The explosive story of America’s secret post-WWII science programs, from the author of the New York Times bestseller Area 51.

In the chaos following World War II, the U.S. government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich’s scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis’ once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler’s scientists and their families to the United States.

Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery. They were also directly responsible for major advances in rocketry, medical treatments, and the U.S. space program. Was Operation Paperclip a moral outrage, or did it help America win the Cold War?

Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and with access to German archival documents (including previously unseen papers made available by direct descendants of the Third Reich’s ranking members), files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and dossiers discovered in government archives and at Harvard University, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into a startling, complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secret of the twentieth century.

In this definitive, controversial look at one of America’s most strategic, and disturbing, government programs, Jacobsen shows just how dark government can get in the name of national security.

Before there was money, there was debt. Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.

Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little-known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.

Was the Battle of Hastings a French victory? Non! William the Conqueror was Norman and hated the French.

Were the Brits really responsible for the death of Joan of Arc? Non! The French sentenced her to death for wearing trousers.

Was the guillotine a French invention? Non! It was invented in Yorkshire.

Ten centuries' worth of French historical 'facts' bite the dust as Stephen Clarke looks at what has really been going on since 1066. The English Channel may be only twenty miles wide, but it’s a thousand years deep. Clarke takes a penetrating look into those murky depths, guiding us through all the times when Britain and France have been at war - or at least glowering at each other across what the Brits provocatively call the English Channel.

Along the way, he explodes a few myths that French historians have been trying to pass off as 'la vérité', as he proves that the French did not invent the baguette, or the croissant, or even the guillotine, and would have taken the bubbles out of bubbly if the Brits hadn’t created a fashion for fizzy champagne.

Starting with the Norman (not French) Conquest and going right up to the supposedly more peaceful present, when a state visit by French President Nicolas Sarkozy becomes a series of hilarious historical insults, this is a light-hearted - but impeccably researched - account of all our great fallings-out. In short, the French are quite right to suspect that the last thousand years have been one long British campaign to infuriate them. And it’s not over yet ...

The acclaimed author of Troublesome Young Men reveals the behind-the-scenes story of how the United States forged its wartime alliance with Britain. This tale is told from the perspective of three key American players in London:

• Edward R. Murrow, the handsome, chain-smoking head of CBS News in Europe.
• Averell Harriman, the hard-driving millionaire who ran FDR’s Lend-Lease program in London.
• John Gilbert Winant, the shy, idealistic U.S. ambassador to Britain.

Each man formed close ties with Winston Churchill—so much so that all became romantically involved with members of the prime minister’s family. Drawing from a variety of primary sources, Lynne Olson skillfully depicts the dramatic personal journeys of these men who, determined to save Britain from Hitler, helped convince a cautious Franklin Roosevelt and reluctant American public to back the British at a critical time.

Deeply human, brilliantly researched, and beautifully written, Citizens of London is a new triumph from an author swiftly becoming one of the finest in her field.

For more than a quarter century, biographer Philip Norman's internationally bestselling Shout! has been unchallenged as the definitive biography of the Beatles. Now, at last, Norman turns his formidable talent to the Beatle for whom being a Beatle was never enough. Drawing on previously untapped sources, and with unprecedented access to all the major characters, Norman presents the comprehensive and most revealing portrait of John Lennon ever published.

This masterly biography takes a fresh and penetrating look at every aspect of Lennon's much-chronicled life, including the songs that have turned him, posthumously, into a near-secular saint. In three years of research, Norman has turned up an extraordinary amount of new information about even the best-known episodes of Lennon folklore—his upbringing by his strict Aunt Mimi; his allegedly wasted school and student days; the evolution of his peerless creative partnership with Paul McCartney; his Beatle-busting love affair with a Japanese performance artist; his forays into painting and literature; his experiments with Transcendental Meditation, primal scream therapy, and drugs.

The book's numerous key informants and interviewees include Sir Paul McCartney, Sir George Martin, Sean Lennon—whose moving reminiscence reveals his father as never seen before—and Yoko Ono, who speaks with sometimes shocking candor about the inner workings of her marriage to John. Honest and unflinching, as John himself would wish, Norman gives us the whole man in all his endless contradictions—tough and cynical, hilariously funny but also naive, vulnerable and insecure—and reveals how the mother who gave him away as a toddler haunted his mind and his music for the rest of his days.

The Hitler biography of the twenty-first century, Ian Kershaw's Hitler is a new, distilled, one-volume masterpiece that will become the standard work.

From Hitler's origins as a failed artist in fin-de-siècle Vienna to the terrifying last days in his Berlin bunker, Kershaw's richly illustrated biography is a mesmerizing portrait of how Hitler attained, exercised, and retained power.

Drawing on previously untapped sources, such as Goebbels's diaries, Kershaw addresses crucial questions about the unique nature of Nazi radicalism, the Holocaust, and the poisoned European world that allowed Hitler to operate so effectively.

India After Gandhi is a magisterial account of the pains, the struggles, the humiliations, and the glories of the world's largest and least likely democracy. Ramachandra Guha offers a breathtaking chronicle of the brutal conflicts that have rocked a giant nation and the extraordinary factors that have held it together.

This intricately researched and elegantly written epic history is populated with larger-than-life characters, making it the work of a major scholar at the peak of his abilities. Guha provides fresh insights into the lives and public careers of India's long-serving prime ministers and other significant figures, painting vivid sketches of major "provincial" leaders and lesser-known yet important Indians—peasants, tribals, women, workers, and musicians.

Moving between history and biography, this story of modern India is both a riveting chronicle and a definitive history of a country that has defied numerous prophets of doom.

Cultural Amnesia is an encyclopedic A-Z masterpiece that serves as the perfect introduction to the core of Western humanism. This international bestseller by Clive James illuminates, rescues, or occasionally destroys the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the twentieth century.

Organized by quotations, the book is more than just a collection of essays. It takes the reader on an intellectual adventure, soaring to Montaigne-like heights, and provides a thorough understanding of the cultural and intellectual landscape of the last century. It's the book to burnish the memories of a Western civilization that James fears is nearly lost.

Seattle's Fremont is lovingly labeled by locals as the “Center of the Universe”. It is one of Seattle's most eclectic and dynamic neighborhoods. Just over a century ago, it was little more than lush primeval forest, but it has grown into a vibrant community.

The area developed as the home of the city's blue-collar workers and became a bohemian haven for local artists. Today, it's a thriving urban mecca filled with bars, restaurants, hip boutiques, and art studios that cater to the worldly aware.

Most recently, Fremont has become the address of high-tech giants like Adobe. It continues to evolve, reflecting the changes in industry that have contributed to Fremont's reputation as an urban area on the cutting edge.

In 1935, with a doctorate in art history and no prospect of a job, the 26-year-old Ernst Gombrich was invited by a publishing acquaintance to attempt a history of the world for younger readers. Amazingly, he completed the task in an intense six weeks, and Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser was published in Vienna to immediate success, and is now available in seventeen languages across the world.

Toward the end of his long life, Gombrich embarked upon a revision and, at last, an English translation. A Little History of the World presents his lively and involving history to English-language readers for the first time. Superbly designed and freshly illustrated, this is a book to be savored and collected.

In forty concise chapters, Gombrich tells the story of man from the stone age to the atomic bomb. In between emerges a colorful picture of wars and conquests, grand works of art, and the spread and limitations of science. This is a text dominated not by dates and facts, but by the sweep of mankind's experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements and an acute witness to its frailties.

The product of a generous and humane sensibility, this timeless account makes intelligible the full span of human history.

The tiny island of Run is an insignificant speck in the middle of the Indonesian archipelago—remote, tranquil, and now largely ignored. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, however, Run's harvest of nutmeg turned it into the most lucrative of the Spice Islands, precipitating a fierce and bloody battle between the all-powerful Dutch East India Company and a small band of ragtag British adventurers led by the intrepid Nathaniel Courthope. The outcome of the fighting was one of the most spectacular deals in history: Britain ceded Run to Holland, but in return was given another small island, Manhattan.

A brilliant adventure story of unthinkable hardship and savagery, the navigation of uncharted waters, and the exploitation of new worlds, Nathaniel's Nutmeg is a remarkable chapter in the history of the colonial powers.

Bearing the Cross: A monumental account of the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., this book offers an in-depth look into the evolution of a young pastor into an iconic leader of America’s civil rights movement.

Based on extensive research and over 700 interviews, including conversations with Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, and Coretta Scott King, this biography paints a multidimensional portrait of a charismatic figure driven by his strong moral obligation to lead.

The book details King’s spiritual development and his crucial role at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, whose protest campaigns in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, led to the enactment of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.

This comprehensive yet intimate study reveals the deep sense of mission King felt to serve as an unrelenting crusader against prejudice, inequality, and violence, and his willingness to sacrifice his own life on behalf of his beliefs.

What makes people love and die for nations, as well as hate and kill in their name? While many studies have been written on nationalist political movements, the sense of nationality—the personal and cultural feeling of belonging to a nation—has not received proportionate attention.

In this widely acclaimed work, Benedict Anderson examines the creation and global spread of the 'imagined communities' of nationality. Anderson explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialization of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time.

He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was modularly adopted by popular movements in Europe, by the imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa.

This revised edition includes two new chapters, one of which discusses the complex role of the colonialist state's mindset in the development of Third World nationalism, while the other analyses the processes by which, all over the world, nations came to imagine themselves as old.

In their 200+ combined years, Sadie and Bessie Delany have seen it all. They saw their father, who was born into slavery, become America's first black Episcopal bishop. They saw their mother—a woman of mixed racial parentage who was born free—give birth to ten children, all of whom would become college-educated, successful professionals in a time when blacks could scarcely expect to receive a high school diploma.

They saw the post-Reconstruction South, the Jim Crow laws, Harlem's Golden Age, and the Civil Rights movement—and, in their own feisty, wise, inimitable way, they've got a lot to say about it.

More than a firsthand account of black American history, Having Our Say teaches us about surviving, thriving, and embracing life, no matter what obstacles are in our way.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Harry S. Truman, whose presidency included momentous events from the atomic bombing of Japan to the outbreak of the Cold War and the Korean War, told by America’s beloved and distinguished historian.

The life of Harry S. Truman is one of the greatest of American stories, filled with vivid characters—Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Wallace Truman, George Marshall, Joe McCarthy, and Dean Acheson—and dramatic events. In this riveting biography, acclaimed historian David McCullough not only captures the man—a more complex, informed, and determined man than ever before imagined—but also the turbulent times in which he rose, boldly, to meet unprecedented challenges.

The last president to serve as a living link between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Truman’s story spans the raw world of the Missouri frontier, World War I, the powerful Pendergast machine of Kansas City, the legendary Whistle-Stop Campaign of 1948, and the decisions to drop the atomic bomb, confront Stalin at Potsdam, send troops to Korea, and fire General MacArthur.

Drawing on newly discovered archival material and extensive interviews with Truman’s own family, friends, and Washington colleagues, McCullough tells the deeply moving story of the seemingly ordinary “man from Missouri” who was perhaps the most courageous president in our history.

The Path Between the Seas is an epic chronicle of the creation of the Panama Canal, a bold and brilliant engineering feat of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Master historian David McCullough delivers a captivating tale of this grand enterprise, filled with both triumph and tragedy.

From the mid-19th century, as Europeans explored the possibilities of creating a link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, to the final handover of the canal to Panama in 1999, the story is one of astonishing engineering feats and tremendous medical accomplishments. The construction involved thousands of workers from many nations, laboring in oppressive heat and battling diseases like malaria.

The Path Between the Seas tells the story of the men and women who fought against all odds to fulfill the 400-year-old dream of constructing an aquatic passageway. It was a story of political power plays, heroic successes, and tragic failures, woven together into a comprehensive and captivating narrative by McCullough's remarkable gift for writing lucid, lively exposition.

The quintessential account of the Second World War as seen by Winston Churchill, its greatest leader. As Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1940 to 1945, Winston Churchill was not only the most powerful player in World War II, but also the free world's most eloquent voice of defiance in the face of Nazi tyranny.

Churchill's epic accounts of those times, remarkable for their grand sweep and incisive firsthand observations, are distilled here in a single essential volume. Memoirs of the Second World War is a vital and illuminating work that retains the drama, eyewitness details, and magisterial prose of his classic six-volume history and offers an invaluable view of pivotal events of the twentieth century.