Adult

A preeminent writer on Paris, John Baxter brilliantly brings to life one of the most dramatic and fascinating periods in the city's history. During World War I, the terrifying sounds of the nearby front could be heard from inside the French capital; Germany's "Paris Gun" and enemy aviators routinely bombarded the city. And yet in its darkest hour, the City of Light blazed more brightly than ever.

Drawing on deep archival research, Geoffrey Wawro charts the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before the war and reconstructs the great battles in the east and the Balkans in thrilling and tragic detail. A MAD CATASTROPHE is a riveting account of a neglected face of World War I, revealing how a once-mighty empire collapsed in the trenches of Serbia and the Eastern Front, changing the course of European history.

One of the most dramatic periods of British history, the Wars of the Roses didn't end at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Despite the death of Richard III and Henry VII's victory, it continued underground into the following century with plots, pretenders and subterfuge by the ousted white rose faction. In a brand new interpretation of this turning point in history, historian Desmond Seward reviews the story of the Tudors' seizure of the throne and shows that for many years they were far from secure.        

For decades, conservative and corporate interests have worked to obscure the greatest achievement of the Greatest Generation: securing Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms for all Americans. These were the democratic aims that helped beat the Great Depression, defeat the Axis Powers in World War II, and turn the United States into the strongest and richest nation in history. In this eye-opening account, Harvey Kaye recalls the full story of this generation’s extraordinary struggles and accomplishments.

In this major new history of the Civil War, Bruce Levine tells the riveting story of how that conflict upended the economic, political, and social life of the old South, utterly destroying the Confederacy and the society it represented and defended. Told through the words of the people who lived it, THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF DIXIE illuminates the way a war undertaken to preserve the status quo became a second American Revolution whose impact on the country was as strong and lasting as that of our first.

It was only meant to be a brief detour. But then Lauren finds herself trapped in a town called Lost on the edge of a desert, filled with things abandoned, broken and thrown away. And when she tries to escape, impassible dust storms and something unexplainable lead her back to Lost again and again. The residents she meets there tell her she's going to have to figure out just what she's missing --- and what she's running from --- before she can leave.

THE DUKE, THE LONGHORNS, AND CHAIRMAN MAO is a fly-on-the-wall exploration of a wild weekend and an immersion into the John Wayne mythology: his politics, his inspirations, the plots to assassinate him, his connections to Stalin, Khrushchev and Chairman Mao, and the death of the Western.

When Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly 60 years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. EMPTY MANSIONS is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the 19th century with a 21st-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades.

Frederick Brown explores the tumultuous forces unleashed in France by the Dreyfus Affair and its aftermath, and examines how the clashing ideologies --- the swarm of ’isms --- and their blood-soaked political scandals and artistic movements following the horrors of World War I resulted in the country’s era of militant authoritarianism, rioting, violent racism and nationalistic fervor. We see how these forces overtook the country’s sense of reason, sealing the fate of an entire nation, and led to the fall of France and the rise of the Vichy government.

THE DEADLY SISTERHOOD is an epic tale of eight women whose lives --- marked by fortune and poverty, power and powerlessness --- encompass the spectacle, opportunity and depravity of Italy’s Renaissance. Lucrezia Turnabuoni, Clarice Orsini, Beatrice d’Este, Isabella d’Este, Caterina Sforza, Giulia Farnese, Isabella d’Aragona and Lucrezia Borgia shared the riches of their birthright: wealth, political influence and friendship, but none were not exempt from personal tragedies, exile and poverty.