Knowledge = Power

Alexander the Great, perhaps the most commanding leader in  history, united his empire and his army by the titanic force of his  will. His death at the age of thirty-two spelled the end of that unity. The  story of Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire is known to many  readers, but the dramatic and consequential saga of the empire’s  collapse remains virtually untold...

The  Spartans were a society of warrior-heroes who were the living exemplars  of such core values as duty, discipline, self-sacrifice, and extreme  toughness. This book, written by one of the world’s leading experts on  Sparta, traces the rise and fall of Spartan society and explores the  tremendous influence the Spartans had on their world and even on ours.  Paul Car...

The New York Times best-selling sequel to "Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!" Like the "funny, brilliant, bawdy" (The New Yorker) "Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!" this book’s many stories―some funny, others intensely moving―display  Richard P. Feynman’s unquenchable thirst for adventure and unparalleled  ability to recount important moments from his life. Here  we meet Feynman’...

“Plutarch  regularly shows that great leaders transcend their own purely material  interests and petty, personal vanities. Noble ideals actually do matter,  in government as in life.” —Michael Dirda, Washington Post Pompey,  Caesar, Cicero, Brutus, Antony: the names still resonate across  thousands of years. Major figures in the civil wars that brutally ended  the Rom...

Timeless wisdom on death and dying from the celebrated Stoic philosopher Seneca "It  takes an entire lifetime to learn how to die," wrote the Roman Stoic  philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC–65 AD). He counseled readers to "study death  always," and took his own advice, returning to the subject again and  again in all his writings, yet he never treated it in a complete work. How to Die...

An  introduction to modern physics and to Richard Feynman at his witty and  enthusiastic best, discussing gravitation, irreversibility, symmetry,  and the nature of scientific discovery. Richard Feynman  was one of the most famous and important physicists of the second half  of the twentieth century. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965,  celebrated for his spi...

Based  on an extraordinary collaboration between Steve Forbes, chairman, CEO,  and editor in chief of Forbes Media, and classics professor John Prevas,  Power Ambition Glory provides intriguing comparisons between six great leaders of the ancient world and contemporary business leaders. •  Great leaders not only have vision but know how to build structures to  effect it. C...

Throughout  this lively and concise historical account of Mao Zedong's life and  thought, Rebecca E. Karl places the revolutionary leader's personal  experiences, social visions and theory, military strategies, and  developmental and foreign policies in a dynamic narrative of the Chinese  revolution. She situates Mao and the revolution in a global setting  informed by...

“Amazing stories . . . Intimate portraits of how [these five  ruthless leaders] were at home and at the table.” —Lulu Garcia-Navarro,  NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday Anthony Bourdain meets  Kapuściński in this chilling look from within the kitchen at the  appetites of five of the twentieth century's most infamous dictators, by  the acclaimed author of Dancing Bears. What was...

Perhaps no one in the twentieth century had a greater long-term  impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar of  contemporary East Asian history and culture is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the many contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China’s boldest strategist. Once described by Mao Zedong as a “needle inside a ball of cotton,”  Deng w...

First published in 1841,  Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is often  cited as the best book ever written about market psychology. This  Harriman House edition includes Charles Mackay's account of the three  infamous financial manias - John Law's Mississipi Scheme, the South Sea  Bubble, and Tulipomania. Between the three of them, these historic &nb...

The Sword and the Shield is based on one of the most extraordinary intelligence coups of recent  times: a secret archive of top-level KGB documents smuggled out of the  Soviet Union which the FBI has described, after close examination, as  the "most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any  source." Its presence in the West represents a catastrophic hemorrhage...

THE BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF PITCH ANYTHING IS BACK TO FLIP YOUR ENTIRE APPROACH TO PERSUASION. Is  there anything worse than a high-pressure salesperson pushing you to  say "yes" (then sign on the dotted line) before you're ready? If  there's one lesson Oren Klaff has learned over decades of pitching,  presenting, and closing long-shot, high-stakes deals, it's that people  ...

"It’s a startling and disconcerting read that should make you think twice every time a friend of a friend offers you the opportunity of a lifetime.” —Erik Larson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dead Wake and bestselling author of Devil in the White City Think you can’t get conned? Think again. The  New York Times  bestselling author of  Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherloc...

When you react, the event controls you. When you respond, you're in control. Verbal Judo is the classic guide to the martial art of the mind and mouth that can  help you defuse confrontations and generate cooperation, whether you're  talking to a boss, a spouse, or even a teenager. For more than a  generation, Dr. George J. Thompson's essential handbook has taught  people how t...

A master class in the art of persuasion, as taught by  professors ranging from Bart Simpson to Winston Churchill, newly revised  and updated. The time-tested secrets taught in this book  include Cicero's three-step strategy for moving an audience to action,  and Honest Abe's Shameless Trick for lowering an audience's  expectations. And it's also replete with contemporary t...

Timeless techniques of effective public speaking from ancient Rome's greatest orator

National Book Award Finalist TIME Magazine's #1 Nonfiction Book of 2012 A New York Times Notable Book A Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2012 Best Nonfiction of 2012: The Wall Street Journal , The Plain Dealer In the much-anticipated follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag ,  acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history  of how Communism took over Eastern Eu...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer." —Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny The  Pulitzer Prize–winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity,  why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward  nationalism and authoritarianism. From the United States and  Britain to continental Europe...

Of all the despots of our time, Joseph Stalin lasted the longest and  wielded the greatest power, and his secrets have been the most jealously  guarded—even after his death. In this book, the first to draw  from recently released archives, Robert Conquest gives us Stalin as a  child and student; as a revolutionary and communist theoretician; as a  political animal skilled...

A  gripping account of the months before and after Stalin’s death and how  his demise reshaped the course of twentieth-century history  Joshua Rubenstein’s riveting account takes us back to the second half of  1952 when no one could foresee an end to Joseph Stalin’s murderous  regime. He was poised to challenge the newly elected U.S. President  Dwight Eisenhower with...

The bestselling historian on the dramatic wartime relationship - and shocking similarities - between two tyrants 'Laurence  Rees brilliantly combines powerful eye-witness testimony, vivid  narrative and compelling analysis in this superb account of how two  terrible dictators led their countries in the most destructive and  inhumane war in history' Professor Sir Ian Kershaw, au...

Scientists throughout history, from Galileo to today’s experts on  climate change, have often had to contend with politics in their pursuit  of knowledge. But in the Soviet Union, where the ruling elites  embraced, patronized, and even fetishized science like never before,  scientists lived their lives on a knife edge. The Soviet Union had the  best-funded scientific estab...

Here is the story of Jerry Weintraub: the self-made, Brooklyn-born,  Bronx-raised impresario, Hollywood producer, legendary deal maker, and  friend of politicians and stars. No matter where nature has placed  him--the club rooms of Brooklyn, the Mafia dives of New York's Lower  East Side, the wilds of Alaska, or the hills of Hollywood--he has found a  way to put on a show...

Understand Bitcoin, Blockchains, and Cryptocurrency “Antony helps us all clearly understand the mechanics of bitcoin and blockchain.” ― Rob Findlay , Founder, Next Money #1  Best Seller in Investing Derivatives and Natural Resource Extraction  Industry, Futures Trading, Banks & Banking, Energy & Mining,  Monetary Policy, and Computers & Technology There’s a  lot wri...