WWII and the American Civil War have been staples in military history publishing for years. But with the U.S. fighting two wars since 2003, modern conflicts take over the general history category this spring.
Acclaimed journalist Peter Bergen brings us Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden—from 9/11 to Abbottabad; Bergen, who’s been reporting on Central Asia for decades and is CNN’s national security analyst, details a multilayered story of the hunt, including the CIA analysts—mostly women—who collected every possible clue on bin Laden’s location. On the Afghanistan front, Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan by Rajiv Chandrasekaran recounts the conflict between Obama and his generals during the surge in the southern region, in which military forces on the ground took over the political battle as well, Matt Damon film Green Zone was based on Chandrasekaran’s award-winning Imperial Life in the Emerald City.
Americans don’t like to lose, yet the Alamo occupies a special place in U.S. history. In The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo—and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation, Texan James Donovan takes up another lost cause (after his account of Custer’s Last Stand in A Terrible Glory) as he delves into that epic struggle against impossible odds. Winston Groom (author of Forrest Gump) takes on the first Civil War battle to produce enormous casualties in Shiloh, 1862; that battle made people realize that the year-old war wasn’t going to end easily or neatly. Not a book about war so much as about averting a war is America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union by Fergus M. Bordewich, about the Compromise of 1850, which resulted from the longest debate in U.S. Senate history. And while the North won the Civil War and preserved the Union, it’s been argued that the South won the peace. Thus, President Theodore Roosevelt’s invitation to Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House in 1901 created a furor; in Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked a Nation, Deborah Davis uses this dinner to examine post–Civil War race and politics as well as the lives of these two formidable men.
The home front gets unique attention in Lizzie Collingham’s The Taste of War. Collingham¸ a British historian, assesses the role that food and food production played during WWII and in creating the industrial agriculture system we know today. And on the lighter side, Charlie Schroeder explores the world of those who want to participate in history by dressing up and re-creating it, in Man of War: My Adventures in the World of Historical Reenactment.
Just to remember that there’s life without war, 2012 is the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s deadly encounter with an iceberg. British biographer Richard Davenport-Hines focuses on the people onboard the ship in Voyagers of the Titanic: Passengers, Sailors, Shipbuilders, Aristocrats, and the Worlds They Came From; his descriptions of passengers from first, second, and third class as well as crew members creates a panorama of life in the second decade of the 20th century. And in an account refreshingly free of warfare, Thomas Christensen chronicles a single year in 1616: The World in Motion, which saw the roots of much of our modern world around the globe: the increasing power of private corporations and the role of economics in politics, women writers in England and women co-rulers in India, and the rise of the samurai in Japan—oops, here we are, back at war again.
PW’s Top 10: History & Military History
Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden—9/11 to Abbottabad
Peter L. Bergen, Crown, May.
Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Knopf, June.
The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo—and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation
James Donovan, Little, Brown, May.
Shiloh, 1862: The First Great and Terrible Battle of the Civil War
Winston Groom, National Geographic Books, Mar.
America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union
Fergus M Bordewich, Simon & Schuster, Apr.
Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked a Nation
Deborah Davis, Atria Books, May.
The Taste of War
Lizzie Collingham, Penguin Press, Mar.
Man of War: My Adventures in the World of Historical Reenactment
Charlie Schroeder, Penguin/Hudson Street Press, May.
Voyagers of the Titanic: Passengers, Sailors, Shipbuilders, Aristocrats, and the Worlds They Came From
Richard Davenport-Hines, William Morrow, Mar.
1616: The World in Motion
Thomas Christensen, Counterpoint, Feb.
History Listings
Allen & Unwin
(dist. by IPG)
Australians: Eureka to the Diggers by Thomas Keneally (May, hardcover, $49.95, ISBN 978-1-74237-448-2). The second volume of the bestselling author’s trilogy of Australian history ranges from the 1860s to the WWI era, with the stories of immigrants and Aboriginal resistance figures, working men and pioneering women, artists and hard-nosed radicals, politicians and soldiers.
Atria Books
Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked a Nation by Deborah Davis (May, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-1-4391-6981-0). When President Roosevelt invited educator Washington to dinner at the White House, Southern editorialists were outraged.
Shadow of the Titanic: The Extraordinary Stories of Those Who Survived by Andrew Wilson (Mar., hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-1-4516-7156-8). Most books about the Titanic are about the ship’s disaster. Wilson looks at the survivors, famous and ordinary, showing the vastly differing effects the ship’s sinking had on their lives.
Berkley Hardcover
Growing Up Patton: Reflections on Heroes, History, and Family Wisdom by Benjamin Patton and Jennifer Scruby (Mar., hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-425-24351-0). Documentary filmmaker Patton—grandson of the WWII general and son of a Vietnam-era general—shares his legacy in this poignant family biography.
No Way Out: A Story of Valor in the Mountains of Afghanistan by Mitch Weiss and Kevin Maurer (Mar., hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-425-24526-2). Two combat reporters relay the story of a Special Forces team that, while on a mission to capture a terrorist leader, were ambushed by their target. An epic battle ensued, which they survived, with 10 soldiers earning Silver Stars, the most awarded to any unit since Vietnam; 16 pages of photos.
Casemate Publishers
Kimberly’s Flight: The Story of Capt. Kimberly Hampton, America’s First Woman Combat Pilot Killed in Battle by Anna Simon and Ann Hampton (May, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-61200-102-9). Hampton commanded a combat troop of the 82nd Airborne Division. A journalist and Hampton’s mother relate Hampton’s life. 10,000-copy announced first printing.
True Story of Catch-22: The Real Men and Missions of Joseph Heller’s 340th Bomb Group in World War II by Patricia Chapman Meder (May, hardcover, $32.95, ISBN 978-1-61200-103-6). Joseph Heller usually denied that his novel was based on real events. Meder, a daughter of the colonel in Heller’s bomb group, shows otherwise in this fascinating portrayal of Heller’s real-life war-time colleagues; photos and illus. 10,000-copy announced first printing.
Counterpoint
(dist. by PGW)
1616: The World in Motion by Thomas Christensen (Feb., hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-1-58243-774-3). In Europe, the deaths of Shakespeare and Cervantes marked the end of an era in literature, while in the East, the last native Chinese dynasty was entering its final years and Japanese artists were rethinking their connections to ancient traditions. Color images and artwork from the period illuminate this magnificent era.
Crown
Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden—from 9/11 to Abbottabad by Peter L. Bergen (May, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-307-95557-9). The author of the bestselling Holy War Inc. details the hunt and the minute-by-minute operation that killed the man who had declared war on America.
Doubleday
Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York by Richard Zacks (Mar., hardcover, $27.95, ISBN 978-0-385-51972-4). This rollicking narrative of Theodore Roosevelt’s short-lived term as New York City’s police commissioner in the 1890s tells of his epic, doomed crusade to curb the city’s many vices.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Elizabethans by A. N. Wilson (Apr., hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-0-374-14744-0). The personalities—Elizabeth herself, Francis Drake, William Cecil, Philip Sidney, Marlowe, Shakespeare—are brought vividly to life in this portrait of the time that created modern Britain.
The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen (May, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-374-29927-9). Samuel Zemurray went from penniless immigrant and fruit-cart peddler to one of the richest, most powerful men in the world, who conquered the United Fruit Company.
Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power by Seth Rosenfeld (June, hardcover, $40, ISBN 978-0-374-25700-2). Based on 250,000 pages of secret FBI files, Rosenfeld’s account delineates the FBI’s sometimes illegal involvement with Reagan, Berkeley radical Mario Savio, and Berkeley president Clark Kerr, shedding new light on the 1960s.
Free Press
Da Vinci’s Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image by Toby Lester (Feb., hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-4391-8923-8). Leonardo’s image of a man, arms and legs outstretched, within a circle and a square, known as the Vitruvian Man, is perhaps the world’s most famous cultural icon, appearing as corporate and academic logos and even on spaceships. Lester investigates its source in the moment when the Middle Ages became the Renaissance.
Grove/Atlantic/Atlantic Monthly Press
Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life by David Treuer (Jan., hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-8021-1971-1). A celebrated Native American novelist, a member of the Ojibwe of northern Minnesota who grew up on Leech Lake Reservation, offers an intimate insider’s exploration of the history of Indian reservations and contemporary life on the rez. Part memoir, part cultural history, part investigative exposé, Treuer’s work reveals a world little understood by non–Native Americans.
Harper
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King (Feb., hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-06-179228-1). In July 1949, four black men were accused of raping a white woman. Based on FBI and NAACP files, this true story of racism and the law brings to light a little-known civil rights case and offers a trenchant portrait of a young civil rights attorney, Thurgood Marshall.
Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup by Christopher de Bellaigue (Apr., hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-184470-6). The Tehran correspondent for the Economist offers the first full-length biography of the democratically elected Iranian leader whose demise during a coup in 1953 eventually resulted in the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the current regime of the mullahs in Iran. 25,000-copy announced first printing.
Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States by Michael Lind (Mar., hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-183480-6). This sweeping work of U.S. economic history illustrates how new technology has destabilized political institutions—steam power in the Revolution, electricity during the Civil War, and information technology in WWII—yet shows how that flexibility has atrophied today. A Broadside Book.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Love, Fiercely: A Gilded Age Romance by Jean Zimmerman (Feb., hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-15-101447-7). Here is the New York love story of a beautiful heiress who fought for women’s rights and a wealthy young architect, both born to privilege yet who worked as reformers on behalf of the poor and powerless. 15,000-copy announced first printing.
Knopf
The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death by Jill Lepore (June, hardcover, $27.95, ISBN 978-0-307-59299-6). The Harvard historian and New Yorker writer explores ideas about how life begins and what happens when we die in this “history of curiosity.”
A Disposition to Be Rich: How a Small-Town Pastor’s Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated Man in the United States by Geoffrey C. Ward (May, hardcover, $28.95, ISBN 978-0-679-44530-2). The Bernie Madoff of his day was also the author’s great-grandfather. Drawing on thousands of never examined family documents, Ward traces his ancestor’s rapid rise and more rapid fall as a classic American conman.
Library of America
Barbara Tuchman: The Guns of August & The Proud Tower, edited by Margaret MacMillan (Mar., hardcover, $40, ISBN 978-1-59853-145-9) comes out on Tuchman’s centennial and the 50th anniversary of publication of the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Guns of August.
Little, Brown
The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo—and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation by James Donovan (May, hardcover, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-316-05374-7). This sweeping, action-packed saga of the legendary last stand at the Alamo is by the author of the bestselling A Terrible Glory, another lost battle. 75,000-copy announced first printing.
MIT Press
The Femicide Machine by Sergio González Rodríguez, trans. by Michael Parker-Stainback (Feb., paper, $12.95, ISBN 978-1-58435-110-8). Dozens of women and girls have been murdered in Juarez, Mexico. Journalist González Rodríguez analyzes the terror techniques of “narco-warfare” on both sides of the border and the combination of global capital with corrupt politics that leaves transient workers unprotected. A Semiotext(e) Intervention book.
William Morrow
Voyagers of the Titanic: Passengers, Sailors, Shipbuilders, Aristocrats, and the Worlds They Came From by Richard Davenport-Hines (Mar., hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-06-187684-4). On the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking, Davenport-Hines relates the stories of those onboard, from first, second, and third class to crew members. 75,000-copy announced first printing.
Outlaw Platoon: Heroes, Renegades, Infidels, and the Brotherhood of War in Afghanistan by Sean Parnell and John Bruning (Feb., hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-06-206639-8). A personal account of the legendary U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division’s heroic stand on the Afghan-Pakistan border in 2006. 50,000-copy announced first printing.
National Geographic
Shiloh, 1862: The First Great and Terrible Battle of the Civil War by Winston Groom (Mar., hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-1-4262-0874-4). This thrilling narrative account of Shiloh, from the bestselling author of Forrest Gump, is a vivid portrayal of key players and epic moments that changed America’s understanding of the war. 50,000-copy announced first printing.
Naval Institute Press
The Business of Martyrdom: A History of Suicide Bombing by Jeffrey William Lewis (Apr., hardcover, $39.95, ISBN 978-1-61251-051-4). This comprehensive history of suicide bombing, from its origins in imperial Russia to the present day includes an explanation of why some countries have been successful in reducing the threat of suicide bombing.
W.W. Norton
The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain by Paul Preston (Mar., hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0-393-06476-6). The unspeakable atrocities of Franco’s Spain are finally brought to light in this definitive work.
Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of al Qa’ida since 9/11 by Seth G. Jones (May, hardcover, $27.95. ISBN 978-0-393-08145-9). From a former senior adviser at U.S. Special Operations Command comes an insider’s account of the decade-long chase for America’s deadliest enemy, depicting careful police work; investigations by the FBI, CIA, and MI5; and shifting alliances of terrorist groups.
Oxford Univ. Press
Weight of Vengeance: The United States, the British Empire, and the War of 1812 by Troy Bickham (June, hardcover, $34.95, ISBN 978-0-19-539178-7). On the bicentennial of the War of 1812, Texas A&M historian presents an account of this war in the global context of Napoleonic wars in Europe, the slave revolt in Haiti and Britain’s fears of more colonial revolt and America’s maritime challenge.
Elusive Victories: The American Presidency at War by Andrew J. Polsky (June, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-19-986093-7). The president as commander-in-chief is thought to have great power. Yet political scientist Polsky’s analysis of the presidencies of Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, and George W. Bush during war shows the limits imposed by resources, politics, and the constraints of the president’s own previous decisions.
Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town by John Welshman (Mar., hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-19-959557-0). In A Night to Remember, Walter Lord described the sinking of the Titanic as “the last night of a small town.” Welshman reconstructs the individual experiences of 12 of the inhabitants of this short-lived small town, including a wealthy plantation owner, the ship’s second officer, a governess, a South African teenager, a Finnish immigrant, and a domestic servant.
Penguin/Hudson Street Press
Man of War: My Adventures in the World of Historical Re-enactment by Charlie Schroeder (May, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-1-59463-091-0). Billed as Confederates in the Attic meets The Year of Living Biblically, this humorous memoir demonstrates what it’s like to dress up like a Roman soldier in Arkansas or refight the battle of Stalingrad in Colorado.
The Penguin Press
The Irish Way: Becoming American in the Multiethnic City by James R. Barrett (Mar., hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-59420-325-1) explores the Americanizing influence of the Irish on successive waves of migrants from southeastern and eastern Europe to the American city.
The Taste of War by Lizzie Collingham (Mar., hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-1-59420-329-9). While rationing in Britain during WWII provided food security domestically, food policies in the colonies failed so massively that it caused famine in Bengal. U.S. subsidies to agriculture during the war led to our industrial food system.
PM Press
(dist. by IPG)
For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America by John Curl, intro. by Ishmael Reed (July, paper, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-60486-582-0). Seeking to reclaim a history that has remained largely ignored by most historians, this account examines the American cooperative movements for social change—farmers, unions, consumers, and communalist—including cooperatives during the Great Recession and the role of food co-ops in the food revolution on the 1970s.
PublicAffairs
Front Burner: Al Qaeda’s Attack on the USS Cole by Kirk Lippold (Mar., hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-61039-124-5). The commander of the USS Cole on the day an al-Qaeda bomb exploded alongside the ship in October 2000 tells the full story of the terrorist attack and the frustrating aftermath as politicians and bureaucrats ignored the warning signs.
Random/Spiegel & Grau
Darwin’s Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution by Rebecca Stott (June, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-1-4000-6937-8). Darwin’s theory of evolution did not spring full-blown from his own mind, but rested on ideas going back to Aristotle, Arab thinkers of the first century, and even alchemists. This intriguing history of ideas also illustrates how scientists build on the thoughts of others as well as their own insights.
Rowman & Littlefield
Mark Twain and the Colonel: The Arrival of a New Century Through the Lives of Samuel L. Clemens and Theodore Roosevelt by Philip McFarland (May, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-4422-1226-8). The story of the U.S. between 1890 and 1910—in international and domestic politics, in business and matters of race..
Munich 1972: Tragedy, Terror, and Triumph at the Olympic Games by David Large (Apr., hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-7425-6739-9). The Olympics in Munich, West Germany, in 1972 are primarily remembered for the kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes. Based on newly available archives, historian Large also relates such controversies as charges of biased judging, doping, and commercialization.
Seven Stories Press
The Night Wanderers: Uganda’s Children and the Lord’s Resistance Army by Wojciech Jagielski, trans. by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Feb., paper, $18.95, ISBN 978-1-60980-350-6). The author of Towers of Stone: The Battle of Wills in Chechnya digs deeply into the upheaval of Uganda’s society by concentrating on the anguish of children kidnapped into the LRA and forced to kill, and their continuing torment even after they’ve escaped.
Simon & Schuster
Undefeated: America’s Heroic Fight for Bataan and Corregidor by Bill Sloan (Apr., hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-4391-9964-0). Based on new interviews with more than 30 survivors, Sloan narrates how outnumbered and outgunned American soldiers fought against invading Japanese forces in the Philippines at the beginning of World War II and continued to resist for three years as POWs.
America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union by Fergus M. Bordewich (Apr., hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-1-4391-2460-4) relates how an older coterie of senators—Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun—were replaced by new figures: Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis, and William H. Seward.
Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power by Andrew Nagorski (Mar., hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-4391-9100-2). Many Americans were in Germany during the 1930s and watched Hitler’s rise to power—journalists, diplomats, military, expats, visiting authors, Olympic athletes. Based on letters, diaries, dispatches, and interviews, Nagorski brings together the portrait of what they saw and reported back to the American people.
S&S/Gallery Books
Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick (Apr., hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-1-4516-1351-3). A companion to Stone’s Showtime eponymous documentary this spring, this history of 20th-century America, co-written with American University history professor Kuznick, is based on previously unavailable documents and newly declassified information. Its goal is to raise questions not usually posed and to discern patterns in our past that will show how deeply rooted our country’s problems are.
Skyhorse
(dist. by Norton).
Nightcap at Dawn: American Soldiers’ Counterinsurgency in Iraq by J.B. Walker (Apr., paper, $16.95, ISBN 978-1-61608-617-6). J.B. Walker is a pseudonym for a group of American soldiers whose e-mails from Iraq make up this book. The late Christopher Hitchens said of it, “A truly extraordinary book... [written] in the most vivid firsthand manner. These recollections, pooled experiences, and shared sacrifices constitute the most authentic account yet produced of the Iraq battle.”
St. Martin’s Press
Blackhorse Riders: A Desperate Last Stand, an Extraordinary Rescue Mission, and the Vietnam Battle America Forgot by Philip Keith (Feb., hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-312-68192-0). A journalist and Vietnam veteran recounts the story of how the Blackhorse Regiment, a cavalry unit in Vietnam, came to the rescue of an infantry troop that had stumbled onto a North Vietnamese stronghold. Thirty years later, records of the battle and award recommendations had been lost; so began a second rescue mission, to award those medals. 75,000-copy announced first printing.
A Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert, and the Death That Changed the British Monarchy by Helen Rappaport (Feb., hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-312-62105-6). When Prince Albert died, Queen Victoria was not the only one in deep mourning. The entire country was grief-stricken, as it was after Princess Diana’s death. Rappaport relies on letters, diaries, and memoirs to paint a portrait of Prince Albert’s last months, the queen’s obsession with his place in history, and most intriguingly, positing a new cause for the prince’s death.
Empire of Shadows: The Epic Story of Yellowstone by George Black (Feb., hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0-312-38319-0). Black reinterprets the 19th-century west in this exploration of Yellowstone National Park through the lives of cavalryman Lt. Gustavus Cheyney Doane; scientist Ferdinand Hayden, who introduced photographer William Henry Jackson and painter Thomas Moran to Yellowstone; and Gen. Phil Sheridan, who had the national park placed under the U.S. cavalry.
St. Martin’s/Dunne
The Story of Ireland: A History of the Irish People by Neil Hegarty (Feb., hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-250-00289-1). This intriguing take on Irish history explores the nation, from 8000 B.C. to the present financial crisis, in global context, including such influences as the 16th-century religious wars, the American and French Revolutions, and Ireland’s neutrality during WWII.
Viking
Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of the Community by Brenda J. Child (Feb., hardcover, $22.95, ISBN 978-0-670-02324-0)unearths the central role of women in many Native communities in this account of the Ojibwe of Lake Superior and the Mississippi River.
Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden (Mar. 29; hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-670-02332-5). A former Washington Post bureau chief in East Asia presents the shocking story of Shin Dong-hyuk, one of the few people born in a North Korean political prison known to have escaped.
The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc by Nancy Goldstone (Mar. 29, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-670-02333-2). On the 600th anniversary of Joan of Arc’s birth, Goldstone portrays the relationship between the illiterate French peasant and Yolande of Aragon, the queen of Sicily, as both sought to support the dauphin of France against the aggressive forces of England and Burgundy.
Walker & Co.
More Powerful Than Dynamite: Radicals, Plutocrats, Progressives, and New York’s Year of Anarchy by Thai Jones (Apr., hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-8027-7933-5). Occupy Wall Street looks pretty tame compared to New York City in 1914, when a brutal winter overloaded homeless shelters, throngs of anarchists marched past industrialists’ homes, and tens of thousands gathered in Union Square, chanting “Bread or revolution!” An explosion in Harlem revealed a group planning to dynamite John D. Rockefeller’s estate for a massacre of striking workers in Colorado.
The Dark Defile: Britain’s Catastrophic Invasion of Afghanistan, 1838–1842 by Diana Preston (Jan., hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-8027-7982-3). Fearing its India empire was threatened by Russia, Persia, and Afghan tribes, Britain sent an army into Afghanistan to oust the independent king and install its own puppet ruler—and its army was destroyed.
Yale Univ. Press
Battle for the Arab Spring: Revolution, Counter-Revolution and the Making of a New Era by Lin Noueihed and Alex Warren (Apr., $28, ISBN 978-0-300-18086-2). Journalist Noueihed and Middle East consultant Warren offer a guide to the political and economic roots of the upheavals, sparked by the protest of one vegetable seller in Tunisia, and the obstacles faced as Arab nations seek to shape their own future in an uncertain global era.
Apocalyptic Realm: Jihadists in South Asia by Dilip Hiro (Apr., $30, ISBN 978-0-300-17378-9). Drawing on sources from newly released Kremlin archives and classified U.S. Embassy documents published by WikiLeaks, Hiro compiles a history of Islamist terrorism in South Asia, warning that Kashmir, where jihadists seek to incite war between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India, is the most dangerous border in the world.
