"Spanning a variety of disciplines, from religion, philosophy, and political thought, to cultural criticism, social theory, and the arts, Ideas That Made America: A Brief History shows how ideas have been major forces in American history, driving movements such as transcendentalism, Social Darwinism, conservatism, and postmodernism"--

"A monumental and exhilarating history of European thought from the end of Antiquity to the beginning of the Enlightenment--500 to 1700 AD--tracing the arc of intellectual history as it evolved over the course of 1,200 years, setting the stage for the modern era." -- inside front jacket flap. "A history of European intellectual life from 500 AD to 1700 AD"--

"An incandescent group portrait of the midcentury artists and thinkers whose lives, loves, collaborations, and passions were forged against the wartime destruction and postwar rebirth of Paris"--Amazon.com.

Examines the life of René Descartes, the seminal scientist, mathematician, traveler, soldier, and spy who transformed seventeenth-century Europe and became the father of modern philosophy.

Their mission: to fight a large development along the tidal river where member Robbie-Lee grew up and where his mother, Dolores Simpson, a former stripper turned alligator hunter, still lives in a fishing shack. The developer is Darryl Norwood, ex-husband of narrator Dora Witherspoon, who returns to Collier County to assist in the battle. An old land deed, the discovery that one of the key characters has been using a false name, and a dramatic court...

A portrait of a scientist-explorer whose mountain-scaling, desert-crossing, river-fording, blizzard-surviving adventures helped create the new West of the nineteenth century. King in his youth was an icon of the new America: a man of both action and intellect, who combined science and adventure with romanticism and charm. He went west in 1863 at age 21 as a geologist-explorer. During the next decade he scaled the Sierra Nevada, published a book now...

Hailed for her "fearless indictment of the most powerful man in Russia" (The Wall Street Journal), award-winning journalist Masha Gessen is unparalleled in her understanding of the events and forces that have wracked her native country in recent times. In The Future Is History, she follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren...

The author and poet recalls the anguish of her childhood in Arkansas and her adolescence in northern slums. "Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother...