Kenneth C. Davis, author of the phenomenal New York Times bestseller Don't Know Much About History, presents a collection of extraordinary stories, each detailing an overlooked episode that shaped the nation's destiny and character. Davis's dramatic narratives set the record straig...

Offering a unique approach to history, this series of individual encyclopedias will delineate and explain the people, places, events, chronology, and ramifications of pivotal days in history. One Day in History: December 7, 1941 will provide a comprehensive and engaging overview of this da...

Based on extensive interviews with Boyd and with those who knew him, The Mind of War is the first biography of this pivotal figure in American military history. 13 b/w illustr...

Colin Powell once observed that "a dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work." This sentiment is mirrored dramatically in the story of African Americans in aerospace history.

The invention of the airplane in the first decade of the twentiet...

Nine years ago, French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin became obsessed by the centuries-old mystery of how the Great Pyramid was built. For ten hours a day, he labored at his computer to create exquisitely detailed 3-D models of the interior of the Great Pyramid. After five years of effort, the imag...

A lavishly illustrated history of America's game, from the unparalleled collections of the Library of Congress

Baseball, the sport that helped reunify the country in the years after the Civil War, remains the National Pastime. The Library of Congress houses the w...

Do Cats Hear with Their Feet? traces the evolution of cats from the time they first adapted their feline form about 20 million years ago. Exploring every aspect of a cat's life—from predation, to play, to communication—Jake Page shows us what a cat's daily life is really like. He gives...

When the American colonies defeated Britain during the War for Independence, Native American leaders began to establish diplomatic relations with the new nation.

Here, for the first time, is the little-known history of American Indians and American presidents, what they said and felt ab...

A century ago, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, one of the world's greatest public hospitals was built. Massive and modern, the hospital's twenty-two state-of-the-art buildings were crammed onto two small islands, man-made from the rock and dirt excavated during the building of the New Yo...

Working for four presidents over six decades, R. Sargent "Sarge" Shriver founded the Peace Corps, launched the War on Poverty, created Head Start and Legal Services for the Poor, starte...

On a summer day in July, 1776, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the world changed forever. On July 4, thirteen English colonies on the continent of North America decided to declare themselves free and independent states, united in their purpose of forming a new nation. The approval of that decisio...

Righting the Mother Tongue tells the cockamamie story of English spelling. When did ghost acquire its silent 'h'? Will cyberspace kill the one in rhubarb? And was it really rocket scientists who invented spell-check?

Seeking to untangle the twisted story of English sp...

A compelling, intimate look at the founders—George Washington, Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison—and the women who played essential roles in their lives

With his usual storytelling flair and unparalleled researc...

Not all animals are created equal. For a start, pigs have it, sheep don't; that is, that special quality of intelligence, a sense of play, and a gregariousness that make these tragically misunderst...

A powerful story about race and identity told through the lives of one American family across three generations

In 1914, in defiance of his middle-class landowning family, a young white man named James Morgan Richardson married a light-skinned black woman name...

With woodworking fast becoming one of the most popular pastimes in the country, The Collins Complete Woodworker, from the editors of Woodworker's Journal, is the perfect introduction for anyone wanting to get better acquainted with this rewarding hobby. Written in an easy-to-unders...

The first accessible book on a theory of physics that explains the relationship between the particles and forces that make up our universe.

For decades, physicists have been fascinated with the possibility that two seemingly independent aspects of our world—...

One museum, two thieves, and the Boston underworld—the story behind the lost Gardner masterpieces and the art detective who swore to get them back

Shortly after midnight on March 18, 1990, two men broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and ...

The time: 1936-1938. The mood: Hopeful. It wasn't wartime, not yet. The music: The incomparable Count Basie and Benny Goodman, among others. The setting: Living rooms across America and, most of all, New York City.

Dream Lucky covers politics, race, religion, arts, and sports, bu...

George Washington wrote an astonishing number of letters, both personal and professional. The majority—about 140,000 documents—are from his years as commander in chief during the Revolutionary War, from 1775 to 1783. This Glorious Struggle presents a selection of Washington's most imp...

What makes a good explorer? Adaptability, ambition, stamina, self-belief, doggedness, curiosity, optimism, authority, hardiness -- and fund-raising ability.

A powerful punch of self-help, how-to, popular history, and humor. In this celebration of the glory days of exploration, Mick Cone...

Shaped by cartoons and museum dioramas, our vision of Paleolithic times tends to feature fur-clad male hunters fearlessly attacking mammoths while timid women hover fearfully behind a boulder. In fact, recent research has shown that this vision bears little relation to reality.

The fiel...

From the author of the bestselling Silent Night comes a close look at the embattled holiday season of 1864, when Major General W. T. Sherman gave President Lincoln the city of Savannah and paved the way for the end of the Civil War.

General Sherman's C...

More than just the tale of one flag and one song, The Star-Spangled Banner is the story of how Americans—often in times of crisis—have expressed their patriotism and defined their identity through the "broad stripes and bright stars" of our preeminent national symbol, a tradition that still ...

Lincoln's Men is the first narrative portrait of the three young men who served as Lincoln's secretaries during the Civil War. John Nicolay and John Hay lived in the White House, across the hall from the president's office, and they and William Stoddard spent more time with Lincoln than a...

An inside look at the work and adventures of Harry Hopkins and Averell Harriman in the creation of history's most remarkable international partnership

After the fall of France in June 1940, London became the center of world political theater. For the U.S. pres...

It's the stuff of nightmares, the dark inspiration for literature and film. But astonishingly, cannibalism does exist, and in Among the Cannibals travel writer Paul Raffaele journeys to the far corners of the globe to discover participants in this mysterious and disturbing practice. From ...

Maurice Hilleman's mother died a day after he was born and his twin sister stillborn. As an adult, he said that he felt he had escaped an appointment with death. He made it his life's work to see that others could do the same. Born into the life of a Montana chicken farmer, Hilleman ran off to t...

In 2002, an ancient limestone box called the James Ossuary was trumpeted on the world's front pages as the first material evidence of the existence of Jesus Christ. Today it is exhibit number one in a forgery trial involving millions of dollars worth of high-end, Biblical era relics, some of whic...

The image of the Baron de Steuben training Washington's ragged, demoralized troops in the snow at Valley Forge is part of the iconography of our Revolutionary heritage, but most history fans know little more about this fascinating figure.

In the first book on Steuben since 1937, Paul Lo...

Einstein's gravity theory—his general theory of relativity—has served as the basis for a series of astonishing cosmological discoveries. But what if, nonetheless, Einstein got it wrong?

Since the 1930s, physicists have noticed an alarming discrepancy between ...