Through the poetry of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian authors, including Pushkin and Akhmatova, "Poetry Reader for Russian Learners" helps upper-beginner, intermediate, and advanced Russian students refine their language skills. Poems are c...

"Prisoners, Lovers, and Spies" is a book about concealing and revealing secret communications. It is the first history of invisible writing, uncovered through stories about scoundrels and heroes. Spies were imprisoned or murdered, adultery unmasked,...

Each age has its own crisis-our modern experience of science-religion conflict is not so very different from that experienced by our forebears, Keith Thomson proposes in this thoughtful book. He considers the ideas and writings of Thomas Jefferson an...

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) became notorious for the declarations he made about the end of painting, encouraging artists to exchange brush, pigment, and canvas for camera, film, and searchlight. Even as he made these radical claims, he painted thr...

Medieval prayer books held not only the devotions and meditations of Christianity, but also housed, slipped between pages, sundry notes, reminders, and ephemera, such as pilgrims' badges, sworn oaths, and small painted images. Many of these last item...

Information is power. For more than five hundred years the success or failure of nations has been determined by a country's ability to acquire knowledge and technical skill and transform them into strength and prosperity. Leading historian Jeremy Bla...

Should we fear or welcome the internet's evolution? The "internet of things" is the rapidly growing network of everyday objects-eyeglasses, cars, thermostats-made smart with sensors and internet addresses. Soon we will live in a pervasive yet invisib...

Along with millions of other Frenchmen, Louis Barthas, a thirty-five-year-old barrelmaker from a small wine-growing town, was conscripted to fight the Germans in the opening days of World War I. Corporal Barthas spent the next four years in near-ceas...

A crossroads of religions, politics, and cultures with deep symbolic and historical significance, the holy land of Palestine has a resonance far greater than its size. Notably, the centuries-old conflict there has catapulted this tiny area to the cen...

This vivid and revealing portrait of shipboard life as experienced by eighteenth-century immigrants to the New World explores the transformative journey undertaken by the thousands of Europeans who journeyed in search of a better life. Stephen Berry...