Everyone has seen photographs of the Taj Mahal. The massive, bulbous central dome, the four slender minarets, the shimmering marble, the long reflecting pool, the manicured gardens - all seem too striking for adequate description and proper appreciation. But there is more to the Taj than its beauty. The world's best-known mausoleum celebrates the love story of the seventeenth-century Moghul emperor Shah Jahan and his queen, Mumtaz Mahal. They fell in love at first sight and were married fo...

King Louis XIV had many loves, but none as compelling as Versailles, the modest country estate he transformed into one of the world's most spectacular palaces. Here is the dramatic - and tragic - story of Versailles and the men and women who made it their home.

The "aged queen of French cathedrals," Victor Hugo called Notre-Dame. And ancient it was - nearly 700 years had passed since the Bishop Maurice de Sully decided that Paris needed a cathedral worthy of France's capital. "Every face, every stone of the venerable monument," Hugo continued, "is a page not only of the history of the country but also of the history of science and art." Here, National Book Award Winner Richard Winston tells the dramatic story of the building of the great cathedra...

Hagia Sophia is more than 1,400 years old. It was a Christian Church, then a Muslim mosque, and is now a museum. Here, from National Book Award winner Richard Winston, is the extraordinary story of one of the world's great architectural treasures and its everchanging role in the history of Constantinople.

Rarely in history has a great city arisen in a less likely place than the islands and mud flats of the Venetian lagoon. But they provided the city's founders with a refuge from the barbarians who had invaded their mainland homes. With energy and ingenuity, these displaced people created a maritime empire of unequaled splendor. At its height, the Republic of Venice was said to encompass "one quarter and one half of one quarter" of the known world. During those years, its merchant princess l...

More than 1,500 years have passed since the last blood - human or animal - was spilled in the Colosseum, but the massive building erected by the Flavian emperors has continued to play a role in history. This book tells the dramatic story of the Colosseum - from its bloody gladiatorial games and the sacrifice of early Christians to the dismantling of the arena and its final restoration. The book also recounts the story of Rome as viewed from the vantage point of the empire's most impressive...

There is only one New York. It didn't make America, but it made possible the America we've come to know. Here - from American Heritage magazine and such historians as Nathaniel Benchley, David McCullough, and William V. Shannon - is its remarkable story: from Henry Hudson's historic voyage and the sale of Manhattan Island to New York's occupation by British forces during the Revolution and the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, and the Whitney Museum.

In August 1839, what appeared to be a listless pirate ship, unidentified by any flag, was spotted off the North Atlantic coast of the United States. On board were thirty barely clad black men, armed with cutlasses, and two white men - Spanish slave owners with an incredible story to tell. A month earlier, the Amistad had set sail from Havana with a valuable cargo of slaves and 40,000 worth of gold doubloons. She was headed for the Cuban coastal town of Puerto Principe - but in a matter of ...

After years of prosecuting hard-core criminals, rising legal star Alan Bell took a private sector job in South Florida’s newest skyscraper. Suddenly, he suffered such bizarre medical symptoms, doctors suspected he’d been poisoned by the Mafia. Bell’s rapidly declining health forced him to flee his glamorous Miami life to a sterile “bubble” in the remote Arizona desert.As his career and marriage dissolved, Bell pursued medical treatments in a race against time, hoping to stay alive ...

From a National Jewish Book Award–winning author: The "revelatory and shocking" investigation into the CIA's liberation of Nazi war criminals ( Kirkus Reviews).How did Gen, Karl Wolff, one of the highest-ranking members of the Nazi Party's Waffen-SS, who personally oversaw the deportation of three hundred thousand Jews to the Treblinka extermination camps, escape prosecution at the Nuremberg trials? As revealed in this groundbreaking investigation—culled fr...

Here is the story of America's greatest architects, whose designs and structures have changed the world - Charles Bulfinch, Benjamin Latrobe, Thomas Jefferson, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eliel and Eero Saarinen, to name but a few. From the United States Capitol building, designed in Old World style, to modern private residences like Fallingwater, from Boston's Trinity Church to the White City of the Chicago World's Fair, these buildings define the nation.

On May 14, 1804, a party of explorers dispatched by President Thomas Jefferson set off up the Missouri River into America's newly acquired Louisiana Territory. Under the leadership of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, the men of the Corps of Discovery would cross the continent and into history. Here, from award-winning historian Ralph K. Andrist, is the dramatic story of their epic journey.