"She-wolf" is what Shakespeare called Margaret of Anjou (1430-1482), who wielded power over England in the vacum created by the infirmities of her husband, Henry VI. In this superb royal history, Helen Castor chronicles the life of Margaret and other formidable queens who paved the way for the rule of Elizabeth I.

Anyone who has seen the fine film starring Colin Firth as George VI, who assumed the British throne in 1936, and Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue, the innovative speech therapist who taught the monarch to master his debilitating stutter, will welcome this chronicle, based upon Logue's diaries and correspondence, of the real events behind the drama.

A science-minded Pope who honored Islamic thought? Such was the resumé of Pope Sylvester II, who, prior to his death in 1003 AD, did his best to enlighten the Dark Ages. Nancy Marie Brown sets his uniqueness in a vivid medieval context.

Mao's ambitious and ruthless Great Leap Forward, designed to vault China into the twentieth century, tramples tens of million of lives, as Frank Dikötter meticulously details in this gripping work.

We may no longer worry about massive exchanges of nuclear weapons between superpowers, but Pulitzer-winning historian Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb) knows that so long as a single atomic bomb exists in the world, potential disaster lurks. In his fourth volume on our nuclear history, he charts post-Cold War challenges and prospects.

How can famous objects seen daily by millions of tourists, whose long history is well- documented over the past few centuries, retain any mysteries? Charles Freeman eruditely explains how, as he puts those iconic Venetian equine statues under his historical microscope. Read more...

Few historians writing today are able to marshal, as Michael O'Brien can, formidable literary gifts to complement their scholarly acumen. The author of the recent Mrs. Adams in Winter, O'Brien here offers a welcome abridgment of his two-volume, Bancroft Prize-winning Conjectures of Order, an illuminating exploration of the intellectual and cultural life of the Old South. Read more...

The most notorious law firm of the 19th century's Gilded Age is given its due in Cait Murphy's exuberant account of William Howe and Abraham Hummel, whose roster of clients in post-Civil War New York included corrupt politicians, Broadway stars, bank robbers, socialites, and gangsters. Read more...

Combining elements from mystery, thriller, and conspiracy novels into a quest fit for Indiana Jones, David Howard's true tale of the perilous peregrinations of one of the original copies of the Bill of Rights proves that history is stranger than fiction. Read more...

Now in paperback: Neal Bascombe's authoritative account of Adolf Eichmann's escape from Nazi Germany at the end of World War II, and of the world-wide hunt—led by concentration camp survivor Simon Wiesenthal—to pick up his trail and bring him to justice. Riveting history. Read more...

Will revelations about surprising fallout from World War II ever cease? Here, Pulitzer-winner Johnson uncovers the roots of Euro-based jihad in a Nazi program to co-opt disaffected Muslims into an anti-Soviet enterprise. Read more...

Ben Macintyre’s Operation Mincemeat details Britain’s most ingenious hour: a plan conceived by James Bond creator Ian Fleming to set a body adrift, kitted out as a British officer and carrying false plans for the invasion of southern Europe, to mislead the Nazis. It’s all true, and it worked—as Katherine A. Powers reports in her review of a “terrific book written with intelligence and brio." We're adding it here to bring your attention to the audiobook version, read with characteristic excellence by the fabulous John Lee. Read more...

Chloë Schama's debut recounts a compelling tale of exuberant impropriety in Victorian England, and of the independent and unconventional woman -- Theresa Longworth -- at its core. History with a healthy dose of scandal. Read more...

The acclaimed cultural history illuminates a turbulent and telling period in French history. Read more...

A compelling novel of family and friendship set in Ethiopia in 1974 during the violent overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie. Read more...