History

War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865 (Hardcover)

By James M. McPherson

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ISBN: 9780807835883

Availability: Out of Print

Published: University of North Carolina Press - September 17th, 2012

Huzzah!  A new book by the Pulitzer-winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom, my choice for the go-to one-volume history of the Civil War.  Here he treats the naval aspect of the conflict with the same compelling narrative style as Battle Cry, including blockade runners, extraordinary battles for dominance of the crucial Mississippi River and the total game-changing introduction of ironclads.
Gary

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (Paperback)

By Stephen Greenblatt

$16.95

ISBN: 9780393343403

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Published: W. W. Norton & Company - September 4th, 2012

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A veritable intellectual historical thriller concerning the wire-thin survival into modern times of Lucretius' On the Nature of Things - an astonishingly humanist view arrived at centuries before the Enlightenment. It reads like a novel, and reminds us of how tenuous can be the survival of ideas - especially when a power structure like the Roman Church is trying to obliterate them.

Gary

Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris (Hardcover)

By Christopher Kemp

$22.50
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ISBN: 9780226430362

Published: University of Chicago Press - May 15th, 2012

Ambergris, a biliary secretion of sperm whales, is one of the most expensive substances on earth.   And though it has been used as everything from a perfume fixative to a seasoning, we still know remarkably little about it.  Kemp's quirky little book bobs through an ocean of information about this fragrant flotsam, picking over New Zealand beaches, whaling histories, seventeenth century newspapers, perfumer's manuals, and the latest marine research in order to bring us the weird, wandering story of this strange commodity.

Kim

Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall (Paperback)

By Anna Funder

$15.99

ISBN: 9780062077325

Availability: Available at Wholesaler

Published: Harper Perennial - September 20th, 2011

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Seven
years after the fall of the Wall in 1989, Funder travels to the former
East Germany to interview both the victims and the victimizers of the
world’s once most notorious police states. Originally published abroad
in 2003 and now seeing its first U.S. publication, the personal stories
she relates of courage, heartbreak, and the sometime absurdities of life
in GDR are still powerful and compelling.Dale

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (Hardcover)

By Charles C. Mann

$35.00
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ISBN: 9780307265722

Published: Knopf - August 9th, 2011

Charles Mann has done it again. Like his previous book, 1491, Mann synthesizes current historical scholarship and gives us a radically new and fascinating interpretation of the enormous, world-wide changes brought about with the European discovery of the New World, known as the Columbian Exchange.

Dale

Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 (The Pacific War Trilogy #1) (Hardcover)

By Ian W. Toll

$35.00

ISBN: 9780393068139

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Published: W. W. Norton & Company - November 14th, 2011

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Toll (author of the superb Six Frigates) starts with a horrific narrative of Pearl Harbor, goes through the savage learning curve of the Battle of the Coral Sea (this was all a new kind of warfare) and climaxes with a spectacular account of Midway.  In-depth portraits of the major players add an exciting dimension to the great naval duel.

Gary

Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild (Paperback)

By Lee Sandlin

$17.95
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ISBN: 9780307473578

Published: Vintage - October 4th, 2011

It seems everybody on a Mississippi river boat was out to cheat, swindle, outright rob or even kill you if you were unfortunate enough to be an innocent pilgrim.  It was a wild and raucous bunch who peopled the wild and roiling river, and Sandlin, in addition to painting a vivid picture of the dangerous physicality of the greatest of America's merchantile waterways, packs this flavorful history with river pirates and professional gamblers, rapscallions and adventurers, wrecks and epic Civil War engagements.  The title is apt.

Gary

Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron, and Other Tangled Lives (Paperback)

By Daisy Hay

$26.00

ISBN: 9780374532932

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Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - March 29th, 2011

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Drawing upon documents found as recently as 1991, Hay describes in deeply satisfying detail the emotional and commercial interconnectedness of a group of talented young  people, whose philosophical and political beliefs brought them together when all were well under 30. Her use of their extensive correspondence is so successful one feels one is overhearing their conversations at breakfast. The later fabrications and exaggerations of some of the principle players are stripped away, and we learn not only the real story, but the motivations for invention.

Joan

The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age (Paperback)

By Juliet Nicolson

$16.95

ISBN: 9780802145406

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Published: Grove Press - June 14th, 2011

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Those interested in World War I and its aftermath will find Juliet Nicolson’s study of the years right after the war to be enlightening, engaging and all too often disheartening.  Great Britain suffered from a lack of collective confidence, as well as having the resources to rebound and move past the horrors of the war years.  Written in concise, but vivid prose, Nicolson paints a time of haunting history.

Nathan