HISTORY

HISTORY

Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (Hardcover)

By Gordon S. Wood
$35.00
ISBN-13: 9780195039146
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Oxford University Press, USA, 10/2009
Other Editions of this Title
Gordon Wood, a master historian whose accomplishments have been honored with both Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes, revisits the first twenty-five years of the newborn republic, 1789-1815, in his monumental study, Empire Of Liberty (Oxford Univ., $35). Throughout the narrative Wood reminds readers that there was no compelling reason why this precarious state would become a flourishing democracy. “Momentous uncertainties” proliferated in what was, after all, an experiment with untested political principles. Given such risks, we can only admire the magnitude of the founders’ achievements all the more. Barbara Meade

The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War (Hardcover)

By Caroline Alexander
$26.95
ISBN-13: 9780670021123
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Viking Adult, 10/2009
Other Editions of this Title
The War That Killed Achilles (Viking, $26.95) is an insightful and original exposition of Homer’s epic poem, The Iliad. Caroline Alexander investigates the importance of Achilles’s actions in his defiance of Agamemnon, and his sorrowful plea to his immortal mother, Thetis, to avenge his wounded honor. However, this is not only about personal honor, but about what it means to fight for other people’s ends, whether to help colleagues like Agamemnon and Menelaus avenge their own injured pride, or, in more contemporary contexts, to help one’s nation achieve the kinds of goals the United States fought for in Vietnam. Alexander succeeds wonderfully in widening her scope from a study of Homer to an intricate and detailed account of what war’s sacrifices really mean. Adam Waterreus

Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History (Hardcover)

By Margaret Macmillan
$22.00
ISBN-13: 9780679643586
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Modern Library, 7/2009
Other Editions of this Title
In this timely and outstanding work of scholarship, Margaret MacMillan, the prize-winning Oxford professor and author of Paris 1919 and Nixon and Mao, examines the many uses to which history is put in academic, national, and international debate. Dangerous Games (Modern Library, $22) warns us against the tendency to regard different situations as analogous; it’s reductive and misleading, for instance, to see today’s war in Iraq as simply another Vietnam. For those historians, generals, and statesmen who search for parallels, she cautions against the perils of erroneous, insufficient, and/or irrelevant information as well as oversimplification. Barbara Meade

The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika (Hardcover)

By Robert B. Strassler
$40.00
ISBN-13: 9780375422553
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Pantheon, 11/2009
Other Editions of this Title
Ancient history readers are in for a joyful season this year with the release of Robert Strassler’s latest installment of sublimely accessible primary source work by Greece’s greatest historians. The Landmark Xenophon’s Hellenika (Pantheon, $40) takes up the story left off by Landmark’s Thucydides, as an exhausted Sparta is poised to finally defeat her archrival, Athens, after 27 years of war. Landmark’s Xenophon, packed to the gills with maps, essays, and helpful annotations, is the ideal guide through this fast-moving, labyrinthine world of backstabbing Greek states. Shane Cagney

Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (Hardcover)

By Anthony Everitt
$30.00
ISBN-13: 9781400066629
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Random House, 9/2009
Other Editions of this Title
Historians have traditionally formed a guarded view of Hadrian, acknowledged as one of Rome’s “good” emperors—he of caustic personality and obsession with Greece. The Victorians cast a disapproving eye on his passionate love life, and his legions devastated Judea. In Hadrian And The Triumph Of Rome (Random House, $30), Anthony Everitt, author of Cicero and Augustus, sets about restoring Hadrian’s status as one of the ancient world’s most significant figures. Rising from provincial origins, he became a prolific builder, and made the history-changing decision to limit the empire to natural frontiers. Shane Cagney