Knowledge = Power

The  brilliance of the Renaissance laid the foundation of the modern world.  Textbooks tell us that it came about as a result of a rediscovery of the  ideas and ideals of classical Greece and Rome. But now bestselling  historian Gavin Menzies makes the startling argument that in the year  1434, China - then the world's most technologically advanced  civilization - pro...

In Vietnam,  Christopher Goscha tells the full history of Vietnam, from antiquity to  the present day. Generations of emperors, rebels, priests, and  colonizers left complicated legacies in this remarkable country. Periods  of Chinese, French, and Japanese rule reshaped and modernized Vietnam,  but so too did the colonial enterprises of the Vietnamese themselves as  t...

A  dazzling account of the men (and occasional woman) who led the world’s  empires, a book that probes the essence of leadership and power through  the centuries and around the world. From the rise of  Sargon of Akkad, who in the third millennium BCE ruled what is now Iraq  and Syria, to the collapse of the great European empires in the  twentieth century, the empire...

In the classic tradition of Sun Tzu's The Art of War,  here for the first time in English is the timeless wisdom of China's  greatest emperor, Tang Taizong (AD 598-649), which will show anyone who  leads or manages how to achieve unparalleled results and an enduring  legacy. Tang Taizong was arguably the greatest  emperor in Chinese history. In Asia many historians rank hi...

On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set  sail from China to "proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to  collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas." When the fleet  returned home in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in  political and economic chaos. The great ships were left to rot at their  moorings and the records...

A portrait of one of the ancient world’s first political celebrities, who veered from failure to success and back again “This colorful biography of Demetrius . . . explores his rich inner  life and reveals an ancient world of violence and intrigue.”—New York Times Book Review The life of Demetrius (337–283 BCE) serves as a through-line to the  forty years following the death of Alexander...

In his signature larger-than-life style, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall is a revealing self-portrait of his illustrious, controversial, and truly unique life. The greatest immigrant success story of our time. His story is unique, and uniquely entertaining, and he tells it brilliantly in these pages. He was born in a year of famine, in a small Austrian town, the son of  an austere police...

Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 (Part 2)

 Pulitzer Prize-finalist Stephen Kotkin has written the definitive biography of Joseph Stalin, from collectivization and the Great Terror to the conflict with Hitler's Germany that is the signal event of modern world history   In 1929, Joseph Stalin, having already achieved dictatorial power over the vast Soviet Empire, formally ordered the systematic conversion of the world’s largest pe...

 [Fixed] The climax and conclusion of one of the best-selling biographies of our time. The New Yorker declared the first volume of Ian Kershaw's two-volume masterpiece "as  close to definitive as anything we are likely to see," and that promise  is fulfilled in this stunning second volume. As Nemesis opens, Adolf Hitler has achieved absolute power within Germany and  triumphed...

About  national and international power in the "modern" or Post Renaissance  period. Explains how the various powers have risen and fallen over the 5  centuries since the formation of the "new monarchies" in W. Europe.

Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail - Ray Dalio

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Edith Grossman's definitive English translation of the Spanish masterpiece, in an expanded P.S. edition Widely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the adventures of the self-created knight-errant Don Quixote  of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza...

Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery  novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the  novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will  Kaufman. Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female  Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle  Tom, a long-suffering black s...

The awesome conclusion to The Lord of the Rings—the greatest fantasy epic of all time—which began in The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read While the evil might of the Dark Lord Sauron swarms out to conquer all  Middle-earth, Frodo and Sam struggle deep into Mordor, seat of Sauron’s  power. To d...

Inspired by The Hobbit and begun in 1937, The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy that J.R.R. Tolkien created to provide "the necessary  background of history for Elvish tongues". From these academic  aspirations was born one of the most popular and imaginative works in  English literature. The Fellowship of the Ring,  the first volume in the trilogy, tells of the fateful power of t...

The Two Towers is the second volume of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic saga, The Lord of the Rings. The  Fellowship has been forced to split up. Frodo and Sam must continue  alone towards Mount Doom, where the One Ring must be destroyed.  Meanwhile, at Helm’s Deep and Isengard, the first great battles of the  War of the Ring take shape. In this splendid,  unabridged audio production...

The journey through Middle-earth begins here with J.R.R. Tolkien's classic prelude to his Lord of the Rings trilogy. “A  glorious account of a magnificent adventure, filled with suspense and  seasoned with a quiet humor that is irresistible... All those, young or  old, who love a fine adventurous tale, beautifully told, will take The Hobbit to their hearts.”—The New York T...

Frank Herbert’s classic masterpiece—a triumph of the imagination and one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked  with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the  “spice” melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing  consciousne...

Named 2006 Best Book of the Year by Amazon.com “An authoritative and exciting portrait not only of Caesar but of the complex society in which he lived.”—Steven Coates, New York Times Book Review “The best introduction to Caesar and his world that is currently available.”—Karl Galinsky, Bookforum Tracing the extraordinary trajectory of the great Roman emperor’s life,  Goldsworthy covers not on...

A fascinating, comprehensive biography of the cunning Roman conqueror Julius Caesar. More  than two thousand years after his death, Julius Caesar remains one of  the great figures of history. He shaped Rome for generations, and his  name became a synonym for “emperor”—not only in Rome but as far away as  Germany and Russia. He is best known as the general who defeated the &nbsp...

From classicist James Romm comes a “striking…fascinating” (Booklist)  deep dive into the last decades of ancient Greek freedom leading up to  Alexander the Great’s destruction of Thebes - and the saga of the  greatest military corps of the time, the Theban Sacred Band, a unit  composed of 150 pairs of male lovers. The story of  the Sacred Band, an elite 300-man corps recru...

21st Century Monetary Policy takes readers inside the Federal Reserve, explaining what it does and why. In  response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve deployed an  extraordinary range of policy tools that helped prevent the collapse of  the financial system and the U.S. economy. Chair Jerome Powell and his  colleagues lent directly to U.S. businesses, purchased tril...

Many appreciate Richard P. Feynman's contributions to  twentieth-century physics, but few realize how engaged he was with the  world around him -- how deeply and thoughtfully he considered the  religious, political, and social issues of his day. Now, a wonderful  book -- based on a previously unpublished, three-part public lecture he  gave at the University of Washington i...

One  of the most famous science books of our time, the phenomenal national  bestseller that "buzzes with energy, anecdote and life. It almost makes  you want to become a physicist" (Science Digest). Richard  P. Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous  adventures. In this lively work that “can shatter the stereotype of the  stuffy scientist...