The #1 New York Times bestselling author of What Went Wrong? tells the story of his extraordinary life After September 11, Americans who had never given much thought to the Middle East turned to Bernard Lewis for an explanation, catapulting What Went Wrong? and later Crisis of Islam to become number one bestsellers. He was the first to warn of a coming "clash of civilizations," a term he coined in 1957, and has led an amazing life, as much a political actor as a scholar of the Middle East. In this witty memoir he reflects on the events that have transformed the region since World War II, up through the Arab Spring. A pathbreaking scholar with command of a dozen languages, Lewis has advised American presidents and dined with politicians from the shah of Iran to the pope. Over the years, he had tea at Buckingham Palace, befriended Golda Meir, and briefed politicians from Ted Kennedy to Dick Cheney. No stranger to controversy, he pulls no punches in his blunt criticism of those who see him as the intellectual progenitor of the Iraq war. Like America’s other great historian-statesmen Arthur Schlesinger and Henry Kissinger, he is a figure of towering intellect and a world-class raconteur, which makes Notes on a Century essential reading for anyone who cares about the fate of the Middle East.

In 1966, Edward Hoagland made a three-month excursion into the wild country of British Columbia and encountered a way of life that was disappearing even as he chronicled it. Showcasing Hoagland’s extraordinary gifts for portraiture—his cast runs from salty prospector to trader, explorer, missionary, and indigenous guide—Notes from the Century Before is a breathtaking mix of anecdote, derring-do, and unparalleled elegy from one of the finest writers of our time.

In The Business of the 21st Century, Robert Kiyosaki explains the revolutionary business of network marketing in the context of what makes any business a success in any economic situation. This book lends credibility to multilevel marketing business, and justifies why it is an ideal avenue through which to learn basic business and sales skills... and earn money.

Havana in the 1550s was a small coastal village with a very limited population that was vulnerable to attack. By 1610, however, under Spanish rule it had become one of the best-fortified port cities in the world and an Atlantic center of shipping, commerce, and shipbuilding. Using all available local Cuban sources, Alejandro de la Fuente provides the first examination of the transformation of Havana into a vibrant Atlantic port city and the fastest-growing urban center in the Americas in the late sixteenth century. He shows how local ambitions took advantage of the imperial design and situates Havana within the slavery and economic systems of the colonial Atlantic.

Few writers have so consistently taken stock of the society in which they have lived. In a letter to fellow Nobel Laureate Kenzaburo Oe, Nadine Gordimer describes this impressive volume as 'a modest book of some of the non-fiction pieces I've written, a reflection of how I've looked at this century I've lived in.' It is, in fact, an extraordinary collection of essays, articles, appreciations of fellow writers and addresses delivered over four decades, including her Nobel Prize Lecture of 1991. We may examine here Nadine Gordimer's evidence of the inequities of Apartheid as she saw them in 1959, her shocking account of the bans on literature still in effect in the mid-1970s, through to South Africa's emergence in 1994 as a country free at last, a view from the queue on that first day blacks and whites voted together plus updates on subsequent events. Gordimer's canvas is global and her themes wide-ranging. She examines the impact of technology on our expanding world-view, the convergence of the moral and the political in fiction and she reassesses the role of the writer in the world today.

In this innovative historical portrait of society in the premodern Middle East, Abraham Marcus takes us on a guided tour of a past world, revealing its inner workings and throwing new light on its realities during the crucial century before the onset of modernization in the region. Focusing on the great Syrian city of Aleppo, he pieces together aspects of life ranging from business and family to disease and popular pastimes. This work of social history shows how many of the accepted notions and assumptions about what is commonly called premodern, Islamic, or traditional society are inaccurate or unfounded, and draws our attention to the intricacies of a world that may appear alien and exotic but was by no means simple, primitive, or static.

A “marvelous history”* of medieval Europe, from the bubonic plague and the Papal Schism to the Hundred Years’ War, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Guns of August *Lawrence Wright, author of The End of October, in The Wall Street Journal The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. In this revelatory work, Barbara W. Tuchman examines not only the great rhythms of history but the grain and texture of domestic life: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike. Granting her subjects their loyalties, treacheries, and guilty passions, Tuchman re-creates the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, grocers and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and, dominating all, the knight—in all his valor and “furious follies,” a “terrible worm in an iron cocoon.” Praise for A Distant Mirror “Beautifully written, careful and thorough in its scholarship . . . What Ms. Tuchman does superbly is to tell how it was. . . . No one has ever done this better.”—The New York Review of Books “A beautiful, extraordinary book . . . Tuchman at the top of her powers . . . She has done nothing finer.”—The Wall Street Journal “Wise, witty, and wonderful . . . a great book, in a great historical tradition.”—Commentary

This unique and innovative book is more than a price and identification guide to Michigan's early banking system; it demonstrates the state's evolution from pioneer settlements for prosperous communities. &break;&break;This one-of-a-kind is filled with more than 2,200 rarely seen images from the foremost Michigan bank note collection. In addition, this reference gives collectors: &break;&break;Detailed listings organized alphabetically by name of the issuing institution, for easier identification and thorough regional research &break;&break;Additional historical information about early banking processes in Michigan, development of the state, and detailed guidelines for accurately identifying Michigan's obsolete and national bank notes &break;&break;Thoroughly researched value estimates for each listing

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Multilayered, subtle, insightful short stories from the inimitable Booker Prize–winning author, with an introduction by Anita Desai Nobody has written so powerfully of the relationship between and within India and the Western middle classes than Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. In this selection of stories, chosen by her surviving family, her ability to tenderly and humorously view the situations faced by three (sometimes interacting) cultures—European, post–Independence Indian, and American—is never more acute. In “A Course of English Studies,” a young woman arrives at Oxford from India and struggles to adapt, not only to the sad, stoic object of her infatuation, but also to a country that seems so resistant to passion and color. In the wrenching “Expiation,” the blind, unconditional love of a cloth shop owner for his wastrel younger brother exposes the tragic beauty and foolishness of human compassion and faith. The wry and triumphant “Pagans” brings us middle–aged sisters Brigitte and Frankie in Los Angeles, who discover a youthful sexuality in the company of the languid and handsome young Indian, Shoki. This collection also includes Jhabvala’s last story, “The Judge’s Will,” which appeared in The New Yorker in 2013 after her death. The profound inner experience of both men and women is at the center of Jhabvala’s writing: she rivals Jane Austen with her impeccable powers of observation. With an introduction by her friend, the writer Anita Desai, At the End of the Century celebrates a writer’s astonishing lifetime gift for language, and leaves us with no doubt of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s unique place in modern literature. "The stories—all of them elegantly plotted and unsentimental, with an addictive, told–over–tea quality—are largely character studies of people isolated, often tragically, by custom or self–delusion . . . Vivid, unsparing portraits are leavened with the kind of humanizing moments that evoke a total world within their compression."—Megan O’Grady, The New York Times Book Review

Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta