No single human invention has transformed war more than the airplane--not even the atomic bomb. Even before the Wright Brothers' first flight, predictions abounded of the devastating and terrible consequences this new invention would have as an engine of war. Soaring over the battlefield, the airplane became an unstoppable force that left no spot on earth safe from attack. Drawing on combat memoirs, letters, diaries, archival records, museum collections, and eyewitness accounts by the men who fought--and the men who developed the breakthrough inventions and concepts--acclaimed author Stephen...
No single human invention has transformed war more than the airplane--not even the atomic bomb. Even before the Wright Brothers' first flight, predict...
Animal rights extremists argue that eating meat is murder and that pets are slaves. This compelling reappraisal of the human-animal bond, however, shows that domestication of animals is not an act of exploitation but a brilliantly successful evolutionary strategy that has benefited humans and animals alike. "Budiansky's slim, elegant discourse is a persuasive counterweight to the pastoral delusions of sentimentalists intent on seeing humans as malevolently at odds with the noble animal kingdom."--Manuela Hoelterhoff, Wall Street Journal "Forcefully argued and...
Animal rights extremists argue that eating meat is murder and that pets are slaves. This compelling reappraisal of the human-animal bond, however, sho...
Sir Francis Walsingham's official title was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I, but in fact this pious, tight-lipped Puritan was England's first spymaster. A ruthless, fiercely loyal civil servant, Walsingham worked brilliantly behind the scenes to foil Elizabeth's rival Mary Queen of Scots and outwit Catholic Spain and France, which had arrayed their forces behind her. Though he cut an incongruous figure in Elizabeth's worldly court, Walsingham managed to win the trust of key players like William Cecil and the Earl of Leicester before launching his own secret campaign against the...
Sir Francis Walsingham's official title was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I, but in fact this pious, tight-lipped Puritan was England's first...
A gripping look at terrorist violence during the Reconstruction era Between 1867, when the defeated South was forced to establish new state governments that fully represented both black and white citizens, and 1877, when the last of these governments was overthrown, more than three thousand African Americans and their white allies were killed by terrorist violence. Drawing on original letters and diaries as well as published racist diatribes of the time, acclaimed historian Stephen Budiansky concentrates his vivid, fast paced narrative on the efforts of five heroic men?two Union...
A gripping look at terrorist violence during the Reconstruction era Between 1867, when the defeated South was forced to establish new stat...
The Evander Lawless College of North Ohio has two problems. One is the arrival of a new vice president determined to "make the college more businesslike." Drawing on his years of executive experience in a multinational breakfast cereal company (where he earned the nickname "The Frosted Flake"), the vice president has launched a "branding initiative" and a plan to sell naming rights to individual courses. The other problem is that members of the faculty keep turning up dead. It falls to Ted Gilpin, earnest professor of Cognitive and Deconstructivist Studies, to follow a trail of clues that...
The Evander Lawless College of North Ohio has two problems. One is the arrival of a new vice president determined to "make the college more businessli...
In March 1941, after a year of devastating U-boat attacks, the British War Cabinet turned to an intensely private, bohemian physicist named Patrick Blackett to turn the tide of the naval campaign. Though he is little remembered today, Blackett did as much as anyone to defeat Nazi Germany, by revolutionizing the Allied anti-submarine effort through the disciplined, systematic implementation of simple mathematics and probability theory. This is the story of how British and American civilian intellectuals helped change the nature of...
A Washington Post Notable Book
In March 1941, after a year of devastating U-boat attacks, the British War Cabinet turned to an...
