Jonathan Steinberg

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Pennsylvania

A Life

This riveting, New York Times bestselling biography illuminates the life of Otto von Bismarck, the statesman who unified Germany but who also embodied everything brutal and ruthless about Prussian culture.Jonathan Steinberg draws heavily on contemporary writings, allowing Bismarck's friends and foes to tell the story. What rises from these pages is a complex giant of a man: a hypochondriac with the constitution of an ox, a brutal tyrant who could easily shed tears, a convert to an extreme form of evangelical Protestantism who secularized schools and introduced civil divorce. Bismarck may have been in sheer ability the most intelligent man to direct a great state in modern times. His brilliance and insight dazzled his contemporaries. But all agreed there was also something demonic, diabolical, overwhelming, beyond human attributes, in Bismarck's personality. He was a kind of malign genius who, behind the various postures, concealed an ice-cold contempt for his fellow human beings and a drive to control and rule them. As one contemporary noted: "the Bismarck regime was a constant orgy of scorn and abuse of mankind, collectively and individually."In this comprehensive and expansive biography--a brilliant study in power--Jonathan Steinberg brings Bismarck to life, revealing the stark contrast between the "Iron Chancellor's" unmatched political skills and his profoundly flawed human character.

Bismarck

f89631db-07e2-4bb2-b254-30ed6f4f8a38-1

Joshua Foer

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

“Highly entertaining.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker “Funny, curious, erudite, and full of useful details about ancient techniques of training memory.” —The Boston Globe The blockbuster phenomenon that charts an amazing journey of the mind while revolutionizing our concept of memory An instant bestseller that is poised to become a classic, Moonwalking with Einstein recounts Joshua Foer's yearlong quest to improve his memory under the tutelage of top "mental athletes." He draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of remembering, and venerable tricks of the mentalist's trade to transform our understanding of human memory. From the United States Memory Championship to deep within the author's own mind, this is an electrifying work of journalism that reminds us that, in every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories.

Moonwalking with Einstein

0ea99146-d3de-4987-ad80-f632954bbf4d-1

Tom Reiss

Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life

A thrilling page-turner of epic proportions, Tom Reiss’s panoramic bestseller tells the true story of a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince in Nazi Germany. Lev Nussimbaum escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan and, as “Essad Bey,” became a celebrated author with the enduring novel Ali and Nino as well as an adventurer, a real-life Indiana Jones with a fatal secret. Reiss pursued Lev’s story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal–and sometimes as heartbreaking–as his subject’s life.

nbsp;

The Orientalist

a550175a-04db-4bdd-8052-80b5ef0eac37-1

Steven Hahn

Eric Foner

The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910

The era from 1830 to 1910 witnessed massive transformations in how people lived, worked, thought about themselves, and struggled to live and thrive. It also witnessed the birth of economic and political institutions that still shape our world. America's population grew more than ten-fold. The country expanded to the Pacific coast and then out into the Pacific itself. Civil warfare erupted. Three centuries of slavery ended. Native peoples were suppressed and remanded to reservations. Massive waves of immigrants from Europe and Asia arrived. From an agricultural society with a weak central government, the US became an urban and industrial society in which government assumed a greater and greater role in the framing of social and economic life.
A Nation Without Borders's signature achievement is to place this history in a wholly new light, by capturing the tensions and contradictions between nation and empire. His new interpretations include the fact that slavery was national not sectional, that Jim Crow racism initially emerged in the Northeast and Midwest, that "sectionalism" was less a fact of politics than an important political construct in the battle over slavery's future, and that the principle struggle of the period was not between the North and South but rather between the Northeast and the Mississippi Valley for control of the continent and hemisphere. Hahn's strikingly original thesis resets the familiar framework of that of a country expanding from colony. He shows how, the United States had, from its colonial origins and birth as a union, significant imperial ambitions on the continent and in the hemisphere, and that the United States only became a nation, a nation-state - as many others did - in the midst of a massive political and military struggle in the 1860s. A nation is understood to have clearly defined borders, which delineate sovereignty and belonging. Empires, though they may expand and contract, lack real borders; they are more about vectors, claims, and alliances. By 1910, as the "long" nineteenth century came to a close, the United States stood as one of the most formidable empires on the globe.


A Nation Without Borders

c4d1e4a0-c893-44ad-a8e8-77c650d6675d-1

Oliver Sacks

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Tales of Music and the Brain

Musicophilia

67de4d8b-3ffe-4a5e-94dc-5936124a68fb-1

William Rosen

Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century

In May 1315, it started to rain. It didn't stop anywhere in northern Europe until August. Next came the coldest winters in a millennium. Two separate animal epidemics killed nearly 80 percent of northern Europe's livestock. Wars between Scotland and England, France and Flanders, and two rival claimants to the rule of the Holy Roman Empire destroyed the remaining farmland. After seven years, the combination of lost harvests, warfare, and pestilence would claim six million lives - one eighth of Europe's total population. The Third Horsemantells the story of those seven years that saw one of the most astonishing catastrophes in Europe's history. It reveals the complex and interrelated forces, centuries gestating, that set the stage for the apocalyptic disaster that became known as the Great Famine. William Rosen draws connections between feudalism and agricultural economics; climatology and Viking exploration; chivalric warfare and village life, showing how a succession of impersonal traumas conspired to turn hunger into starvation. The Third Horsemanpaints rich portraits of the key actors of the period, characters such as Scotland's William Wallace, and Robert Bruce, facing off against a feckless Edward II of England whose failures serve as a colourful backdrop to changing demographics across Europe. By incorporating the most current scientific theories and economic models, Rosen demonstrates, too, the powerful implication for climate change today. A stunning story told with exceptional wit and drama by a writer whose breadth of knowledge of history and science defies category, The Third Horsemanis a reminder that history can be made by events that shift, ever so gradually, the delicate balance between life and death.

The Third Horseman

48636f1b-267c-45a8-a7f5-f4b3e5b7fd83-0

Donald T. Critchlow

From Nixon to Reagan

Republican Character examines the role of temperament, personality, character, and leadership ability in political success. Donald T. Critchlow compares the strengths and weaknesses of four key Republicans—Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan—as well as the uneasy alliances that arose between them.

Republican Character

066e045c-3d81-4929-9461-988618fb4ff8-0

Jared M. Diamond

How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

A study of the downfall of some of history's greatest civilizations discusses the Anasazi, the Maya, and the Viking colony on Greenland, tracing patterns of environmental damage, poor political choices, and other factors in their demise.

Collapse

a167d169-56dd-41e6-90da-7f625ff15ddd-1

Jourey Newell

Jourey Newell

@jourey141936

Books Listed

Following

Followers

Jonathan Steinberg

Bismarck

Joshua Foer

Moonwalking with Einstein

Tom Reiss

The Orientalist

Steven Hahn; Eric Foner

A Nation Without Borders

Oliver Sacks

Musicophilia

William Rosen

The Third Horseman

Donald T. Critchlow

Republican Character

Jared M. Diamond

Collapse

Get The App

Browse by categories

Jonathan Steinberg

Bismarck

Joshua Foer

Moonwalking with Einstein

Tom Reiss

The Orientalist

Steven Hahn; Eric Foner

A Nation Without Borders

Oliver Sacks

Musicophilia

William Rosen

The Third Horseman

Donald T. Critchlow

Republican Character

Jared M. Diamond

Collapse

Get The App