After years of filing dispatches from foreign war zones, Tony Horwitz comes home to the Blue Ridge Mountains only to be awakened by the crackle of musket fire.

Explores the subtle, secret influences that affect the decisions we make--from what we buy, to the careers we choose, to what we eat. You think that your choices and behaviors are driven by your individual, personal tastes, and opinions. Our own personal thoughts and opinions is patently obvious. Right? Wrong. Other people's behavior has a huge influence on everything we do, from the mundane to the momentous. Berger integrates research and thinking...

As the new age of the Renaissance began to flower, Hans Holbein the Younger, born in 1497 and at first apprenticed to his father, discovered his vocation - portrait painting. His picture of the most famous scholar of his age, Erasmus of Rotterdam, reveals the complexity of his subject's character. Erasmus introduced him to Sir Thomas More, through whom Holbein came to know, and paint, other members of Henry VIII's court. The new patrons of the time,...

In The Book of Not, Dangarembga reintroduces a lot of her old characters, including Tambu's detestable mother, her misogynistic uncle, her bitter aunt, and her intelligent and ever-questioning cousin Nyasha. It is the family we have all wanted to run away from at some point in time. For all connoisseurs of African literature, The Book of Not is an important new read. The story of Tambu surprises with its poignant commentary on a still painful Zimbabwean...

"We meant well to the Americans -- just to punish them with a few bloody noses, and then to make laws for the happiness of both countries," said George III. The ensuing uprising led to the creation of the United States -- this extraordinary country, this amalgam of people from every corner of the earth. Robert Harvey, whose most recent book Liberators cast a new light on the struggle against colonialism in South America, challenges many conventional...

Karen Armstrong, bestselling author of A History of God, skillfully narrates this history of the Crusades with a view toward their profound and continuing in-fluence. In 1095 Pope Urban II summoned Christian warriors to take up the cross and reconquer the Holy Land. Thus began the holy wars that would focus the power of Europe against a common enemy and become the stuff of romantic legend. In reality the Crusades were a series of rabidly savage conflicts...

Enjoying a vacation at a theme resort where employees and guests dress like characters from Jane Austen's novels, Charlotte wonders if she has stumbled on a murder scene when her hosts behave suspiciously.

"In her writing for Harper's, the London Review of Books, The New Yorker, and elsewhere, Lauren Oyler has emerged as one of the most trenchant and influential critics of her generation, a talent whose judgments on works of literature--whether celebratory or scarily harsh--have become notorious. But what is the significance of being a critic and consumer of media in today's fraught environment? How do we understand ourselves, and each other, as space...