Leah Trachtman-Palchan was an ordinary woman who lived an extraordinary life. This was a life of migration, dissent, exile and survival. Born in the final years of Tsarist Russia, her family was forced to leave their small town following the repeated pogroms of the Civil War era. A two year voyage followed, bringing them all to British Mandate Palestine in 1921. Here what seems like a typical Jewish story of migration from Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century took an unexpected tu...

What makes people fight and risk their lives for countries other than their own? Why did diverse individuals such as Lord Byron, George Orwell, Che Guevara, and Osama bin Laden all volunteer for ostensibly foreign causes? Nir Arielli helps us understand this perplexing phenomenon with a wide-ranging history of foreign-war volunteers, from the wars of the French Revolution to the civil war in Syria.Challenging narrow contemporary interpretations of foreign fighters as a security pro...

A human history of one of the planet's most iconic lakes, and the civilizations that surrounded its shoresThe Dead Sea is a place of many contradictions. Hot springs around the lake are famed for their healing properties, though its own waters are deadly to most lifeforms—even so, civilizations have built ancient cities and hilltop fortresses around its shores for centuries. The protagonists in its story are not only Jews and Arabs, but also Greeks, Nabataeans, Rom...

As the 100th anniversary of World War I approaches, historian Margaret MacMillan compares current global tensions-rising nationalism, globalization’s economic pressures, sectarian strife, and the United States’ fading role as the world’s pre-eminent superpower-to the period preceding the Great War. In illuminating the years before 1914, MacMillan shows the many parallels between then and now, telling an urgent story for our time. THE BROOKINGS ESSAY: In the spirit of its commitment to high...

A major new book by New York Times bestselling author and geopolitical forecaster George Friedman (The Next 100 Years), with a bold thesis about coming events in Europe. This provocative work examines “flashpoints,” unique geopolitical hot spots where tensions have erupted throughout history, and where conflict is due to emerge again.“There is a temptation, when you are around George Friedman, to treat him like a Magic 8 Ball.” —The Ne...

As fitting for the twenty-first century as von Clausewitz’s On War was in its own time, Invisible Armies is a complete global history of guerrilla uprisings through the ages.Beginning with the first insurgencies in the ancient world—when Alexander the Great discovered that fleet nomads were harder to defeat than massive conventional armies—Max Boot, best-selling author and military advisor in Iraq and Afghanistan, masterfully guides us from the Jewish rebellion ag...

In the current Middle East, insurgency tactics are used with frequency and increasing success. But guerrilla war-fare is not just the tool of modern-day terrorists. Its roots stretch back to our very own revolution.In Violent Politics, William Polk takes us on a concise, brilliant tour of insurgencies throughout history, starting with the American struggle for independence, when fighters had to battle against both the British and the loyalists, those colonists who sided wi...

A chronological compilation of twentieth-century world events in one volume—from the acclaimed historian and biographer of Winston S. Churchill.The twentieth century has been one of the most unique in human history. It has seen the rise of some of humanity's most important advances to date, as well as many of its most violent and terrifying wars. This is a condensed version of renowned historian Martin Gilbert's masterful examination of the century's history, offer...

The Caucasus mountains rise at the intersection of Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. A land of astonishing natural beauty and a dizzying array of ancient cultures, the Caucasus for most of the twentieth century lay inside the Soviet Union, before movements of national liberation created newly independent countries and sparked the devastating war in Chechnya. Combining riveting storytelling with insightful analysis, The Ghost of Freedom is the first general history of the modern...

At last, here is the final and most ambitious installment of Henry Kong's dazzling historical trilogy. The core question is how the people of a divided, impoverished continent emerged to conquer the world with their technology and ideas. The serendipitous triumph of "Western Civilization" is an epic story every educated person should know. Henry Kong's crisp and succinct narration takes the reader from the Florentine Renaissance and the French Enlightenment to the Holocaust and the end of ...

When Charles de Gaulle learned that France's former colonies in Africa had chosen independence, the great general shrugged dismissively, "They are the dust of empire." But as Americans have learned, particles of dust from remote and seemingly medieval countries can, at great human and material cost, jam the gears of a superpower.In The Dust of Empire, Karl E. Meyer examines the present and past of the Asian heartland in a book that blends scholarship with reportage, provid...

An engaging collection that uncovers injustices in history and overturns misconceptions about the role of women in warWhen you think of war, you think of men, right? Not so fast. In Hell Hath No Fury, Rosalind Miles and Robin Cross prove that although many of their stories have been erased or forgotten, women have played an integral role in wars throughout history.In witty and compelling biographical essays categorized and alphabetized for easy reference, Miles and...