February 2017

Between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, in a few favored areas of the world, humankind mastered the formulas that released it from the
Stone Age. For the first time in history, people became civilized.
This globe- and time-trotting book vividly describes how a number of major civilizations - the Mayans, the Egyptians, the Khmers, the
Etruscans, and more - emerged, thrived, faded, but left a mark on our collective imagination and culture.
Memories of some of these civilizations linger in the form of legends. Some left monuments whose meaning seemed inscrutable to later
ages. Still others vanished under desert sands, floods, or tropical jungles. This sharply observed and meticulously researched book
unearths the stories and the cultures that make us who we are today.

Lorenzo de' Medici was never an old man. He died in 1492 at the age of forty-three. He came to power in fifteenth-century Florence at the
age of twenty. In the twenty-odd years of his rule, this banker, politician, international diplomat, free-wheeling poet and songwriter, and
energetic revolutionary helped to give shape, tone, and tempo to that truly dazzling time of Western history, the Renaissance.
This book, by award-winning author Charles L. Mee, Jr., recounts the remarkable life of Lorenzo de’ Medici and of the times in which he
lived.

J.P. Morgan, like a "one-man Federal Reserve," calmed bankers and depositors and helped ease the Panic of 1907. Here, in this short-form
book from historian John A. Garraty, is the story.

Some of America's foremost historians - including James M. McPherson, Allan Nevins, Harold Holzer, and Stephen B. Oates - recount the
extraordinary life of Abraham Lincoln in this collection of the best essays from sixty years of American Heritage.
Lincoln, the book argues, "evolved into nothing less than an apostle for the sanctity of the Union, the ethic of majority rule, and the
dreams of freedom and equality of opportunity. Who could have so predicted when Lincoln had seemed the least qualified candidate for
the presidency?” Lincoln comes to life in this selection from America's leading history magazine, chosen by its current editor-in-chief,
Edwin S. Grosvenor.

To most people, thanks to Mark Twain, "Mississippi" suggests riverboat. Here, from award-winning historian Ralph K. Andrist, is the dramatic story of the world through which the great, Mississippi paddle-wheelers moved - a world these revolutionary ships and their captains, crews, and creators were largely responsible for bringing into being.

Here, award-winning historian Charles L. Mee Jr. explores life in Renaissance Italy - from the ascendancy of Florence and the Medicis to
the genius of Leonardo da Vinci. Through wars and violence to festivals and sumptuous feasts, Mee examines the people - merchants,
clergy, artists, scholars, courtiers, women - who fashioned the cradle for the rebirth of the Western world.

National Book Award winner Richard Winston explores life in the Middle Ages - from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, beginning with the
fall of the Roman Empire to the dawn of the Renaissance. In both countryside and towns, from peasants to the bourgeoisie to nobility, no
aspect of life in this era is left unexplored.

National Book Award winner Richard Winston explores life in the Middle Ages - from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, beginning with the
fall of the Roman Empire to the dawn of the Renaissance. In both countryside and towns, from peasants to the bourgeoisie to nobility, no
aspect of life in this era is left unexplored.

Award-winning historian Lionel Casson paints a vivid portrait of life in ancient Rome - for slaves and emperors, soldiers and commanders
alike - during the empire's greatest period, the first and second centuries A.D.

Award-winning historian Lionel Casson paints a vivid portrait of life in ancient Rome - for slaves and emperors, soldiers and commanders
alike - during the empire's greatest period, the first and second centuries A.D.