Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/01/2011
ISBN-13: 9780307268440
ISBN-10: 0307268446

Award-winning author Robert Hughes (The Shock of the New) takes readers on an unforgettable jaunt through three millennia of Roman art, politics, and history. Hughes is not merely a world-class scholar of the ancient city, but also an enthralled constant visitor there since 1959. Here, he vividly brings to life historical figures and events behind some of Rome's most spectacular achievements in architecture, painting, and sculpture. Lively prose and the author's curmudgeonly charm make Rome an "exhilarating, rambunctious book" (Newsweek) perfect for readers who might ordinarily be daunted by the epic scale of Roman history.

Publisher: Random House
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/08/2011
ISBN-13: 9780679456728
ISBN-10: 0679456724

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Nicholas and Alexandria offers a masterful study of 18th-century Russia's most influential femme fatale, Empress Catherine the Great. At barely 16, a newly christened Catherine (formerly Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst) married Peter III, the decidedly unprepossessing heir to Russia's Romanov dynasty. Catherine proved to be all that Peter was not: brilliant, ambitious, strategic, sensual, and determined to lead Russia from its provincial past. The New York Times praises this account of her remarkable 34-year rule as "juicy and suspenseful."

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Publisher: HarperCollins
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/08/2011
ISBN-13: 9780061650703
ISBN-10: 0061650706

A Train in Winter describes the experiences of 230 French women held under brutal conditions by the Gestapo just outside Paris. Some were active in the French Resistance, but many others had been arrested for a single, impulsive gesture (like a 15-year old girl who simply scrawled a small "V" for victory on the wall of her school) -- or for no reason at all. Drawn primarily from personal, in-depth interviews with survivors, these accounts sensitively portray the women who forged unbreakable bonds of loyalty, trust, and friendship in a crucible of hate. Readers seeking another powerful look at European women's experiences in World War II should consider A Woman in Berlin, too.

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Publisher: Da Capo Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/01/2011
ISBN-13: 9780306820618
ISBN-10: 0306820617

Japan's brutal December 7th attack on Pearl Harbor left Americans at once reluctant to embrace the season of joy mere weeks later, yet all the more desperate for the feelings of peace and hope with which the Christmas holiday is also infused. Pearl Harbor Christmas is a thought-provoking cultural chronicle of how great world leaders and everyday people alike navigated a difficult season of cheer -- and fear -- at the onset of World War II. The author's earlier Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce is another interesting look at holiday history during wartime.

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Publisher: HarperCollins
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 08/01/2008
ISBN-13: 9780060781002
ISBN-10: 0060781009

At the peak of Chicago’s decadent Jazz Age, two mannerly, educated, highly intelligent, and affluent young men blossomed into cold-blooded killers: Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb plotted for months before killing their younger neighbor, Bobby Franks. They later testified that neither the victim nor the ransom they demanded mattered at all: they sought only the thrill of committing the perfect crime without ever being caught. A tiny shred of physical evidence (readers will want to discover the details for themselves) destroyed that plan -- but the shocking outcome of their highly publicized trial may leave readers wondering whether or not they really did get away with murder.

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Publisher: Free Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 03/01/2005
ISBN-13: 9780743242783
ISBN-10: 0743242785

Author Jay Feldman explores the unexpected socio-political “aftershocks” of monster quakes that rocked the American Midwest from December 16, 1811 until April of 1812. The natural disaster magnified racial, military, economic, and religious tensions -- and in turn precipitated the War of 1812 between American and British forces. The quake exposed the body of a dismembered slave (murdered by Thomas Jefferson's nephew); Shawnee chief Tecumseh saw the quake as an omen of disaster and urged his tribes to war; and, despite the Mississippi's post-quake flooding, the first steamboat made its way west. Feldman's vivid portrait of upheaval on the American frontier is a tour de force of natural and human history writing.

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Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/25/2008
ISBN-13: 9780143114284
ISBN-10: 014311428X

In 1920, a Massachusetts robbery left two dead; seven years later, after a controversial trial and many appeals, two Italian immigrants were executed for the crime. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, avowed anarchists as well as immigrants, faced much prejudice from police and prosecutors. Did bigotry trump justice, leading to their conviction -- and deaths -- for crimes they did not commit? Readers can weigh the evidence for themselves as they read this clear-eyed, well-researched narrative of events. For an excellent read on present-day cases involving justice and prejudice, try William Shawcross' Justice and the Enemy about the prosecution of terror suspects in the U.S. in the aftermath of 9/11.

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