In the summer of 1914, three great empires dominated Europe: Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. Four years later, all had vanished in the chaos of World War I. Drawing on unpublished letters and rare primary sources, Greg King and Sue Woolmans tell the true story behind the tragic romance and brutal assassination that sparked The Great War.

THE BLOOD TELEGRAM is a riveting history --- the first full account --- of the involvement of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the 1971 atrocities in Bangladesh that led to war between India and Pakistan, shaped the fate of Asia, and left in their wake a host of major strategic consequences for the world today.

From acclaimed military historian Max Hastings comes a new history of the outbreak of World War I: the dramatic stretch from the breakdown of diplomacy to the battles that marked the frenzied first year before the war bogged down in the trenches.

A 2006 report commissioned by Brown University revealed that institution’s complex and contested involvement in slavery --- setting off a controversy that leapt from the ivory tower to make headlines across the country. But Brown’s troubling past was far from unique. In EBONY AND IVY, Craig Steven Wilder, a rising star in the profession of history, lays bare uncomfortable truths about race, slavery and the American academy.

During a Biblical seven years in the middle of the 19th century, Ireland experienced the worst disaster a nation could suffer. Fully a quarter of its citizens either perished from starvation or emigrated. In this grand, sweeping narrative, Ireland''s best-known historian, Tim Pat Coogan, gives a fresh and comprehensive account of one of the darkest chapters in world history.

For decades, a major piece of World War II history has gone virtually unwritten. The war began in China, two years before Hitler invaded Poland, yet its drama of invasion, resistance, slaughter and political intrigue remains little known in the West. No 20th-century event was as crucial in shaping China’s worldview, and no one can understand China, and its relationship with America today, without this definitive work.

FORMER PEOPLE is the story of how a centuries-old elite, famous for its glittering wealth, its service to the tsar and empire, and its promotion of the arts and culture, was dispossessed and destroyed along with the rest of old Russia. Chronicling the fate of two great aristocratic families --- the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns --- it reveals how even in the darkest depths of the terror, daily life went on.

Acclaimed historian Peter Ackroyd tells the epic story of England itself. He takes us from the primeval forests of England’s prehistory to the death, in 1509, of the first Tudor king, Henry VII. He guides us from the building of Stonehenge to the founding of the two great glories of medieval England: common law and the cathedrals. He describes the successive waves of invaders who made England English, despite being themselves Roman, Viking, Saxon, or Norman French.

Based on new information, MASTER OF THE MOUNTAIN opens up a huge, poorly understood dimension of Thomas Jefferson’s faraway world. Wiencek’s Jefferson is a man of business and public affairs who makes a success of his debt-ridden plantation thanks to what he calls the “silent profit” gained from his slaves --- and thanks to the skewed morals of the political and social world that he and thousands of others readily inhabited.

As the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination draws near, the events of that fateful day will undoubtedly be on the minds of many throughout the world. Here, Dean Owen curates a fascinating collection of interviews and thought-provoking commentaries from notable men and women connected to that notorious Friday afternoon.

In OLD MAN RIVER, Paul Schneider tells the story of the river at the center of America’s rich history --- the Mississippi. Some 15,000 years ago, the majestic river provided Paleolithic humans with the routes by which early man began to explore the continent’s interior. Since then, the river has been the site of historical significance, from the arrival of Spanish and French explorers in the 16th century to the Civil War.

The period between 1630 and 1660 was one of the most tumultuous in Western history. These three decades witnessed the birth of New England and, in the mother country, a chaotic civil war. At the center of this turbulent time was an outsized family: the Rainborowes, who bridged two worlds as they struggled to forge a better future for themselves and their kin. In THE RAINBOROWES, acclaimed historian Adrian Tinniswood follows this singular clan.

In THE REVENGE OF GEOGRAPHY, Robert D. Kaplan, the bestselling author of MONSOON and BALKAN GHOSTS, builds on the insights, discoveries and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene.

As 1862 dawned, the American republic was at death’s door. The survival of the country depended on the judgment and resilience of Abraham Lincoln, the unschooled frontier lawyer who had recently been elected president. Acclaimed author David Von Drehle has created both a deeply human portrait of America’s greatest president and a dramatic narrative about our most fateful year.

Games between the Dodgers and Giants are never just another day at the ballpark. A longtime newspaper editor and baseball fiend, Joe Konte understands what is so special about what is one of the most significant rivalries in American sports. And so --- via statistical analysis, game summaries, roster scrutiny, manager matchups, season recaps, and more --- he has put together a rivalry bible.

THE STORY OF AIN'T by David Skinner is the captivating true chronicle of the creation of Merriam Webster’s Third New International Dictionary in 1961, the most controversial dictionary ever published. The book describes a great societal metamorphosis, tracing the fallout of the world wars, the rise of an educated middle class, and the emergence of America as the undisputed leader of the free world, and illuminating how those forces shaped our language.

In the late 1930s, the German–American Bund was a small but powerful national movement, determined to conquer the United States government with a fascist dictatorship. But while they dreamed of a Swastika Nation, politicians, a rising legal star, a newspaper columnist, and denizens of the criminal underworld utilized their respective means and muscle to bring down the movement and its dreams of a United Reich States.

“The Chinese Communist party refers to its victory in 1949 as a ‘liberation.’ In China the story of liberation and the revolution that followed is not one of peace, liberty, and justice. It is first and foremost a story of calculated terror and systematic violence.” So begins Frank Dikötter’s stunning and revelatory chronicle of Mao Zedong’s ascension and campaign to transform the Chinese into what the party called New People.

Brilliantly illuminating one of the least-understood areas of American history, bestselling author Eric Jay Dolin now traces our fraught relationship with China back to its roots: the unforgiving 19th-century seas that separated a brash, rising naval power from a battered ancient empire.

One hundred years after his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson still stands as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, and one of the most enigmatic. Now, after more than a decade of research and writing, Pulitzer Prize-winning author A. Scott Berg has completed the most personal and penetrating biography ever written about the 28th President.

In 1945, one world had ended and a new, uncertain one was beginning. Regime change had come on a global scale, great cities around the world lay in ruins, and the ground was laid for more horror to come. In YEAR ZERO, an examination of the postwar years is intertwined with author Ian Buruma's father's attempted reentry into “normalcy” after his experience as a prisoner of war.