"The historians of Ancient Greece were pioneers of a new literary craft, and their work stands among the most enduring and important legacies of the Western world and the foundation of a major discipline. This highly readable edition includes key selections from Herodotus--often called the "father of history"--Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch, whose biographies drew on primary sources since lost to history. It collects their most popular, and most...

From acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot, a searingly smart and bitingly hilarious retelling of American history that corrects the record and showcases the perspectives and experiences of Black Americans. America's backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory.

"Five hundred years ago, in November 1519, Hernando Cortés walked along a causeway leading to the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with Moctezuma. That story--and the story of what happened afterwards--has been told many times, but always from the point of view of the Europeans. After all, we have been taught, it was the Europeans who held the pens. But the Native Americans were more intrigued by the Roman alphabet than the Spaniards...

When Deborah Lipstadt speaks out against Holocaust denier David Irving over his falsification of history, she discovers that the stakes are higher than ever in the battle for historical truth. Now faced with a libel lawsuit in British court, Lipstadt and her attorney have the heavy burden of proving that the Holocaust actually happened, in a riveting legal fight with stunning consequences.

In The Abyss, Max Hastings turns his focus to one of the most terrifying events of the mid-twentieth century-the thirteen days in October 1962 when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war. Hastings looks at the conflict with fresh eyes, focusing on the people at the heart of the crisis-America President John F. Kennedy, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, and a host of their advisors. Combining in-depth...

Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein's three-part, six-hour documentary series examines how the American people and leaders responded to one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of the twentieth century, and how this catastrophe challenged America's identity as a nation of immigrants and the very ideals of democracy. The U.S. and the Holocaust examines America's response to one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the twentieth century....