A chronological guide to the fantastic world of Japanese myths, retelling the stories and exploring how Japanese mythology has changed over time.

A unique survey of seven great Asian empires, powerful forces on the world stage during a thousand years of history and that continue to resonate in regional and global politics today.

Opens a door onto the world of pre-revolutionary Russia in original photographs taken during the last decades of Romanov rule. This title includes many remarkable colour images created using an early three-colourplate technique; these bring the remote past to life with an especially vivid jolt.

The story of a strange experiment - a journey into the oddest corners of 60s Britain and the outer edges of science and reason.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2012Almost six hundred years ago, a short, genial man took a very old manuscript off a library shelf.

In almost every major war there comes a point where defeat looms for one side and its rulers cut a deal with the victors, if only in an attempt to save their own skins. This title offers an account of the final months of the Nazi war machine, from the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944 to the German surrender in May 1945.

A writer’s travels along the legendary yet contested Jordan River—exploring the long conflict over water supply

A deeply engaging new history of how European settlements in the post-Colombian Americas shaped the world, from the bestselling author of 1491.

Presenting the latest research by biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the post-Columbian network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City-where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamical...

An urgent, fascinating exploration of warfare--past, present, and future--and what we must do if we want to win today from an 82nd Airborne Division veteran, former private military contractor, and professor of war studies at the National Defense University. War is timeless. Some things change--weapons, tactics, technology, leadership, objectives--but our desire to go into battle does not. We are living in the age of "durable disorder"--a period of unrest created by numerous factors: China's ...

This is a book about why medieval manuscripts matter. Coming face to face with an important illuminated manuscript in the original is like meeting a very famous person. We may all pretend that a well-known celebrity is no different from anyone else, and yet there is an undeniable thrill in actually meeting and talking to a person of world stature.

The idea for the book, which is entirely new, is to invite the reader into intimate conversations with twelve of the most famous manuscrip...