"On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter. Master storyteller Erik Larson...

Contains analyses of the U.S. Presidents and their administrations, from George Washington to George W. Bush, with discussion of each man's rise to power, the problems he confronted in office, and his effect on the institution of the presidency, and includes a chapter on the role of First Ladies in shaping the presidency.

This paperback reissue of a classic not only examines King's Birmingham campaign for civil rights, but the history of the struggle and the tasks that await future generations fighting for equality. New Afterword by Rev. Jesse Jackson. Reissue.

By the acclaimed journalist and New York Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, this day-by-day eyewitness account of the momentous events leading up to World War II in Europe is the private, personal, utterly revealing journal of a great foreign correspondent. CBS radio broadcaster William L. Shirer was virtually unknown in 1940 when he decided there might be a book in the diary he had kept in Europe during the 1930s—specifically...

The first president born after America's independence ushers in a new era of no-holds-barred democracy The first "professional politician" to become president, the slick and dandyish Martin Van Buren was to all appearances the opposite of his predecessor, the rugged general and Democratic champion Andrew Jackson. Van Buren, a native Dutch speaker, was America's first ethnic president as well as the first New Yorker to hold the office, at a time when...

"A leading journalist and public intellectual explains the long, disturbing history behind the American Right's embrace of foreign dictators, from Kaiser Wilhelm and Mussolini to Putin and Orban"--

The Third Reich's senseless purges and war on European cultural artefacts are profiled by Nicholas, who describes how art treasures were both perserved and destroyed.

"In The New American Militarism, Bacevich examines the origins and implications of this misguided enterprise. He shows how American militarism emerged as a reaction to the Vietnam War, when various groups in American society -soldiers, politicians on the make, intellectuals, strategists, Christian evangelicals, even purveyors of pop culture-came to see the revival of military power and the celebration of military values as the antidote to all the...

"Although both revolutions professed similar Enlightenment ideals of freedom, equality, and justice, there were dramatic differences. The Americans were content to preserve many aspects of their English heritage; the French sought a complete break with a thousand years of history. The Americans accepted nonviolent political conflict; the French valued unity above all. The Americans emphasized individual rights, while the French stressed public order...