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The Invention of Russia: From Gorbachev's Freedom to Putin's War

Arkady Ostrovsky · Viking
Pages: 374
Format: Print book

WINNER OF THE 2016 ORWELL PRIZE FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR "Fast-paced and excellently written ... much needed, dispassionate and eminently readable." - New York Times "Filled with sparkling prose and deep analysis." -The Wall Street Journal How did a country...
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The Weapon Wizards: How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower

Yaakov Katz · St. Martin's Press
Pages: 304
Format: Print book

From drones to satellites, missile defense systems to cyber warfare, Israel is leading the world when it comes to new technology being deployed on the modern battlefield. The Weapon Wizards shows how this tiny nation of 8 million learned to adapt to the changes in warfare and in the defense...
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Garlic, an Edible Biography: The History, Politics, and Mythology behind the World's Most Pungent Food--with over 100 Recipes

Robin Cherry · Roost Books
Format: Paperback

Garlic weaves a colorful, engaging story about one of the world's timeless ingredients--perfect for food lovers, devoted eaters, and readers of culinary narrative. Garlic is the Lord Byron of produce, a lusty rogue that charms and seduces you but runs off before dawn, leaving a bad taste...
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Becoming Leonardo: An Exploded View of the Life of Leonardo da Vinci

Mike Lankford · Melville House
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover

Why did Leonardo Da Vinci leave so many of his major works uncompleted? Why did this resolute pacifist build war machines for the notorious Borgias? Why did he carry the Mona Lisa with him everywhere he went for decades, yet never quite finish it? Why did he write backwards, and was he really...
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Supremely Partisan: How Raw Politics Tips the Scales in the United States Supreme Court

James D. Zirin · Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 312
Format: Hardcover

On the eve of a presidential election that may determine the makeup of Supreme Court justices for decades to come, prominent attorney James D. Zirin argues that the Court has become increasingly partisan, rapidly making policy choices right and left on bases that have nothing to do with...
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Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth

SARAH SMARSH · Scribner
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover

An eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in the American Midwest.During Sarah Smarsh's turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, the forces of cyclical poverty and the country's changing economic policies solidified her family's place among the working poor. By telling...
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1917: War, Peace, and Revolution

D Stevenson · Oxford University Press
Pages: 430
Format: Hardcover

1917 was a year of calamitous events, and one of pivotal importance in the development of the First World War. In 1917: War, Peace, and Revolution, leading historian of World War I David Stevenson examines this crucial year in context and illuminates the century that followed. He shows...
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Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe

JOHN JULIUS NORWICH · ATLANTIC MONTHLY
Pages: 304
Format: Print book

John Julius Norwich -- who the Wall Street Journal called "the very model of a popular historian" -- has crafted a big, bold tapestry of the early sixteenth century, when Europe and the Middle East were overshadowed by a quartet of legendary rulers, all born within a ten-year...
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Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites who Fought for Women's Right to Vote

Johanna Neuman · NYU Press
Pages: 240
Format: Hardcover

New York City's elite women who turned a feminist cause into a fashionable revolution In the early twentieth century over two hundred of New York's most glamorous socialites joined the suffrage movement. Their names - Astor, Belmont, Rockefeller, Tiffany, Vanderbilt, Whitney and the like...
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67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence

Howard B Means · Da Capo Press
Pages: 288
Format: Print book

At mid-day on May 4, 1970, after three days of protests, several thousand students and the Ohio National Guard faced off at opposite ends of the grassy campus Commons at Kent State University. Just after noon, the Guard moved out. Twenty-five minutes later, Guardsmen launched a 13-second,...
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The Fall of Hitler's Fortress City: The Battle for Konigsberg, 1945

Isabel Denny · W W Norton
Pages: 264
Format: Print book

The harrowing, tragic story of a city and a people ravaged by one of the most brutal battles of World War II.In 1945, in the face of the advancing Red Army, two and a half million people were forced out of Germany's most easterly province, East Prussia, and in particular its capital,...
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The Fall of the House of Wilde: Oscar Wilde and His Family

Emer O'Sullivan · Bloomsbury Press
Pages: 495
Format: Print book

The first biography of Oscar Wilde that places him within the context of his family and social and historical milieu--a compelling volume that finally tells the whole story.It's widely known that Oscar Wilde was precociously intellectual, flamboyant, and hedonistic--but lesser so that he owed...
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The Road to Dawn: Josiah Henson and the Story That Sparked the Civil War

JARED BROCK · PublicAffairs
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover

This sweeping biography about the man who was the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is an epic tale of courage and bravery in the face of unimaginable trials.The Road to Dawn tells the improbable story of Josiah Henson-a dynamic, driven man with exceptional...
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