"A rip-snortin' story of shipwreck, intrigue, horror, courage, risk, luck and will . . . The authors have brought the drama in the Chesapeake alive." — Publishers WeeklyThe English had long dreamed of colonizing America, especially after Sir Francis Drake brought home Spanish treasure and dramatic tales from his raids in the Caribbean. Ambitions of finding gold and planting a New World colony seemed within reach when in 1606 Thomas Smythe extended overseas...

The fierce battle over identity and patriotism within Cherokee culture that took place in the years surrounding the Trail of TearsThough the tragedy of the Trail of Tears is widely recognized today, the pervasive effects of the tribe's uprooting have never been examined in detail. Despite the Cherokees' efforts to assimilate with the dominant white culture—running their own newspaper, ratifying a constitution based on that of the United States—they were never able t...

The English had long dreamed of colonizing America, especially after Sir Francis Drake brought home Spanish treasure and dramatic tales from his raids in the Caribbean. Ambitions of finding gold and planting a New World colony seemed within reach when, in 1606, Thomas Smythe extended overseas trade with the launch of the Virginia Company. But from the beginning the American enterprise was a disaster. Within two years, warfare with Indians and dissent among the settlers threatened to destro...

Award-winning Civil War historian Noah Andre Trudeau has written a gripping, definitive new account that will stand as the last word on General William Tecumseh Sherman's epic march—a targeted strategy aimed to break not only the Confederate army but an entire society as well. With Lincoln's hard-fought reelection victory in hand, Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Union forces, allowed Sherman to lead the largest and riskiest operation of the war. In rich detail, Trudeau explains why Gene...

The literature of the Gettysburg Address tends to fall into one of two extremes. At one end are those books that maintain that Lincoln wrote his speech hastily, even on a scrap of paper on the train en route from Washington to Gettysburg. In this version, Lincoln delivered his remarks to an uncomprehending public, which applauded politely, failing to appreciate his genius. Many of the books that argue this point of view are out of print today, but the myths and legends live on.At t...

"Vivid with a Mesozoic bestiary" (Tom Holland), this on-the-ground, must-listen narrative weaves together the chance discovery of dinosaurs and the rise of the secular age.When the twelve-year-old daughter of a British carpenter pulled some strange-looking bones from the country's southern shoreline in 1811, few people dared to question that the Bible told the accurate history of the world. But Mary Anning had in fact discovered the "first" ichthyosaur, and over th...

Three generations of English merchant adventurers-not the Pilgrims, as we have so long believed-were the earliest founders of America. Profit-not piety-was their primary motive.Some seventy years before the Mayflower sailed, a small group of English merchants formed "The Mysterie, Company, and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places Unknown," the world's first joint-stock company. Back then, in the mid-sixteenth centu...

June 6, 1944, was a pivotal moment in the history of World War II. On that day the climactic and decisive phase of the war in Europe began. Those who survived the intense fighting on the Normandy beaches found their lives irreversibly changed. That day ushered in a great change for the United States as well, because on D-day America began its march to the forefront of the Western world.By the end of the Battle of Normandy, almost one out of every two soldiers involved was an Americ...

“...a gripping narrative that offers a revelatory perspective on the combined origins of two nations...compelling drama and instructive history.” -- Wall Street JournalIn a narrative both panoramic and intimate, Tom Chaffin captures the four-decade friendship of Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette.Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette shared a singularly extraordinary friendship, one involved in the making of two ...

An unforgettable story of children in wartime, of heroism at sea, and--above all--of courage and the power of the human spirit.On September 17, 1940, at a little after ten at night, a German submarine torpedoed the passenger liner S.S. City of Benares in the North Atlantic. There were 406 people on board, but the ship's prized passengers were 90 children whose parents had elected to send their boys and girls away from Great Britain to escape the ravages of...

“[A] brilliant book…by far the best study yet” (The Wall Street Journal) of the gripping history behind the Marshall Plan and its long-lasting influence on our world.In the wake of World War II, with Britain’s empire collapsing and Stalin’s on the rise, US officials under new Secretary of State George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would con...

Meriel Schindler spent her adult life trying to keep her father, Kurt, at bay. But when he died in 2017, he left behind piles of Nazi-era documents related to her family’s fate in Innsbruck, Austria, and a treasure trove of family albums reaching back to before World War I. Meriel was forced to confront not only their fractured relationship but also the truth behind their family history. The Lost Café Schindler re-creates the journey of an extraordinary family, whose relatives included the...