books tagged “history”

It hardly seems fair that so many great doctors are also great writers. Perhaps it's qualities like sensitivity, craft, and dedication that keep physicians like Oliver Sacks in hospitals all day and at writing desks all night; if nothing else, these qualities shine in books like Awakenings. This powerful set of case histories rises above its pathological foundation to find new literary territory, a medical-spiritual synthesis equally stimulating for the mind and the soul. It's no wonder Hollywood producers chose to turn it into a feature film--anyone can see the universal human struggle against bondage and despair in these pages.

The sleeping-sickness epidemic of 1918 caused hundreds of survivors to slip into a bizarre rigid paralysis with similarities to advanced Parkinson's disease. These patients, only occasionally able to communicate or move, were nearly all institutionalized for life, their ranks increasing every now and then with similarly afflicted men and women. Sacks came to work at a long-term care facility shortly before the first exciting results with L-dopa and Parkinson's in the late 1960s; his patients soon embarked on dramatic, difficult recoveries from up to 50 years of torpor. He documents their spiritual and medical obstacles with great care to portray their individual personalities, long suppressed but finally released. Though many great doctors are also great writers, few can compare with Oliver Sacks for expressing the relation of medicine to the human spirit. --Rob Lightner [via]

Stories of famously eccentric Princetonians abound--such as that of chemist Hubert Alyea, the model for The Absent-Minded Professor, or Ralph Nader, said to have had his own key to the library as an undergraduate. Or the "Phantom of Fine Hall," a figure many students had seen shuffling around the corridors of the math and physics building wearing purple sneakers and writing numerology treatises on the blackboards. The Phantom was John Nash, one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his generation, who had spiraled into schizophrenia in the 1950s. His most important work had been in game theory, which by the 1980s was underpinning a large part of economics. When the Nobel Prize committee began debating a prize for game theory, Nash's name inevitably came up--only to be dismissed, since the prize clearly could not go to a madman. But in 1994 Nash, in remission from schizophrenia, shared the Nobel Prize in economics for work done some 45 years previously.

Economist and journalist Sylvia Nasar has written a biography of Nash that looks at all sides of his life. She gives an intelligent, understandable exposition of his mathematical ideas and a picture of schizophrenia that is evocative but decidedly unromantic. Her story of the machinations behind Nash's Nobel is fascinating and one of very few such accounts available in print (the CIA could learn a thing or two from the Nobel committees). This highly recommended book is indeed "a story about the mystery of the human mind, in three acts: genius, madness, reawakening." --Mary Ellen Curtin [via]

Stories of famously eccentric Princetonians abound--such as that of chemist Hubert Alyea, the model for The Absent-Minded Professor, or Ralph Nader, said to have had his own key to the library as an undergraduate. Or the "Phantom of Fine Hall," a figure many students had seen shuffling around the corridors of the math and physics building wearing purple sneakers and writing numerology treatises on the blackboards. The Phantom was John Nash, one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his generation, who had spiraled into schizophrenia in the 1950s. His most important work had been in game theory, which by the 1980s was underpinning a large part of economics. When the Nobel Prize committee began debating a prize for game theory, Nash's name inevitably came up--only to be dismissed, since the prize clearly could not go to a madman. But in 1994 Nash, in remission from schizophrenia, shared the Nobel Prize in economics for work done some 45 years previously.

Economist and journalist Sylvia Nasar has written a biography of Nash that looks at all sides of his life. She gives an intelligent, understandable exposition of his mathematical ideas and a picture of schizophrenia that is evocative but decidedly unromantic. Her story of the machinations behind Nash's Nobel is fascinating and one of very few such accounts available in print (the CIA could learn a thing or two from the Nobel committees). This highly recommended book is indeed "a story about the mystery of the human mind, in three acts: genius, madness, reawakening." --Mary Ellen Curtin [via]

It's Friday night and you're on a red-eye to the city of sin. Strapped to your chest is half a million dollars; in your overnight bag is another twenty-five thousand in blackjack chips; and your wallet holds ten fake IDs. As soon as you land in Las Vegas, you are positive you are being investigated and followed. To top it all off, the IRS is auditing you, someone has been going through your mail -- and you have a multivariable calculus exam on Monday morning. Welcome to the world of an exclusive group of audacious MIT math geniuses who legally took the casinos for over three million dollars -- while still finding time for college keg parties, football games, and final exams.

In the midst of the go-go eighties and nineties, a group of overachieving, anarchistic MIT students joined a decades-old underground blackjack club dedicated to counting cards and beating the system at major casinos around the world. While their classmates were working long hours in labs and libraries, the blackjack team traveled weekly to Las Vegas and other glamorous gambling locales, with hundreds of thousands of dollars duct-taped to their bodies. Underwritten by shady investors they would never meet, these kids bet fifty thousand dollars a hand, enjoyed VIP suites and other upscale treats, and partied with showgirls and celebrities.

Handpicked by an eccentric mastermind -- a former MIT professor and an obsessive player who had developed a unique system of verbal cues, body signals, and role-playing -- this one ring of card savants earned more than three million dollars from corporate Vegas, making them the object of the casinos' wrath and eventually targets of revenge. Here is their inside story, revealing their secrets for the first time.

Master storyteller Ben Mezrich takes you from the ivory towers of academia to the Technicolor world of Las Vegas, where anything can happen -- and often does. [via]

Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe....They forget that in time of danger, in the face of the enemy, they must trust and confide in each other, or perish....They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the enemy. "That, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary. An enemy was just a friend we hadn't done enough for yet. Or perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, or an oversight on our part -- something that we could correct.... "Our first task is therefore to try to grasp what the concept of the enemy really means. The enemy is someone who is willing to die in order to kill you. And while it is true that the enemy always hates us for a reason, it is his reason, and not ours." So begins Civilization and Its Enemies, an extraordinary tour de force by America's "reigning philosopher of 9/11," Lee Harris. What Francis Fukuyama did for the end of the Cold War, Lee Harris has now done for the next great conflict: the war between the civilized world and the international terrorists who wish to destroy it. Each major turning point in our history has produced one great thinker who has been able to step back from petty disagreements and see the bigger picture -- and Lee Harris has emerged as that man for our time. He is the one who has helped make sense of the terrorists' fantasies and who forces us most strongly to confront the fact that our enemy -- for the first time in centuries -- refuses to play by any of our rules, or to think in any of our categories. We are all naturally reluctant to face a true enemy. [via]

D-Day, the largest amphibious invasion in history, took place on June 6, 1944. The subsequent battle of Normandy involved over a million men from America, Canada, Britain, France, Poland, and Germany, and helped seal the fate of Hitler¨s Third Reich. This book, published to celebrate the 60th anniversary of D-Day, is a graphic account of the planning and execution of Operation Overlord, as well as the campaign that effectively destroyed the German forces in France and opened the way for the Allied advance to Holland, Belgium, and into Germany itself.Written by one of Britain¨s best-known and respected military historians, Professor Richard Holmes, and including a wealth of firsthand accounts, The D-Day Experience contains 30 facsimile items of D-Day memorabilia integrated into the pages of the book. The reader can relive this momentous period of 20th century history by holding and examining maps, diaries, letters, sketches, secret memos and reports, posters, and labels that up until now have remained filed or exhibited in the Imperial War Museum and other North American archives. In addition, the accompanying CD contains 60 minutes of firsthand veteran accounts from American, Canadian, and British troops. [via]

It was not long after the first Japanese bombs fell on the American naval ships at Pearl Harbor that conspiracy theories began to circulate, charging that Franklin Roosevelt and his chief military advisors knew of the impending attack well in advance. Robert Stinnett, who served in the U.S. Navy with distinction during World War II, examines recently declassified American documents and concludes that, far more than merely knowing of the Japanese plan to bomb Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt deliberately steered Japan into war with America.

Stinnett's argument draws on both circumstantial evidence--the fact, for example, that in September 1940 Roosevelt signed into law a measure providing for a two-ocean navy that would number 100 aircraft carriers--and, more importantly, on American governmental documents that offer apparently incontrovertible proof that Roosevelt knowingly sacrificed American lives in order to enter the war on the side of England. Although obviously troubled by his discovery of a systematic plan of deception on the part of the American government, Stinnett does not take deep issue with its outcome. Roosevelt, he writes, faced powerful opposition from isolationist forces, and, against them, the Pearl Harbor attack was "something that had to be endured in order to stop a greater evil--the Nazi invaders in Europe who had begun the Holocaust and were poised to invade England." Sure to excite discussion, Stinnett's book offers what may be the final word on the terrible matter of Pearl Harbor. --Gregory McNamee [via]

Foreign-affairs journalist William Shawcross travels around the world--Bosnia, Baghdad, and elsewhere--to paint a messy portrait of the post-cold-war world. Deliver Us from Evil is very much an on-the-ground book, full of reportage and descriptions of world leaders such as UN chief Kofi Annan. It includes a strong point of view: the dewy-eyed, do-gooder mentality that drives so much contemporary international relations is, as far as Shawcross is concerned, deeply wrongheaded. Peacekeeping missions often find that there's no peace to keep, and expectations of what they can accomplish soar far too high. "Today 'humanitarianism' often rules. It becomes a sop to international concern, and then it can be dangerous," writes Shawcross. Coupled with a world of instant media, where CNN broadcasts live from the killing fields, humanitarianism fuels a strong desire to have immediate reconciliation between warring factions. But it's a delusional goal, says Shawcross, pointing to the American Civil War and how long (even after Appomattox) it took North and South to reconcile fully. There's no reason to think other torn nations will respond more quickly. Peacekeeping missions often promise a heaven on earth they cannot deliver. "In a more religious time it was only God whom we asked to deliver us from evil," concludes Shawcross. "Now we call upon our own man-made institutions for such deliverance. That is sometimes to ask for miracles." --John J. Miller [via]

Though inarguably revolutionary, Charles Darwin's theories of evolution and natural selection had many intellectual forebears, some of them little known. One was Mary Anning, a young Dorset woman who, in the early 19th century, turned to "fossiling" to earn a living, supplying private collectors and museums with the curiosities she found in the chalk cliffs--and who knew far more about comparative anatomy than many of the academics of her time. Anning's identification of unknown dinosaur species and explanations of curiosities such as the ichthyosaurus's kinked tail provided grist for contemporary scientists, who, arguing against theological orthodoxy, sought to extend the chronology of life far into the past--and who, in the bargain, published Anning's work as their own even as they professed scorn for amateurs.

In this lucid and lively book, Christopher McGowan, a Canadian zoologist, examines the contributions to 19th-century science of Anning and other self-taught fossil-hunters, from difficult eccentrics like Thomas Hawkins to superb scholars like Richard Owen, all of whom had to battle plenty of orthodoxies in their status-conscious time. They succeeded admirably, McGowan suggests, and they should provide inspiration for other amateurs in science. For, he writes, "the future for paleontological discoveries looks very bright ... [and] many of the most important finds will be made by those who are not employed as paleontologists." --Gregory McNamee [via]

'Among the finest books ever written about Dublin' Dermot Bolger, 'The Sunday Tribune' 'This book will long stand as the definitive social history of Ireland's gulags, where the poor were herded together in conditions worse than animals, and will hopefully serve as further inspiration to those who still campaign for decent housing for all citizens.' Joe Duffy, 'The Sunday Press' Other books by Kevin C Kearns Dublin Voices Stoneybatter Streets Broad and Narrow. [via]

All the best armchair travellers are sceptics. Those of the fourteenth century were no exception: for them, there were lies, damned lies, and Ibn Battutah's India. Born in 1304, Ibn Battutah left his native Tangier as a young scholar of law. He returned nearly thirty years later having visited most of the known world between Morocco and China, the Prince of Travellers for some, a blatant Munchausen for most. It was India that stretched his readers' credulity beyond the limit. In his highly acclaimed Travels with a Tangerine, Tim Mackintosh-Smith tailed the Moroccan around the old Islamic world. Now he traces in situ the dizzy ladders and terrifying snakes of Ibn Battutah's Indian career as a judge and a hermit, courtier and prisoner, ambassador and castaway. From the plains of Hindustan to the plateaux of the Deccan and the lost ports of Malabar, sleuth-work, scholarship and luck lead him through the incredible memories of a man who died ten lifetimes ago. On the way, he reveals an India far off the beaten path of Taj and Raj, where a dead Muslim poses as a Hindu deity, Jesus pops up in the pulpit of a Mosque, and the rotten tooth of a mad sultan is revered as a saint.Ibn Battutah left India on a snake, stripped to his underpants by pirates; but he took away a treasure of tales as rich as any in the history of travel. Back home they said the treasure was a fake. Mackintosh-Smith proves the sceptics wrong. India is a jewel in the Prince of Travellers' turban. Here it is, glittering, grotesque but genuine, a fitting ornament for his 700th birthday. [via]

T.H. Huxley (1825-1895) - "Darwin's bulldog" - led a far more fascinating and outgoing life than the reclusive Darwin. He did battle with God and Gladstone, sat on royal commissions and campaigned for elementary education. He carried Darwin's fight to the public and outraged the old order with his talk of the material basis of life. It was a life lived at high speed and to the full, embracing all the Victorian hopes and fears. Desperately trying to scratch a living in his young days, he suffered mental collapses as he failed to bring his fiancee over from Sydney (he raised the cash after four years). The author of this book uses the life of Huxley to illustrate and illuminate the second - and far more turbulent - half of the 19th century. Adrian Desmond is the author of "Darwin" which won the James Tait Black Prize in Britain, the Comisso Prize in Italy and the Watson Davis Prize in America. [via]

If Vietnam was the first television war, the Civil War was the first to use mass-produced battlefield sketches and drawings as adjuncts to news reports, filling the pages of publications such as Harper's and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly. One illustrator, a Union private named Robert Sneden, had plenty of opportunities to practice his art at close range, turning out nearly a thousand sketches, maps, and plans of the great battles in which he participated.

Images from the Storm, the follow-on from last year's bestselling Eye of the Storm, gathers more than 300 of those images that Sneden made of clashes at Second Manassas, Malvern Hill, Antietam, Yorktown and others. Some of the images are panoramic, capturing miles-long lines of infantry and cities under siege; others depict smaller scenes of war, such as dancing "contraband," or freed slaves, and the graves of the fallen. Of particular interest to historians are Sneden's drawings of the Confederate prison camps at Richmond and, notoriously, Andersonville, where he spent much of the year 1864 after he was captured by John Singleton Mosby's cavalry at Brandy Station, Virginia. One of those images became nationally known after the war, note the book's editors, accompanying an account of the war crimes trial and subsequent execution of the Andersonville camp commander.

These works, one scholar has noted, constitute "the single most important collection of Civil War art to be discovered in this century." Students of that conflict will find this critical edition to be of much interest and use as a companion to other accounts. --Gregory McNamee [via]

Iron Tears examines the Revolutionary War primarily from the perspective of British politicians, soldiers, citizens, and the royal court of King George III. In this enjoyable and enlightening book, American historian Stanley Weintraub looks at myopic King George and his ambition to hold the colonies at any price, discusses how antiwar opposition in Parliament gradually gained momentum, and studies the sentiments of the general population who were forced to pay heavy taxes to support the conflict, causing resentment and, in 1780, a riot. Despite such rumblings all around him, the insulated king failed to realize how much the situation in far-off America affected domestic issues in England and was shocked enough when he lost America that he considered abdicating his throne. Most British citizens did not take it nearly as hard; many, in fact, welcomed the chance to get back to business with the Americans, feeling that commerce had been interrupted long enough by an expensive and unnecessary war.

Weintraub also covers the battles on the other side of the Atlantic and offers profiles of the major players, particularly George Washington, who became a folk hero in Britain, earning the admiration of even those ardently against the American cause. The consequences of Britain's hiring of thousands of foreign mercenaries, some of which ended up deserting and settling permanently in America, are also discussed, along with the issue of why loyalists in the colonies failed to join the redcoats in significant numbers. Most importantly, in detailing the strategic and tactical mistakes made by Britain, the author highlights the various circumstances that greatly favored the rebellious colonies from the beginning, including the sheer vastness of America and the maddening logistical difficulties involved in sending soldiers, provisions, and messages across the ocean. Weintraub makes a compelling case that the mighty British Empire never really had a chance. --Shawn Carkonen [via]

A moving cultural biography of abolitionist martyr John Brown, by one of the most important African-American intellectuals of the twentieth century.

In the history of slavery and its legacy, John Brown looms large as a hero whose deeds partly precipitated the Civil War. As Frederick Douglass wrote: "When John Brown stretched forth his arm ... the clash of arms was at hand." DuBois's biography brings Brown stirringly to life and is a neglected classic. [via]

In the tradition of Garry Wills's modern classic Lincoln at Gettysburg, Ronald C. White Jr. offers a close reading of the speech Abraham Lincoln gave in 1865 at his second inauguration and declares it the man's finest and most important effort. It contains one of Lincoln's best-known lines ("With malice toward none; with charity for all"), which White admires as "a timeless promise of reconciliation." At the same time, White reminds readers that rather than yanking such brilliant rhetorical nuggets from their context, "We need to understand Lincoln's strategy for the complete speech." He provides this in some detail, describing the political environment in which Lincoln found himself, having recently won a presidential election that he nearly lost and also seeing the Confederacy begin to collapse for good. It was not a long speech, containing only 701 words of mostly one syllable each and requiring merely six or seven minutes to deliver, compared to about 35 minutes for the inaugural address he had given four years earlier. White calls these words Lincoln's "last will and testament to America." John Wilkes Booth, who attended the inaugural ceremony, would murder him the next month. Lincoln buffs in particular will appreciate this book, as will fans of Jay Winik's April 1865. --John Miller [via]

Sara Crewe, a pupil at Miss Minchin's London school, is left in poverty when her father dies but is later rescued by a mysterious benefactor. [via]

Bob Woodward called his biography of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan Maestro for two reasons. First, Greenspan is a musician. He started out as a Julliard-trained jazz sax man. "He wasn't a good improviser," Woodward reports. And while the other guys got stoned all night, Greenspan "read economics and business books and eventually became the band's bookkeeper." He also cultivated powerful pals, like Ayn Rand, whose coterie dubbed the dour young man "The Undertaker."

More profoundly, Greenspan is a maestro, a conductor, exquisitely attuned to every instrument in the political and economic orchestra. He rules by consensus, but with a firm hand and notoriously inscrutable words. Marvelously, Woodward relates that Greenspan had to propose twice to his wife, the violinist-turned-TV news star Andrea Mitchell, before she understood: "His verbal obscurity and caution were so ingrained that Mitchell didn't even know that he had asked her to marry him." Woodward gives us the inside story of what Greenspan really thinks and how he outmaneuvered the most ruthless politicians on earth in some of the hairiest times imaginable, from the 1987 stock market crash to the 1994-95 Mexican crisis to the stomach-churning turn of the century. It turns out that for all his awesome knowledge of monetary minutiae, the Fed chief literally relies on "a pain in the pit of my stomach" to make decisions. "At times, he found his body sensed danger before his head," writes Woodward. The Fed chief also adapts Einstein's technique to economics, hunting for discrepancies as keys to deeper theories. Einstein made breakthroughs out of bent light; Greenspan deduced productivity gains that government statisticians had overlooked for years. (The gains appeared when Greenspan made the statisticians calculate productivity by business sector, the way it's done in the real world.)

Woodward's prose is cool and rational, not exuberant. But if you're into economics and politics, you'll find a rich gossip trove here. Who knew Reagan had a draft of a presidential order to shut down Wall Street trading at hand in 1987? Scary! Reading Maestro is better than sitting with Greenspan in his famous tub as he charts your future--it's like being right there inside his head. --Tim Appelo [via]

Mapping Asia presents an authoritative selection of the most important antique maps of Asia and the Middle East produced from the time of Alexander the Great to the early nineteenth century, by cartographers from England, France, Portugal, Holland, Turkey, Italy, and China. A fascinating visual chronicle of the maps and their makers, this book explores the history of Europe's discovery of lands to the east, from Constantinople to present-day Alaska. It tells the stories of the thriving trade that linked east and west beginning with the ancient Silk Road, the explorers - such as Magellan and Sir Francis Drake - who continually searched for new lands and routes to reach the east beginning in the fifteenth century, and the indigenous peoples who struggled to retain their autonomy in the face of European missionary activity and influence. Mapping Asia reproduces in full color 80 beautifully rendered and rare maps, more than 40 of which have never been published for the general public. Each map is accompanied by an accessible essay that provides extensive background on the mapmaker and how the map was originally produced, and describes the geography, sites, and details on the map. Most [via]

Middle East Illusions offers chapters written by Chomsky just before the 2000 Palestinian Intifada and up through October 2002, when 9-11 and a prospective U.S. military campaign against Iraq add new pressures to age-old conflicts. The book also includes the full text of Chomsky's earlier book, Peace in the Middle East? Reflections on Justice and Nationhood, written during the crucial period spanning the Six-Day and 1973 wars, which continue to define and deeply influence events in the Middle East today. [via]

What are the roots of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and how has it been influenced by the United States? Why has the U.S.-brokered "peace process" repeatedly failed to deliver peace? What are the prospects for a just resolution? What interests underlie current U.S. strategic doctrines in the Middle East, especially in its redeclared "war on terrorism" after 9-11, and how do we look beyond them to find more peaceful and viable alternatives?

These are among the current and long-standing questions Noam Chomsky takes up in his newest book. Middle East Illusions presents recent chapters written by the author about the myths behind the peace process, the second Palestinian Intifada (which began in September 2000 and continues today in defiance of Israeli repression), and the Bush administration's response to the September 11 attacks on the United States, including its drive toward another war with Iraq.

Middle East Illusions also includes the full text of Chomsky's earlier book, Peace in the Middle East? Reflections on Justice and Nationhood, written during the crucial period spanning the Six-Day and 1973 wars, events that continue to define and deeply influence the world today. It therefore presents in-depth analysis covering several decades, making it one of the richest of any analysis published about the region's geopolitics.

Noam Chomsky is recognized internationally for his critical analysis of the Middle East. His thoroughly documented research draws on an immense range of sources, including Hebrew texts rarely discussed in the United States, declassified government planning documents, and other sources all too often overlooked in discussions of the U.S. role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. [via]

What really happened in the Marabar caves? This is the mystery at the heart of E.M. Forster's 1924 novel, A Passage to India, the puzzle that sets in motion events highlighting an even larger question: Can an Englishman and an Indian be friends?

"It is impossible here," an Indian character tells his friend, Dr. Aziz, early in the novel.

"They come out intending to be gentlemen, and are told it will not do.... Why, I remember when Turton came out first. It was in another part of the Province. You fellows will not believe me, but I have driven with Turton in his carriage--Turton! Oh yes, we were once quite intimate. He has shown me his stamp collection.

"He would expect you to steal it now. Turton! But red-nosed boy will be far worse than Turton!

"I do not think so. They all become exactly the same, not worse, not better. I give any Englishman two years, be he Turton or Burton. It is only the difference of a letter. And I give any Englishwoman six months. All are exactly alike."

"Why, the kindest thing one can do to a native is to let him die," said Mrs. Callendar.
"How if he went to heaven?" asked Mrs. Moore, with a gentle but crooked smile.
"He can go where he likes as long as he doesn't come near me. They give me the creeps."

Arguably Forster's greatest novel, A Passage to India limns a troubling portrait of colonialism at its worst, and is remarkable for the complexity of its characters. Here the personal becomes the political and in the breach between Aziz and his English "friends," Forster foreshadows the eventual end of the Raj. --Alix Wilber [via]

The George W. Bush White House, as described by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, is a world out of kilter. Policy decisions are determined not by careful weighing of an issue's complexities; rather, they're dictated by a cabal of ideologues and political advisors operating outside the view of top cabinet officials. The President is not a fully engaged administrator but an enigma who is, at best, guarded and poker-faced but at worst, uncurious, unintelligent, and a puppet of larger forces. O'Neill provided extensive documentation to journalist and author Suskind, including schedules with 7,630 entries and a set of 19,000 documents that featured memoranda to the President, thank-you notes, meeting minutes, and voluminous reports. The result, The Price of Loyalty, is a gripping look inside the meeting rooms, the in-boxes, and the minds of a famously guarded administration. Much of the book, as one might expect from the story of a Treasury Secretary, revolves around economics, but even those not normally enthused by tax code intricacies will be fascinated by the rapid-fire intellects of O'Neill and Fed chairman Alan Greenspan as they gather for regular power breakfasts. A good deal of the book is about the things that O'Neill never figures out. He knows there's something creepy going on with the administration's power structure, but he's never inside enough to know quite what it is. But while those sections are intriguing, other passages are simply revelatory: O'Neill asserts that Saddam Hussein was targeted for removal not in the 9/11 aftermath but soon after Bush took office. Paul O'Neill makes for an interesting protagonist. A vaunted economist from the days of Nixon and Ford, he returns to a Washington that's immeasurably more cutthroat. And while he appears almost naïvely academic initially, he emerges as someone determined to speak his mind even when it becomes apparent that such an approach spells his political doom. --John Moe [via]

In 1961 Georges Duby wrote what is still the best overview of European medieval rural history to date. Originally published in French and first translated into English in 1968, Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West brings together local research on the countryside and its economic life and distills from it lessons that apply much more widely. With this edition, the University of Pennsylvania Press brings this modern classic back into print.

For a generation, Muslim extremists have targeted Americans in an escalation of terror that culminated in the September 11 attacks. Our shared confusion -- Who are the attackers? Why are we targets? -- is cleared away in a book as dramatic as it is authoritative.

Updated with new chapters on Afghanistan and the the broader Islamic movement, Sacred Rage combines Robin Wright's extraordinary reportage on the Islamic world with an historian's grasp of context to explain the roots, the motives, and the goals of the Islamic resurgence. Wright talked to terrorists, militant religious leaders, and fighters from Beirut to Islamabad and Kabul. Their voices of rage reverberate here -- right up to the attacks in New York and Washington.

Across continents extends a challenge we fail to understand at our peril. Sacred Rage now casts light on the war being fought in the shadows. [via]

The fables and legends of "Aladdin" and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", taken from the "Arabian Nights". In these two tales filled with mystery, intrigue and excitement, Aladdin and Ali Baba each make magical discoveries. [via]

A valuable sourcebook for costume designers, dressmakers and those involved in historical reenactments, this book contains all the information you need to create authentic clothes from the Tudor period. Computer-generated, historically accurate patterns enable you to make a wide range of garments, such as doublets, hose, bodices, skirts, hats and headdresses -- even underwear. There are also plenty of ideas for decoration and embellishment such as ruffs, cuffs, collars, embroidery and other surface decoration. The full range of Tudor society is represented, including lower- and middle-class clothing as well as the more sumptuous costumes from the courts of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. There is also information on how to store and look after your finished clothing. In addition to the patterns, there are detailed drawings of each costume and information about historical context, including original paintings and source material. [via]

women warlords is the first book to reveal the reality of female milirary leadership in ancient and medieval warfare. [via]

Odyssey, The: The World's Great Classics, by Homer; tr. by S.H. Butcher and Andrew Lang [via]