"His keen understanding of history and legend...illuminate[s] his visits." --Publishers Weekly

"A vivid picture of the island." --Associated Press

"It is hard to think of anywhere on earth where so many firsts and mosts are crammed into a space so small," Barry Unsworth writes of the isle of Crete. Birthplace of the Greek god Zeus, the Greek alphabet, and the first Greek laws, as well as the home of 15 mountain ranges

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Hatshepsut was the daugher of Egypt's glorious 18th dynasty pharaoh Tuthmosis I. The little princess was expected to be seen and not heard. Everyone knew that one of her brothers would take the throne. But Hatshepsut grew up to rule the great land of Egypt herself, not as its queen but as its all powerful king. Read her extraordinary true story from her birthplace to her foreign expeditions and see the world of Egypt through her eyes. Discover...

Anna Quindlen first visited London from a chair in her suburban Philadelphia home--in one of her beloved childhood mystery novels. She has been back to London countless times since, through the pages of books and in person, and now, in Imagined London, she takes her own readers on a tour of this greatest of literary cities.

While New York, Paris, and Dublin are also vividly portrayed in fiction, it is London, Quindlen argues, that has always...

A biography of the Italian explorer who became famous for his travels in Asia.

Presents an illustrated biography Saladin, from his birth into a prominent Kurdish family in Tikrit, Mesopotamia, in 1138, through his wars to regain holy lands in and around Jerusalem, to his death in Damascus on March 4, 1193.