History

Prior to the outbreak of war in September 1939, the German Army had focused exclusively on the operational, organizational and training preparations needed to wage war in continental Europe. The threat of an Italian collapse in North Africa in early...

After bitter debate, South Africa, a dominion of the British Empire at the time, declared war on Germany five days after the invasion of Poland in September 1939. Thrust by the British into the campaign against Erwin Rommel's German Afrika Korps in North...

The service of African-American soldiers during the Civil War is one of that conflict's most stirring, if still not completely understood, aspects. In this comprehensive account--from recruitment into combat, and covering all the military, political, and...

The true story that's "bloody good entertainment" (New York Times) about the colorful and legendary pirates of the 17th century. If not for today's news stories about piracy on the high seas, it'd be easy to think of pirating as a romantic way of life...

In The Mau Mau Rebellion, the author describes the background to and the course of a short but brutal late colonial campaign in Kenya. The Mau Mau, a violent and secretive Kikuyu society, aimed to restore the proud tribe's pre-colonial superiority and...

Brimming with rich, electrifying tales of the precious dye and its ancient heritage, Indigo is also the story of a personal quest: Catherine McKinley is the descendant of a clan of Scots who wore indigo tartan; Jewish "rag traders"; a Massachusetts...

The ideological passions that, along with critical acclaim, greeted the publication of Paul Berman's A Tale of Two Utopias showed how persistent are some of the battle lines drawn in the tumultuous years around 1968.A Tale of Two Utopias recounts in...

The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It brought down six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, returned de Gaulle to power, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died...

Originally formed in order to lend support to the FNLA and UNITA in the Angolan war, 32 Battalion quickly gained the reputation of being an unconventional, secretive, yet highly effective group. Written by a man who was intimately involved with the unit...

"The Last Train from Djibouti is an odyssey you will not forget." --Larry Bechtel, author of The Tinsmith's Apprentice and sculptorOtis Lee begins this story in the most innocuous of locations: a train from Charlottesville, Virginia, to Penn Station in...