1968 was a year filled with mind-boggling headlines. Both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were struck down by assassins’ bullets. The war in Vietnam was raging. And a small, nondescript former cargo ship, the USS Pueblo,and her crew were seized by the North Koreans in international waters. This massively researched book tells the full story of what became known as "the Pueblo incident."

Beethoven scholar and classical radio host John Suchet has had a lifelong, ardent interest in the man and his music. Here, in his first full-length biography, Suchet illuminates the composer’s difficult childhood, his struggle to maintain friendships and romances, his ungovernable temper, his obsessive efforts to control his nephew’s life, and the excruciating decline of his hearing.

In 1856, Paul Du Chaillu ventured into the African jungle in search of a mythic beast, the gorilla. After wild encounters with vicious cannibals, deadly snakes and tribal kings, Du Chaillu emerged with 20 preserved gorilla skins --- two of which were stuffed and brought on tour --- and walked smack dab into the biggest scientific debate of the time: Darwin's theory of evolution. Quickly, Du Chaillu's trophies went from objects of wonder to key pieces in an all-out intellectual war.

GLORIOUS WAR, the definitive biography of George Armstrong Custer’s Civil War years, is nothing short of a heart-pounding cavalry charge through the battlefield heroics that thrust the gallant young officer into the national spotlight in the midst of the country’s darkest hours. From West Point to the daring actions that propelled him to the rank of general at age 23 to his unlikely romance with Libbie Bacon, Custer’s exploits are the stuff of legend.

For more than two centuries, our political life has been divided between a party of progress and a party of conservation. In THE GREAT DEBATE, Yuval Levin explores the origins of the left/right divide by examining the views of the men who best represented each side of that debate at its outset: Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine.

THE HEIR APPARENT chronicles the eventful life of Queen Victoria’s firstborn son, the quintessential black sheep of Buckingham Palace, who matured into as wise and effective a monarch as Britain has ever seen. Granted unprecedented access to the royal archives, noted scholar Jane Ridley draws on numerous primary sources to paint a vivid portrait of the man and the age to which he gave his name.

Historian Edward P. Kohn argues that it was Theodore Roosevelt's hometown of New York that made him the progressive president we celebrate today. During his early political career, he took on local Republican factions and Tammany Hall Democrats alike, proving his commitment to reform at all costs. HEIR TO THE EMPIRE CITY reveals that Roosevelt’s true education took place not in the West but on the mean streets of 19th-century New York.

The Chelsea Hotel, since its founding by a visionary French architect in 1884, has been an icon of American invention: a cultural dynamo and haven for the counterculture, all in one astonishing building. Sherill Tippins, author of the acclaimed FEBRUARY HOUSE, delivers a masterful and endlessly entertaining history of the Chelsea and of the successive generations of artists who have cohabited and created there.

Ted Williams was the best hitter in baseball history. His batting average of .406 in 1941 has not been topped since, and no player who has hit more than 500 home runs has a higher career batting average. Those totals would have been even higher if Williams had not left baseball to serve as a Marine pilot in WWII and Korea. He hit home runs farther than any player before him --- and traveled a long way himself, as Ben Bradlee, Jr.'s biography reveals.

METRONOME follows Loránt Deutsch, historian and lifelong Francophile, as he goes on a compelling journey through the ages, treating readers to Paris as they've never seen it before. Using 21 stops of the subway system as focal points --- one per century --- Deutsch shows, from the underground up, the unique, often violent, and always striking events that shaped one of the world’s most romanticized city.

Elizabeth I came to the throne at a time of insecurity and unrest. Rivals threatened her reign; England was a Protestant island, isolated in a sea of Catholic countries. Spain plotted an invasion, but Elizabeth's Secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, was prepared to do whatever it took to protect his queen and country.

SECRETS OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR is the compelling chronicle of the warrior monks and their fight to defend the Catholic faith, and of their participation in the efforts to vie for control of the Holy Land with the Muslim armies of Kurdish military genius Saladin and his successors. Informally organized in 1119 to protect pilgrims on their journeys to visit the Holy Land, and officially sanctioned by the Catholic Church in 1129, the medieval Knights Templar grew into an elite fighting force that played a central role in the battles of the Crusades.

Ever since Korea was first divided at the end of World War II, the tension between its northern and southern halves has riveted --- and threatened to embroil --- the rest of the world. In this landmark history, now thoroughly revised and updated in conjunction with Korea expert Robert Carlin, veteran journalist Don Oberdorfer grippingly describes how a historically homogenous people became locked in a perpetual struggle for supremacy --- and how they might yet be reconciled.

The Republic of Venice was the first great economic, cultural and naval power of the modern Western world. After winning the struggle for ascendency in the late 13th century, the Republic enjoyed centuries of unprecedented glory. THE VENETIANS illuminates the character of the Republic during these illustrious years by shining a light on some of the most celebrated personalities of European history.

In 1943, the Nazis liquidated Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto. A year later, they threatened to complete the city’s destruction by deporting its remaining residents. As Soviet soldiers turned back the Nazi invasion of Russia and began pressing west, the underground Polish Home Army decided to act. Taking advantage of German disarray and seeking to forestall the absorption of their country into the Soviet empire, they chose to liberate the city of Warsaw for themselves. WARSAW 1944 tells the story of this brave --- and errant --- calculation.