For six hundred years, the Ottoman Empire swelled and declined. Islamic, martial, civilized, and tolerant, it advanced in three centuries from the dusty foothills of Anatolia to rule on the Danube and the Nile; at its height, Indian rajahs and the kings of France beseeched the empire’s aid. In its last three hundred years the…
The struggle to perform well is universal: each one of us faces fatigue, limited resources, and imperfect abilities in whatever we do. But nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine, where lives are on the line with every decision. Author Atul Gawande is author of three bestselling books: Complications, a…
When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw and the city’s zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Author Diane Ackerman has been the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in addition to many other awards and recognitions for her…
In the tradition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all. Author S. C. Gwynne is an American nonfiction writer. He was graduated from Princeton…
Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life—having nothing but his own wits to help him along.
The first two stories of a masterwork once thought lost, written by a pre-WWII bestselling author who was deported to Auschwitz and died before her work could be completed. Author Irène Némirovsky (born February 11, 1903, Kiev, died August 17, 1942, Auschwitz, German Occupied Poland) was a Jewish novelist and biographer born in the Ukraine,…
An unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human. Author Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, OBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist of Japanese origin and Nobel Laureate in Literature (2017). His family moved to England in 1960. Ishiguro obtained his Bachelor’s degree from the University…
A rich, wonderfully alive novel from one of our most admired and best-loved writers, her first book in nine years. Lark and Termite is set during the 1950s in West Virginia and Korea. It is a story of the power of loss and love, the echoing ramifications of war, family secrets, dreams and ghosts, and…
Scholar A. Roger Ekirch illuminates the aspects of life most often overlooked by other historiansthose that unfold at night. Author A. Roger Ekirch (1950) is University Distinguished Professor of history at Virginia Tech in the United States. He was a Guggenheim fellow in 1998. He is internationally known for his pioneering research into pre-industrial sleeping…
The Forger’s Spell is the true story of Johannes Vermeer and the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him centuries later. The con man’s mark was Hermann Goering, one of the most reviled leaders of Nazi Germany and a fanatic collector of art. Author Edward Dolnick is an American writer, formerly a science writer…
