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Filip Müller came to Auschwitz with one of the earliest transports from Slovakia in April 1942 and began working in the gassing installations and crematoria in May. He was still alive when the gassings ceased in November 1944. He saw millions come and disappear; by sheer luck he survived. Müller is neither a historian nor a psychologist; he is a source—one of the few prisoners who saw the Jewish people die and lived to tell about it. Eyewitness Auschwitz is one of the key documents of the Holocaust.

At a crucial point in the twentieth century, as Nazi Germany prepared for war, negotiations between Britain, France, and the Soviet Union became the last chance to halt Hitler’s aggression. Incredibly, the French and British governments dallied, talks failed, and in August 1939 the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Germany. Michael Carley’s gripping account of these negotiations is not a pretty story. It is about the failures of appeasement and collective security in Europe. It is about moral depravity and blindness, about villains and cowards, and about heroes who stood against the intellectual and popular tides of their time. Some died for their beliefs, others labored in obscurity and have been nearly forgotten. In 1939 they sought to make the Grand Alliance that never was between France, Britain, and the Soviet Union. This story of their efforts is background to the wartime alliance created in 1941 without France but with the United States in order to defeat a demonic enemy. 1939 is based upon Mr. Carley’s longtime research on the period, including work in French, British, and newly opened Soviet archives. He challenges prevailing interpretations of the origins of World War II by situating 1939 at the end of the early cold war between the Soviet Union, France, and Britain, and by showing how anti-communism was the major cause of the failure to form an alliance against Hitler. 1939 was published on September 1, the sixtieth anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland and the start of the war.

In this second volume of his major work on Bunin, the neglected master of Russian letters, Thomas Marullo recreates his life in exile, chiefly in Paris, after escaping from his newly bolshevized country in 1920. Drawing from Bunin's correspondence, his diaries, and his stories, and translating most of these materials into English for the first time, Mr. Marullo gives us a vivid picture of a man suddenly and agonizingly without a country. Bunin's life and art, which depended so heavily on traditional Russian values, seemed to be overthrown in a moment, and the writer found himself marooned amidst Western culture, clinging to his old ideals. Through his writings we are also provided a window on the lively but despairing and often fractious community of Russian emigrés in Paris in the twenties, which included Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff Chafiapin, Prokofiev, Chagall, Kandinsky, Pavlova, Diaghilev, and Zamyatin. The volume ends in 1933, when Bunin became the first Russian to receive the Nobel Prize in literature. Mr. Marullo's first volume, Ivan Bunin: Russian Requiem, was widely acclaimed. Gary Saul Morson of Northwestern wrote: "It engages the reader from the first page ...Marullo has an eye for the perfect quotation." Ruth Rischin, in the Russian Review, described the book as "elegantly crafted... a serious achievement."

Despite all the thousands of studies of the Holocaust and the rise of Nazi Germany, we still have no satisfactory explanation of why this tragedy occurred in one of the most "civilized" of Western nations. John Weiss's Ideology of Death is the first book to explore the unique nature of German history, showing how it rejected the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment, and to trace the culture of racism and anti-Semitism among powerful elites and ordinary Germans over a long period of German history. In a stunningly lucid narrative, Weiss describes exactly how and why Christian anti-Semitism, in its unique form among German Protestants and Austrian Catholics, reinforced modern secular racism to create an explosive mix. Using the latest research, he details how the Nazis, building on traditional German anti-Semitism, were able to adjust it so as to appeal to a wide variety of social groups–crucial to their electoral success. And he explains the specific complicities of various German groups and institutions in the Holocaust, and why they voluntarily cooperated with the Nazis. In its clarity and compelling argument, Ideology of Death is certain to be one of the most important books for many years to come on the reasons behind the Holocaust.

In conversations with the poet-biographer Felix Chuev, Molotov offers an incomparable view of the politics of Soviet society and the nature of Kremlin leadership under communism. Filled with startling insights and indelible portraits, the book is an historical source of the first order. A mesmerizing and chilling chronicle. —Kirkus Reviews

This new collection of essays by the author of Life at the Bottom bears the unmistakable stamp of Theodore Dalrymple's bracingly clearsighted view of the human condition. In these pieces, Dr. Dalrymple ranges over literature and ideas, from Shakespeare to Marx, from the breakdown of Islam to the legalization of drugs. Here is a book that restores our faith in the central importance of literature and criticism to our civilization. Theodore Dalrymple is the best doctor-writer since William Carlos Williams. —Peggy Noonan. Includes When Islam Breaks Down, named the best journal article of 2004 by David Brooks of the New York Times.

Aldous Huxley's stature as one of the giants of modern English prose and of social commentary in our time is confirmed in this gathering of his distinguished stories into a single volume. Twenty-one pieces are here, including "The Gioconda Smile," "Little Mexican," "Young Archimedes," and "Chawdron." Together they offer a complete view of Huxley's work in the genre, in which he established himself as an acknowledged master.

This is the poignant memoir of a man who has spent most of his lifetime immersed in the evidence of one of the great horrors in human history. It is both a record of how it affected him and a revelation of the surprising ways in which his monumental work was received by his contemporaries. Even after thirty-five years, Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews remains the most distinguished and comprehensive analysis of the Nazi destruction process. Yet at the time it was written, as Mr. Hilberg recounts in The Politics of Memory, both the manuscript and its subject matter were rejected by major publishers and university presses; and in the wake of publication the author faced a hostile reception from those who refused to believe that the Jews were less than heroic in their journey to the gas chambers. How his study was used and abused—especially by Hannah Arendt, Lucy Dawidowicz, and Nora Levin—draws Mr. Hilberg's attention, as does the more admiring reception for Destruction in Europe than in America. The Politics of Memory brings full circle a scholarly enterprise that in many ways has been a terrible calling. A courageous, powerful portrait of one scholar's self-directed search for truth. —Toronto Globe and Mail

This new interpretation of the New England Witch Trials offers an innovative, well-grounded explanation of witchcraft's link to organic illness. While most historians have concentrated on the accused, Laurie Winn Carlson focuses on the afflicted. Systematically comparing the symptoms recorded in colonial diaries and court records to those of the encephalitis epidemic in the early twentieth century, she argues convincingly that the victims suffered from the same disease. A unique blend of historical epidemiology and sociology. —Katrina L. Kelner, Science. Meticulously researched...the author marshalls her arguments with clarity and persuasive force. —New Yorker

"The Gentleman from San Francisco" is easily the best known of Ivan Bunin's stories and has achieved the stature of a masterpiece. But Bunin's other stories and novellas are not to be missed. Over the last several years a great many of them have been freshly and brilliantly translated by Graham Hettlinger. Together, along with four new pieces, they are now published in a one-volume paperback collection of Bunin's greatest writings. In Mr. Hettlinger's renderings readers will see why Bunin was regarded by many of his contemporaries as the rightful successor to Tolstoy and Chekhov as a master of Russian letters.

Budd Schulberg's celebrated novel of the prize ring has lost none of its power since its first publication almost fifty years ago. Crowded with unforgettable characters, it is a relentless expose of the fight racket. A modern Samson in the form of a simple Argentine peasant is ballyhooed by an unscrupulous fight promoter and his press agent and then betrayed and destroyed by connivers. Mr. Schulberg creates a wonderfully authentic atmosphere for this book that many critics hailed as even better than What Makes Sammy Run? "The quintessential novel of boxing and corruption."—USA Today "The book will stand not only as the novel about boxing but also as a book that indirectly tells more about civilization than do most books about civilization itself."—Arthur Miller. "Brilliant, witty, and amusing—the best book on fighting that I have read."—Gene Tunney.

This remarkable collection of the great attorney’s writings reveals why he was such a force in the court of law and in the court of public opinion. Darrow turned to writing—essays, debates, fiction—to influence a broader audience beyond the field of law. Through his observations on such social issues as race, revolution, labor, divorce, crime, war, and religion, and his estimates of men and women, he became the attorney for the public conscience. His beliefs, delivered with an urbane blending of wit, lawyer’s logic, satire, and sentiment, remain a part of our continuing social philosophy. They are amply illustrated in this superb collection, and remain strikingly pertinent today. “Fascinating.…Whether Darrow is condemning capital punishment, questioning immortality, or extolling free trade, he is usually incisive, never boring, and always unafraid of speaking his mind. A rare combination in his or any other age.”—William M. Kunstler, New York Times. “A fascinating collection of Darrow’s writings, showing the wide range and the impact of his thinking on the American character.”—Irving Stone.

This extraordinary collection of short stories reminds us how great a talent Dreiser was. A giant among American writers, he fought throughout his career to capture life in realistic terms. In his stories as well as his celebrated novels, he sought to uncover the problems of common Americans at the turn of the century—their struggles with society and their dreams of power and wealth against a backdrop of threatening poverty. "Dreiser has no peer in the American short story.…As fine as his novels are, they do not attain the artistic wholeness of his short tales. Among the moderns, there is almost no one capable of writing tales like these. The best of today is pallid and non-human when compared with Dreiser’s compassionate searchings."—from the Introduction by Howard Fast.

In this first detailed comparison of the workings and effects of slavery in two New World colonies, Herbert Klein dramatically confirms formerly untested theories about institutional differences in Latin American and North American slavery. He explains in large measure why blacks have achieved greater social integration and occupational mobility in Latin America than they have in the North. Similar in their racial proportions and in their plantation agriculture, Cuba and Virginia make excellent comparative models. Mr. Klein’s pathbreaking analysis considers legal structures, religion, economic development, and the position of freedmen. His conclusions provide essential background for understanding some of the complexities of contemporary race relations.

This is not simply the story of a year from our past but a dramatic account of a social and political uprising that became a crisis in the course of American development. By 1877 the United States had ground through four years of depression with no end in sight. The mood of the nation was explosive. As labor sought to unite against the great corporations, violence and lawlessness spread through the cities, accented by race riots, lynchings, government corruption, scandal in high places, and the shocking growth of teenage gangs. The summer of 1877 produced a climax: a nationwide railroad strike accompanied by rioting coast to coast. Mr. Bruce's moving account of these events portrays a nation trying to cope with an industrial depression before it had learned about the problems of industrialism. The upheaval was perhaps our closest brush with class revolution in America. “A taut narrative that is relieved by flashes of an appropriately sardonic humor. Mr. Bruce has resisted the temptation to let his spectacular story turn into a mere hour-by-hour re-creation of mayhem and emotion. All along the way he thoughtfully assesses just what this year meant in American history.”—Eric F. Goldman, New York Times. “The author goes to the sources in scholarly fashion but reports it in a popular style…An informative and readable book.”—C. Vann Woodward.

Books about the sixties have proliferated in recent years, but none has surpassed Nicholas von Hoffman’s classic account of the 1960s counter-culture in San Francisco. “In the summer of 1967,” he writes, “youth drew attention to itself by clustering in large numbers in most major American cities, where they broke the narcotics laws proudly, publicly, and defiantly. At the same time, they enunciated a different social philosophy and a new politics, and perhaps even mothered into life a subculture that was new to America. This book tries to explain what happened in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco. For it was in the Haight that whatever happened, happened most vividly and so intensely that it drew international attention to itself.” “An impressively serious treatment.”—New York Times. “A rare example of journalism that approaches art in one direction and the best of social science in another.”—Newsweek.

In its transformation from an agrarian to an industrial economy, the United States saw a fundamental change in the marketing of manufactured goods during the 19th century. Changes in distribution were at least as important as changes in production, as the authors demonstrate in this unique account of the rise of modern marketing. Their focus is on iron, tobacco, railway supplies, and perishable goods, and they show how rising industrial capacity, the concentration of markets, and advancing technology forced new methods of distribution and the decline of independent merchants and wholesalers. By the beginning of the 20th century the outlines of a new economic order had emerged, one in which the modern corporation became the dominant institution. "A splendid study in business history. And it is business history of the best kind, that which relates changes in business organizations and practice to the mainstream of economic development."—Journal of Southern History. "No one before Porter and Livesay has so carefully delineated the transition from the old mercantile to the new industrial world…A good book about an important subject."—Choice.

In the most controversial analysis ever written of the apostle of American liberty, the distinguished constitutional historian Leonard W. Levy examines Jefferson's record on civil liberties and finds it strikingly wanting. Clearing away the saintliness that surrounds the hero, Mr. Levy tries to understand why the “unfamiliar” Jefferson supported loyalty oaths; countenanced internment camps for political suspects; drafted a bill of attainder; urged prosecutions for seditious libel; condoned military despotism; used the Army to enforce laws in time of peace; censored reading; chose professors for their political opinions; and endorsed the doctrine that means, however odious, are justified by ends. "Implicitly," Mr. Levy writes, "this book is a study of libertarian leadership in time of power and time of danger...Jefferson should be seen [by his biographers] as a whole man in the perspective of his times, but my task is to determine the validity of his historical reputation as the apostle of liberty." "Blunt words and blunt facts...an indispensable book."—Commentary.

We know a great deal about what went on in the White House and at the federal level to combat the gravest economic crisis in the nation’s history; we know much less about what it was like at the grass roots, in cities, towns, and communities throughout the country. Hitting Home is absorbing reading because it describes the problems of the depression on a scale we can all comprehend. Mr. Sternsher has selected twelve historical articles which fill in the local picture in compelling detail—from New York’s Harlem to Orange County, California; from Minneapolis to the Oklahoma Indians. The reader comes away with a real feeling for the immediate problems that the depression created, and an understanding of the difficulties faced by local governments. In a notable introduction, Mr. Sternsher considers how little the people demanded in the face of adversity, and how this inaction squares with the ideas about the American character. And in a new closing chapter, he draws important conclusions about whether people blamed themselves for their troubles. "The emphasis on the local scene is a real breakthrough in our understanding of the depression."—Alfred B. Rollins, Jr.

The debate among those who sought to abolish slavery in America was a crucial one in the history of the nation, for it raised a great many questions we are still debating. Reading Ms. Kraditor’s study of the abolitionists’ thinking on the goals, strategy, and tactics of their cause, the modern reader can hardly escape seeing parallels with present-day politics and protest movements. Ms. Kraditor focuses on arguments over the role of women in the Anti-Slavery Society, over religion, and over political action. She sees a struggle between "respectability" and radical action which continues to reverberate. "From first to last this lucid, important book challenges preconceptions. Obviously Professor Kraditor intends to provoke critical reexamination of many points she raises, and in this she is brilliantly successful.... Her book is a fruitful exploration into the history of a great movement."—Harold M. Hyman, Book World. "Original, perceptive, provocative."—American Historical Review

"Ambition is not what it used to be," writes Joseph Epstein. The desire to get ahead no longer evokes the same admiration it once did—indeed, modern novelists seem hardly able to deal with ambition without a sneer. But is ambition necessarily synonymous with ruthless, narrow self-interest? Or, as Mr. Epstein suggests, is it "the fuel of achievement"—an honorable way to influence and advance civilization? Mr. Epstein’s sketches of eminent Americans—from Benjamin Franklin (that premier go-getter) to Henry Ford, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Adlai Stevenson, and the Rockefeller, Guggenheim, and Kennedy dynasties—and his pointed reconsideration of the ingredients of the American Dream (success, money, and power) form a fascinating social history, one that may change many readers’ attitudes toward their “secret passion.” "Should be must reading in executive suites as well as college classrooms."—Forbes. "Handled with a good amount of wit and with the clear, straightforward analysis of a man with a point of view. Like Samuel Johnson, [Epstein] reminds more often than he instructs."—Jack Richardson, New York Times. "To have so rich an intellectual fare so pleasurably served is rare. Read Ambition and feast."—Saturday Review.

At the height of his power in New York City, around 1870, William Marcy (Boss) Tweed’s hands were everywhere in city government and party politics. His success in looting the city treasury and using the payoff to achieve his objectives earned him a reputation as the classic example of the corrupt municipal boss. Amidst the turbulent political and social conditions of a metropolis in the making, Boss Tweed was, according to Mr. Mandelbaum, the right man at the right time—“a master communicator” who “united the elements in a divided society.” In effect he replaced the good communications which the author argues are essential to democratic decision-making. Mr. Mandelbaum’s analysis of the historical situation is a cogent case study in the democratization of American society.

How roaring were the Roaring Twenties? How lost was the Lost Generation? In this major reinterpretation of one of the most colorful decades in American history, Roderick Nash finds the image of the period to be less than life-size. His book is not only a summary of the high points of American thought from the Great War to the Great Depression but a lively foray into popular culture. His interest in Zane Grey as well as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Ford as well as John Dewey, offers fresh insights into a decade filled with paradoxes. Seeking to find “what captured the enthusiasm of ordinary people,” Mr. Nash has written an original and persuasive analysis of a generation that continues to command our attention.

The great age of American entrepreneurship produced the “robber barons,” men who exercised an enormous influence on the nation’s psychology. What these men thought—or thought they thought—is the subject of Mr. Kirkland’s original and provocative book. Immersing himself in the statements and writings of businessmen of the era, he explores their views of the social and economic scene, their interest in higher education, and their unease with wasteful and inefficient government. In distilling their dreams and thought, Mr. Kirkland does not pass judgment on whether their actions measured up to their words. "Kirkland’s book demonstrates that history can be provocative and even colorful when written with urbanity rather than partisanship.…His book deserves widespread attention by historians and businessmen alike."—American Historical Review. "Brightly written and thoughtful…a stimulating integration of economic and social history."—Journal of American History.

Of all the world’s mercantile lures, none was more persistent or more mesmeric for Americans than the fabled Far Eastern markets. In the 1890s, United States commercial expansion into the Pacific catapulted the nation to the status of a great power. In describing and analyzing American ambitions in China which led to the Open Door negotiations, Mr. McCormick argues that American leaders rationally and pragmatically sought the China market in order to absorb American “overproduction” and achieve domestic stability. The dilemmas that emerged from the nature of American aims and policies were to plague the United States throughout the twentieth century. "A most important volume."—American Historical Review. "Impressive…a significant contribution to ultimate understanding of an important and complex series of events."—Ernest R. May, Political Science Quarterly.

Besides the slavery issue, one of the major notes of American life in the years preceding the Civil War was created by the Industrial Revolution. It produced remarkable social and industrial upheavals which were repugnant to an astonishingly large numbers of Americans. Despite national prosperity, industrial workers suffered severe losses of economic status and independence; in protests grounded in religion and politics, they sought to hold on to what they had, and later to win material gains. Mr. Ware's illuminating book analyzes the conditions which brought on the Industrial Revolution, and traces and interprets the labor struggles that developed in response to the factory system.

One of the most widely read poems of our time, John Brown’s Body is Stephen Vincent Benét’s masterful retelling of the Civil War. A book of great energy and sweep, it swings into view the entire course of that terrible and decisive war, lighting up the lives of soldiers, leaders, and civilians, North and South, amidst the conflict. Generations of readers have found the book a compelling and moving experience. "Magnificently readable."—New Statesman. "It is not one of your tours de forces of intellect and technique, to be admired and then tucked away on the library shelf. It is a library of storytelling itself, a poem extraordinarily rich in action as well as actors, vivid, varied, and so expressive of many men and moods that prose could never have carried its electric burden."—Saturday Review. "A remarkable piece of imaginative reporting; and one in which not only the forces which make history are embodied in the speech and action of very diverse men and women but the ideas also of which these forces were the driving power."—London Times Literary Supplement.

Domestic programs and foreign policies—and the man himself—explored in almost a hundred articles and essays, with expert commentary. Paul Boyer has caught the essence of the pros and cons of Reagan and his presidency....A thoughtful and absorbing introduction. —Frank Freidel

Lunch at the 5 & 10 is the story of the Greensboro sit-ins—how four African-American college students sat down at a Woolworth's lunch counter in North Carolina and ignited the civil rights movement in America. The year was 1960, but the racial sensibilities of Americans were light years removed from what they are today. Mr. Wolff's even-handed account of this pivotal event in our race relations has been widely praised since it was first published in 1970. In this new edition, the author adds a new conclusion, written after the 30th anniversary commemoration of the event where the Greensboro Four met once again. August Meier's introduction places the Greensboro sit-in in historical context and explains its importance in the course of the civil rights movement. "A remarkable account...reads like a novel. Wolff has recaptured these days with a sense of their drama, with deft characterizations of the principals, and with a sure feeling for the mood....An extraordinary accomplishment."—Book World.