From the author of the National Book Award–winning An American Requiem and the classic bestseller Constantine’s Sword comes the story of Colman Brady, an Irish farmer who involves himself in the Irish rebellion of the early 1920s and later escapes to Boston where he rises to and falls from political power and seeks a second chance through the life of his son.Richly imagined scenes, a complex plot, and masterful writing combine fact and fiction; characters like May...

Over twenty years ago, William F. Buckley Jr. launched the dashing character of Blackford Oakes like a missile over the literary landscape. This newly minted CIA agent—brainy, bold, and complex—began his career by saving the queen of England and quickly took his place in the pantheon of master spies drawn up by Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, and John le Carré.Against the backdrop of Cold War intrigue, in this his eleventh outing, Oakes crosses swords with Kim Philby, perhaps the ...

This audiobook contains a broad overview of time travel in science fiction, along with a detailed examination of the philosophical implications of time travel. The emphasis of this book is now on the philosophical and on science fiction, rather than on physics, as in the author’s earlier books on the subject. In that spirit there are, for example, no tech notes filled with algebra, integrals, and differential equations, as there are in the first and second editions of Time Machines

In this highly original audiobook, Russell Blackford discusses the intersection of science fiction and humanity’s moral imagination. With the rise of science and technology in the nineteenth century, and our continually improving understanding of the cosmos, writers and thinkers soon began to imagine futures greatly different from the present. Science fiction was born out of the realization that future technoscientific advances could dramatically change the world.Along with the dev...

In this compact yet comprehensive history of ancient Greece, Thomas R. Martin brings alive Greek civilization from its Stone Age roots to the fourth century BC. Focusing on the development of the Greek city-state and the society, culture, and architecture of Athens in its Golden Age, Martin integrates political, military, social, and cultural history in a book that will appeal to students and general readers alike.Now in its second edition, this classic work now features updates th...

A provocative manifesto arguing for a new understanding of the Jews’ peoplehoodToday there are two seemingly mutually exclusive notions of what “the Jews” are: either a religion or a nation/ethnicity. The widespread conception is that the Jews were formerly either a religious community in exile or a nation based on Jewish ethnicity. The latter position is commonly known as “Zionism,” and all articulations of a political theory of Zionism are taken to be variations of that view....

For twenty-four winters, the blond child had been held captive by the Indians. Now rangy, raw-boned Ben Allison set out to heat up a stone-cold trail and bring Amy Johnston home.He was armed with only an old mountain man’s map, a cheap gold locket, an ornery pack mule, and his army Colt. It was an impossible mission leading straight into hostile Indian country. Ben was keenly aware that the search for Amy could very well be his own death hunt.

In a bold and moving book that is sure to spark heated debate, the novelist and cultural critic James Carroll maps the profoundly troubling two-thousand-year course of the Church’s battle against Judaism and faces the crisis of faith it has provoked in his own life as a Catholic. More than a chronicle of religion, this dark history is the central tragedy of Western civilization, its fault lines reaching deep into our culture.The Church’s failure to protest the Holocaust—the infamou...

In this, his best-known work, the controversial American economist and social critic Thorstein Veblen appropriates Darwin’s theory of evolution to analyze the modern industrial system. For Veblen, the shallowness and superficiality observed in society results from the tendency to believe that true accomplishment lies in arriving at a condition of ostentatious wealth and status. In developing his thesis, Veblen traces the origins and development of ownership and property, offering extraordi...

With commanding skill, Thomas R. Martin tells the remarkable and dramatic story of how a tiny, poor, and threatened settlement grew to become, during its height, the dominant power in the Mediterranean world for five hundred years. Encompassing the period from Rome’s founding in the eighth century BC through Justinian’s rule in the sixth century AD, he offers a distinctive perspective on the Romans and their civilization by employing fundamental Roman values as a lens through which to view...

It’s tough being an author these days, and it’s getting harder. A recent Authors Guild survey showed that the median income for all published authors in 2017, based solely on book-related activities, was just over $3,000, down more than 20% from eight years previously. Roughly 25% of authors earned nothing at all. Price cutting by retailers, notably Amazon, has forced publishers to pay their writers less. A stagnant economy, with only the rich seeing significant income increases, has hit w...

"Ah how shameless – the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone they say come all their miseries yes but they themselves with their own reckless ways compound their pains beyond their proper share.” – The OdysseyExperience the stunning Greek poetry of Homer in this collection of his two major works: The Iliad and The Odyssey. These epic poems are beloved for their presentation of Greek history and belief systems, their str...