1944 witnessed a series of titanic events: FDR at the pinnacle of his wartime leadership as well as his reelection, the planning of Operation Overlord with Churchill and Stalin, the unprecedented D-Day invasion, the liberation of Paris and the horrific Battle of the Bulge, and the tumultuous conferences that finally shaped the coming peace. But on the way, millions of more lives were still at stake as President Roosevelt was exposed to mounting evidence of the most grotesque crime in history: the Final Solution.

With Lincoln’s assassination, his “team of rivals” was left adrift. President Andrew Johnson, a former slave owner from Tennessee, was challenged by Radical Republicans led by Thaddeus Stephens and Charles Sumner, who wanted to punish the defeated South. By the 1868 election, united Republicans nominated Ulysses Grant, Lincoln's winning Union general. His attempts to reconcile Southerners with the Union and to quash the rising Ku Klux Klan were undercut by post-war greed and corruption. Reconstruction died unofficially in 1887 when Republican Rutherford Hayes joined with the Democrats in a deal that removed the last federal troops from South Carolina and Louisiana.

On August 22, 1485, at Bosworth Field, Richard III fell, the Wars of the Roses ended, and the Tudor dynasty began. The clash is so significant because it marks the break between medieval and modern. Yet how much do we really know about this historical landmark? Michael Jones uses archival discoveries to show that Richard III's defeat was by no means inevitable and was achieved only through extraordinary chance.

Robert Darnton recreates three historical worlds in which censorship shaped literary expression in distinctive ways. In 18th-century France, censors, authors and booksellers collaborated in making literature by navigating the intricate culture of royal privilege. Shaken by the Sepoy uprising in 1857, the British Raj undertook a vast surveillance of every aspect of Indian life, including its literary output. And in Communist East Germany, censorship was a component of the party program to engineer society.

THE CONQUERING TIDE encompasses the heart of the Pacific War --- the period between mid-1942 and mid-1944 --- when parallel Allied counteroffensives north and south of the equator washed over Japan's far-flung island empire like a "conquering tide," concluding with Japan's irreversible strategic defeat in the Marianas. It was the largest, bloodiest, most costly, most technically innovative and logistically complicated amphibious war in history, and it fostered bitter interservice rivalries, leaving wounds that even victory could not heal.

The Plantagenets reigned over England longer than any other family --- from Henry II to Richard III. Four kings were murdered, two came close to deposition, and another was killed in a battle by rebels. Shakespeare wrote plays about six of them, further entrenching them in the national myth. Based on major contemporary sources and recent research, acclaimed historian Desmond Seward provides, in one volume, the first readable overview of the whole extraordinary dynasty.

Many Americans in Jefferson Davis’ own time and in later generations considered him an incompetent leader, if not a traitor. Not so, argues James M. McPherson. In EMBATTLED REBEL, McPherson shows us that Davis might have been on the wrong side of history, but it is too easy to diminish him because of his cause’s failure. In order to understand the Civil War and its outcome, it is essential to give Davis his due as a military leader and as the president of an aspiring Confederate nation.

The fight for gay, lesbian and trans civil rights --- the years of outrageous injustice, the early battles, the heartbreaking defeats, and the victories beyond the dreams of the gay rights pioneers --- is the most important civil rights issue of the present day. Based on rigorous research and more than 150 interviews, THE GAY REVOLUTION tells this unfinished story through dramatic accounts of passionate struggles, with all the sweep, depth and intricacies only an award-winning activist, scholar and novelist like Lillian Faderman can evoke.

Jack Kemp’s role in a pivotal period in American history is at last illuminated in this first-ever biography, which also has lessons for the politics of today. Kemp was the congressional champion of supply-side economics --- the idea that lowering taxes would foster growth. Even today, almost no one advocates a return to a top income tax rate of 70 percent. Kemp didn’t just challenge the Democratic establishment. He also encouraged his fellow Republicans to be growth (not austerity) minded, open their tent to minorities and blue-collar workers, battle poverty and discrimination, and once again become "the party of Lincoln."

Just two months into his presidency, Ronald Reagan lay near death after a gunman's bullet came within inches of his heart. His recovery was nothing short of remarkable --- or so it seemed. But Reagan was grievously injured, forcing him to encounter a challenge that few men ever face. Could he silently overcome his traumatic experience while at the same time carrying out the duties of the most powerful man in the world?

No American statesman has been as revered or as reviled as Henry Kissinger. He has also been hounded by conspiracy theorists, scouring his every “telcon” for evidence of Machiavellian malfeasance. Yet as Niall Ferguson shows in this magisterial two-volume biography, drawing not only on Kissinger’s hitherto closed private papers but also on documents from more than a hundred archives around the world, the idea of Kissinger as the ruthless arch-realist is based on a profound misunderstanding.

Harold Holzer shows us an activist Lincoln through journalists who covered him from his start through to the night of his assassination --- when one reporter ran to the box where Lincoln was shot and emerged to write the story covered with blood. Holzer depicts politicized newspaper editors battling for power, and a masterly president using the press to speak directly to the people and shape the nation.

In the past 50 years, Asian Americans have helped change the face of America and are now the fastest growing group in the United States. But as award-winning historian Erika Lee reminds us, Asian Americans also have deep roots in the country. THE MAKING OF ASIAN AMERICA tells the little-known history of Asian Americans and their role in American life, from the arrival of the first Asians in the Americas to the present day.

The years 1913-1923 saw the emergence in Ireland of the Ulster Volunteer Force to resist Irish home rule and in response, the Irish Volunteers, who would later evolve into the IRA. World War One, the rise of Sinn Fein, intense Ulster unionism and conflict with Britain culminated in the Irish war of Independence, which ended with a compromise Treaty with Britain and then the enmities and drama of the Irish Civil War. Drawing on an abundance of newly released archival material, witness statements and testimony from the ordinary Irish people who lived and fought through extraordinary times, A NATION AND NOT A RABBLE explores these revolutions.

In 1950, Fairfax County, Virginia, was 90 percent white, 10 percent African-American, with a little more than 100 families who were “other.” Currently the African-American percentage of the population is about the same, but the Anglo white population is less than 50 percent, and there are families of Asian, African, Middle Eastern and Latin American origin living all over the county. A NATION OF NATIONS follows the lives of a few immigrants to Fairfax County over recent decades as they gradually “Americanize.”

Between 1971 and 1973, President Richard Nixon’s voice-activated tape recorders captured 3,700 hours of conversations. Douglas Brinkley and Luke Nichter’s intrepid two-volume transcription and annotation of the highlights of this essential archive provides an unprecedented and fascinating window into the inner workings of a momentous presidency. THE NIXON TAPES: 1973 tells the concluding chapter of the story, the final year of taping, covering such events as the Vietnam cease-fire, the Wounded Knee standoff and, of course, the Watergate investigation.

Detroit in 1963 is on top of the world. The city’s leaders are among the most visionary in America: Grandson of the first Ford; Henry Ford II; Motown’s founder Berry Gordy; the Reverend C.L. Franklin and his daughter, the incredible Aretha; Governor George Romney, Mormon and Civil Rights advocate; car salesman Lee Iacocca; Police Commissioner George Edwards; Martin Luther King. The time was full of promise. The auto industry was selling more cars than ever before. Yet the shadows of collapse were evident even then.

The third volume of Peter Ackroyd's The History of England covers the Stuart dynasty, which brought together England and Scotland, during a period marked by civil war and the killing of a king. Ackroyd tells the story of the turbulent 17th century, in which England suffered through three civil wars --- two fought between Parliament and both Charles I and Charles II, and, finally, the "Glorious Rebellion of 1688," which saw Charles II’s brother James deposed and sent into exile.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. inherited his assassinated father's piercing blue eyes and Brahmin style, earning a reputation as the nation's foremost environmental activist and lawyer, battling corporate polluters. But in this first-ever biography of him, Jerry Oppenheimer places Bobby Jr., leader of the third generation of America's royal family, under a journalistic microscope. Like his slain father, the iconic senator and presidential hopeful, he was destined for political greatness. Why it never happened is revealed here.

Over the course of his 40-year career, Thurgood Marshall brought down the separate-but-equal doctrine, integrated schools, and not only fought for human rights and human dignity but also made them impossible to deny in the courts and in the streets. In SHOWDOWN, Wil Haygood uses the framework of the dramatic, contentious five-day Senate hearing to confirm Marshall as the first African-American Supreme Court justice, to weave a provocative and moving look at Marshall’s life as well as at the politicians, lawyers, activists and others who shaped --- or desperately tried to stop --- the civil rights movement.

The relationship between Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg transcends party, religion, region and culture. Strengthened by each other’s presence, these groundbreaking judges, the first and second to serve on the highest court in the land, have transformed the Constitution and America itself, making it a more equal place for all women. Linda Hirshman’s dual biography includes revealing stories of how these trailblazers fought for their own recognition in a male-dominated profession.

In SUCH TROOPS AS THESE, acclaimed military historian Bevin Alexander presents a compelling case for Stonewall Jackson as a supreme military strategist and the greatest general in American history. Fiercely dedicated to the cause of Southern independence, Jackson would not live to see the end of the War. But his military legacy lives on and finds fitting tribute in this book.

In 1942, Marie Jalowicz, a 20-year-old Jewish Berliner, made the extraordinary decision to do everything in her power to avoid the concentration camps. She removed her yellow star, took on an assumed identity and disappeared into the city. In the years that followed, Marie took shelter wherever it was offered, living with the strangest of bedfellows, from circus performers and committed communists to convinced Nazis. As Marie quickly learned, however, compassion and cruelty are very often two sides of the same coin. Fifty years later, she agreed to tell her story for the first time.