The games comprised gladiatorial fights, staged animal hunts (venationes) and the executions of convicted criminals and prisoners of war. Besides entertaining the crowd, the games delivered a powerful message of Roman power: as a reminder of the wars in which Rome had acquired its empire, the distant regions of its far-flung empire (from where they had obtained wild beasts for the venatio), and the inevitability of Roman justice for criminals and those foreigners who had ...

50,000 years ago – merely a blip in evolutionary time – our Homo sapiens ancestors were competing for existence with several other human species, just as their own precursors had been doing for millions of years. Yet something about our species separated it from the pack, and led to its survival while the rest became extinct. So just what was it that allowed Homo sapiens to become Masters of the Planet? Curator Emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, Ian Tatte...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Perfect for fans of A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones—an epic history of Westeros and the lands beyond, featuring hundreds of pages of all-new material from George R. R. Martin!If the past is prologue, then George R. R. Martin’s masterwork—the most inventive and entertaining fantasy saga of our time—warrants one hell of an introduction. At long last, it has arrived with The World of Ice & Fire....

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • THE BOOK BEHIND THE FIFTH SEASON OF THE ACCLAIMED HBO SERIES GAME OF THRONESNAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF THE DECADEHere is the fifth book in the landmark series that has redefined imaginative fiction and become a modern masterpiece in the making.A DANCE WITH DRAGONSIn the aftermath of a colossal battle, Daenerys Targaryen rules with her ...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SERIESTaking place nearly a century before the events of A Game of Thrones, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms compiles the three official prequel novellas to George R. R. Martin's ongoing masterwork, A Song of Ice and Fire.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY LOS ANGELES TIMES AND BUZZFEEDThese collected adventures recoun...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTUREA mission to Mars. A freak accident. One man’s struggle to survive. From the author of Project Hail Mary comes “a hugely entertaining novel that reads like a rocket ship afire” (Chicago Tribune).“Brilliant . . . a celebration of human ingenuity [and] the purest example of real-science sci-fi for many years . . . utterly compelling.”—The Wall Stre...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “mercilessly entertaining” (Vanity Fair) instant classic “about the nature of identity and the terrible secrets that can survive and thrive in even the most intimate relationships” (Lev Grossman, Time “One of the Best Books of the Decade”)—now featuring never-before-published deleted scenesTHE NEW YORK TIMES’S BEST THRILLER OF THE CENTURY • ONE OF TIME'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ...

NOW THE ACCLAIMED HBO SERIES GAME OF THRONES—THE MASTERPIECE THAT BECAME A CULTURAL PHENOMENONHere is the first book in the landmark series that has redefined imaginative fiction and become a modern masterpiece.A GAME OF THRONESIn a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the North of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are m...

**New York Times BestsellerA New York Times Notable BookNamed one of the Best Books of the Year by the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Foreign Affairs, and Kirkus ReviewsFinalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction)Shortlisted for the Cundill Prize in Historical LiteratureFinalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History)A San Francisco Chronicle Hol...

“A fascinating insight into the mind of the Roman emperor.”—Sunday Telegraph (London)Born in A.D. 76, Hadrian lived through and ruled during a tempestuous era, a time when the Colosseum was opened to the public and Pompeii was buried under a mountain of lava and ash. Acclaimed author Anthony Everitt vividly recounts Hadrian’s thrilling life, in which the emperor brings a century of disorder and costly warfare to a peaceful conclusion while demonstrating ho...

The first full-scale history of Hannibal's Carthage in decades and "a convincing and enthralling narrative." (The Economist )Drawing on a wealth of new research, archaeologist, historian, and master storyteller Richard Miles resurrects the civilization that ancient Rome struggled so mightily to expunge. This monumental work charts the entirety of Carthage's history, from its origins among the Phoenician settlements of Lebanon to its apotheosis as a Mediter...

From acclaimed classical historian, author of Ghost on the Throne (“Gripping . . . the narrative verve of a born writer and the erudition of a scholar” —Daniel Mendelsohn) and editor of The Landmark Arrian:The Campaign of Alexander (“Thrilling” —The New York Times Book Review), a high-stakes drama full of murder, madness, tyranny, perversion, with the sweep of history on the grand scale.At the center, the tumultuous life of Seneca, ancient Rome’s preemine...