In June 1812 the still-infant United States had the audacity to declare war on the British Empire. Fought between creaking sailing ships and armies often led by bumbling generals, the ensuing conflict featured a tit-for-tat "You burned our capital, so we'll burn yours" and a legendary battle unknowingly fought after the signing of a peace treaty.

During the course of the war, the young American navy proved its mettle as the USS Constitution,

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For all who remain intrigued by the legacy of the Civil War—re-enactors, battlefield visitors, Confederate descendants and other Southerners, history fans, students of current racial conflicts, and more—this ten-state adventure is part travelogue, part social commentary and always good-humored. When prize-winning war correspondent Tony Horwitz leaves the battlefields of Bosnia and the Middle East for a peaceful corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains,...

In war-torn Asia and stricken Europe, men and women, still young but veterans of harsh experience, must reinvent their lives and expectations, and learn, from their past, to dream again. Some will fulfill their destinies, others will falter. At the center of the story, a brave and brilliant soldier find that survival and worldly achievement are not enough. His counterpart, a young girl living in occupied Japan and tending her dying brother, falls...

A "tapestry of one Baby Boomer's life and the trio of unforgettable women who have changed it"--

"We tend to think of the Cold War as a bounded conflict: a clash of two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, born out of the ashes of World War II and coming to a dramatic end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Bancroft Prize-winning scholar Odd Arne Westad argues that the Cold War must be understood as a global ideological confrontation, with early roots in the Industrial Revolution and ongoing repercussions...

Lorelie Bauer has a penchant for Sylvia Plath, and finds her life paralleling Plath's when she seeks to better understand her own mother as a parent.

"From New York Times bestselling author and economics columnist Robert Frank, a revelatory look at the power and potential of social context. As psychologists have long understood, social environments profoundly shape our behavior, sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. Less widely noted is that social influence is a two-way street: Our environments are in large part themselves a product of the choices we make. Society embraces regulations...

Call it persuading, negotiating or convincing. Ethical influence is the foundation of successful leadership, management, sales, and customer service. Robert Cialdini has spent his career systematically studying the psychology of influence. In this program he reveals what lies at the heart of his findings: the six principles of influence that form the basis of effective, persuasive appeals. These principles - reciprocation, scarcity, authority, commitment,...