History Essays

From the co-author of Three Cups of Tea comes the inspiring story of two very different doctors—one from the United States, the other from Nepal—united in a common mission: to rid the world of preventable blindness. In this transporting book, David Oliver Relin shines a light on the work...

The Bharatiya Janata Party is an idea that was seeded into the minds of nationalist Jana Sangh leaders when they began to envision India after Independence. Much like the very core the freedom struggle was built on, they saw India as a demographically, culturally and historically cohesive and...

"The road in life forks in every moment, with one path leading toward confusion, separateness, and entanglement, and the other toward clarity, connection, and mental freedom. With mind whispering, the choice can be ours." Why sometimes do even the smallest events send us into a downward spiral?...

A New York Times bestseller The author of the beloved #1 New York Times bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran returns with the next chapter of her life in books—a passionate and deeply moving hymn to America Ten years ago, Azar Nafisi electrified readers with her multimillion-copy...

From the internationally acclaimed Oxford authority on Communism, a definitive history that examines the origins of the ideology, its development in different nations, its collapse in many of those countries following perestroika, and its current incarnations around the globe. The Rise and Fall...

Keith Haring is synonymous with the downtown New York art scene of the 1980's. His artwork-with its simple, bold lines and dynamic figures in motion-filtered in to the world's consciousness and is still instantly recognizable, twenty years after his death. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition...

Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award A lively exploration of animal behavior in all its glorious complexity, whether in tiny wasps, lumbering elephants, or ourselves. For centuries, people have been returning to the same tired nature-versus-nurture debate...

This Leibniz collection contains some of the philosopher’s most important works and ideas, spans three decades and illuminates the fascinating intellectual journey undertaken by him in his quest for truth. A prodigious polymath, Leibniz was a mathematician, philosopher, physicist and statesman and engaged with a sweeping range of ideas and disciplines, striving throughout his life to be at the cutting edge of scientific thinking. These Principal Essays are arranged in chronological order.

The inspiration for the upcoming film Reagan starring Dennis Quaid and directed by Sean McNamara “Combining the skills of great story-telling with his commitment to scholarly detail, Paul Kengor has written an important book that also makes for a fascinating read. The Crusader will not only...

Lost Discoveries, Dick Teresi's innovative history of science, explores the unheralded scientific breakthroughs from peoples of the ancient world -- Babylonians, Egyptians, Indians, Africans, New World and Oceanic tribes, among others -- and the non-European medieval world. They left an...

In its 4.5 billion–year history, life on Earth has been almost erased at least half a dozen times: shattered by asteroid impacts, entombed in ice, smothered by methane, and torn apart by unfathomably powerful megavolcanoes. And we know that another global disaster is eventually headed our way...

Frances Mayes, whose enchanting #1 New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites readers back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food, there and throughout Italy. Having spent her summers in Tuscany for the past...

On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz makes an unsettling discovery. A history buff since early childhood, expensively educated at university—a history major, no less!—he’s reached middle age with a third-grader’s grasp of early America. In fact, he’s mislaid more than a...

With Virginia Woolf as a guide, the stories of eight radical 20th century women--wanderers, rebels, explorers, mentors--who made a life for themselves in spite of everything. Everything that changed in the 20th century changed more dramatically for women. Her Own Voice tells the stories of eight...

All of James A. Michener's storytelling and reportorial skills are brought to the fore in this stunning and heartbreaking examination of the events that led to the 1970 shootings at Kent State, which shook the country to the roots and had a profound impact on the anti-war movement...

A richly-detailed real-life account of ancient tribal life and the fascinating role of Ayahuasca in the heart of the Amazon. Wizard of the Upper Amazon provides an insightful depiction of a South American tribal society at the turn of the 20th century. It delves into the captivating world of the...

The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, The Revenant--basis for the award-winning motion picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio--tells the remarkable story of the worst hard-rock mining disaster in American history. The worst hard-rock mining disaster in American history began a half...

In this Christian Encounter Series biography, author Robert West explores the life of Saint Francis, a man who lived entirely devoted to God. Francis of Assisi has inspired the church for centuries. Francis took the gospel literally, following all that Jesus said and did without limit, and his...

Learn about these golf legends as they were learning to master the game on their home turf. In Grown at Glen Garden, the early friendship of Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson is shown, from their caddying days at Glen Garden Country Club to their chummy rivalry at the Masters decades later. With a peek at their family backgrounds, the story shows both the hardships and joys of growing up and learning to golf in Fort Worth, Texas, in the 1920s.

This definitive and magnificent 10-volume unabridged translation is one of the rare English translations in full of the epic. Bibek Debroy makes the Mahabharata marvellously accessible to contemporary readers. Dispute over land and kingdom may lie at the heart of this story of war...