Normans History

Of all the goals the Bolshevik Revolution aimed to bring about, perhaps nowhere were Russian promises delivered on more than in the success of the Soviet Space program of the 1950s and 1960s. As a result of Russian innovation and technology, but also due to incredible drive to modernize and compete with the United States for world power, Russia was finally and triumphantly modernized in the eyes of her own people and the world.

The Louvre. The very name conjures up scenes of art and elegance, and of long halls filled with beauty and people strolling through them whispering quietly among themselves about the glories they are witnessing. Even those who have never been to the Louvre know some of its most prized possessions, from ancient statues to Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. As the world's largest museum, the Louvre is the cultural highpoint of Paris, a city that has long been considered the cultural center of Europe.

The Ottoman Empire lasted more than six centuries. Its soldiers fought, died, and conquered lands on three different continents, making it one of the few stable multi-ethnic empires in history - and likely one of the last. Thus, it's somewhat inevitable that the history of its dissolution is at the heart of complex geopolitical disputes, as well as sectarian tensions that are still key to understanding the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans.

On Christmas Day 1914, amid the bloodily stalemated trenches of Flanders just five months into World War I, a memorable event dubbed the Christmas Truce occurred. In place of the rattle of gunfire and the crash of bursting artillery shells, familiar German and English Christmas carols floated through the frosty air. Officers and men on both sides emerged from their trenches to mingle, exchange Yuletide greetings, give one another small gifts and mementos, and discuss the fighting as language allowed.

The United States has never had a shortage of cults based on religious teachings and charismatic leaders, but perhaps none are as infamous as Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, which remain notorious for the mass murder-suicide event in Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978, during which nearly 900 people drank cyanide-laced Flavor Aid, including nearly 300 children.

The powerful forces of the United States Navy (USN), Marine Corps, and Army advanced inexorably against Imperial Japan in 1944. Following massive interdiction of Japanese merchant shipping by American submarines and multiple naval victories, the Americans stood poised to liberate the Philippines, then move on to locations closer to the Japanese home islands.

Though Americans would be able to look back in hindsight at 1777 as the year the American Revolution reached a turning point in favor of the colonists, the winter of 1777 was still considered a miserable point for the cause at the time. Although Benedict Arnold and Horatio Gates were victorious at Saratoga, George Washington and his Continental army had been less successful.

The American Revolution is replete with seminal moments that every American learns in school, from the "shot heard 'round the world" to the Declaration of Independence, but the events that led up to the fighting at Lexington & Concord were borne out of 10 years of division between the British and their American colonies over everything from colonial representation in governments to taxation, the nature of searches, and the quartering of British regulars in private houses.

In his first major work of fiction in more than a decade, Norman Mailer offers what may be his consummate literary endeavor: he has set out to explore the evil of Adolf Hitler. The narrator, a mysterious SS man who is later revealed to be an exceptional presence, takes the young Adolf from birth through his adolescence. En route, reavealing portraits are offered of Hitler's father and mother, sisters, and brothers.

Liberty in Eclipse is an expose and indictment of our nation's descent into the early stages of police state tyranny. Topics discussed include the militarization and federalization of law enforcement; the establishment of a quasi-dictatorial "war presidency"; the evisceration of the Bill of Rights, and due process guarantees going back to the Magna Carta; the increasingly commonplace surveillance of Americans; the institutionalization of torture; and the likely restoration of conscription, including a military draft.

This volume contains 20 autobiographies of men who fought in the Korean War. Their stories help listeners to understand what draftees, volunteers, and professional military men experienced in combat in Korea. They often tell information not available in US military reports and government-authorized histories and sometimes contradict official reports.

By July 1536, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (c. 1490 - 1559) and three other survivors had walked 2,500 miles from Texas, across northern Mexico, to Sonora and ultimately to Mexico City. Cabeza de Vaca's account of this astonishing journey is now recognized as one of the great travel stories of all time and a touchstone of New World literature.

In 1940, the last patch of resistance to the Nazi war machine was a little strip of beach whose name would soon be famous around the world: Dunkirk. Over 300,000 Allied soldiers crowded into the little harbor. If Hitler destroyed them, Britain would be left defenseless, and the war would almost be over. The British had other ideas. Over the next ten days, the people of Britain launched an unprecedented rescue effort. Countless little ships steamed forth from every port in England to bring the boys back home.

Warfare in the sky for the first time in history! The French Lafayette Espadrille accepts Americans to serve as pilots before America's entry into World War I. James Norman Hall describes his frightening experiences flying over enemy lines and his soul searching when commanded to kill. He recounts his training in a French flight school, his friendships with other trainees and his crash landing in German territory.

Dallas first grabbed the national imagination in 1936 when it hosted the Texas Centennial Exposition. Since then, the fascination with Big D has seldom flagged. If the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 cast a pall over the city, the success of the Dallas Cowboys and the popularity of the television series Dallas revived the image of a glitzy, hustling metropolis at the center of the Sunbelt.

This is the story of an Abraham Lincoln many Americans aren't at all familiar with: Lincoln as a reluctant husband in an abusive relationship; Lincoln who came within moments of fighting a duel with a political adversary; the first and only president to patent an invention; and the first future president to argue before the Supreme Court.

Eminent historian Richard Brookhiser presents a vivid portrait of James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution” and one of America's greatest statesmen.

Per dieci secoli Costantinopoli è stata l'altra Roma. Poi, in una giornata di primavera del 1453, tutto è cambiato. Roma s'inabissava, nasceva Istanbul. Una città eterna, prodigiosa, inquieta. Un luogo del mondo dove è possibile incrociare le storie di imperatrici belle e crudeli, di sultani folli e saggi, di schiave e avventurieri. Storie piccole e grandissime ritrovate e raccontate da un autore capace, come raramente accade, di fondere in un unico sguardo sapere e meraviglia.

Our most revered president gets a unique and uniquely engaging biography fashioned from the answers to the most frequent, and most unusual and surprising, questions asked about Abraham Lincoln that Gerald J. Prokopowicz was asked during the nine years he served as scholar-in-residence at the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Prokopowicz's authoritative, often surprising responses illuminate facets of Abraham Lincoln's life, work, and legacy about which people remain endlessly curious.

For decades, James MacGregor Burns has been one of the great masters of the study of power and leadership in America. Now he turns his eye to an institution of government that he believes has become more powerful---and more partisan---than the Founding Fathers ever intended: the Supreme Court. Much as we would like to believe that the Court remains aloof from ideological politics, Packing the Court reveals how often justices behave like politicians in robes.