Drawing on myriad sources--from the faint traces left by the rocking of a cradle at the site of an early medieval home to an antique illustration of Eve's fall from grace-this second volume in the celebrated series offers new perspectives on women of the past. Twelve distinguished historians from many countries examine the image of women in the masculine mind, their social condition, and their daily experience from the demise of the Roman Empire to the genesis of the Italian Renaissance.

More than in any other era, a medieval woman's place in society was determined by men; her sexuali...
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Complete with introductions, full commentary, glossary, and a guide to further reading, Medieval Worlds is a comprehensive sourcebook for the study of Western Europe from the fifth to the fifteenth century.

Drawing on a wide range of documents, from chronicles, legal, state, and church documents, to biographies, poems, and letters from all over Europe, the authors expertly illustrate to the reader the unity - and complexity - of the medieval world.

Amongst many more, central issues discussed include:

• the diverse world of monasteries
• the Papacy View More...

Here are true tales about hair-raising escapes from death, and stories of great courage in the face of grievous wounds and desperate circumstances. But there are also stories on a ...
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Texts and images, each introdu...
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"I never indeed thought him an honest, frank-dealing man, but considered him as a crooked gun, or other perverted machine, whose aim or stroke you could never be sure of."--Thomas Jefferson on Aaron Burr

" A]lways an honest Man, often a wise one, but sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of his senses."-- Benjamin Franklin on John Adams

"I do now know Jefferson] to be one of the most artful, intriguing, industrious and double-faced politicians in all America."-- John Nicholas to George Washington

"I shall really regret to leave Mr. Jefferson, he is one of the choice ones of t...
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In the 1920s, Weigl had created the first typhus vaccine using a method as bold as it was dangerous for its use of living human subjects. The astonishing success of Weigl's techniques attracted...
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Writing in "Life" magazine in February 1941, Henry Luce memorably announced the arrival of The American Century. The phrase caught on, as did the belief that America s moment was at hand. Yet as Andrew J. Bacevich makes clear, that century has now ended, the victim of strategic miscalculation, military misadventures, and economic decline. To take stock of the short American Century and place it in historical perspective, Bacevich has assembled a richly provocative range of perspectives.

What did this age of reputed American preeminence signify? What caused its premature demise? What leg...
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In the span of five violent hours on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed major Gulf Coast cities and flattened 150 miles of coastline. Yet those wind-torn hours represented only the first stage of the relentless triple tragedy that Katrina brought to the entire Gulf Coast, from Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama.

First came the hurricane, one of the three strongest ever to make landfall in the United States -- 150-mile-per-hour winds, with gusts measuring more than 180 miles per hour ripping buildings to pieces.

Second, the storm-surge flooding, which submerged a half ...
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In 1939, the Nazi regime's plans for redrawing the demographic map of Eastern Europe entailed the expulsion of millions of Jews. By the fall of 1941, these plans had shifted from expulsion to systematic and total mass murder of all Jews within the Nazi grasp. The Origins of the Final Solution is the most detailed and comprehensive analysis ever written of what took place during this crucial period--of how, precisely, the Nazis' racial policies evolved from persecution and "ethnic cleansing" to the Final...
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In One Summer Bill Bryson, one of our greatest and most beloved nonfiction writers, transports readers on a journey back to one amazing season in American life.

The summer of 1927 began with one of the signature events of the twentieth century: on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop, and when he landed in Le Bourget airfield near Paris, he ignited an explosion of worldwide rapture and instantly became the most famous person on the planet. Meanwhi...
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Norman Cantor, the premier historian of the Middle Ages, draws together the most recent scientific discoveries and groundbreaking historical research to pierce the mist and tell the story of t...
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""A good story, well told, of a sliver of life in Richmond, a small, elite-driven capital city in the young nation's most influential state.""

--Publishers Weekly

George Wythe clung to the mahogany banister as he inched down the staircase of his comfortable Richmond, Virginia, home. Doubled over in agony, he stumbled to the kitchen in search of help. There he found his maid, Lydia Broadnax, and his young proteg , Michael Brown, who were also writhing in distress. Hours later, when help arrived, Wythe was quick to tell anyone who would listen, ""I am murdered."" Over the next two wee...
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Churchill vividly recounts the major campaigns that shaped the war: the furious attacks of the Marne, the naval maneuvers off Jutland, Verdun's "soul-stirring frenzy," and the surprising victory of Chemins des Dames. Here, too, he re-creates the dawn of modern warf...
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From the award-winning and bestselling author of Directorate S, the explosive first-hand account of America's secret history in Afghanistan

To what extent did America's best intelligence analysts grasp the rising thread of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail? Comprehensively and for the first time, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll recounts the history of the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks. Based on scrupulous research a...
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During the turbulent period prior to colonial India's partition and independence, Muslim intellectuals in Hyderabad sought to secularize and reformulate their linguistic, historical, religious, and literary traditions for the sake of a newly conceived national public. Responding to the model of secular education introduced to South Asia by the British, Indian academics launched a spirited debate about the reform of Islamic education, the importance of education in the spoken languages of the country, the shape of Urdu and its past, and the significance of the histories of Islam and India fo...
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