"From the best-selling author of The Name of the Rose and The Prague Cemetery, a novel about the murky world of media politics, conspiracy, and murder. A newspaper committed to blackmail and mud slinging, rather than reporting the news. A paranoid editor, walking through the streets of Milan, reconstructing fifty years of history against the backdrop of a plot involving the cadaver of Mussolini's double. The murder of Pope John Paul I, the CIA,...

In the winter of 1417, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties plucked a very old manuscript off a dusty shelf in a remote monastery, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. He was Poggio Bracciolini, the greatest book hunter of the Renaissance. His discovery, Lucretius' ancient poem On the Nature of Things, had been almost entirely lost to history for more than a thousand years. It was a beautiful...

R. Buckminster Fuller is regarded as one of the most important figures of the 20th century, renowned for his achievements as an inventor, designer, architect, philosopher, mathematician, and dogged individualist. Perhaps best remembered for the Geodesic Dome and the term "Spaceship Earth," his work and his writings have had a profound impact on modern life and thought. Critical Path is Fuller's master work--the summing up of a lifetime's thought and...

Surveys the fads, fashions, trends, and cultural and intellectual preoccupations of the self-satisfied, consumeristic 1950s.

Presents the political, social, and cultural trends of the first decade of the twenty-first century which included terrorist attacks, the first African American president, financial collapse, and inventions like the iPod and Facebook.

Surveys the fads, fashions, trends, and cultural and intellectual preoccupations of the comfortable, high-living 1920s.

Using pictures of ancient artifacts and modern photographs, this book describes legacies from ancient Greece, including their works of history and philosophy, their ideas on math and science, their system of politics, their architecture, and their literature.

Explains some of the inventions and other influences contributing to today's society that were originated by the ancient Egyptians.

The nineteenth century saw Ireland lose half of its population to famine, emigration, or deportation to penal colonies in Australia--often for infractions as common as stealing food. Among the victims of this tragedy were Thomas Keneally's own forebearers, and they were his inspiration to tell the story of the Irish who struggled and ultimately triumphed in Australia and North America. Relying on rare primary sources--including personal letters, court...

It is an era that redefined history. As the 1790s began, a fragile America teetered on the brink, Russia was a vast imperial power, and France plunged into revolution. But in contrast to the way conventional histories tell it, none of these events occurred in isolation. Here, historian Winik shows how their fates combined to change the course of civilization. Here is a savage world war, the toppling of a great dynasty, and an America struggling to...