History

In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. From the astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, which had running water, immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city, to the Mexican corn that was so carefully created in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.

Acclaimed national security columnist and noted cultural critic Fred Kaplan looks past the 1960s to the year that really changed America

While conventional accounts focus on the sixties as the era of pivotal change that swept the nation, Fred Kaplan argues that it was 1959 that ushered in the wave of tremendous cultural, political, and scientific shifts that would play out in the decades that followed. Pop culture exploded in upheaval with the rise of artists like Jasper Johns, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, and Miles Davis. Court rulings unshackled previously banned books. Political power broadened with the onset of Civil Rights laws and protests. The sexual and feminist revolutions took their first steps with the birth control pill. America entered the war in Vietnam, and a new style in superpower diplomacy took hold. The invention of the microchip and the Space Race put a new twist on the frontier myth.

• Vividly chronicles 1959 as a vital, overlooked year that set the world as we know it in motion, spearheading immense political, scientific, and cultural change
• Strong critical acclaim: "Energetic and engaging" (Washington Post); "Immensely enjoyable . . . a first-rate book" (New Yorker); "Lively and filled with often funny anecdotes" (Publishers Weekly)
• Draws fascinating parallels between the country in 1959 and today

Drawing fascinating parallels between the country in 1959 and today, Kaplan offers a smart, cogent, and deeply researched take on a vital, overlooked period in American history.

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Long before his conservative manifesto Liberty and Tyranny became a #1 New York Times bestseller, Mark R. Levin's love for his country was instilled in him by his father, Jack E. Levin. At family dinners, Jack would share his bountiful knowledge of American history and, especially, the inspiration of Abraham Lincoln.

The son of immigrants, Jack Levin is an American patriot who responded with deep personal emotion to Lincoln's call for liberty and equality. His admiration for the great Civil War president inspired him to personally design and produce a beautiful volume, enhanced with period illustrations and striking battlefield images by Matthew Brady and other renowned photographers of the era, that brings to life the words of Lincoln's awe-inspiring response to one of the Civil War's costliest conflicts.

Now Jack Levin's loving homage to the spirit of American freedom is available in an essential edition that features his original foreword as well as a touching new preface by his son, Mark Levin. In this way, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address Illustrated celebrates the passing of patriotic pride and historical insight from generation to generation, from father to son.

The day following the dedication of the National Soldier's Cemetery at Gettysburg, Edward Everett, who spoke before Lincoln, sent him a note saying: “Permit me to express my great admiration for the thoughts expressed by you, with such eloquent simplicity and appropriateness, at the consecration of the cemetery. I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

Lincoln wrote back to Everett: “In our respective parts yesterday, you could not have been excused to make a short address, nor I a long one. I am pleased to know that in your judgement the little I did say was not entirely a failure.”

This spectacular volume, at once a concise resource guide and a fascinating read, brings the dazzling variety of sub-Saharan Africa to life with its inviting, innovative approach. Africa tells its story through hundreds of breathtaking full-color, full-page images of people, landscapes, artworks, and artifacts accompanied by extended explanatory captions, relevant quotations, and concise overviews of topics such as art, religion, colonialism, slavery, and popular culture. Attentive to the ways in which we have constructed and deconstructed meanings of Africa, the crisp text encompasses recent understandings of history. The book explores the contemporary dimension as well, illuminating throughout the dynamic, multicultural, and complex nature of African societies. It includes a map of precolonial Africa, a chronology of events, and a list of the museums where visitors can view much of the art featured in the volume. With its innovative organization, wideranging coverage, and up-to-date information, this highly original guide presents Africa as a living, changing entity.

From bestselling historian H. W. Brands, an incisive chronicle of the events and trends that guided-and sometimes misguided-our nation from the A-bomb to the iPhone.

For a brief, bright moment in 1945, America stood at its apex, looking back on victory not only against the Axis powers but against the Great Depression, and looking ahead to seemingly limitless power and promise. What we've done with that power and promise over the past six decades is a vitally important and fascinating topic that has rarely been tackled in one volume, and never by a historian of H. W. Brands's stature.

As American Dreams opens, Brands shows us a country dramatically different from our own-more unequal in social terms but more equal economically, more religious and rural but also more liberal and more wholeheartedly engaged with the rest of the world. As he traces the changes we have gone through as a nation, he reveals the great themes and dreams that have driven America-the rising focus on individual rights and pleasures, the growing distance between our global goals and those of the rest of the world, and the inexorable dissolution of a shared sense of what it means to be American. In Brands's adroit hands, these trends unfold through a character-driven narrative that sheds brilliant light on the obvious highs and lows-from Watergate to the Berlin Wall, from Apollo 11 to 9/11, from My Lai to shock and awe. But he also chronicles the surprising impact of less celebrated events and trends. Through his eyes, we realize the sweeping significance of the immigration reforms of the 1960s, which gradually transformed American society. We come to grasp the vast impact of abandoning the gold standard in 1971, which enabled both globalization and the current financial crisis. We ponder the unnerving results of CNN's debut in 1979, which sped up the news cycle and permanently changed our foreign policy by putting its effects live on our TV screens.

Blending political and cultural history with his keen sense of the spirit of the times, Brands captures the national experience through the last six decades and reveals the still-unfolding legacy of dreams born out of a global cataclysm.