War Years

From one of our most acclaimed and original colonial historians, a groundbreaking book - the first to look at the critical "long year" of 1774 and the revolutionary change that took place from December 1773 to mid-April 1775, from the Boston Tea Party and the First Continental Congress to the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

No country was more deeply affected by 9/11 than Afghanistan: an entire generation grew up amid the upheaval that began that day. Young Afghans knew the promise of freedom, democracy, and safety, fought with each other over its meaning―and then witnessed its collapse. In Twenty Years, the Wall Street Journal correspondent Sune Engel Rasmussen draws on more than a decade of reporting from the country to tell Afghanistan’s story from a new angle.

Captain Alatriste is the story of a fictional 17th-century Spanish soldier who, after being wounded in battle during the Thirty Years' War, is forced to retire from the army. Now he lives the comparatively tame, though hardly quiet, life of a swordsman-for-hire in Madrid. Approached with an offer of work, Alatriste is told to go with another hired blade to an unfamiliar part of the city at midnight and wait.

Born as the heir to the English Throne, the Black Prince was trained from a young age to be king. Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, had other ideas. His love for chivalry, knighthood, and combat brought him on campaigns all over Europe. How did he become known as the Black Prince? What caused his stunning victories against the numerically superior French? How did the Black Prince almost get himself into financial ruin? Why was he the scourge of the French? In this book, we explore every detail of the action-packed life of Edward, the Black Prince.

John McCorkle was a young Missouri farmer of Southern sympathies. After serving briefly in the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard, he became a prominent member of William Clarke Quantrill's infamous guerrillas, who took advantage of the turmoil in the Missouri-Kansas borderland to prey on pro-Union people. McCorkle displayed an unflinchingly violent nature while he participated in raids and engagements including the massacres at Lawrence and Baxter Springs, Kansas; and Centralia, Missouri.

For the past three decades, the United States and Iran have been engaged in an unacknowledged secret war. This conflict has frustrated five American presidents, divided administrations, and repeatedly threatened to bring the two nations to the brink of open warfare. Drawing upon unparalleled access to senior officials and key documents of several US administrations, David Crist, a senior historian in the federal government, breaks new ground in virtually every section of The Twilight War.

In 1961, equipped with a master’s degree from famed Columbia Journalism School and letters of introduction to Associated Press bureau chiefs in Asia, 26-year-old Beverly Deepe set off on a trip around the world. Allotting just two weeks to South Vietnam, she was still there seven years later, having then earned the distinction of being the longest-serving American correspondent covering the Vietnam War and garnering a Pulitzer Prize nomination.

There can be no doubt that military conflict between France and England dominated European history in the 14th and 15th centuries. The Hundred Years War is of considerable interest both because of its duration and the number of theatres in which it was fought. Drawing on the latest research for this new edition, Hundred Years War expert Professor Anne Curry examines how the war can reveal much about the changing nature of warfare: the rise of infantry and the demise of the knight; the impact of increased use of gunpowder and the effect of the war on generations of people.

In Bucharest, Romania's capital, Kaplan discovered that few Westerners were reporting on the country - one of the darkest corners of Europe during the Cold War. In an intense and cinematic travelogue, Kaplan explores the history and culture of the only country in the West where the leading intellectuals have been right-wing rather than left-wing; a country that gave rise to the dictator Ion Antonescu, Hitler's chief foreign accomplice during WWII; a country where the Latin West mixes with the Greek East, producing a fascinating fusion of cultures.

When Frank Johnson arrived in Vietnam in 1969, he was 19, a young soldier untested in combat like thousands of others - but with two important differences: Johnson volunteered for the elite L Company Rangers of the 101st Airborne Division, a long range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP) unit, and he kept a secret diary, a practice forbidden by the military to protect the security of LRRP operations. Now, more than three decades later, those hastily written pages offer a rare look at the daily operations of one of the most courageous units that waged war in Vietnam.

New York Times best-selling author Jay Winik brings to life in gripping detail the year 1944, which determined the outcome of World War II and put more pressure than any other on an ailing yet determined President Roosevelt.

In 1937, a schoolteacher on the island of Maui challenged a group of poverty-stricken sugar plantation kids to swim upstream against the current of their circumstance. The goal? To become Olympians. They faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The children were Japanese-American, were malnourished and barefoot, and had no pool; they trained in the filthy irrigation ditches that snaked down from the mountains into the sugarcane fields.

When Green Beret Lieutenant James N. Rowe was captured in 1963 in Vietnam, his life became more than a matter of staying alive. In a Vietcong POW camp, Rowe endured beri-beri, dysentery, and tropical fungus diseases. He suffered grueling psychological and physical torment. He experienced the loneliness and frustration of watching his friends die. And he struggled every day to maintain faith in himself as a soldier and in his country as it appeared to be turning against him.

The final volume of Taylor Branch's monumental, much honored, and definitive history of the Civil Rights Movement (America in the King Years), At Canaan's Edge covers the final years of King's struggle to hold his non-violent movement together in the face of factionalism within the Movement, hostility and harassment of the Johnson Administration, the country torn apart by Vietnam, and his own attempt (and failure) to take the Freedom Movement north.

The opening years of the French and Indian War were disastrous for the British. Hindered by quarrelsome provincial councils, incompetent generals, and the redcoats' inability to adapt to wilderness warfare, Britain was losing the war. Learning that most of Britain's military resources were allocated to Louisbourg, the French launched a campaign along the weakened frontier. French Commander Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and his American Indian allies laid siege to Fort William Henry; Monro could not hold out and was forced to surrender.

On the 100th anniversary of the devastating pandemic of 1918, Jeremy Brown, a veteran ER doctor, explores the troubling, terrifying, and complex history of the flu virus, from the origins of the Great Flu that killed millions, to vexing questions such as: are we prepared for the next epidemic, should you get a flu shot, and how close are we to finding a cure?

Medieval England’s history starts with the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. In the 11th century, the Anglo-Saxon elite was completely replaced by the invading Normans. William the Conqueror and his successors brought novelties to England such as castles and cavalry. The last phase of Medieval England started with the great Famine and Black Death in the 14th century, when millions of lives were lost, resulting in England losing half of its population. In this book, you'll get insights into all of the above events and many more.

It is April of 69 A.D., and Rome’s first civil war in a hundred years has ended. Emperor Otho, who violently overthrew the tyrannical Galba just three months before, is dead. The triumphant armies of the Rhine coerce the senate into ratifying their governor, Aulus Vitellius, as emperor. While there is an uneasy hope that peace has returned to Rome, Vitellius’ cronyism and utter incompetence soon alienates most of Rome’s patricians, along with many of the provinces.

World War II is raging in Europe, and Tomie finds that life has changed in many ways. Now he has to wear an extra sweater to school because they're trying to conserve coal. Then tragedy brings the war home to the dePaola family, and all Tomie can do is ask "Why?"

Tomie keeps hearing the phrase, "For the duration." Gas is being rationed "for the duration." The Fourth of July fireworks will be the last show "for the duration." So many things will be different as long as the war goes on, but much of Tomie's life goes on as usual. He's excited about starring in a dance recital, taking the bus around town all by himself, and having his first Communion. But Tomie is also still getting over his cousin's death in the war, and he has to say good-bye to his uncle as he ships off to basic training.