America's greatest president, who rose to power in the country's greatest hour of need and whose vision saw the United States through the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln towers above the others who have held the office of president-the icon of greatness, the pillar of strength whose words bound up the nation's wounds. His presidency is the hinge on which American history pivots, the time when the young republic collapsed of its own contradictions and a...

Publisher description: From one of the world's most distinguished historians, a magisterial new reckoning with Hitler's rise to power and the collapse of civilization in Nazi Germany. In 1900 Germany was the most progressive and dynamic nation in Europe, the only country whose rapid technological and social growth and change challenged that of the United States. Its political culture was less authoritarian than Russia's and less anti-Semitic than...

Comedians Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld never thought anyone would watch their silly little sitcom about a New York comedian sitting around talking to his friends. NBC executives didn't think anyone would watch either, but they bought it anyway, hiding it away in the TV dead zone of summer. But against all odds, viewers began to watch, first a few and then many, until nine years later nearly forty million Americans were tuning in weekly. In Seinfeldia,...