Basic Books: 1466 books
Let Our Fame Be Great
Journeys Among the Defiant People of the Caucasus
Language: English
Release Date: August 3, 2010
The jagged peaks of the Caucasus Mountains have hosted a rich history of diverse nations, valuable trade, and incessant warfare. But today the region is best known for atrocities in Chechnya and the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia.
In Let Our Fame Be Great, journalist and Russian expert...
Rights from Wrongs
A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights
Language: English
Release Date: April 20, 2009
Where do our rights come from? Does "natural law" really exist outside of what is written in constitutions and legal statutes? If so, why are rights not the same everywhere and in all eras? On the other hand, if rights are nothing more than the product of human law, why should we ever allow...
Postethnic America
Beyond Multiculturalism
Language: English
Release Date: February 28, 2006
First published in 1995, Postethnic America was widely hailed as a groundbreaking proposal for healing our nation's ethnic divisions. David A. Hollinger, one of America's foremost intellectual historians, argues for replacing the pluralist model of multiculturalism that is based on the idea of group...
The Impossible Will Take a Little While
A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear
Language: English
Release Date: April 29, 2014
More relevant than ever, this seminal collection of essays encourages us to believe in the power of ordinary citizens to change the world
In today's turbulent world it's hard not to feel like we're going backwards; after decades of striving, justice and equality still seem like far off goals....
Huey
Spirit of the Panther
Language: English
Release Date: April 27, 2009
Huey P. Newton remains one of the most misunderstood political figures of the twentieth century. As cofounder and leader of the Black Panther Party for more than twenty years, Newton (1942-1989) was at the forefront of the radical political activism of the 1960s and '70s. Raised in poverty in Oakland,...
Working Toward Whiteness
How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs
Language: English
Release Date: August 8, 2006
How did immigrants to the United States come to see themselves as white?
David R. Roediger has been in the vanguard of the study of race and labor in American history for decades. He first came to prominence as the author of The Wages of Whiteness, a classic study of racism in the development...
Locust
The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American Frontier
Language: English
Release Date: April 28, 2009
In 1876, the U.S. Congress declared the locust the single greatest impediment to the settlement of the country between Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains.” Throughout the nineteenth century, swarms of locusts regularly swept across the American continent, turning noon into dusk, devastating farm...
An Iron Wind
Europe Under Hitler
Language: English
Release Date: October 25, 2016
A vivid account of German-occupied Europe during World War II that reveals civilians' struggle to understand the terrifying chaos of war
In An Iron Wind, prize-winning historian Peter Fritzsche draws diaries, letters, and other first-person accounts to show how civilians in occupied Europe...
by William F. Buckley Jr.
Language: English
Release Date: October 14, 2008
Language: English
Release Date: October 14, 2008
No two people were more important to American conservatism in the postwar era than William F. Buckley Jr. and Ronald Reagan. Buckley's writings provided the intellectual underpinnings, while Reagan brought the conservative movement into the White House.
They met in 1961 when Reagan introduced...
Caliphate
The History of an Idea
Language: English
Release Date: October 11, 2016
From a preeminent scholar of Islamic history, the authoritative history of caliphates from their beginnings in the 7th century to the modern day
In Caliphate, Islamic historian Hugh Kennedy dissects the idea of the caliphate and its history, and explores how it became used and abused today....
Freedom for Sale
Why the World Is Trading Democracy for Security
Language: English
Release Date: January 26, 2010
Democratic liberalism v. authoritarianism – the ideological divide that defined the twentieth century. But when the cold war ended, “the end of history” was proclaimed. Soon the fire of freedom would burn worldwide, the experts said. And where markets were freed, human rights would inevitably...
Mass Hate
The Global Rise Of Genocide And Terror
Language: English
Release Date: August 4, 2008
Mass Hate explores why the brutality of humankind erupted and flowed more expansively in the twentieth century than ever before. Psychologist Neil Kressel recommends specific steps to help stem this bloody global tide of slaughter, terror and genocide. In his investigation, Kressel focuses on the...
Recollections
An Autobiography
Language: English
Release Date: August 4, 2008
Born in 1905 in the center of the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire, Viktor Frankl was a witness to the great political, philosophical, and scientific upheavals of the twentieth century. In these stirring recollections, Frankl describes how as a young doctor of neurology in prewar Vienna his disagreements...
Ethnic America
A History
Language: English
Release Date: August 1, 2008
This classic work by the distinguished economist traces the history of nine American ethnic groups—the Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians, Chinese, African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans.