The European “discovery” and conquest of America was one of the most cataclysmic events in history, leading to the wholesale destruction of millions of people and hundreds of flourishing societies. As far as history books are concerned, Native Americans have been secondary to an essentially Euro-American story. Now, James Wilson presents a rigorously authoritative, beautifully written, comprehensive history that—as Richard Gott wrote in the London Literary Review—“places the ‘Nati...

Coming into the Country is an unforgettable account of Alaska and Alaskans. It is a rich tapestry of vivid characters, observed landscapes, and descriptive narrative, in three principal segments that deal, respectively, with a total wilderness, with urban Alaska, and with life in the remoteness of the bush.Readers of McPhee's earlier books will not be unprepared for his surprising shifts of scene and ordering of events, brilliantly combined into an organic whole. In the course of t...

Six months after the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution was all but lost. A powerful British force had routed the Americans at New York, occupied three colonies, and advanced within sight of Philadelphia. Yet, as David Hackett Fischer recounts in this riveting history, George Washington--and many other Americans--refused to let the Revolution die. On Christmas night, as a howling nor'easter struck the Delaware Valley, he led his men across the river and attacked the exhau...

The Battle of Antietam, fought on September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest single day in American history, with more than 6,000 soldiers killed--four times the number lost on D-Day, and twice the number killed in the September 11th terrorist attacks. In Crossroads of Freedom, America's most eminent Civil War historian, James M. McPherson, paints a masterful account of this pivotal battle, the events that led up to it, and its aftermath. As McPherson shows, by September 1862 the survival of th...

The first of John McPhee's works in his series on geology and geologists, Basin and Range is a book of journeys through ancient terrains, always in juxtaposition with travels in the modern world—a history of vanished landscapes, enhanced by the histories of people who bring them to light. The title refers to the physiographic province of the United States that reaches from eastern Utah to eastern California, a silent world of austere beauty, of hundreds of discrete high mountain ranges tha...

It is a tale as familiar as our history primers: A deranged actor, John Wilkes Booth, killed Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre, escaped on foot, and eluded capture for twelve days until he met his fiery end in a Virginia tobacco barn. In the national hysteria that followed, eight others were arrested and tried; four of those were executed, four imprisoned. Therein lie all the classic elements of a great thriller. But the untold tale is even more fascinating.Now, in American Bru...

Joshua Slocum was the first man ever to sail around the world single-handedly. He completed his voyage in 1895, without radio and modern technology, when native pirates roamed the seas. It makes for an exciting tale-all 46,000 miles and three years of it.

To this landmark biography of our first president, Joseph J. Ellis brings the exacting scholarship, shrewd analysis, and lyric prose that have made him one of the premier historians of the Revolutionary era. Training his lens on a figure who sometimes seems as remote as his effigy on Mount Rushmore, Ellis assesses George Washington as a military and political leader and a man whose "statue-like solidity" concealed volcanic energies and emotions. Here is the impetuous young officer whose mi...

Her Little Majesty is a fresh and fascinating portrait of the diminutive monarch who ruled the vast British empire for over 60 years. Award-winning biographer and historian, Carolly Erickson, transports you behind the walls of Buckingham Palace to introduce you to the quirky, loveable Queen Victoria-revealed only to her closest associates. Emotionally deprived, inadequately educated, and socially isolated for much of her life, young Victoria felt ill-prepared to ascend the throne. But the ...

In this erudite and enjoyable Los Angeles Times best-seller, Joel Kotkin explores the history of cities around the globe. He argues that urban areas must be places where there is a shared feeling of sacredness, civic identity, and moral order. These exciting concentrations of ideas and energy have long been and should continue to be meaningful in our daily lives. "... an accessible general introduction to the history of urban life, culture and spaces."-Publishers Weekly

From the outwash plains of Brooklyn to Indiana's drifted diamonds and gold In Suspect Terrain is a narrative of the earth, told in four sections of equal length, each in a different way reflecting the three others—a biography; a set piece about a fragment of Appalachian landscape in illuminating counterpoint to the human history there; a modern collision of ideas about the origins of the mountain range; and, in contrast, a century-old collision of ideas about the existence of the Ice Age.

It was the largest campaign ever attempted in the Civil War: the Peninsula campaign of 1862. General George McClellan planned to advance from Yorktown up the Virginia Peninsula and destroy the Rebel army in its own capital. But with Robert E. Lee delivering blows to the Union army, McClellan's plan fell through at the gates of Richmond. Now, in a study of the great Civil War engagement that weaves together narrative, military analysis, and eyewitness accounts drawn from the diaries and let...