Basic Books: 1466 books
by Alistair Cooke
Language: English
Release Date: August 25, 2009
Language: English
Release Date: August 25, 2009
First published in 1973, this follow-up to Alistair Cooke's acclaimed 1972 television documentary series America: A Personal History of the United States has sold almost two million copies. From the nation's discovery to modern times; from the American revolutionaries to the pioneers who forged westward;...
by Svetlana Boym
Language: English
Release Date: August 5, 2008
Language: English
Release Date: August 5, 2008
Combining personal memoir, philosophical essay, and historical analysis, Svetlana Boym explores the spaces of collective nostalgia that connect national biography and personal self-fashioning in the twenty-first century. She guides us through the ruins and construction sites of post-communist cities--St....
Bugs In The System
Insects And Their Impact On Human Affairs
Language: English
Release Date: June 18, 1996
An introduction to insect physiology, genetics and behaviour which looks at the interaction between humans and insects, and explores both the positive and negative aspects of the relationship.
The Ape And The Sushi Master
Cultural Reflections Of A Primatologist
Language: English
Release Date: August 5, 2008
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mama's Last Hug and Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, a provocative argument that apes have created their own distinctive cultures
In The Ape and the Sushi Master, eminent primatologist Frans de Waal corrects our arrogant assumption...
Matisse and Picasso
The Story of Their Rivalry and Friendship
Language: English
Release Date: August 4, 2008
Matisse and Picasso achieved extraordinary prominence during their lifetimes. They have become cultural icons, standing not only for different kinds of art but also for different ways of living. Matisse, known for his restraint and intense sense of privacy, for his decorum and discretion, created...
The Moment of Psycho
How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder
Language: English
Release Date: November 24, 2009
It was made like a television movie, and completed in less than three months. It killed off its star in forty minutes. There was no happy ending. And it offered the most violent scene to date in American film, punctuated by shrieking strings that seared the national consciousness. Nothing like Psycho...
The Long Weekend
Life in the English Country House, 1918-1939
Language: English
Release Date: May 3, 2016
From an acclaimed social and architectural historian, the tumultuous, scandalous, glitzy, and glamorous history of English country houses and high society during the interwar period
As WWI drew to a close, change reverberated through the halls of England's country homes. As the sun set slowly...
Curious
The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It
Language: English
Release Date: August 26, 2014
A fun yet provocative look at the importance of staying curious in an increasingly indifferent world
Everyone is born curious. But only some retain the habits of exploring, learning, and discovering as they grow older. Those who do so tend to be smarter, more creative, and more successful....
1920
The Year of the Six Presidents
Language: English
Release Date: April 21, 2009
The presidential election of 1920 was among history's most dramatic. Six once-and-future presidents-Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt-jockeyed for the White House. With voters choosing between Wilson's League of Nations and Harding's front-porch isolationism, the...
A Dreadful Deceit
The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama's America
Language: English
Release Date: December 10, 2013
In 1656, a planter in colonial Maryland tortured and killed one of his slaves, an Angolan man named Antonio who refused to work the fields. Over three centuries later, a Detroit labor organizer named Simon Owens watched as strikebreakers wielding bats and lead pipes beat his fellow autoworkers for...
Washington
A History of Our National City
Language: English
Release Date: October 13, 2015
On January 24, 1791, President George Washington chose the site for the young nation's capital: ten miles square, it stretched from the highest point of navigation on the Potomac River, and encompassed the ports of Georgetown and Alexandria. From the moment the federal government moved to the District...
Uncommon Grounds
The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World
Language: English
Release Date: July 9, 2019
The definitive history of the world's most popular drug
Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in ancient Abyssinia to the advent of Starbucks. Mark Pendergrast reviews the dramatic changes in coffee culture over the past decade, from the disastrous "Coffee...
by Mark Pendergrast
Language: English
Release Date: May 14, 2013
Language: English
Release Date: May 14, 2013
For God, Country and Coca-Cola is the unauthorized history of the great American soft drink and the company that makes it. From its origins as a patent medicine in Reconstruction Atlanta through its rise as the dominant consumer beverage of the American century, the story of Coke is as unique, tasty,...
The Company Town
The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills That Shaped the American Economy
Language: English
Release Date: September 7, 2010
Company town: The very phrase sounds un-American. Yet company towns are the essence of America. Hershey bars, Corning glassware, Kohler bathroom fixtures, Maytag washers, Spam—each is the signature product of a company town in which one business, for better or worse, exercises a grip over the population....