NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 10 BEST BOOKS • THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • 2011 NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The New Yorker • Chicago Tribune • The Economist • Nancy Pearl, NPR • Bloomberg.com • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In this brilliant narrative, Amanda Foreman tells the fascinating story of the American Civil War—and the major role played by Britain and its citizens in that epic struggle. Between 1861 and 1865, thousands of British citizens volunteered for service on both sides of the Civil War. From the first cannon blasts on Fort Sumter to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, they served as officers and infantrymen, sailors and nurses, blockade runners and spies. Through personal letters, diaries, and journals, Foreman introduces characters both humble and grand, while crafting a panoramic yet intimate view of the war on the front lines, in the prison camps, and in the great cities of both the Union and the Confederacy. In the drawing rooms of London and the offices of Washington, on muddy fields and aboard packed ships, Foreman reveals the decisions made, the beliefs held and contested, and the personal triumphs and sacrifices that ultimately led to the reunification of America. “Engrossing . . . a sprawling drama.” —The Washington Post “Eye-opening . . . immensely ambitious and immensely accomplished.” —The New Yorker WINNER OF THE FLETCHER PRATT AWARD FOR CIVIL WAR HISTORY

First published in 1961 by Stackpole Books, Street without Joy is a classic of military history. Journalist and scholar Bernard Fall vividly captured the sights, sounds, and smells of the brutal— and politically complicated—conflict between the French and the Communist-led Vietnamese nationalists in Indochina. The French fought to the bitter end, but even with the lethal advantages of a modern military, they could not stave off the Viet Minh insurgency of hit-and-run tactics, ambushes, booby traps, and nighttime raids. The final French defeat came at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, setting the stage for American involvement and a far bloodier chapter in Vietnam‘s history. Fall combined graphic reporting with deep scholarly knowledge of Vietnam and its colonial history in a book memorable in its descriptions of jungle fighting and insightful in its arguments. After more than a half a century in print, Street without Joy remains required reading.

"What an exciting, inspiring, and wonderfully-written book this is....Each page has lessons for today, and it is also a thrilling narrative to read." --Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Steve Jobs The masterfully told story of the unlikely men who came together to make the Berlin Airlift one of the great military and humanitarian successes of American history. On the sixtieth anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, Andrei Cherny tells a remarkable story with profound implications for the world today. In the tradition of the best narrative storytellers, he brings together newly unclassified documents, unpublished letters and diaries, and fresh primary interviews to tell the story of the ill-assorted group of castoffs and second-stringers who not only saved millions of desperate people from a dire threat but changed how the world viewed the United States, and set in motion the chain of events that would ultimately lead to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and to America's victory in the Cold War. On June 24, 1948, intent on furthering its domination of Europe, the Soviet Union cut off all access to West Berlin, prepared to starve the city into submission unless the Americans abandoned it. Soviet forces hugely outnumbered the Allies', and most of America's top officials considered the situation hopeless. But not all of them. Harry Truman, an accidental president, derided by his own party; Lucius Clay, a frustrated general, denied a combat command and relegated to the home front; Bill Tunner, a logistics expert downsized to a desk job in a corner of the Pentagon; James Forrestal, a secretary of defense beginning to mentally unravel; Hal Halvorsen, a lovesick pilot who had served far from the conflict, flying transport missions in the backwater of a global war--together these unlikely men improvised and stumbled their way into a uniquely American combination of military and moral force unprecedented in its time. This is the forgotten foundation tale of America in the modern world, the story of when Americans learned, for the first time, how to act at the summit of world power--a masterful and exciting work of historical narrative, and one with strong resonance for our time.

** Wall Street Journal , Publishers Weekly , and USA Today Bestseller!** In the lead-up to the Bolshevik Revolution, one young revolutionary is condemned to exile in Siberia; a hundred years later, his ancestors discover his story and learn just how much history has repeated itself. In the midst of running a long-shot political campaign, Democratic political consultant John Simon discovers a 100-year-old manuscript written by his grandfather Joseph—a brilliant young revolutionary whose exile to Siberia by the last czar of Russia is just the beginning of an extraordinary tale of survival, romance, and revolution. Return From Siberia chronicles not only the Simon family's relationship to each other and the past, but also the remarkable story of a young man who sacrificed everything for his political ideals. As Joseph's manuscript is translated, chapter-by-chapter, the Simon family is pulled deep into their ancestor’s story— in particular, the bitter rivalry between two brothers, whose competing visions of the American Dream are played out on the campaign trail and in their lives. Return from Siberia is a timely appraisal of modern politics and society juxtaposed with an inside look into the machinations of a young political mind 100 years ago. The true story documents an extraordinary time of political upheaval in Russia and Europe just prior to World War I while also drawing parallels to current day American politics and the current philosophical and ideological debates about immigration, Democratic Socialism, and Capitalism. Beyond the deep social, political, and philosophical themes, there is romance, adventure, betrayal, suspense, and the struggles of families today and in yesteryear. Return from Siberia illustrates how one modern family's connection to the past helps them resolve their future.

"They were abolitionists, speculators, slave owners, government officials, and occasional politicians. They were observers of the anxieties and dramas of empire. And they were from one family. The Inner Life of Empires tells the intimate history of the Johnstones--four sisters and seven brothers who lived in Scotland and around the globe in the fast-changing eighteenth century. Piecing together their voyages, marriages, debts, and lawsuits, and examining their ideas, sentiments, and values, renowned historian Emma Rothschild illuminates a tumultuous period that created the modern economy, the British Empire, and the philosophical Enlightenment. One of the sisters joined a rebel army, was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, and escaped in disguise in 1746. Her younger brother was a close friend of Adam Smith and David Hume. Another brother was fluent in Persian and Bengali, and married to a celebrated poet. He was the owner of a slave known only as "Bell or Belinda," who journeyed from Calcutta to Virginia, was accused in Scotland of infanticide, and was the last person judged to be a slave by a court in the British isles. In Grenada, India, Jamaica, and Florida, the Johnstones embodied the connections between European, American, and Asian empires. Their family history offers insights into a time when distinctions between the public and private, home and overseas, and slavery and servitude were in constant flux. Based on multiple archives, documents, and letters, The Inner Life of Empires looks at one family's complex story to describe the origins of the modern political, economic, and intellectual world"-- Provided by publisher.

“Together, Rockliff and Bruno make the scientific method seem exciting, and kids interested in science and history will likely be, well, mesmerized.” — Booklist (starred review) When American inventor Benjamin Franklin arrives in Paris, he is upstaged by a compelling and enigmatic figure: Dr. Mesmer. In elaborately staged shows, Mesmer has Parisians believing he can control a magic force that changes the taste of water, cures illness, and controls thoughts! Can Ben Franklin’s approach of observing, hypothesizing, and testing get to the bottom of Mesmer’s tricks? A rip-roaring, lavishly illustrated peek into a fascinating moment in history shows the development of the scientific method — and reveals the amazing power of the human mind.

Is the West witnessing a huge political upheaval? As if overnight, many Democrats revolted and passionately backed a socialist named Bernie Sanders; the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, in a stunning rebuke; the vituperative billionaire Donald Trump became the presidential nominee of the Republican Party; and a slew of rebellious parties continued to win election after election in countries like Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Austria, and Greece. John B. Judis tells us why we need to learn about the populist movement that began in the United States in the 1890s, the politics of which have recurred on both sides of the Atlantic ever since. Populism, on both the right and the left, champions the people against an establishment, based on issues -- globalization, free trade, immigration -- on which there has been a strong elite consensus, but also an even stronger mass discontent that is now breaking out in the open.

Two Lives is Janet Malcolm's stunning portrait of a legendary couple: Gertrude Stein, the modernist master, and Alice B Toklas, the 'worker bee' who ministered to Stein's needs throughout their forty-year expatriate 'marriage'. As Malcolm pursues the truth of the couple's charmed life in a village in Vichy France her subject becomes the larger question of biographical truth. 'The instability of human knowledge is one of our few certainties,' she writes. The portrait of their relationship that emerges is unexpectedly charged. The two world wars Stein and Toklas lived through together are paralleled by the private war that went on between them. This war, as Malcolm learned, sometimes flared into bitter combat. Janet Malcolm is at her finest in this extraordinary work of literary biography and investigative journalism.

A collection of "first-rate frontline journalism" from the Spanish Civil War to US actions in Central America "by a woman singularly unafraid of guns" (Vanity Fair). For nearly sixty years, Martha Gellhorn's fearless war correspondence made her a leading journalistic voice of her generation. From the Spanish Civil War in 1937 through the Central American wars of the mid-eighties, Gellhorn's candid reporting reflected her deep empathy for people regardless of their political ideology. Collecting the best of Gellhorn's writing on foreign conflicts, and now with a new introduction by Lauren Elkin, The Face of War is a classic of frontline journalism by "the premier war correspondent of the twentieth century" (Ward Just, The New York Times Magazine ). Whether in Java, Finland, the Middle East, or Vietnam, she used the same vigorous approach. "I wrote very fast, as I had to," she says, "afraid that I would forget the exact sound, smell, words, gestures, which were special to this moment and this place." As Merle Rubin noted in his review of this volume for The Christian Science Monitor, "Martha Gellhorn's courageous, independent-minded reportage breaks through geopolitical abstractions and ideological propaganda to take the reader straight to the scene of the event."

"In May of 1945, German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, effectively putting an end to World War II in Europe. But the aftershocks of this global military conflict did not cease with the signing of truces and peace treaties. Millions of lost and homeless POWs, slave laborers, political prisoners, and concentration camp survivors overwhelmed Germany, a country in complete disarray. British and American soldiers gathered the malnourished and desperate foreigners, and attempted to repatriate them to Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and the USSR. But after exhaustive efforts, there remained over a million displaced persons who either refused to go home or, in the case of many, had no home to which to return. They would spend the next three to five years in displaced persons camps, divided by nationalities, temporary homelands in exile, with their own police forces, churches, schools, newspapers, and medical facilities. The international community couldn't agree on the fate of the Last Million, and after a year of fruitless debate and inaction, an International Refugee Organization was created to resettle them in lands suffering from labor shortages. But no nations were willing to accept the 200,000 to 250,000 Jewish men, women, and children who remained trapped in Germany. In 1948, the United States, among the last countries to accept anyone for resettlement, finally passed a Displaced Persons Bill - but as Cold War fears supplanted memories of WWII atrocities, the bill only granted visas to those who were reliably anti-communist, including thousands of former Nazi collaborators, Waffen-SS members, and war criminals, while barring the Jews who were suspected of being Communist sympathizers or agents because they had been recent residents of Soviet-dominated Poland. Only after the passage of the controversial UN resolution for the partition of Palestine and Israel's declaration of independence were the remaining Jewish survivors finally able to leave their displaced persons camps in Germany."--

"In May of 1945, German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, effectively putting an end to World War II in Europe. But the aftershocks of this global military conflict did not cease with the signing of truces and peace treaties. Millions of lost and homeless POWs, slave laborers, political prisoners, and concentration camp survivors overwhelmed Germany, a country in complete disarray. British and American soldiers gathered the malnourished and desperate foreigners, and attempted to repatriate them to Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and the USSR. But after exhaustive efforts, there remained over a million displaced persons who either refused to go home or, in the case of many, had no home to which to return. They would spend the next three to five years in displaced persons camps, divided by nationalities, temporary homelands in exile, with their own police forces, churches, schools, newspapers, and medical facilities. The international community couldn't agree on the fate of the Last Million, and after a year of fruitless debate and inaction, an International Refugee Organization was created to resettle them in lands suffering from labor shortages. But no nations were willing to accept the 200,000 to 250,000 Jewish men, women, and children who remained trapped in Germany. In 1948, the United States, among the last countries to accept anyone for resettlement, finally passed a Displaced Persons Bill - but as Cold War fears supplanted memories of WWII atrocities, the bill only granted visas to those who were reliably anti-communist, including thousands of former Nazi collaborators, Waffen-SS members, and war criminals, while barring the Jews who were suspected of being Communist sympathizers or agents because they had been recent residents of Soviet-dominated Poland. Only after the passage of the controversial UN resolution for the partition of Palestine and Israel's declaration of independence were the remaining Jewish survivors finally able to leave their displaced persons camps in Germany."--

These two volumes are designed to explain the origins of World Way II by focusing on the role of German foreign policy under Hitler. New light is shed on German rearmament, on the efforts of Britain and France to avert war, on the annexation of Austria, on the Munich Agreement, and on the final steps to war in 1939. Both specialists and general readers will find much of interest in these two volumes. The German foreign policy, as determined by Adolf Hitler, is analyzed on the basis of comprehensive research in German, British, and American archives. The published documents of France, Italy, Russia, and numerous other countries as well as the extensive literature on the subject and the papers of many participants have been researched to present what still remains the only comprehensive study in any language of the road to way in 1939. This edition adds a new preface relating these volumes to the evidence, the controversies, and the literature of the years since they were first written.

While today the Nazi genocide of Jews is seen as a massacre unique in its savagery and a central feature of World War II, in 1933-45 it was accepted in the USA, and in the Western world in general, as one of the many wartime brutalities, almost understandable and predictable. Political leaders, public opinion, and later the Allied military greeted the first news concerning the Nazi persecution and murder of Jews with disbelief; later, when the facts of the Nazi mass murder of Jews became apparent, they tended to conflate the Nazi victimization of Jews with that of other ethnic groups. There was a tendency to diminish the scope of the genocide and even to see it as, at least partly, deserved by the victims. These views found expression in a commonly shared reluctance to receive Jewish refugees from Nazism. Opinion polls of the late 1930s-early 1940s show that the American public was consistently against any relaxation of immigration restrictions. In Western Europe and the rest of the Americas, sentiments were similar: some countries were ready to admit Poles, Czechs, and other refugees, but not Jews. These sentiments can only partly be ascribed to the economic hardships of the 1930s; their main cause was antisemitism, ethnic opposition to the Jewish alien. In the postwar years, the tendency to silence and trivialize the Holocaust persevered; it was only in the 1960s that public opinion recognized the Holocaust as unique. Argues against Peter Novick's view, according to which Holocaust memory initially fell victim to the Cold War. Contends that, in the 1960s, most people thought that the "Jewish question" was finally solved - by emancipation, assimilation and, last but not least, by the Nazi mass murder.

Using an interactive format that includes removable letters, documents, and personal effects, this visual history of the Jews in America follows the successive waves of Jewish immigration to the United States, from the eighteenth century to the present day. 30,000 first printing. Traditions Book Club Main.

Written in rivetings fashion by the coauthors of The Secret War Against the Jews, Unholy Trinity tells one of the darkest tales of World War II. After the war had ended, fearing a surge of Soviet growth, the Papacy entered into an espionage alliance with British and American intelligence agents. Subsuming justice to the nascent Cold War ideology, these three powers ferreted Nazi criminals out of Europe so that they could be used in the supposedly greater fight against Communism. The Vatica's Nazi smuggling network was penetrated by Prince Anton Turkul, the great Soviet double agent who turned the operations into a sting for his masters in the Kremlin. Unholy Trinity exposes Turkul's "Red Nazi" operation for the first time and shows how Kim Philby, the infamous British-Soviet double agent, and his network were nearly sacrificed to preserve Turkul's Vatican operation. Exploring the Vatican's role in aiding Nazi criminals to escape punishment for their crimes, this book, originally published in 1991, first revealed the Vatican--Swiss bank connection to Nazi gold and documented the hidden links to Western investors in Nazi Germany. Since 1991, major revelations about the role of Swiss banks have confirmed Unholy Trinity's expose of the flight of the Nazi's stolen treasures; the new introduction and new final chapters, written by Aarons and Loftus for this edition, bring the book completely up to date and show how the media have missed the vital Vatican connection in the Swiss-bank story. Among other things, the authors demonstrage that U.S. and British code-breakers were fully aware of the Holocaust as early as 1941 but lied to the Western press; that the code-breakers bugged the Swiss banks and then buried secrets of Nazi gold transfers to protect U.S. intelligence chief Allen Dulles; and that the Australian, Brisih, and Canadian governments are still waging a campaign to keep their citizens ignorant about the Nazi war criminals living among them. Covers all these topics and more, Unholy Trinity is the definitive history of a series of profoundly disturbing cover-ups involing the Holy See, Allen Dulles, the Swiss banks, and the remnants of the Third Reich.

Peter Gay's inquiry into the ideas and sensibilities which dominated nineteenth-century culture is one of the great achievements in modern historical writing. This is the fifth volume. Peter Gay's The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud has revolutionized our thinking about the nineteenth century as a whole and particularly about its dynamo - the middle classes. Gay's achievement is to summarize the interior life, the mentality of the nineteenth century. In uncovering the roots of modernism, he shows us a hidden side of the Victorian era. The Victorians we meet in this volume are not the stodgy, complacent characters of drawing room comedy. They are instead a varied crowd, from the capitalists in the top tier of the bourgeoisie eager to be recognized as gentlemen or, better yet, dubbed as nobility, to those at the bottom of the pile, the clerks and craftsmen mortally afraid of sinking into the mass of the proletariat. What they share is an anxiety, driven by their concern to advance up the social pyramid or at least to maintain the status they have achieved. Some of the individuals in this richly peopled narrative turn on their own class, none more bitterly than Gustave Flaubert; others celebrate their success, whether in Manchester or Munich, by sponsoring symphony orchestras or establishing museums; still others become cultural hunters and gatherers, turning their newly acquired fortunes to the private accumulation of art, ranging from the "safe" works of the old masters to the daring innovations of the Impressionists. The stage is thus set for the explosion of modernism accompanied by an inevitable reaction against the subversive avant-garde of artists, composers, and writers as varied as Cezanne, Picasso, Stravinsky, Shaw, Ibsen, and Zola. No one reading this concluding volume of Peter Gay's magnificent reevaluation of the nineteenth century will ever again use the term Victorian as a synonym for dull.

In Witness to Nuremberg , the chief interpreter for the American prosecution at the Nuremberg trials after World War II offers his insights into dealing directly with Hermann Goering, a leading member of the Nazi Party, as well as the story of his own colorful, eventful life before and after the trials. At age twenty-two, Richard Sonnenfeldt was appointed chief interpreter for the American prosecution of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. His pretrial time spent with Hermann Goering reveals much about not only Goering, but Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and other high-ranking Nazis. Sonnenfeldt was the only American who talked with all the defendants. Here is his inimitable life in wonderful detail.

It has now been more than forty years since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on the streets of Dallas on November 22, 1963. No event in the post-war era, not even the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has cast such a long shadow over our national life. The murder of the handsome and vigorous president shocked the nation to its core, and shook the faith of many Americans in their institutions and way of life. The repercussions from that event continue to be felt down to the present day. Looking back, it is now clear that Kennedy's death marked a historical crossroads after which point events began to move in surprising and destructive directions. In Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism, James Piereson examines this seminal event from an entirely new and provocative point of view. Most books on the assassination take up the question as to who was really responsible for killing the President. Mr. Piereson takes it as established fact that Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. What needs to be explained, he argues, is the bizarre aftermath of the assassination: Why in the years after the assassination did the American Left become preoccupied with conspiratorial thinking? How and why was John F. Kennedy transformed in death into a liberal icon and a martyr for civil rights? In what way was the assassination linked to the collapse of mid-century liberalism, a doctrine which until 1963 was the reigning philosophy of the nation? In answering these questions, Piereson places great weight on the influence of Jacqueline Kennedy in shaping public memory of her husband and the meaning of his death. The Kennedy assassination, he argues, is a case study in public myth-making and the ways in which images and symbols can override fact and substance in political life.

The peace treaties represented an almost impossible attempt to solve the problems caused by a murderous world war. In The Lights that Failed: European International History 1919-1933, part of the Oxford History of Modern Europe series, Steiner challenges the common assumption that the Treaty of Versailles led to the opening of a second European war. In a radically original way, this book characterizes the 1920s not as a frustrated prelude to a second global conflict but as a fascinating decade in its own right, when politicians and diplomats strove to re-assemble a viable European order. Steiner examines the efforts that failed but also those which gave hope for future promise, many of which are usually underestimated, if not ignored. She shows that an equilibrium was achieved, attained between a partial American withdrawal from Europe and the self-imposed constraints which the Soviet system imposed on exporting revolution. The stabilization painfully achieved in Europe reached it fragile limits after 1925, even prior to the financial crises that engulfed the continent. The hinge years between the great crash of 1929 and Hitler's achievement of power in 1933 devastatingly altered the balance between nationalism and internationalism. This wide-ranging study helps us grasp the decisive stages in this process. In a second volume, The Triumph of the Night , Steiner will examine the immediate lead up to the Second World War and its early years.

Living at a time of unprecedented upheaval and social chaos, Benedict of Nursia could not save the Roman Empire from collapse, but he did something more remarkable: he created Europe to take its place. It didn't happen overnight but instead over centuries. Benedict took the best that classical culture had to offer, combined it with Christianity, and came up with a very specific way to live in a world where chaos was the rule. The Rule of St. Benedict proposed in specific terms, down to the amount of beer a monk was allowed to drink, how to live in a world where the empire had failed. Benedict's Rule became, in Dawson's words, "the Roman standard of the monastic life and finally the universal type of Western monasticism." It brought order and classical coherence to the chaotic ethnic existence of the Germanic tribes, as well as the formation of new centers of culture in Ireland, Northumbria, and ultimately the Carolingian Empire.The Europe Benedict created is now facing another kind of threat. Europe has lost contact with its roots. The Enlightenment separates Europe's contemporary inhabitants from the man who made their culture possible. Cut off from his roots and disillusioned by one failed utopian experiment after another, European Man has contracted a spiritual disease whose clearest manifestation is his inability to reproduce. If this sickness is not cured within the the next generation, Europe will almost certainly reach the demographic tipping point and become a Muslim continent. The same is true of America. Cities like New York are fast on their way to losing their European character. And they are losing it for much the same reason: those of European descent are not having children. Benedict's vision of the small community is now more relevant than ever. At a time of American imperial over-extension and the threat of imminent collapse, at a time when "citizen" is a euphemism for taxpayer, or cannon fodder, or both, everyone needs a supportive community. At a time of demographic collapse, young people need to know that these small communities will support them so they can marry and raise families. When they fail to receive that assurance from the Church, the young simply fail to marry and have children, creating a sense of doom based on the feeling that there is no future. And they are right. Without children there is no future. Their fears have created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cut off from Europe's Benedictine past, the Europeans and their American cousins also find themselves cut off from the future by their fear-driven refusal to have children.Renowned cultural critic E. Michael Jones is the editor of Culture Wars magazine and the author of The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal As Ethnic Cleansing.