“[A] magical, profound, and elegant look at the continued need for high quality in our throw away society.” —Douglas Brinkley, HistorianThis intensely human story, which moves from an ageless workshop in Brooklyn to the rehearsal rooms of Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and across the globe to Cremona, the birthplace of Stradivari, opens up for the reader the insular and fascinating realm of music, musicians, and the craftsmanship that is essential to tha...

"Monumental." --New York Times Book ReviewNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFrom one of the foremost historians of the period and the acclaimed author of Inferno and Catastrophe: 1914, The Secret War is a sweeping examination of one of the most important yet underexplored aspects of World War II—intelligence—showing how espionage successes and failures by the United States, Britain, Russia, Germany, and Japan influenced the course of the war and its final outcome.Spies, code...

"With its tough humor, profound cynicism, and unerring nose for corruption and hypocrisy, City of Nets offers a distinctly Brechtian vision of Hollywood." — The Village VoiceIn 1939, fifty million Americans went to the movies every week, Louis B. Mayer was the highest-paid man in the country, and Hollywood produced 530 feature films a year. One decade and five thousand movies later, the studios were faltering. The 1940s became the decade of Hollyw...

In 1936, the British monarchy faced the greatest threats to its survival in the modern era -- the crisis of abdication and the menace of Nazism. The fate of the country rested in the hands of George V's sorely unequipped sons:a stammering King George VI, terrified that the world might discover he was unfit to rulea dull-witted Prince Henry, who wanted only a quiet life in the armythe too-glamorous Prince George, the Duke of Kent -- a reformed hedonist ...

The "extraordinarily informed" account of how US cryptographers broke Japan's Purple cipher to change the course of World War II ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review).Marching Orders tells the story of how the American military's breaking of the Japanese diplomatic Purple codes during World War II led to the defeat of Nazi Germany and hastened the end of the devastating conflict. With unprecedented access to over one million pages of US Army documents ...

In the tradition of Dava Sobel's Longitude comes sailing expert David Barrie's compelling and dramatic tale of invention and discovery—an eloquent elegy to one of the most important navigational instruments ever created, and the daring mariners who used it to explore, conquer, and map the world.Since its invention in 1759, a mariner's most prized possession has been the sextant. A navigation tool that measures the angle between a celestial object and the horizon, the sextant allowe...

What if history had a sound track? What would it tell us about ourselves? Based on a thirty-part BBC Radio series and podcast, Noise explores the human dramas that have revolved around sound at various points in the last 100,000 years, allowing us to think in fresh ways about the meaning of our collective past.Though we might see ourselves inhabiting a visual world, our lives have always been hugely influenced by our need to hear and be heard. To tell the ...

In the tradition of The Botany of Desire and Wicked Plants, a witty and engaging history of the first botanists interwoven with stories of today's extraordinary plants found in the garden and the lab.In Paradise Under Glass, Ruth Kassinger recounted with grace and humor her journey from brown thumb to green, sharing lessons she learned from building a home conservatory in the wake of a devastating personal crisis.In A Garden of Marvels, s...

"A gem. . . . An unforgettable account of one of the great moments in the history of human thought." —Steven PinkerProbing the life and work of Kurt Gödel, Incompleteness indelibly portrays the tortured genius whose vision rocked the stability of mathematical reasoning— and brought him to the edge of madness.

"A learned and often visceral account of how the Mediterranean ceased to be Roman, which serves simultaneously as charge sheet and lament." —Tom Holland, award-winning author of DominionThe dream Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar shared of uniting Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East in a single community shuddered and then collapsed in the wars and disasters of the sixth century. Historian and classicist James J. O'Donnell—...

Drawing from hundreds of interviews with WWII veterans who survived Japan’s terrifying kamikaze strikes, acclaimed author and former U.S. Navy Officer David Sears vividly portrays what it was like to experience this tactic, capturing the real-life dramas behind America’s first confrontation with the psychology and devastating impact of suicide warfare.In the last days of World War II, a new and baffling weapon terrorized the United States Navy in the Pacif...

In this vivid and captivating journey through the colors of an artist’s palette, Victoria Finlay takes us on an enthralling adventure around the world and through the ages, illuminating how the colors we choose to value have determined the history of culture itself.How did the most precious color blue travel all the way from remote lapis mines in Afghanistan to Michelangelo’s brush? What is the connection between brown paint and ancient Egyptian mummies? Why did Robin Hood wear Lin...