"The terror film, with puzzling, disturbing, multivalent images, often leads us into regions that are strange, disorienting, yet somehow familiar; and for all the crude and melodramatic and morally questionable forms in which we so often encounter it, it does speak of something true and important, and offers us encounters with hidden aspects of ourselves and our world." So writes S. S. Prawer in his concise and penetrating study of the horror film--from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Frankenstein, to Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Omen. After a brief...

The SS--short for the German Schutzstaffeln--was a far-flung organization, of which the Gestapo was only one branch, that served as the tyrannical expression of Nazi bureaucracy, a politics of terror. Germans in high places still use the SS as a standard excuse for the acts of murder, extortion, and genocide that were facts of daily life under the Nazis. Reitlinger explores the complex social machinery that allowed the SS to operate--the administration and internal rivalries, the SS field divisions, German military intelligence, and the organization of the concentration and death...

The story of the Declaration of Independence - its genesis, drafting, ratification, and influence - is as complex as any great vision and realization. Did it merely sum up the prevailing thought of its day, or was it an advanced expression of uniquely American ideals? Were its signers aware of the Declaration's full revolutionary significance, or did they see it as the rationale for an economic dispute? Such questions face any historian of the period and require an extraordinary control of materials, a sensitive reading of character and text, and a lucid gift for recreating a time more than...

Occasionally a book that begins as a work of scholarship becomes a great and profoundly moving human document. This life of Lincoln's friend, law partner and biographer is such a book. It has a two-fold focus: on the "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" days--the days of Lincoln's courting, arguing, and politicking; and on Herndon's long and wracking fight to publish his biography in the face of poverty, drive, and disillusionment, it achieves the impetus and grandeur of tragedy. David Donald has given us a magnificent account of how a country lawyer became a national figure and what happened to the...

T. E. Shaw, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, was one of the most romantic, heroic, and enigmatic figures of his day. The subject of myth and hagiography, he was equally accomplished in several fields--as archaeologist, diplomat, writer, and soldier--and he worked throughout World War I and after in the Middle East in efforts to promote independent Arab states. His autobiography Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the greatest works of its kind. The esteemed military historian B. H. Liddell Hart wrote this study of Lawrence in order to pierce the clouds of legend. He discussed...

In 1863 Walt Whitman first proposed to the publisher John Redpath a book about his Civil War experiences. It was never published. But in a draft prospectus Whitman described "a new book . . . with its framework jotted down on the battlefield, in the shelter tent, by the wayside amid the rubble of passing artillery trains or the moving cavalry in the streets of Washington . . . a book full of the blood and vitality of the American people." Walter Lowenfels has edited the book Whitman could only envision. From a mosaic of materials--newspaper dispatches, letters, notebooks, published and...

Described by Leonard Feather as "one of the most influential saxophonists of the bop era," Dexter Gordon has been a recognized master for over four decades. This new biography traces his career from his early stints with Lionel Hampton and Louis Armstrong, through his time with the bop big band of Billy Eckstine and his sparring partnership with fellow tenor-player Wardell Gray in Los Angeles, to his self-exile in Denmark, and his triumphant return to New York in 1976, an event that decisively shaped the still strong bebop revival. Stan Britt devotes chapters to Gordon's acclaimed performance...

Anyone who has ever heard a Billie Holiday record knows the sound of her voice--sad, sexy, always relaxed but securely aware of the beat. Conveying a poignancy that cut to the heart of a song, she redeemed even trivial material with her impeccable sense of dramatic phrasing and time. The well-known tale of her lifelong battle with drugs has obscured the artistry that has made her one of the most revered singers of the twentieth century. Everyone from Frank Sinatra (who in the 1950s called her "unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years")...

The history of the American rebellion against England, written by one of America's preeminent eighteenth-century historians, differs from many views of the Revolution. It is not colored by excessive worship of the Founding Fathers but, instead, permeated by sympathy for all those involved in the conflict. Alden has taken advantage of recent scholarship that has altered opinions about George III and Lord North. But most of all this is a balanced history--political, military, social, constitutional--of the thirteen colonies from the French and Indian War in 1763 to Washington's inauguration in...