In Washington, D.C., a homeless man dies in Commander Gray Pierce's arms, shot by an assassin's bullet. But the death leaves behind a greater mystery: a bloody coin found clutched in the dead man's hand, an ancient relic that can be traced back to the Greek Oracle of Delphi. As ruthless hunters search for the stolen artifact, Gray Pierce discovers that the coin is the key to unlocking a plot that dates back to the Cold War and threatens the very foundation of humanity.

An international think tank of scientists known as the Jasons has discovered a way to bioengineer autistic children who show savant talents — mathematical geniuses, statistical masterminds, brilliant conceptual artists — into something far greater and far more frightening, in hopes of creating a world prophet for the new millennium, one to be manipulated to create a new era of global peace... a peace on their own terms.

Halfway around the world, a man wakes up in a hospital bed with no memory of who he is, knowing only that he's a prisoner in a subterranean research facility. With the help of three unusual children, he makes his escape across a mountainous and radioactive countryside, pursued by savage hunters bred in the same laboratory. But his goal is not escape, nor even survival. In order to thwart a plot to wipe out a quarter of the world's population, he must sacrifice all, even the children who rescued him.

From ancient Greek temples to glittering mausoleums, from the slums of India to the toxic ruins of Russia, two men must race against time to solve a mystery that dates back to the first famous oracle of history — the Greek Oracle of Delphi. But one question remains: Will the past be enough to save the future?

No one could reach her. Twelve-year-old Helen Keller lived in a prison of silence and darkness. Born deaf, blind, and mute, with no way to express herself or comprehend those around her, she flew into primal rages against anyone who tried to help her, fighting tooth and nail with a strength born of furious, unknowing desperation.

Then Annie Sullivan came. Half-blind herself, but possessing an almost fanatical determination, she would begin a frightening and incredibly moving struggle to tame the wild girl no one could reach, and bring Helen into the world at last.

A compulsively readable account of a journey to the Congo — a country virtually inaccessible to the outside world — vividly told by a daring and adventurous journalist.

Ever since Stanley first charted its mighty river in the 1870s, the Congo has epitomized the dark and turbulent history of a failed continent. However, its troubles only served to increase the interest of Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher, who was sent to cover Africa in 2000. Before long he became obsessed with the idea of recreating Stanley’s original expedition — but travelling alone.

Despite warnings Butcher spent years poring over colonial-era maps and wooing rebel leaders before making his will and venturing to the Congo’s eastern border. He passed through once thriving cities of this country and saw the marks left behind by years of abuse and misrule. Almost, 2,500 harrowing miles later, he reached the Atlantic Ocean, a thinner and a wiser man.

Butcher’s journey was a remarkable feat. But the story of the Congo, vividly told in Blood River, is more remarkable still.

Why does Oklahoma have that panhandle? Did someone make a mistake? We are so familiar with the map of the United States that our state borders seem as much a part of nature as mountains and rivers. Even the oddities—the entire state of Maryland(!)—have become so ingrained that our map might as well be a giant jigsaw puzzle designed by Divine Providence. But that's where the real mystery begins.

Every edge of the familiar wooden jigsaw pieces of our childhood represents a revealing moment of history and of, well, humans drawing lines in the sand. How the States Got Their Shapes is the first book to tackle why our state lines are where they are. Here are the stories behind the stories, right down to the tiny northward jog at the eastern end of Tennessee and the teeny-tiny (and little known) parts of Delaware that are not attached to Delaware but to New Jersey.

How the States Got Their Shapes examines:

• Why West Virginia has a finger creeping up the side of Pennsylvania
• Why Michigan has an upper peninsula that isn't attached to Michigan
• Why some Hawaiian islands are not Hawaii
• Why Texas and California are so outsized, especially when so many Midwestern states are nearly identical in size

Packed with fun oddities and trivia, this entertaining guide also reveals the major fault lines of American history, from ideological intrigues and religious intolerance to major territorial acquisitions. Adding the fresh lens of local geographic disputes, military skirmishes, and land grabs, Mark Stein shows how the seemingly haphazard puzzle pieces of our nation fit together perfectly.

Originally published: Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen is an atmospheric and gritty tale set against the backdrop of a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression. Jacob Jankowski, a veterinary student who is almost a graduate, finds himself adrift and orphaned. His life takes an unexpected turn when he jumps onto a passing train and enters the world of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.

Within the circus, Jacob is put in charge of the menagerie and it is here that he meets Marlena, the captivating young star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, an elephant who appears untrainable until Jacob discovers a way to connect with her. The novel weaves a tale of star-crossed lovers and explores the bonds that develop among a group of diverse characters, including the charismatic but twisted animal trainer, August.

Set in a time when even love was considered a luxury, Water for Elephants is a story about the enduring power of love and the beauty that can be found amidst the struggle for survival.

Charlotte Miller has always scoffed at talk of a curse on her family's woolen mill, which holds her beloved small town together. But after her father's death, the bad luck piles up: departing workers, impossible debts, an overbearing uncle. Then a stranger named Jack Spinner offers a tempting proposition: He can turn straw into gold thread, for the small price of her mother's ring. As Charlotte is drawn deeper into her bargains with Spinner-and a romance with the local banker-she must unravel the truth of the curse on the mill and save the community she's always called home.

Weir has tirelessly made her way through the entire labyrinth of Tudor history to tell the collective story of the six wives of Henry VIII--a vivid, full-blooded portrait of six very different women--in a work of sound and brilliant scholarship. Illustrations.

Night Train to Lisbon is a captivating novel that delves into the depths of our shared humanity, offering a breathtaking insight into life, love, and literature itself. This compelling exploration of consciousness examines the possibility of truly understanding another person and the ability of language to define our very selves.

Raimund Gregorius, a Latin teacher at a Swiss college, encounters a mysterious Portuguese woman and decides to abandon his old life to start anew. He takes the night train to Lisbon, carrying with him a book by Amadeu de Prado, a fictional Portuguese doctor and essayist whose writings explore loneliness, mortality, friendship, love, and loyalty.

Gregorius becomes obsessed with what he reads and restlessly struggles to comprehend the life of the author. His investigations lead him all over the city of Lisbon, as he speaks to those entangled in Prado’s life. Gradually, the picture of an extraordinary man emerges—a doctor and poet who rebelled against Salazar’s dictatorship.

Longitude is a dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest: the search for the solution of how to calculate longitude and the unlikely triumph of an English genius, John Harrison.

Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day—and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives, and the increasing fortunes of nations, hung on a resolution.

The scientific establishment of Europe—from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton—had mapped the heavens in both hemispheres in its certain pursuit of a celestial answer. In stark contrast, one man, John Harrison, dared to imagine a mechanical solution—a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land. This is Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer.

Full of heroism and chicanery, it is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation, and clock-making, and opens a new window on our world.

Robert Littell does for the CIA what Mario Puzo did for the Mafia. The Company is an engrossing, multigenerational, wickedly nostalgic yet utterly entertaining and candid saga, bringing to life, through a host of characters—both historical and imagined—the nearly 50 years of this secretive and powerful organization.

In a style both intelligent and ironic, Littell tells it like it was: CIA agents fighting not only 'the good fight' against foreign enemies, but sometimes the bad one as well, with the ends justifying such means as CIA-organized assassinations, covert wars, kidnappings, and toppling of legitimate governments.

Behind every manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre, though, one question spans the length of the book: Who is the mole within the CIA? This astonishing novel captures the life and death struggle of an entire generation of CIA operatives during a long Cold War.

Darkness falls on the Great Green and the Ancient World is fiercely divided.

On the killing fields outside the golden city of Troy, forces loyal to the Mykene King Agamemnon mass. Among them is Odysseus, fabled storyteller and reluctant ally to the Mykene. He knows that Agamemnon will stop at nothing to secure the treasure that lies within the city walls, and he must soon face his former friends in deadly combat.

Ailing and bitter, the Trojan king waits. His hope is pinned on two heroes: his favourite son, Hektor, the mightiest warrior of his age, and the dread Helikaon, who will wreak terrible vengeance for the death of his wife at Mykene hands.

War has been declared.

As enemies, who are also kinsmen, are filled with bloodlust, they know that some of them - men and women - will become heroes: heroes who will live forever in a story that will echo down the centuries.

If you start to read this book, you will go on a journey with a nine-year-old boy named Bruno. (Though this isn't a book for nine-year-olds.) And sooner or later you will arrive with Bruno at a fence.

Fences like this exist all over the world. We hope you never have to encounter one.

Berlin, 1942: When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move to a new house far, far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people in the distance.

But Bruno longs to be an explorer and decides that there must be more to this desolate new place than meets the eye. While exploring his new environment, he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very different from his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences.

Americans have lost touch with their history, and in Lies My Teacher Told Me Professor James Loewen shows why. After surveying eighteen leading high school American history texts, he has concluded that not one does a decent job of making history interesting or memorable. Marred by an embarrassing combination of blind patriotism, mindless optimism, sheer misinformation, and outright lies, these books omit almost all the ambiguity, passion, conflict, and drama from our past.

In this revised edition, packed with updated material, Loewen explores how historical myths continue to be perpetuated in today's climate and adds an eye-opening chapter on the lies surrounding 9/11 and the Iraq War. From the truth about Columbus's historic voyages to an honest evaluation of our national leaders, Loewen revives our history, restoring the vitality and relevance it truly possesses.

Thought provoking, nonpartisan, and often shocking, Loewen unveils the real America in this iconoclastic classic beloved by high school teachers, history buffs, and enlightened citizens across the country.

Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. Inside the traitor was a man of loyalty; inside the villain was a hero. The problem for Chapman, his spymasters, and his lovers was to know where one persona ended and the other began.

In 1941, after training as a German spy in occupied France, Chapman was parachuted into Britain with a revolver, a wireless, and a cyanide pill, with orders from the Abwehr to blow up an airplane factory. Instead, he contacted MI5, the British Secret Service. For the next four years, Chapman worked as a double agent, a lone British spy at the heart of the German Secret Service who at one time volunteered to assassinate Hitler for his countrymen.

Crisscrossing Europe under different names, all the while weaving plans, spreading disinformation, and, miraculously, keeping his stories straight under intense interrogation, he even managed to gain some profit and seduce beautiful women along the way.

The Nazis feted Chapman as a hero and awarded him the Iron Cross. In Britain, he was pardoned for his crimes, becoming the only wartime agent to be thus rewarded. Both countries provided for the mother of his child and his mistress.

A gripping story of loyalty, love, and treachery, Agent Zigzag offers a unique glimpse into the psychology of espionage, with its thin and shifting line between fidelity and betrayal.

The intrepid Jacky Faber, having once again eluded British authorities, heads west, hoping that no one will recognize her in the wilds of America. There she tricks the tall-tale hero Mike Fink out of his flatboat, equips it as a floating casino-showboat, and heads south to New Orleans, battling murderous bandits, British soldiers, and other scoundrels along the way.

Will Jacky's carelessness and impulsive actions ultimately cause her beloved Jaimy to be left in her wake? Bold, daring, and downright fun, Jacky Faber proves once again that with resilience and can-do spirit, she can wiggle out of any scrape... well, almost.

The Lace Reader is a novel set in the mysterious town of Salem, Massachusetts, a place steeped in history and intrigue. The story revolves around Towner Whitney, a woman descended from a long line of mind readers and fortune tellers who can read the future in the patterns of lace.

Returning to Salem for some rest and relaxation, Towner's life is thrown into turmoil when her beloved aunt drowns under mysterious circumstances. As Towner delves deeper into her family's secrets, she must confront her painful past and the shocking truth about the death of her twin sister.

Through unreliable narratives and a blend of reality and imagination, the novel explores themes of family, memory, and the supernatural. The Whitney women's ability to read lace serves as both a gift and a curse, revealing hidden truths and challenging their perceptions of reality.

As the story unfolds, readers are drawn into a suspenseful, fast-paced tale that questions the boundaries between what is real and what is imagined. The novel's rich, evocative prose casts an enthralling spell, making it a compelling read for those who enjoy a mix of mystery, psychological drama, and historical fiction.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a witty and fantastical satire about aging, authored by the renowned F. Scott Fitzgerald. This strange and haunting story embodies the sharp social insight that has made Fitzgerald one of the great voices in the history of American literature.

In 1860, Benjamin Button is born an old man and mysteriously begins aging backward. At the beginning of his life, he is withered and worn, but as he continues to grow younger, he embraces life. He goes to war, runs a business, falls in love, has children, goes to college and prep school, and, as his mind begins to devolve, he attends kindergarten and eventually returns to the care of his nurse.

This imaginative tale challenges our perceptions of time and age, offering a unique perspective on the human experience.

Kabale und Liebe, a masterpiece by Friedrich Schiller, is a powerful exploration of love and politics. This classic drama, set in Germany, delves deep into the complexities of social class and personal ambition.

Luise and Ferdinand, two young lovers from different social backgrounds, struggle against the intrigues and manipulations of those around them. Their love is tested by the machinations of power, leading to a tragic yet compelling narrative that has captivated audiences for centuries.

This work, rich in cultural heritage, highlights the timeless themes of love, betrayal, and the quest for justice, making it a significant piece in the canon of German literature.

Lady Elyssa Yamato Amaterasu Wentworth is a seven-hundred-year-old vampire in need of a new servant—now more than ever as she's suffering the signs of a mysterious ailment that threatens to consume her.

As a gift, she's been given Jacob, an extraordinary physical specimen, but all wrong when it comes to being... used. A total alpha male, he's not accustomed to submitting to any woman's wishes.

Elyssa soon learns that what really binds Jacob to her are not her sensual midnight hungers, but something far more provocative. It stirs her blood, renews her life, and awakens her soul like only true love can. And the passion between Elyssa and Jacob is about to yield something else unexpected—a shared history that reaches back through the centuries and is fated to challenge their destiny like nothing ever will again...

New York Times bestselling author James Rollins returns with a terrifying story of an ancient menace reborn to plague the modern world... and of an impossible hope that lies hidden in the most shocking place imaginable: within the language of angels.

ju·das strain, n. A scientific term for an organism that drives an entire species to extinction.

From the depths of the Indian Ocean, a horrific plague has arisen to devastate humankind—a disease that's unknown, unstoppable... and deadly. But it is merely a harbinger of the doom that is to follow. Aboard a cruise liner transformed into a makeshift hospital, Dr. Lisa Cummings and Monk Kokkalis—operatives of SIGMA Force—search for answers to the bizarre affliction. But there are others with far less altruistic intentions.

In a savage and sudden coup, terrorists hijack the vessel, turning a mercy ship into a floating bio-weapons lab. A world away, SIGMA's Commander Gray Pierce thwarts the murderous schemes of a beautiful would-be killer who holds the first clue to the discovery of a possible cure.

Pierce joins forces with the woman who wanted him dead, and together they embark upon an astonishing quest following the trail of the most fabled explorer in history: Marco Polo. But time is an enemy as a worldwide pandemic grows rapidly out of control. As a relentless madman dogs their every step, Gray and his unlikely ally are being pulled into an astonishing mystery buried deep in antiquity and in humanity's genetic code.

And as the seconds tick closer to doomsday, Gray Pierce will realize he can truly trust no one, for any one of them could be... a Judas.

In this Newbery Honor-winning novel, Gary D. Schmidt offers an unforgettable antihero. The Wednesday Wars is a wonderfully witty and compelling story about a teenage boy’s mishaps and adventures over the course of the 1967–68 school year in Long Island, New York.

Meet Holling Hoodhood, a seventh-grader at Camillo Junior High, who must spend Wednesday afternoons with his teacher, Mrs. Baker, while the rest of the class has religious instruction. Mrs. Baker doesn’t like Holling—he’s sure of it. Why else would she make him read the plays of William Shakespeare outside class?

But everyone has bigger things to worry about, like Vietnam. His father wants Holling and his sister to be on their best behavior: the success of his business depends on it. But how can Holling stay out of trouble when he has so much to contend with? A bully demanding cream puffs; angry rats; and a baseball hero signing autographs the very same night Holling has to appear in a play in yellow tights!

As fate sneaks up on him again and again, Holling finds Motivation—the Big M—in the most unexpected places and musters up the courage to embrace his destiny, in spite of himself.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition—published in both hardcover and paperback—Brown has contributed an incisive new preface.

Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.

A Legendary Masterpiece: A story of money and power, sex and death.

Jonas Cord coveted his father's fame, fortune, and even his young, beautiful wife. When his father died, Jonas swore to possess them all. But Rina Marlow was the celebrated screen goddess no man could master. Her sizzling sensuality might inflame and enthrall millions, but her personal boudoir was no Hollywood fantasy. She consumed her lovers on the fiery rack of her burning desires.

Rina and Jonas took Hollywood, the airplane industry, and America itself by storm. From New York to LA, they brawled, lusted, and carved out an empire, blazoned in banner headlines and their enemies' blood—only to learn that money and power, revenge and renown were not enough. Too much would never be enough—not for Jonas Cord and the relentless Rina Marlowe. The higher they soared, the more their ambition demanded... the darker and deadlier their fiery passions grew.

The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom narrates the harrowing true tale of seven escaped Soviet prisoners who desperately marched out of Siberia through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India.

Einstein was a rebel and nonconformist from boyhood days, and these character traits drove both his life and his science. In this narrative, Walter Isaacson explains how his mind worked and the mysteries of the universe that he discovered. The first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. Biographer Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk-

Using the dramatic scenario of an investigative journalist pursuing his story and leads, Lee Strobel uses his experience as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune to interview experts about the evidence for Christ from the fields of science, philosophy, and history.

Retracing his own spiritual journey from atheism to faith, Lee Strobel, former legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, cross-examines a dozen experts with doctorates from schools like Cambridge, Princeton, and Brandeis who are recognized authorities in their own fields. Strobel challenges them with questions like, How reliable is the New Testament? Does evidence for Jesus exist outside the Bible? Is there any reason to believe the resurrection was an actual event?

But it's not fiction. It's a riveting quest for the truth about history's most compelling figure. The new edition includes scores of revisions and additions, including updated material on archaeological and manuscript discoveries, fresh recommendations for further study, and an interview with the author that tells dramatic stories about the book's impact, provides behind-the-scenes information, and responds to critiques of the book by skeptics.

Human Action: A Treatise on Economics by Ludwig von Mises is a profound and comprehensive examination of economic principles. Mises delves into the intricacies of market phenomena, presenting them as the results of countless conscious, purposive actions, choices, and preferences of individuals. Each person strives to attain various wants and ends while avoiding undesired consequences.

Individual Choices: It is the subjective value judgments of individuals that ultimately determine market phenomena such as supply and demand, prices, the pattern of production, and even profits and losses. While governments may attempt to set "prices," it is individuals who, through competitive bidding for money, products, and services, actually determine them.

Economics as a Study of Human Actions: Mises presents economics not merely as a study of material goods, services, and products, but as a study of human actions. He introduces the science of praxeology, a discipline grounded in reason and logic, which acknowledges a regularity in the sequence and interrelationships among market phenomena.

The Impact of Free Market Policies: Mises attributes the tremendous technological progress and increased wealth and general welfare in the last two centuries to liberal government policies based on free-market economic teachings. These policies created an environment of freedom and peace, allowing individuals to pursue their respective goals.

The Futility of Government Regulation: Mises explains the futility and counter-productiveness of government attempts to regulate and control individuals' circumstances. He argues that men are born unequal, and it is precisely their inequality that fosters social cooperation and civilization.

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) was a leading figure of the Austrian School of Economics in the twentieth century. His work continues to be a significant reference in the field of economics.

Discovered in 1855, Green Lake has been an essential feature within Seattle's distinctive juxtaposition of landscape architecture and urban expansion, providing recreation and community focus for the last 150 years.

Named after the persistent algae bloom that still occurs, the lake is a valuable natural landmark at the center of a neighborhood in transition. Its past is threaded with tenacious organizations and ambitious individuals.

From its first homesteader, Erhart "Green Lake John" Saifried, to the vision of the Olmsted brothers, from Guy Phinney's menagerie to the triumph and tragedy of Helene Madison, from ice-skating to the Aqua Follies, this broad collection of vintage images illustrates a bygone era and provides a unique perspective on community values and ecological struggle.

The Pillow Book is a fascinating, detailed account of Japanese court life in the eleventh century. Written by a lady of the court at the height of Heian culture, this book enthralls with its lively gossip, witty observations, and subtle impressions. Lady Shonagon was an erstwhile rival of Lady Murasaki, whose novel, The Tale of Genji, fictionalized the elite world Lady Shonagon so eloquently relates.

Featuring reflections on royal and religious ceremonies, nature, conversation, poetry, and many other subjects, The Pillow Book is an intimate look at the experiences and outlook of the Heian upper class, further enriched by Ivan Morris's extensive notes and critical contextualization.

How a handful of bastards and outlaws fighting under a piece of striped bunting humbled the omnipotent British Navy.

Before the ink was dry on the U.S. Constitution, the establishment of a permanent military had become the most divisive issue facing the new government. Would a standing army be the thin end of dictatorship? Would a navy protect American commerce against the Mediterranean pirates, or drain the treasury and provoke hostilities with the great powers? The founders—particularly Jefferson, Madison, and Adams—debated these questions fiercely and switched sides more than once.

How much of a navy would suffice? Britain alone had hundreds of powerful warships. From the decision to build six heavy frigates, through the cliffhanger campaign against Tripoli, to the war that shook the world in 1812, Ian W. Toll tells this grand tale with the political insight of Founding Brothers and a narrative flair worthy of Patrick O'Brian. According to Henry Adams, the 1812 encounter between USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere "raised the United States in one half hour to the rank of a first class power in the world."

Magic, madam, is like wine and, if you are not used to it, it will make you drunk. Faerie is never as far away as you think. Sometimes you find you have crossed an invisible line and must cope, as best you can, with petulant princesses, vengeful owls, ladies who pass their time embroidering terrible fates, or with endless paths in deep, dark woods and houses that never appear the same way twice.

The heroines and heroes bedevilled by such problems in these fairy tales include a conceited Regency clergyman, an eighteenth-century Jewish doctor, and Mary, Queen of Scots, as well as two characters from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: Strange himself and the Raven King.

This enchanting collection of stories from Susanna Clarke invites readers into a world where charm is always tempered by eerieness, and picaresque comedy is always darkened by the disturbing shadow of Faerie.

مثل أبيلار هيلواز دفنا في قبر مشترك، ارتبط اسماهما معاً إلى الأبد. كانا زوجين من أزواج العالم الأسطوريين. لا يمكننا أن نفكر باحد منهما من دون التفكير بالآخر: سيمون دو بوفوار وجان بول سارتر.

في نهاية الحرب العالمية الثانية تبوأ سارتر وبوفوار، على نحو سريع، مكانة عالية بوصفهما مفكريَنْ حرين وملتزمين. كتبا في جميع الأنواع الأدبية: المسرحيات، الروايات، الدراسات الفلسفية، قصص الرحلات، السيرة الذاتية، المذكرات، أدب السيرة، والصحافة.

وقد شكلت رواية سارتر الأولى «الغثيان» حدثاً في عالم الرواية الفرنسية المعاصرة. وغدت مسرحياته العشر حديث الموسم المسرحي في باريس. وأحدثت دراساته الفلسفية: «الوجود والعدم» و «نقد الفكر الديالكتيكي» وغيرها صدمة. هذا إلى جانب بحثيه الأدبيين اللذين كرسهما لجان جينيه وغوستاف فلوبير.

لكنه ربما سيُذكر على نحو أفضل من خلال سيرته الذاتية «كلمات»، هذا الكتاب الذي أكسبه جائزة نوبل. وسترتبط بوفوار دائماً بكتابها الهام «الجنس الآخر» وبمذكراتها وبروايتها اللامعة «المندرين» التي استحضرت فيها جو أوروبا بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus is a groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology by Charles C. Mann. This transformative book radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Contrary to the common belief that pre-Columbian Indians were sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness, Mann reveals that there were vast numbers of Indians who actively shaped and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan boasted running water and immaculately clean streets, surpassing any contemporary European city in size and sophistication.

Mexican cultures achieved remarkable feats, such as the creation of corn through a specialized breeding process, often referred to as man's first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land; they were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that are only now being understood.

This book challenges and surprises readers, offering a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.

The River of Doubt is an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth. This true story takes you through the treacherous journey along the black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon, known as the River of Doubt. It's a place where Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows, piranhas glide through its waters, and boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron.

After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt sought the most punishing physical challenge he could find: the first descent of this unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Accompanied by his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt achieved a feat so monumental that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever.

Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, including losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, enduring starvation, Indian attacks, disease, drowning, and even a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide.

The River of Doubt brings these extraordinary events to life in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller featuring one of America’s most famous figures. From the soaring beauty of the Amazon rainforest to the darkest nights of Roosevelt’s life, Candice Millard’s dazzling debut is a must-read.

Sky stepped out into the sunshine, blinking, still holding the bottle, and a black man, robed like the others, took him by the arm and whispered, 'God be praised, it has found you!'

Everything changes for Sky when he finds a perfume bottle that whisks him away to the city of Giglia, an ancient city similar to Florence. This may be the beautiful City of Flowers, but things that seem beautiful might also be deadly.

As a new Stravagante - someone who can travel through space and time with the help of a talisman - Sky finds himself caught up in a deadly feud between Giglia's two ruling families. Now, the Stravaganti must do all they can to avoid further bloodshed as politics, conspiracy, and espionage unfold.

Thirteen Moons is a magnificent novel by one of America’s finest writers, set in nineteenth-century America against the background of a vanishing people and a rich way of life. At the age of twelve, under the Wind moon, Will is given a horse, a key, and a map, and sent alone into the Indian Nation to run a trading post as a bound boy. It is during this time that he grows into a man, learning of the raw power it takes to create a life and find a home.

In a card game with a white Indian named Featherstone, Will wins—for a brief moment—a mysterious girl named Claire, and his passion and desire for her spans this novel. As Will’s destiny intertwines with the fate of the Cherokee Indians—including a Cherokee Chief named Bear—he learns how to fight and survive in the face of both nature and men, and eventually, under the Corn Tassel Moon, Will begins the fight against Washington City to preserve the Cherokee’s homeland and culture.

This novel is brilliantly imagined and written with great power and beauty by a master of American fiction. It is a stunning narrative about a man’s passion for a woman, and how loss, longing, and love can shape a man’s destiny over the many moons of a life.

The British crown has placed a price on Jacky's head, so she returns to the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls in Boston to lay low. But laying low isn't in the cards for a spunky lass who finds trouble even when she's not looking for it.

A school outing goes awry as Jacky and her classmates are abducted and forced into the hold of the Bloodhound, a ship bound for the slave markets on the Barbary Coast. All of Jacky's ingenuity, determination, and plain old good luck will be put to the test as she rallies her classmates to fight together to avoid being sold on the auction block in this new installment of the Bloody Jack Adventures.

Nightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch. That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities: Paris, Berlin, and Vienna—a world in which the boundaries of class, religion, and sexuality are bold but surprisingly porous.

The outsized characters who inhabit this world are some of the most memorable in all of fiction. There is Guido Volkbein, the Wandering Jew and son of a self-proclaimed baron; Robin Vote, the American expatriate who marries him and then engages in a series of affairs, first with Nora Flood and then with Jenny Petherbridge, driving all of her lovers to distraction with her passion for wandering alone in the night; and there is Dr. Matthew-Mighty-Grain-of-Salt-Dante-O'Connor, a transvestite and ostensible gynecologist, whose digressive speeches brim with fury, keen insights, and surprising allusions.

Barnes' depiction of these characters and their relationships has made the novel a landmark of feminist and lesbian literature. Most striking of all is Barnes' unparalleled stylistic innovation, which led T. S. Eliot to proclaim the book so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it.

Now with a new preface by Jeanette Winterson, Nightwood still crackles with the same electric charge it had on its first publication in 1936.

Originally appearing as a series of articles in The New Yorker, Hannah Arendt’s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann sparked a flurry of debate upon its publication. This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account.

A major journalistic triumph by an intellectual of singular influence, Eichmann in Jerusalem is as shocking as it is informative—an unflinching look at one of the most unsettling and unsettled issues of the twentieth century that remains hotly debated to this day.

In nineteenth-century England, a powerful sorcerer and King of the Goblins chooses Kate, the elder of two orphan girls recently arrived at their ancestral home, Hallow Hill, to become his bride and queen...

The story unfolds in a magical realm where young women have been vanishing from Hallow Hill for thousands of years. Now, Kate and her sister Emily find themselves entangled in the land's dreadful heritage—until Marak, a powerful magician claiming to be the goblin king, reveals his very specific plans for the two new girls who have trespassed into his kingdom.

Half of a Yellow Sun is a novel by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie that re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria during the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed. The novel tells the story of the Biafran War through the perspective of the characters Olanna, Ugwu, and Richard.

Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor's beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna's twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone.

As Nigerian troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise and the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place, bringing us one of the most powerful, dramatic, and intensely emotional pictures of modern Africa that we have ever had.

The Worst Hard Time is a captivating tour de force of historical reportage by Timothy Egan. It rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows, focusing on the dust storms that terrorized the High Plains during the darkest years of the Depression. These storms were unprecedented and have not been seen since.

Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the loss of loved ones. He brilliantly captures the terrifying drama of catastrophe, while doing justice to the human characters who become the heroes of his story — the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives are opened up with urgency and respect.

In an era that promises ever-greater natural disasters, The Worst Hard Time serves as a powerful reminder about the dangers of trifling with nature.

It is 922 A.D. The refined Arab courtier Ibn Fadlan is accompanying a party of Viking warriors back to their home. He is appalled by their customs—the gratuitous sexuality of their women, their disregard for cleanliness, and their cold-blooded sacrifices.

As they enter the frozen, forbidden landscape of the North—where the day’s length does not equal the night’s, where after sunset the sky burns in streaks of color—Fadlan soon discovers that he has been unwillingly enlisted to combat the terrors in the night that come to slaughter the Vikings, the monsters of the mist that devour human flesh. But just how he will do it, Fadlan has no idea.

Flags of Our Fathers is an unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history. James Bradley captures the glory, triumph, heartbreak, and legacy of the six men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. This is the true story behind the immortal photograph that symbolizes America's courage and indomitable will.

In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima—and into history. Through a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire, they battled to the island's highest peak. After climbing through a landscape of hell itself, they raised a flag.

Now, the son of one of the flag-raisers has written a powerful account of six very different young men who came together in a moment that will live forever. To his family, John Bradley never spoke of the photograph or the war. But after his death at age seventy, his family discovered closed boxes of letters and photos.

In Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley draws on those documents to retrace the lives of his father and the men of Easy Company. Following these men's paths to Iwo Jima, Bradley tells a classic story of the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island—an island riddled with Japanese tunnels and 22,000 fanatic defenders who would fight to the last man.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the story is what happened after the victory. The men in the photo—three were killed during the battle—were proclaimed heroes and flown home, becoming reluctant symbols. For two of them, the adulation was shattering. Only James Bradley's father truly survived, displaying no copy of the famous photograph in his home, telling his son only: "The real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didn't come back."

Flags of Our Fathers captures the complexity and furor of war and its aftermath with keen insight, enormous honesty, and the passion of a son paying homage to his father. It is a story of the difference between truth and myth, the meaning of being a hero, and the essence of the human experience of war.

Two thousand years ago, Mary Magdalene hid a set of scrolls in the rocky foothills of the French Pyrenees, a gospel that contained her own version of the events and characters of the New Testament. Protected by supernatural forces, these sacred scrolls could be uncovered only by a special seeker, one who fulfills the ancient prophecy of l'attendue -- The Expected One.

When journalist Maureen Pascal begins the research for a new book, she has no idea that she is stepping into an ancient mystery so secret, so revolutionary, that thousands of people have killed and died for it. She becomes deeply immersed in the mystical cultures of southwest France as the eerie prophecy of The Expected One casts a shadow over her life and work, and a long-buried family secret comes to light.

Maureen's extraordinary journey takes her from the dusty streets of Jerusalem to the cathedrals of Paris... and ultimately to search for the scrolls themselves. She must unravel clues that link history's great artistic masters, including Sandro Botticelli, Nicolas Poussin, and Jean Cocteau; the Medici, Bourbon, and Borgia dynasties; and great scientific minds like Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton.

Ultimately, she, and the reader, come face-to-face with Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist, Judas, and Salome in the pages of a deeply moving and powerful new gospel, the life of Jesus as told by Mary Magdalene.

The Education of Henry Adams records the struggle of Bostonian Henry Adams (1838-1918), in early old age, to come to terms with the dawning 20th century, so different from the world of his youth. It is also a sharp critique of 19th-century educational theory and practice.

Adams explores the incredible events of the 19th century, meditating on his sense of disorientation with the scientific and technological expansion over his lifetime. He reflects on the political and social challenges of the late nineteenth century, rooted in the collapse of traditional values, expectations, and ideals.

The narrative is an extended meditation on the social, technological, political, and intellectual changes that occurred over Adams's lifetime. He concluded that his traditional education failed to help him come to terms with these rapid changes, hence his need for self-education. The book is narrated in the third person and is frequently sarcastic and humorously self-critical.

This autobiography stands as a thoughtful, humane, often tender exploration of himself and a brilliant history of a changing country. Henry Adams gives us a prescient view of the century ahead, contrasting the Romantic ideals of his ancestors with the chaotic world of the future.

Marco Polo was nicknamed "Marco of the millions" because his Venetian countrymen took the grandiose stories of his travels to be exaggerated, if not outright lies. As he lay dying, his priest, family, and friends offered him a last chance to confess his mendacity, and Marco, it is said, replied, "I have not told the half of what I saw and did."

Now, Gary Jennings has imagined the half that Marco left unsaid as even more elaborate and adventurous than the tall tales thought to be lies. From the palazzi and back streets of medieval Venice to the sumptuous court of Kublai Khan, from the perfumed sexuality of the Levant to the dangers and rigors of travel along the Silk Road, Marco meets all manner of people, survives all manner of danger, and, insatiably curious, becomes an almost compulsive collector of customs, languages, and women.

In more than two decades of travel, Marco was variously a merchant, a warrior, a lover, a spy, even a tax collector - but always a journeyer, unflagging in his appetite for new experiences, regretting only what he missed.

Here - recreated and reimagined with all the splendor, the love of adventure, the zest for the rare and curious that are Jennings's hallmarks - is the epic account, at once magnificent and delightful, of the greatest real-life adventurer in human history.