A provocative history of how nation states arose out of the ashes of World War II, showing how catastrophe, compromise, and contested visions forged the fragile order we still live in today.“A magnificent history . . . Necessary reading for all those who want to understand how the modern world came into being.” —O. A. Westad, author of The Global Cold WarNation states—self-contained territories with their own econo...

Between 1946 and 1963, St. Petersburg was the quintessential Sunbelt city experiencing a post-World War II boom and wrestling with the problems that accompanied rapid growth. The city's old-school techniques of promotion expanded the population from about 60,000 to more than 180,000 in eighteen years. The city developed a split personality--it aimed to be modern but retained a dated, rustic appearance. Follow St. Petersburg author and journalist Jon Wilson as he details how the city coped ...

A man crushed by profound grief seeks solace at Elvis Presley's mansion...Three shunned children embark on a peculiar quest that changes their lives...A despondent writer finds new hope when he meets a crazy cat lady... A missing lion revives the flagging career of a private eye who is not as hard-boiled as he thinks...Time travel promises exotic romance when a dull boy learns life offers more than his weekly soda ... plus more short fiction, poetry, and essays as Helpless at the Gates of ...

Days of Fear exposes the shocking story of a gruesome 1914 murder in St. Petersburg, Florida and the calculated lynching of the Black man accused. Who killed Frank Sherman with a shotgun blast inches from his head? What in the restless photographer's life led to his bloody end? And whydid powerful men decide John Evans had to die for the crime? This book explores true-crime events buried for decades. It tells of the friendless Evans torn from his jail cell, marched down the main st...

A sweeping history of the conquest of India by the British, from the first faltering trading stations to the marbled imperial cities, emphasizing the violence of colonial rule and its chaotic inheritanceThe popular image of the British Raj—an era of efficient but officious governors, sycophantic local functionaries, doting amahs, blisteringly hot days and torrid nights—chronicled by Forster and Kipling is glamorous and nostalgic, but entirely fictitious. In this dr...

A provocative history of how nation states arose out of the ashes of World War II, showing how catastrophe, compromise, and contested visions forged the fragile order we still live in today.“A magnificent history of how concepts of territory, political power, and national identity were molded into nation states. Necessary reading for all those who want to understand how the modern world came into being.” -O. A. Westad, author of The Glo...

In the 2016 CBC Massey Lectures, former Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General and international relations specialist Jennifer Welsh delivers a timely, intelligent, and fascinating analysis of twenty-first-century geopolitics.In 1989, as the Berlin Wall crumbled and the Cold War dissipated, the American political commentator Francis Fukuyama wrote a famous essay, entitled “The End of History,” which argued that the demise of confrontation between Communism and...

During the first half of the twentieth century, Atlantic City was the nation's most popular middle-class resort--the home of the famed Boardwalk, the Miss America Pageant, and the board game Monopoly. By the late 1960s, it had become a symbol of urban decay and blight, compared by journalists to bombed-out Dresden and war-torn Beirut. Several decades and a dozen casinos later, Atlantic City is again one of America's most popular tourist spots, with thirty-five million visitors a year. Yet ...

Our illustrated travel guide will take you to Chicago, Illinois.Chicago is the home of the blues and the truth of jazz, the heart of comedy and the idea of the skyscraper. Here, the age of railroads found its center, and airplanes followed suit. Butcher of hogs and believer in progress, it is one of the world's great cities, and yet the metropolitan luxuries of theater, shopping, and fine dining have barely put a dent in real Midwestern friendliness. It's a city with a swagger, but...

Stories and photographs celebrating the city's history through its abandoned architectural landmarks.Lost Detroit tells the stories behind twelve of the city's most beautiful left-behind landmarks and of the people who occupied them, from the day they opened to the day they closed. While these buildings might stand as ghosts of the past today, their stories live on within these pages.This book brings you the memories of those who caught trains out o...

What would the world look like if America were to reduce its role as a global leader in order to focus all its energies on solving its problems at home? And is America really in decline? Robert Kagan, New York Times best-selling author and one of the country’s most influential strategic thinkers, paints a vivid, alarming picture of what the world might look like if the United States were truly to let its influence wane.Although Kagan asserts that much of the current pessim...

This "fascinating, engaging" history of St. Louis's monument to American expansion reveals a story of greed, discrimination, and community displacement (NextSTL.com).Rising to a triumphant height of 630 feet, the Gateway Arch is one of the world's most widely recognized structures and attracts millions of tourists to St. Louis every year. Envisioned in 1947 but not completed until the mid-1960s, its story is one of innovation and greed; civic pride and backroom dea...