History

"The computer world is like an intellectual Wild West, in which you can shoot anyone you wish with your ideas, if you're willing to risk the consequences. " —from Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham We are...

Illuminates the far-reaching harms of believing that natural means “good,” from misinformation about health choices to justifications for sexism, racism, and flawed economic policies.People love what’s natural: it’s the best way...

In his breakout bestseller, The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger created "a wild ride that brilliantly captures the awesome power of the raging sea and the often futile attempts of humans to withstand it" (Los Angeles Times Book Review)...

From the Nobel Prize winner and acclaimed author of My Name is Red comes a portrait of Istanbul by its foremost writer, revealing the melancholy that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire.  "Delightful, profound,...

Sun Tzu was one of the greatest army generals who ever lived. He wrote The Art of War in the fifth century BC and yet his words are still resoundingly relevant to our modern lives.His writings on aspects of warfare from the laying of plans to the tactics...

“Irresistible is a fascinating and much needed exploration of one of the most troubling phenomena of modern times.” —Malcolm Gladwell, author of New York Times bestsellers David and...

This classic history of America's high-stakes quest to dominate the skies is "a gripping technothriller in which the technology is real" (New York Times Book Review).   From the development of the U-2 to the Stealth fighter, Skunk Works is...

“A monumental new volume. . . . Revelatory, even revolutionary. . . . Clark has done a masterful job explaining the inexplicable.” — Boston Globe   One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year...

In his bestselling The Moral Animal, Robert Wright applied the principles of evolutionary biology to the study of the human mind. Now Wright attempts something even more ambitious: explaining the direction of evolution and human history–and...

Set your sails east with this stunningly original new history of the world. Peter Frankopan explores the connections made by people, trade, disease, war, religion, adventure, science and technology in this extraordinary book about how the east married...

Vita Sackville-West, novelist, poet, and biographer, is best known as the friend of Virginia Woolf, who transformed her into an androgynous time-traveler in Orlando. The story of Sackville-West's marriage to Harold Nicolson is one of intrigue and...

Darrin Bell was six years old when his mother told him he couldn’t have a realistic water gun. She said she feared for his safety, that police tend to think of little Black boys as older and less innocent than they really are.Through evocative...

This is the classic book on war as we know it. During his long life, Basil H. Liddell Hart was considered one of the world's foremost military thinkers--a man generally regarded as the "Clausewitz of the 20th century." Liddell Hart stressed movement,...

The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch—the endless fascination human beings have for design rather than evolution, for direction rather than emergence. Drawing on anecdotes from science, economics,...

If, as Darwin suggests, evolution relentlessly encourages the survival of the fittest, why are humans compelled to live in cooperative, complex societies? In this fascinating examination of the roots of human trust and virtue, a zoologist and former...

The History of the Peloponnesian War is a historical account of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), which was fought between the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta) and the Delian League (led by Athens). It was written by Thucydides, an Athenian...

Legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky inspired a generation of activists and politicians with Reveille for Radicals, the original handbook for social change. Alinsky writes both practically and philosophically, never wavering from his belief...

    'It was said to me, "Better have a little of the plantation manner of speech than not; 'tis not best that you seem too learned."' Appearing in 1855, My Bondage and My Freedom is the second autobiography written by Frederick...

A painter and architect in his own right, Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) achieved immortality for this book on the lives of his fellow Renaissance artists, first published in Florence in 1550. Although he based his work on a long tradition of biographical...

This volume contains is the a series of letters between an American self-made millionaire and his son who is just entering the family business. Dating back to the 1890s, the letters contain timeless advice and words of wisdom that are as useful today as...