Adult

The ancient Greeks invented democracy, theater, rational science and philosophy. But understanding these uniquely influential people has been hampered by their diffusion across the entire Mediterranean. Most ancient Greeks did not live in what is now Greece but in settlements scattered across Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Libya, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Russia and Ukraine. Acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall’s INTRODUCING THE ANCIENT GREEKS is the first book to offer a synthesis of the entire ancient Greek experience.

In 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, the Continental Congress declared independence, and George Washington crossed the Delaware. We are familiar with these famous moments in American history, but we know little about the extraordinary events occurring that same year far beyond the British colonies. In this distinctive history, Claudio Saunt tells an intriguing, largely untold story of an immense and restless continent connected in surprising ways.

One of our finest narrative historians, Lawrence James has written a genuinely new biography of Winston Churchill, one focusing solely on his relationship with the British Empire. As a young army officer in the late 19th century serving in conflicts in India, South Africa and the Sudan, his attitude toward the Empire was the Victorian paternalistic approach --- at once responsible and superior. This ground-breaking volume reveals the many facets of Churchill’s personality: a visionary leader with a truly Victorian attitude toward the British Empire.

From 1951 to 1967, Egypt pursued a secret program to build military rockets that could have conceivably posed a threat to neighboring Israel. Because such an ambitious project required Western expertise, the Egyptian leader president Nasser hired West German scientists, many of them veterans of the Nazi rocket program at Peenemünde and elsewhere. These covert plans soon came to the attention of Israel’s legendary secret service, Mossad, and caused deep alarm in Tel Aviv.

Roger Fredericks, a leading golf instructor and golf fitness pioneer who has worked with the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Arnold Palmer, takes readers on a step-by-step journey to explain precisely why golfers have a hard time improving and, more importantly, what to do about it. In THE FLEXIBLE GOLF SWING, he lays out his commonsense approach and explains in detail the true fundamentals of the golf swing and precisely how the mechanics are merely symptoms of how a body functions.

In OWN YOUR GAME, Dave Stockton --- one of the most sought-after coaches in golf --- recreates the experience of riding 18 holes with him at one of his highly sought-after corporate outings. He explains how any player can learn to use his or her mind effectively --- both in the microcosm of the shot at hand and in plotting a way through a round. Amateur golfers are tired of trying to imitate the swings of the pros --- to mostly disastrous results. Stockton gives players the tools and the freedom to play better with the swing they currently have.

Mark Broadie is at the forefront of a revolutionary new approach to the game of golf. What does it take to drop 10 strokes from your golf score? What part of Tiger Woods’ game makes him a winner? Traditional golf stats can't answer these questions. Broadie, a professor at Columbia Business School, helped the PGA Tour develop its cutting-edge strokes gained putting stat. In this eye-opening new book, Broadie uses analytics from the financial world to uncover the secrets of the game of golf.

In a long, award-winning career writing about golf, Bill Fields has sought out the most interesting stories --- not just those featuring big winners and losers, but the ones that get at the very character of the game. Collected here, his pieces offer an intriguing portrait of golf over the past century. The legends are here in vivid profiles of such familiar figures as Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Mickey Wright and Tiger Woods. But so are lesser-known golfers like John Schlee, Billy Joe Patton and Bert Yancey, whose tales are no less compelling.

The back-and-forth battle among Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller and Tom Weiskopf at the 1975 Masters Tournament would dramatically culminate in one of the greatest finishes in Masters history. Gil Capps, a 20-year veteran of the golf industry and NBC Sports producer, recaptures hole-by-hole the thrilling drama of this singular event from golf’s golden era --- from the media-crazed build-up to the tournament's final dramatic putt that would change the game of golf forever.

Robert Trent Jones was the most prolific and influential golf course architect of the 20th century and became the archetypical modern golf course designer. Jones spread the gospel of golf by designing courses in 42 US states and 28 countries, and 20 U.S. Opens have been contested on Jones-designed courses. Biographer James R. Hansen recounts how an English immigrant boy arrived in upstate New York in 1912, just as golf was emerging as a popular pastime in America.