The author makes the point that in this abridgement he has adhered to Gibbon's style, format, planning, and footnotes, and has made only selective exclusions. The history covers the centuries from Marcus Aurelius to the capture of Constantinople, and concludes with an epilogue dealing with medieval Rome and the dawn of the Renaissance.

Chronicles the January 15, 1919 Boston Molasses Flood that killed twenty-one people when over two million gallons of molasses poured out of the steel tank that stored it and traveled through the city's North End.

"From Rebecca Traister, the New York Times bestselling author of All the Single Ladies--whom Anne Lamott called "the most brilliant voice on feminism in this country"--comes a vital, incisive exploration into the transformative power of female anger and its ability to transcend into a political movement. In the year 2018, it seems as if women's anger has suddenly erupted into the public conversation. But long before Pantsuit Nation, before the Women's...

In the summer of 1776, Washington's army in Brooklyn and New York City faced one of the largest invading forces ever assembled by the British Empire. After suffering a series of devastating defeats, Washington's vulnerable and dejected troops were forced to evacuate the southern tip of Manhattan Island. Three weeks later, however, near the Canadian border, one of his favorite and most talented generals accomplished a tactical miracle by stalling the...

The liberation of Europe and defeat of the Third Reich is an epic story of courage and calamity, of miscalculation and enduring triumph. Sixty years after America joined the struggle, Atkinson shows why no modern reader can understand the Allied victory without a grasp of what unfolded in North Africa in 1942 and 1943, where American officers learned how to lead, soldiers learned how to hate, and an army learned what it takes to vanquish a formidable...

Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history's most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived: first-century Palestine, an age awash in apocalyptic fervor. Scores of Jewish prophets, preachers, and would-be messiahs wandered through the Holy Land, bearing messages from God. This was the age of zealotry--a fervent nationalism that made resistance...

The untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. A pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler investigate a family mysteriously stricken bald, factory workers with crumbling bones, a diner serving poisoned pies, and many others. Each case...

Describes what life was like in Paris after June 1940, when the Nazis occupied France, juxtaposing the eerie sense of normalcy felt by many Parisians with the passion of the strong resistance movement that rose around Charles de Gaulle. On June 14, 1940, German tanks entered a silent and nearly deserted Paris. Eight days later, France accepted a humiliating defeat and foreign occupation. Subsequently, an eerie sense of normalcy settled over the City...

"Presenting a brief but thorough account of the cultural, economic and political history of the state of Israel, a public intellectual sheds light on the past of this complex nation, one rife with conflict, so that readers can understand its future."-- "Israel is a tiny state, and yet since its creation, it has captured the world's attention, earned its admiration, and, often, been the object of its opprobrium. Why is so much of the international...

This book is the author's eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution. Writing in the first flush of revolutionary enthusiasm, he gives a gripping account of the events in Petrograd in November 1917, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks finally seized power. Containing verbatim reports both of speeches by leaders and of the chance comments of bystanders, and set against an idealized backdrop of soldiers, sailors, peasants, and the proletariat uniting to...