"The millennium between the breakup of the western Roman Empire and the Reformation was a long and hugely transformative period--one not easily chronicled within the scope of a few hundred pages. Yet distinguished historian Chris Wickham has taken up the challenge in this landmark book, and he succeeds in producing the most riveting account of medieval Europe in a generation. Tracking the entire sweep of the Middle Ages across Europe, Wickham focuses...

Chronicles the life of King Leopold II of Belgium and discusses how he plundered the Congo, how his people tried to overthrow him, and other related topics.

"The New York Times bestselling author of Code Girls reveals the untold story of how women at the CIA ushered in the modern intelligence age, a sweeping story of a "sisterhood" of women spies spanning three generations who broke the glass ceiling, helped transform spycraft, and tracked down Osama Bin Laden. Upon its creation in 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency instantly became one of the most important spy services in the world. Like every male-dominated...

"The people who made, saved, and sometimes destroyed medieval manuscripts, over a thousand years of history, from the acclaimed author of Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts The Manuscripts Club tells of twelve men and women, from the eleventh century to the twentieth, who all share an overwhelming obsession with illuminated manuscripts. The saint, the patron, the bookseller, the artist, the antiquary, the collector, the rabbi, the savant, the librarian,...

"From historian and author of the popular daily newsletter LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN, a vital narrative that explains how America, once a beacon of democracy, now teeters on the brink of autocracy--and how we can turn back. In the midst of the impeachment crisis of 2019, Heather Cox Richardson launched a daily Facebook essay providing the historical background of the daily torrent of news. The essays soon turned into a newsletter and, spread by word...

"A biography of the American economist Milton Friedman"-- Provided by publisher. Milton Friedman's work was instrumental in the turn toward free markets that defined the 1980's, and his defenses of capitalism and freedom resonated with audiences around the world. Burns tells his extraordinary story, providing context for his groundbreaking work on everything from why dentists earn less than doctors, to the causes of the Great Depression, to the vital...

"This nation's history and self-understanding have long depended on the notion of a "colonial America," an epoch that supposedly laid the foundation for the modern United States. In Indigenous Continent, Pekka Hämäläinen overturns the traditional, Eurocentric narrative, demonstrating that, far from being weak and helpless "victims" of European colonialism, Indigenous peoples controlled North America well into the 19th century. From the Iroquois...

"A masterful and unsettling history of the forced migration of 80,000 Native Americans across the Mississippi River in the 1830s. On May 28, 1830, Congress authorized the expulsion of indigenous peoples from the East to territories west of the Mississippi River. Over the next decade, Native Americans saw their homelands and possessions stolen through fraud, intimidation, and murder. Thousands lost their lives. In this powerful, gripping book, Claudio...

This history of water rights in the American West focuses on the political corruption and intrigue, including the rivalry between the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.s. Army Corps of Engineers.

"No city stirs the imagination more than Venice. From the richly ornamented palaces emerging from the waters of the Grand Canal to the dazzling sites of Piazza San Marco, visitors and residents alike sense they are entering, as fourteenth-century poet Petrarch remarked, "another world." During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Venice was celebrated as a model republic in an age of monarchs. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became famous...