1.

The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America מאת Maury Klein The dramatic story of the “power revolution” that turned America from an agrarian society into a technological superpower, and the dynamic, fiercely  competitive inventors and entrepreneurs who made it happen—a riveting historical saga to rival McCullough’s The Great Bridge...

2.

The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Birth of the Pax Americana מאת Peter Clarke A sweeping, vivid history capturing the sudden end of Britain’s empire and the moment when America became a world superpower. Britain fought and sacrificed on a worldwide scale to defeat Hitler and his allies—and won. Yet less than three years after victory, the...

3.

After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405 מאת John Darwin A Rise and Fall of the Great Powers for the post–Cold War era—a brilliantly written, sweeping new history of how empires have ebbed and flowed over the past six centuries.   The death of the great Tatar emperor Tamerlane in 1405, writes historian John Dar...

4.

Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock מאת Henry Adams A groundbreaking portrait of the intense personal and artistic relationship between Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock, revealing how their friendship changed American art. The drip paintings of Jackson Pollock, trailblazing Abstract Expressionist, appear to be the polar ...

5.

The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America מאת Raymond Arsenault Award-winning civil rights historian Ray Arsenault describes the dramatic story behind Marian Anderson’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial—an early milestone in civil rights history—on the seventieth anniversary of her performance. On Easter Sunday 1939, the brilliant voc...

6.

Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World מאת Timothy Brook In the hands of an award-winning historian, Vermeer’s dazzling paintings become windows that reveal how daily life and thought—from Delft to Beijing—were transformed in the seventeenth century, when the world first became global. A painting shows a military officer ...

7.

Keynes: The Rise, Fall, and Return of the 20th Century's Most Influential Economist מאת Peter Clarke The ideas of John Maynard Keynes inspired the New Deal and helped rebuild world economies after World War II —and were later dismissed as “depression economics.” Then came the great meltdown of 2008. Market forces that the world relied on suddenly failed to self-correct—and Keynes...

8.

The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization מאת Jonathan Lyons The remarkable story of how medieval Arab scholars made dazzling advances in science and philosophy—and of the itinerant Europeans who brought this knowledge back to the West. For centuries following the fall of Rome, western Europe was a benighted backwater, a w...

9.

The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger מאת Richard Wilkinson The eye-opening and headline-generating UK bestseller that shows how one single factor—the gap between its richest and poorest members—can determine the health and well-being of a society. “This is a book with a big idea, big enough to change political thinking…In hal...

10.

Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot מאת Anna Beer A fresh and engaging account of the life, times, politics, loves, and letters of the great English poet John Milton on the four hundredth anniversary of his birth.John Milton is one of the world’s greatest poets, renowned author of the epic Paradise Lost as well as numerous sonnet...

11.

The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez's Farm Worker Movement מאת Miriam Pawel The rise, fall, and legacy of the inspirational United Farm Workers movement, and the untold story of iconic community organizer Cesar Chavez. A generation of Americans came of age boycotting grapes, swept up in a movement that vanquished California’s most powerful industry...

12.

The Painter's Chair: George Washington and the Making of American Art מאת Hugh Howard An eloquent new look at the beginnings of the American republic—through the portraits of its first icon, George Washington, and the painters who defined him. “I am so hackneyed to the touches of the painters pencil, that I am now altogether at their beck…no dray move...

13.

Runaway Dream: Born to Run and Bruce Springsteen's American Vision מאת Louis P. Masur A rich history of Springsteen’s greatest album, celebrating its themes of youth, escape, and possibility, just in time for the Boss’s sixtieth birthday. To millions of listeners, Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run is much more than a rock-and-roll album—it’s a p...

14.

The New Frugality: How to Consume Less, Save More, and Live Better מאת Chris Farrell From the personal finance correspondent for public radio’s Marketplace Money, a new plan for a new economic reality—the philosophy and practice of living frugally. As a once-in-a-lifetime downturn deepens, our go-go economy has become an uh-oh economy. B...

15.

The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency מאת Matthew Aid In the first complete history of the National Security Agency, America’s most powerful and secretive intelligence organization. In February 2006, while researching this book, Matthew Aid uncovered a massive and secret document reclassification program—a revelation th...

16.

Mrs. Woolf and the Servants: An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury מאת Alison Light A revealing and personal new perspective on the Bloomsbury set and the servants who shared their lives. When Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own in 1929, she established her reputation as a feminist, a woman who could imagine a more open and liberal reality, a...

17.

Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World מאת Matthew Bishop From Buffett to Bono, how today’s leading philanthropists are revolutionizing the field, using new methods to have a vastly greater impact on the world. For philanthropists of the past, charity was often a matter of simply giving money away. For the philanthrocapitalists—t...

18.

Half Moon: Henry Hudson and the Voyage that Redrew the Map of the New World מאת Douglas Hunter A bold new account of explorer Henry Hudson and the discovery that changed the course of history. The year 2009 marks the four-hundredth anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the majestic river that bears his name. Just in time for this milestone, Douglas Hunter, sailo...

19.

The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care מאת John Dittmer The untold story of the courageous doctors and nurses who fought the battle for racial justice in hospitals, in clinics, and on the streets in the 1960s. The Medical Committee for Human Rights was organized in the summer of 1964 by medical professionals, mostly white and Northern...

20.

Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World מאת Matthew Bishop An examination of how today’s leading philanthropists are revolutionizing the field, using new methods to have a vastly greater impact on the world.   For philanthropists of the past, charity was often a matter of simply giving money away....

21.

The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the Next Revolution מאת Daniel P. Erikson On the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, expert Daniel Erikson explores the twilight of the Castro era and what the future has in store for America’s last Cold War enemy. January 1, 2009 will mark a half century for a Cuban regime created and shaped by the pow...

22.

Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot מאת Anna Beer John Milton was one of the world’s greatest poets, the renowned author of Paradise Lost. But he was also deeply involved in political and religious controversies of his time, and authored a series of radical pamphlets on free speech, divorce, and civil rights that proposed a rethi...

23.

Falling off the Edge: Travels Through the Dark Heart of Globalization מאת Alex Perry If the world is flat, as the prophets of globalization proclaim, then what happens on the underside? Alex Perry answers with this eye-opening journey through the planet's most dangerous hotspots  Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, international corporations, governments and Western ...

24.

Bozo Sapiens: Why to Err is Human מאת Michael Kaplan A dazzling new work of popular science and psychology for readers who enjoyed Blink, Stumbling on Happiness, or The Black Swan. The New York Times called the Kaplans’ look at probability in everyday life, Chances Are..., “a dizzying, exhilarating rid...

25.

Mrs. Woolf and the Servants: An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury מאת Alison Light “Superbly researched, often passionately eloquent, and enthralling throughout.”—Washington Post Book World When Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own in 1929, she established her reputation as a feminist, and an advocate for unheard voices. But like t...

26.

Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years מאת Russ Baker “Shocking in its disclosures, elegantly crafted, and faultlessly measured in its judgments.”—Roger Morris, author of Richard Milhous Nixon and Partners in Power How did the deeply flawed George W. Bush ascend to the highest office in the nation, what force...

27.

The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations מאת Brian Fagan How the earth’s previous global warming phase, from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries, reshaped human societies from the Arctic to the Sahara—a wide-ranging history with sobering lessons for our own time. From the tenth to the fifteenth centuries the earth experienced ...