. But it soon became clear to both sides that this fight would be different - that war itself would never be the same again. As President Theodore Roosevelt rallied the diverse ethnic groups of the northern states - Irish and Italians, Mormons and Jews - Confederate President Woodrow Wilson struggled to hold together a nation still beset by ignorance, prejudice, and class divisions. And as the war raged on, southern blacks, oppressed for generations, found themselves fatefully drawn toward a climactic confrontation.

The highly acclaimed first edition of this major work convincingly established Gerald Holton’s analysis of the ways scientific ideas evolve. His concept of “themata,” induced from case studies with special attention to the work of Einstein, has become one of the chief tools for understanding scientific progress. It is now one of the main approaches in the study of the initiation and acceptance of individual scientific insights. Three principal consequences of this perspective extend beyond the study of the history of science itself. It provides philosophers of science with the kind of raw material on which some of the best work in their field is based. It helps intellectual historians to redefine the place of modern science in contemporary culture by identifying influences on the scientific imagination. And it prompts educators to reexamine the conventional concepts of education in science. In this new edition, Holton has masterfully reshaped the contents and widened the coverage. Significant new material has been added, including a penetrating account of the advent of quantum physics in the United States, and a broad consideration of the integrity of science, as exemplified in the work of Niels Bohr. In addition, a revised introduction and a new postscript provide an updated perspective on the role of themata. The result of this thoroughgoing revision is an indispensable volume for scholars and students of scientific thought and intellectual history.

"It's striking how many of the presidents Americans venerate--Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, to name a few--oversaw some of the republic's bloodiest years. Perhaps it's because they looked out for important political causes. Or maybe they just looked out for themselves. This revealing and entertaining book puts some of America's greatest leaders under the microscope, showing how their calls for war, usually remembered as brave and noble, were in fact selfish and convenient. In every case, our presidents chose personal gain over national interest while loudly evoking justice and freedom. The result is an eye-opening retelling of American history, and a call for reforms that may make the future better. In this book, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith show that even leaders who proclaim the loftiest of intentions have concerns and motives that are far less pure than we might like. You'll never look at politics the same way again"--

The New Thought Movement was an enormously popular late nineteenth-century spiritual movement led largely by and for women. Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science is but one example of the fascinating range of these groups, which advocated a belief in mind over matter and espoused women's spiritual ability to purify the world. This work is the first to uncover the cultural implications of New Thought, embedding it in the intellectual traditions of nineteenth-century America, and illuminating its connections with the self-help and New Age enthusiasms of our own fin-de-siècle. Beryl Satter examines New Thought in all its complexity, presenting along the way a captivating cast of characters. In lively and accessible prose, she introduces the people, the institutions, the texts, and the ideas that comprised the New Thought movement. This fascinating social and intellectual history explores the complex relationships among social reform, alternative religion, medicine, and psychology which persist to this day.

Bernard Wasserstein offers the first authoritative history of the fraught diplomatic relations surrounding the Holy City of Jerusalem. Jews, Muslims, and Christians have all claimed the city as their own over the centuries—as have a dizzying array of foreign nations. In the period between the founding of the city and its capture by Israelis in 1967, Jerusalem has been conquered at least thirty-seven times. “No other town,” wrote Arthur Koestler in 1948, “has caused such continuous waves of killing, rape, and unholy misery over the centuries as the Holy City.”Today, Jerusalem lies at the core of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It is the most deeply divided capital city in the world: its Arab and Jewish residents inhabit different districts, speak different languages, attend different schools, read different newspapers, observe different holy days—live, in almost every significant respect, different lives. Against the background of renewed violence in and around Jerusalem, this book explores the complicated origins of the current diplomatic impasse. Why is the question of Jerusalem so intractable? Why has it outlasted almost every other political dispute as a focus for diplomatic wrangling and collective violence? And what are the prospects for resolution?Meticulously researched, and written with humanity and elegance, this book offers an illuminating contribution to the effort to achieve a lasting negotiated settlement of a tragic conflict that affects us all.

History lies heavily on South Africa, and Adam Hochschild brings to bear a lifetime's familiarity with the country in an eye-opening work that blends history and reportage. Hochschild looks at the tensions of modern South Africa through a dramatic prism: the pivotal nineteenth-century Battle of Blood River -- which determined whether the Boers or the Zulus would control that part of the world -- and its contentious commemoration by rival groups 150 years later. This incisive book offers an unusual window onto a society that remains divided. In his epilogue, Hochschild extends his view to the astonishing political changes that have occurred in the country in recent years -- and the changes yet to be made.

"The Holocaust in the Soviet Union is the most complete account to date of the Soviet Jews during World War II and the Holocaust (1941-45). Reports, records, documents, and research previously unavailable in English enable Yitzhak Arad to trace the Holocaust in the German-occupied territories of the Soviet Union through three separate periods in which German political and military goals in the occupied territories dictated the treatment of the Jews."--BOOK JACKET.

The Cruel Years provides readers with a vivid picture of what life was like a hundred years ago, not for the rich and famous but for ordinary working Americans. The story is told in the words of twenty-two fascinating people who lived by laboring long hours at farms and factories and mines. A preface by Howard Zinn and an introduction by William Loren Katz provide an easy-to-follow historical map that places these hard-hitting, first-person narratives in the context of their troubled times and within the larger picture of U.S. growth and development. Here are the no-nonsense words of a young immigrant trying to survive as a sweatshop operator in New York City, a hard working farmer's wife who has writing ambitions; a black southern sharecropper seeking fulfillment under a new system of slavery; a young Puerto Rican passing the Statue of Liberty and ready for new challenges; a Chinese immigrant, a Mexican immigrant, and a Japanese immigrant struggling to rise from lower rungs on the social and economic ladder; an Irish girl of sixteen deciding to become a political agitator; a black southern woman trying to fend off the hurts of Jim Crow; a coal miner telling of the lethal dangers of his work; and a black cowhand rejoicing in the thrill of the cattle trails.

Now a major motion picture starring Drew Barrymore, Ted Danson, Kristen Bell, Tim Blake Nelson, John Krasinski, and Vinessa Shaw—an account of the dramatic rescue of three gray whales trapped under the ice in Alaska in 1988. Set in Cold War–era 1988, Freeing the Whales tells the real story behind the remarkable, bizarre, and oftentimes uproarious event that mesmerized the world for weeks. On October 7, an Inuit hunter near Barrow, Alaska, found three California Gray whales imprisoned in the Arctic ice. In the past, as was nature's way, trapped whales always died. Not this time. Tom Rose, who was covering the event for a Japanese TV station, compellingly describes how oil company executives, environmental activists, Inupiat people, small business people, and the U.S. military boldly worked together to rescue the whales. He also tells the stories of some of the more than 150 international journalists who brought the story to the world's attention. The rescue was followed by millions of people around the world as Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev joined the forces of their two nations to help free the whales.

Where and why was democracy successful in the twentieth century? In The Democratic Century , Seymour Martin Lipset and Jason Lakin combine social, cultural, economic, and institutional analyses to explain why democracy has succeeded in some countries and failed in others. Defining democracy as a political system in which all adults may vote in contested elections to choose their representatives, Lipset and Lakin argue that the mainstays of a successful system are institutions that encourage the diffusion of power—such as competitive parties, an independent civil society, and federalist arrangements. But central to their argument is the notion that culture, at least as much as any other variable, is responsible for the establishment of democracy. The authors’ concept of culture is not static, however. They argue that, because cultures interact with social, economic, and political variables, they can change and become compatible with democracy. Consequently, Lipset and Lakin hope for a democratic twenty-first century. The Democratic Century revisits theories from Lipset’s earlier works, including the classics Agrarian Socialism and Political Man . But the authors do more than update Lipset’s work; they offer an expansive view of democratic systems and of the vast body of relevant literature.

In this classic analysis and refutation of Eric Williams's 1944 thesis, Seymour Drescher argues that Britain's abolition of the slave trade in 1807 resulted not from the diminishing value of slavery for Great Britain but instead from the British public's mobilization against the slave trade, which forced London to commit what Drescher terms econocide. This action, he argues, was detrimental to Britain's economic interests at a time when British slavery was actually at the height of its potential. Originally published in 1977, Drescher's work was instrumental in undermining the economic determinist interpretation of abolitionism that had dominated historical discourse for decades following World War II. For this second edition, which includes a foreword by David Brion Davis, Drescher has written a new preface, reflecting on the historiography of the British slave trade since this book's original publication.

“Impressive…A scrupulously researched work enlarging our understanding of an integral aspect of slave culture.”–-The Washington Post Book World What was it like to be a slave on a plantation of the antebellum South? How did the fiction of the happy slave and myth of the plantation “family” evolve? How did slaves create a performance style that unified them, while simultaneously entertaining and mocking the master? The answers to these questions may be found in the groundbreaking study of the corn-shucking ceremonies of the prewar South, where white masters played host to local slaves and watched their “guests” perform exuberant displays of singing and dancing. Drawing on the detailed written and oral histories of masters, slaves, and Northern commentators, distinguished folklorist Roger Abrahams peels through layers of racism and nostalgia surrounding this celebration to uncover its true significance in the lives and imagination of both blacks and whites – and in the evolution of an enduring African-American culture.

In this major new work, Richard J. Bernstein argues that many of the most important themes in philosophy during the past one hundred and fifty years are variations and developments of ideas that were prominent in the classical American pragmatists: Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey and George H Mead. Pragmatism begins with a thoroughgoing critique of the Cartesianism that dominated so much of modern philosophy. The pragmatic thinkers reject a sharp dichotomy between subject and object, mind-body dualism, the quest for certainty and the spectator theory of knowledge. They seek to bring about a sea change in philosophy that highlights the social character of human experience and normative social practices, the self-correcting nature of all inquiry, and the continuity of theory and practice. And they-especially James, Dewey, and Mead-emphasize the democratic ethical-political consequences of a pragmatic orientation. Many of the themes developed by the pragmatic thinkers were also central to the work of major twentieth century philosophers like Wittgenstein and Heidegger, but the so-called analytic-continental split obscures this underlying continuity. Bernstein develops an alternative reading of contemporary philosophy that brings out the persistence and continuity of pragmatic themes. He critically examines the work of leading contemporary philosophers who have been deeply influenced by pragmatism, including Hilary Putnam, Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, and Robert Brandom, and he explains why the discussion of pragmatism is so alive, varied and widespread. This lucid, wide-ranging book by one of America's leading philosophers will be compulsory reading for anyone who wants to understand the state of philosophy today.

Arendt's personal experiences in Nazi Germany in 1933 and in occupied France in the early 1940s drew her attention to the problem of antisemitism and provided her with a sharp insight into the connection between totalitarianism and antisemitism. Her conception of antisemitism was expressed in "The Origins of Totalitarianism." Arendt regarded antisemitism as a political ideology, whose most dangerous form was peculiar to the epoque of supranational, imperialist states (19th-mid-20th centuries). It was an important element of Nazism, and the catalyst for the most horrendous events of the 20th century. She claimed that the Jews also share responsibility for the success of Nazism because of their inability to withstand it politically. Arendt's book "Eichmann in Jerusalem" provoked a long and bitter controversy. The book is not in fact anti-Jewish: Arendt writes on the total moral collapse of society under the Nazi terror. Her turn from the conception of "radical evil" to that of "banality of evil" in the 1960s was not a break in her thought.

Once upon a time, back in the 1920s and 1930s, in Brooklyn, there lived a breed of men who exist now only in legend and in the memories of a few old men. Their names were Louis Lepke, Abe Reles, Bugsy Siegel, Dutch Schultz, Meyer Lansky, and they were Jewish gangsters: Jews with guns; tough, fearless Jews who roamed the streets in a time when a Jewish boy could fashion a future that was murderous, daring, and wide open.

"Two former spy chief rivals reveal how Russia stole America's nuclear technology, assassinated its President, and killed dozens of foreign political leaders"--

In the final days of World War II, a band of Jewish partisans makes its way from Russia to Italy, moving toward the ultimate goal of Palestine. Based on a true story, the novel chronicles their adventures as they wage a personal war of revenge against the Nazis: blowing up trains, rescuing the last victims of concentration camps, scoring victories in the face of unspeakable devastation. Primo Levi captures the landscape and the people of Eastern Europe in vivid detail, depicting as well the terrible bleakness of war-ridden Europe. But finally, what he gives us is a tribute to the strength and ingenuity of the human spirit.

Modernism in architecture and urban design has failed the American city. This is the decisive conclusion that renowned public intellectual Nathan Glazer has drawn from two decades of writing and thinking about what this architectural movement will bequeath to future generations. In From a Cause to a Style , he proclaims his disappointment with modernism and its impact on the American city. Writing in the tradition of legendary American architectural critics Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs, Glazer contends that modernism, this new urban form that signaled not just a radical revolution in style but a social ambition to enhance the conditions under which ordinary people lived, has fallen short on all counts. The articles and essays collected here--some never published before, all updated--reflect his ideas on subjects ranging from the livable city and public housing to building design, public memorials, and the uses of public space. Glazer, an undisputed giant among public intellectuals, is perhaps best known for his writings on ethnicity and social policy, where the unflinching honesty and independence of thought that he brought to bear on tough social questions has earned him respect from both the Left and the Right. Here, he challenges us to face some difficult truths about the public places that, for better or worse, define who we are as a society. From a Cause to a Style is an exhilarating and thought-provoking book that raises important questions about modernist architecture and the larger social aims it was supposed to have addressed-and those it has abandoned.