"Although war is terrible and brutal, history shows that it has been a great driver of human progress. So argues political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg in this incisive, well-researched study of the benefits to civilization derived from armed conflict. Ginsberg makes a convincing case that war selects for and promotes certain features of societies that are generally held to represent progress. These include rationality, technological and economic development,...

Ora, a middle-aged Israeli mother, is on the verge of celebrating her son Ofer's release from army service when he returns to the front for a major offensive. she sets out for a hike in the Galilee, leaving no forwarding information for the "notifiers" who might darken her door with the worst possible news. Recently estranged from her husband, Ilan, she drags along their former best friend and her former lover Avram. Avram served in the army alongside...

"On August 27, 1943, news broke in the United States that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was on the other side of the world. A closely guarded secret, she had left San Francisco aboard a military transport plane headed for the South Pacific to support and report the troops on WW2's front lines. Meanwhile, for those ten days, Americans had believed she was secluded at home. As Allied forces battled the Japanese for control of the region, Eleanor was...

"From the acclaimed author of No Man's Land and Soldier's Heart, a wide-ranging work of cultural history and criticism that reexamines the impact of post-World War II myths of the "good war.""--

"Caught in the Revolution is Helen Rappaport's masterful telling of the outbreak of the Russian Revolution through eye-witness accounts left by foreign nationals who saw the drama unfold. Between the first revolution in February 1917 and Lenin's Bolshevik coup in October, Petrograd (the former St. Petersburg) was in turmoil--felt nowhere more keenly than on the fashionable Nevsky Prospekt. There, the foreign visitors who filled hotels, clubs, bars...

A foreign correspondent traces the four-thousand-mile plank-board boat journey he took with an inexperienced childhood friend along the Nile River from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea.

A mob of starving commoners crash a decadent ball, forcing Alice to risk everything to protect the nobles, but when the commoners view Alice as the enemy, she must find a way to resolve the situation before anyone gets hurt.

"In the tradition of Redeployment, a short story collection from a decorated U.S. Navy veteran who served several combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan--a powerful depiction of life on the front lines of today's warfare. A mesmerizing debut collection that reveals what it is like to be a member of an elite special operations team, when so many missions take place behind night vision, ancient credos, and layers of secrecy. Told without a trace of bravado,...

A collection of eleven essays that explore various topics associated with the Civil War and the state of Texas including the lives of Texas women during the war, slavery, and postwar experiences of Confederate veterans.

"In The Long Shadow of War, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James M. McPherson considers why the Civil War retains such a hold on our national psyche and identity. Though the drama and tragedy of the subject, from the war's scope and size--an estimated death toll of 750,000, far more than all the rest of the country's wars combined--to the nearly mythical individuals involved--Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson--help explain why the...