For almost three decades at the end of the fifth century BC the ancient world was torn apart in a conflict that was, within its historical context, as dramatic, divisive, and destructive as the great world wars of the twentieth century. The Peloponnesian War pitted Greek against Greek: the Athenians, with their glorious empire, rich legacy of democracy and political rights, and extraordinary cultural achievement, against the militaristic, oligarchic...

With the premise that all civilizations owe their origins to war making, Keegan probes the meanings, motivations, and methods underlying war in different societies over the course of some two thousand years, from the ritualistic combat of Stone Age people to the mass destruction warfare of the present age.

Field Marshal Montgomery's battle plan for Normandy, following the D-day landings on June 6, 1944, resulted in one of the most controversial campaigns of the Second World War. Carlo D'Este's acclaimed book gives the fullest possible account of the conception and execution of Montgomery's plan, with all its problems and complexities. It brings to light information from diaries, papers, and letters that were not available in Montgomery's lifetime and...

"At the height of the Great Depression, Sam Babb, the charismatic basketball coach of tiny Oklahoma Presbyterian College, began dreaming. Like so many others, he wanted a reason to have hope. Traveling from farm to farm, he recruited talented, hardworking young women and offered them a chance at a better life: a free college education if they would come play for his basketball team, the Cardinals. Despite their fears of leaving home and the sacrifices...

Using in-depth interviews with participants and residents, Watson brilliantly captures the tottering legacy of Jim Crow in Mississippi, while vividly portraying: the chaos that brought such national figures as Martin Luther King Jr. and Pete Seeger to the state, the courageous black citizens and Northern volunteers who refused to be intimidated in their struggle for justice, and the white Mississippians who would kill to protect a dying way of life....

"Located between beautiful Big Sur and magnificent Hearst Castle, Monterey's Mother Lode is the story of gold in California's coastal mountains. Illustrated with over 100 rare and historically important photographs, Monterey's Mother Lode affors its readers a visual trip into yesterday, and into the remote Los Burros Mining District of the Santa Lucia Mountains, bordering the Pacific Ocean, and boasting the first recorded history of gold in Monterey...

Four centuries ago, a group of men--led by a one-armed ex-pirate, an epileptic aristocrat, a reprobate cleric and a government spy--left London aboard a fleet of three ships to start a new life in America. They arrived in Virginia in the spring of 1607 and set about trying to create a settlement on a tiny island in the James River. Despite their shortcomings, and against the odds, they built Jamestown, a ramshackle outpost that laid the foundations...

The decade that began with vibrant optimism and the Summer of Love was shattered in the late 1960s amidst riots, assassinations, and a war that would not end. The Rolling Stones emerged as a prominent voice of this new era and became the band which unwittingly played a leading role in the fall of the decade, coming to a horrific close with the Hells Angels at the Altamont music festival.

A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens's great historical novel, set against the violent upheaval of the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author's novels, A Tale...