"A personal, spirited, and concise chronological timeline spanning from Biblical times to today that explores one of the most fascinating countries in the world--Israel"-- While everyone seems to have a strong opinion about Israel, how many people actually know the facts? Tishby creates an accessible and dynamic portrait of a tiny country of outsized relevance. Through bite-sized chunks of history and deeply personal stories, she chronicles her homeland's...

"In Assyria, historian Eckart Frahm tells the epic story of one of the ancient world's most accomplished civilizations, the Assyrian Empire. Tracing its origins to a minor city state in present-day Iraq, Assyria at its height, around 660 BCE, stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf, the first empire the world had seen. Breath-taking, belligerent conquest -- epitomized in the motto of the seventh-century king Esarhaddon, "Before me,...

"As troops pull out of Afghanistan at the end of America's longest war, The Long War uncovers the failures at the start that set the scene for this prolonged conflict. Three American presidents tried to defeat the Taliban--sending 150,000 international troops at the peak and spending a trillion dollars. But early policy mistakes that allowed Osama bin Laden to escape made the task far harder. Deceived by easy victories, they backed ruthless corrupt...

"Korea is one of the last divided countries in the world. Twins born of the Cold War, one is vilified as an isolated, impoverished, time-warped state with an abysmal human rights record and a reclusive leader who perennially threatens global security with his clandestine nuclear weapons program. The other is lauded as a thriving democratic and capitalist state with the thirteenth largest economy in the world and a model that developing countries should...

"A longtime American foreign policy insider's biting and definitive reckoning with the high cost of this country's ambitious meddling in the Middle East-and its bitter end The culmination of almost 40 years of expertise and insider policy access, Grand Delusion is Steven Simon's tour de force, offering a comprehensive yet analytical tour of U.S. involvement in the Middle East. Simon begins with the Reagan administration, when the Middle East shifted...

"What is it like to live in or visit Japan? What makes Japan's culture unique? Explore the geography, traditions, and daily lives of the Japanese people"--

"As tensions over Taiwan escalate, the United States and China stand on the brink of a catastrophic war. Resolving the impasse demands we understand how it began. In 1943, America declared that Japanese-held Taiwan would return to China at the conclusion of World War II. The Chinese civil war led to a change of plans. The Communist Party came to power in China and the defeated Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan, where he was afforded...

"From the acclaimed author of India After Gandhi: a group biography of seven remarkable men and women who arrived in India during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in order to join the freedom movement and struggle for a country and people other than their own"-- Guha explores the fight for Indian independence by focusing on foreigners to India who across the late 19th to late 20th century arrived to join the freedom movement fighting...

Can trauma be inherited? It is this question that sets Alex Halberstadt off on a quest to name and acknowledge a legacy of family trauma, and to end a century-old cycle of estrangement. His search takes him across the troubled, enigmatic land of his birth. In Ukraine he tracks down his paternal grandfather--most likely the last living bodyguard of Joseph Stalin--to reckon with the ways in which decades of Soviet totalitarianism shaped three generations...

"The first true people's history of modern India, told through a seven year, 9,000 mile journey across its many contested borders. Sharing borders with six countries and spanning a geography that extends from Pakistan to Myanmar, India is the world's largest democracy and second most populous country. Yet most of us don't understand it, or the violent history still playing out there. In fact, India as we know it didn't exist until the map of the subcontinent...