Basic Books: 1466 books

"[A] gem of a book... enlivened by incisive analysis, exquisite detail and an elegant and witty style." --Alison Weir The Wars of the Roses, which tore apart the ruling Plantagenet family in fifteenth-century England, was truly a domestic drama, as fraught and intimate as any family...

During World War II, prisoners of war were required by the Geneva Conventions to be treated according to established rules. But in late 1944, when a large number of Americans were captured or surrendered during the Battle of the Bulge and elsewhere, their captors had different plans. Those who were...

The Fighting First recounts the untold story of the 1st Infantry Division's role in the invasion of France at Normandy. Using primary sources, official records, interviews, and unpublished memoirs by the veterans themselves, Flint Whitlock has crafted a riveting, gut-wrenching, personal story of courage...

"A dazzling biography." --Boston Globe At times, even his admirers seemed unsure of what to do with General Douglas MacArthur. Imperious, headstrong, and vain, MacArthur matched an undeniable military genius with a massive ego and a rebellious streak that often seemed to destine him...

The period between 1630 and 1660 was one of the most tumultuous in Western history. These three decades witnessed the birth of New England and, in the mother country, a chaotic civil war that rent the very fabric of English social, political, and religious life. At the center of this turbulent time...

The First World War was the overwhelming disaster from which everything else in the twentieth century stemmed. Fourteen million combatants died, four empires were destroyed, and even the victors' empires were fatally damaged. World War I took humanity from the nineteenth century forcibly into the...

David Stevenson's widely acclaimed history of World War I changes forever our understanding of that pivotal conflict. Countering the commonplace assumption that politicians lost control of events, and that the war, once it began, quickly became an unstoppable machine, Stevenson contends that politicians...

aluable contribution to our understanding of the twentieth century and its most defining conflict.

From a renowned medieval historian comes a new biography of King John, the infamous English king whose reign led to the establishment of the Magna Carta and the birth of constitutional democracy King John (1166-1216) has long been seen as the epitome of bad kings. The son of the most charismatic...

Hurst shows how Grant and Forrest brought to the battlefield the fabled virtues of the American working-class: hard work, ingenuity, and intense determination. Each man's background contributed to his triumphs on the battlefield, but the open-mindedness of his fellow commanders proved just as important....

The explosive search for the truth about who killed JFK, "the final word until 2039-when government files on the case can be unlocked." (Kirkus) Will we ever know the truth about the Kennedy assassination? In Crossfire, Jim Marrs demonstrates that the facts are all there-they just need to be...

From the bestselling author of On Tyranny, the definitive history of Hitler's and Stalin's wars against the civilians of Europe in World War Two Americans call the Second World War "The Good War."But before it even began, America's wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of...

The father of Communist Russia, Vladimir Ilych Lenin now seems to have emerged fully formed in the turbulent wake ofWorldWar I and the Russian Revolution. But Lenin's character was in fact forged much earlier, over the course of years spent in exile, constantly on the move, and in disguise. In...

In this sweeping narrative, acclaimed political historian Lewis L. Gould chronicles over one hundred years of Senate history, from the Progressive Era to the war in Iraq. Over the course of the twentieth century, the most powerful legislative body in the world grappled with great questions of empire...