A tenth anniversary commemorative hardcover edition of James w. Loewen's classic retelling of American history. Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has gone on to win an American Book Award, the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, and to sell over half a million copies in its various editions. What started out as a survey of the twelve leading American history textbooks has ended up being what the San Francisco Chronicle calls "an extremely convincing plea for truth in education." In Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen brings history alive in all its complexity and ambiguity. Beginning with pre-Columbian history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, and the Mai Lai massacre, Loewen offers an eye-opening critique of existing textbooks, and a wonderful retelling of American history as it should —and could —be taught to American students. This 10th anniversary edition features a handsome new cover and a new introduction by the author.

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of What Went Wrong? tells the story of his extraordinary lifeAfter September 11, Americans who had never given much thought to the Middle East turned to Bernard Lewis for an explanation, catapulting What Went Wrong? and later Crisis of Islam to become number one bestsellers. He was the first to warn of a coming "clash of civilizations," a term he coined in 1957, and has led an amazing life, as much a political actor as a scholar of the Middle East. In this witty memoir he reflects on the events that have transformed the region since World War II, up through the Arab Spring.A pathbreaking scholar with command of a dozen languages, Lewis has advised American presidents and dined with politicians from the shah of Iran to the pope. Over the years, he had tea at Buckingham Palace, befriended Golda Meir, and briefed politicians from Ted Kennedy to Dick Cheney. No stranger to controversy, he pulls no punches in his blunt criticism of those who see him as the intellectual progenitor of the Iraq war. Like America’s other great historian-statesmen Arthur Schlesinger and Henry Kissinger, he is a figure of towering intellect and a world-class raconteur, which makes Notes on a Century essential reading for anyone who cares about the fate of the Middle East.

What was life like for women in the American colonies? This classic study suggests that, in spite of hardships, many colonial women led rich, fulfilling lives. Drawing on letters, diaries and contemporary accounts, the author thoroughly depicts the lives of women in the New England and Southern colonies. Thoughtfully written, well-documented account.

Historian Walter Lord, author of "A Night to Remember", gives the definitive account of the doomed vessel in this compelling audiobook. Through painstaking research on the ship's structure, the captain's and crew's abilities, and the survivors' first-hand tales, Lord answers the most frequently asked questions by presenting a complete and chilling picture of the disaster--a gripping story that will be even more compelling on audiobook.

   From admired historian—and coiner of one of feminism's most popular slogans—Laurel Thatcher Ulrich comes an exploration of what it means for women to make history.   In 1976, in an obscure scholarly article, Ulrich wrote, "Well behaved women seldom make history."  Today these words appear on t-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers, greeting cards, and all sorts of Web sites and blogs.  Ulrich explains how that happened and what it means by looking back at women of the past who challenged the way history was written.  She ranges from the fifteenth-century writer Christine de Pizan, who wrote The Book of the City of Ladies, to the twentieth century’s Virginia Woolf, author of A Room of One's Own.  Ulrich updates their attempts to reimagine female possibilities and looks at the women who didn't try to make history but did.  And she concludes by showing how the 1970s activists who created "second-wave feminism" also created a renaissance in the study of history.

Correspondent Ahmed Rashid brings the shadowy world of the Taliban—the world’s most extreme and radical Islamic organization—into sharp focus in this enormously insightful book. He offers the only authoritative account of the Taliban available to English-language readers, explaining the Taliban’s rise to power, its impact on Afghanistan and the region, its role in oil and gas company decisions, and the effects of changing American attitudes toward the Taliban. He also describes the new face of Islamic fundamentalism and explains why Afghanistan has become the world center for international terrorism. New to this updated edition of the #1 New York Times Bestseller with more than 1.5 million copies sold worldwide: o How the Taliban has regained its strength o How and why the Taliban has spread across Central Asia o How the Taliban has helped Al’Qaida’s spread into Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East o Why the Afghan people feel the United States is losing the war o A major new introduction and an all-new final chapter

In American Colonies award-winning historian Alan Taylor challenges the traditional Anglocentric focus of colonial history by exploring the multitude of cultural influences out of which "America" ultimately emerged. From the Siberian migrations across the Bering Strait fifteen thousand years ago and the European expeditions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through the nineteenth-century exploration and occupation of the Hawaiian Islands, Taylor traces the complex ecological, ethnic, and economic history and colonization of the New World from coast to coast, from the Canadian north to the Pacific rim. Examining the repeatedly overlooked influence of the continent's natives upon the colonists and the resulting mutual dependence of the two, Taylor presents a unique and revelatory view of colonial North America. European colonists, African slaves, and native peoples met one another and interacted at a pace and intensity unparalleled in global history. The effects of this staggering confluence of cultural, ecological, military, diplomatic, and economic interests are still being felt in America today. This fascinating and involving history of the origins of the United States will provoke and appeal to all readers of American history. Series Editor: Eric Foner

In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism—all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement that marked the end of more than a millennium during which Christianity provided a framework for shared intellectual, social, and moral life in the West.Before the Protestant Reformation, Western Christianity was an institutionalized worldview laden with expectations of security for earthly societies and hopes of eternal salvation for individuals. The Reformation’s protagonists sought to advance the realization of this vision, not disrupt it. But a complex web of rejections, retentions, and transformations of medieval Christianity gradually replaced the religious fabric that bound societies together in the West. Today, what we are left with are fragments: intellectual disagreements that splinter into ever finer fractals of specialized discourse; a notion that modern science—as the source of all truth—necessarily undermines religious belief; a pervasive resort to a therapeutic vision of religion; a set of smuggled moral values with which we try to fertilize a sterile liberalism; and the institutionalized assumption that only secular universities can pursue knowledge.The Unintended Reformation asks what propelled the West into this trajectory of pluralism and polarization, and finds answers deep in our medieval Christian past. (20111114)

“One of the great adventures of our time.”—Life “Am going to cross Pacific on a wooden raft to support a theory that the South Sea islands were peopled from Peru. Will you come? …Reply at once.” That is how six brave and inquisitive men came to seek a dangerous path to test a scientific theory. On a primitive raft made of forty-foot balsa logs and named “Kon-Tiki” in honor of a legendary sun king, Heyerdahl and five companions deliberately risked their lives to show that the ancient Peruvians could have made the 4,300-mile voyage to the Polynesian islands on a similar craft. On every page of this true chronicle—from the actual building of the raft through all the dangerous and comic adventures on the sea, to the spectacular crash-landing and the native islanders’ hula dances—each reader will find a wholesome and spellbinding escape from the twenty-first century. 80 b&w illustrations

The British Empire was the largest in all history, its reach the nearest thing to world domination ever achieved. By the eve of the Second World War, over a fifth of the world's land surface and nearly a quarter of the world's population were under some form of British rule. Yet for today's generation, the British Empire has come to stand for nothing more than a lost Victorian past--one so remote that it has ceased even to be a target for satire. The time is ripe for a reappraisal.In this major new work of synthesis and revision, Niall Ferguson argues that the British Empire should be regarded not merely as vanished Victoriana but as the very cradle of modernity. Nearly all the key features of the twenty-first-century world can be traced back to the extraordinary expansion of Britain's economy, population, and culture from the seventeenth century until the mid-twentieth--economic globalization, the communications revolution, the racial make-up of North America, the notion of humanitarianism, the nature of democracy. Displaying the originality and rigor that have made him the brightest light among British historians, Ferguson shows that far from being a subject for nostalgia, the story of the Empire is pregnant with lessons for the world today--in particular for the United States as it stands on the brink of a new kind of imperial power based once again on economic and military supremacy.