A sweeping history of the rise of personal choice in the modern world and how it became equated with freedom

Choice touches virtually every aspect of our lives, from what to buy and where to live to whom to love, what profession to practice, and even what to believe. But the option to choose in such matters was not something we always possessed or even aspired to. At the same time, we have been warned by everybody from marketing gurus to psychologists about the negative consequences stemming from our current obsession with choice. It turns out that not only are we not very good at realizing our personal desires, we are also overwhelmed with too many possibilities and anxious about what best to select. There are social costs too. How did all this happen? The Age of Choice tells the long history of the invention of choice as the defining feature of modern freedom.

Taking readers from the seventeenth century to today, Sophia Rosenfeld describes how the early modern world witnessed the simultaneous rise of shopping as an activity and religious freedom as a matter of being able to pick one's convictions. Similarly, she traces the history of choice in romantic life, politics, and the ideals of human rights. Throughout, she pays particular attention to the lives of women, those often with the fewest choices, who have frequently been the drivers of this change. She concludes with an exploration of how reproductive rights have become a symbolic flashpoint in our contemporary struggles over the association of liberty with choice.

Drawing on a wealth of sources ranging from novels and restaurant menus to the latest scientific findings about choice in psychology and economics, The Age of Choice urges us to rethink the meaning of choice and its promise and limitations in modern life.

New York Times, USA Today, Amazon, and Publishers Weekly bestseller

Aspects of History, The Critic, Octavian, and Modern War Institute Book of the Year.

Two leading authorities--an acclaimed historian and the outstanding battlefield commander and strategist of our time--collaborate on a landmark examination of war since 1945. Conflict is both a sweeping history of the evolution of warfare up to Putin's invasion of the Ukraine, and a penetrating analysis of what we must learn from the past--and anticipate in the future--in order to navigate an increasingly perilous world.

In this deep and incisive study, General David Petraeus, who commanded the US-led coalitions in both Iraq, during the Surge, and Afghanistan and former CIA director, and the prize-winning historian Andrew Roberts, explore over 70 years of conflict, drawing significant lessons and insights from their fresh analysis of the past. Drawing on their different perspectives and areas of expertise, Petraeus and Roberts show how often critical mistakes have been repeated time and again, and the challenge, for statesmen and generals alike, of learning to adapt to various new weapon systems, theories and strategies. Among the conflicts examined are the Arab-Israeli wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the two Gulf Wars, the Balkan wars in the former Yugoslavia, and both the Soviet and Coalition wars in Afghanistan, as well as guerilla conflicts in Africa and South America. Conflict culminates with a bracing look at Putin's disastrous invasion of Ukraine, yet another case study in the tragic results when leaders refuse to learn from history, and an assessment of the nature of future warfare. Filled with sharp insight and the wisdom of experience, Conflict is not only a critical assessment of our recent past, but also an essential primer of modern warfare that provides crucial knowledge for waging battle today as well as for understanding what the decades ahead will bring.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A deeply engaging history of how European settlements in the post-Colombian Americas shaped the world--from the highly acclaimed author of 1491. - Fascinating...Lively...A convincing explanation of why our world is the way it is. --The New York Times Book Review

Presenting the latest research by biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the post-Columbian network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City--where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted--the center of the world. In this history, Mann uncovers the germ of today's fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars. In 1493, Mann has again given readers an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination.

From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes--this is award winning writer Simon Winchester's brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds.

With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone button. With so much knowledge at our fingertips, what is there left for our brains to do? At a time when we seem to be stripping all value from the idea of knowing things--no need for math, no need for map-reading, no need for memorization--are we risking our ability to think? As we empty our minds, will we one day be incapable of thoughtfulness?

Addressing these questions, Simon Winchester explores how humans have attained, stored, and disseminated knowledge. Examining such disciplines as education, journalism, encyclopedia creation, museum curation, photography, and broadcasting, he looks at a whole range of knowledge diffusion--from the cuneiform writings of Babylon to the machine-made genius of artificial intelligence, by way of Gutenberg, Google, and Wikipedia to the huge Victorian assemblage of the Mundanaeum, the collection of everything ever known, currently stored in a damp basement in northern Belgium.

Studded with strange and fascinating details, Knowing What We Know is a deep dive into learning and the human mind. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom? Does Rene Descartes's Cogito, ergo sum--I think therefore I am, the foundation for human knowledge widely accepted since the Enlightenment--still hold?

And what will the world be like if no one in it is wise?

New York Times, USA Today, Amazon, and Publishers Weekly bestseller

Aspects of History, The Critic, Octavian, and Modern War Institute Book of the Year.

Two leading authorities--an acclaimed historian and the outstanding battlefield commander and strategist of our time--collaborate on a landmark examination of war since 1945. Conflict is both a sweeping history of the evolution of warfare up to Putin's invasion of the Ukraine, and a penetrating analysis of what we must learn from the past--and anticipate in the future--in order to navigate an increasingly perilous world.

In this deep and incisive study, General David Petraeus, who commanded the US-led coalitions in both Iraq, during the Surge, and Afghanistan and former CIA director, and the prize-winning historian Andrew Roberts, explore over 70 years of conflict, drawing significant lessons and insights from their fresh analysis of the past. Drawing on their different perspectives and areas of expertise, Petraeus and Roberts show how often critical mistakes have been repeated time and again, and the challenge, for statesmen and generals alike, of learning to adapt to various new weapon systems, theories and strategies. Among the conflicts examined are the Arab-Israeli wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the two Gulf Wars, the Balkan wars in the former Yugoslavia, and both the Soviet and Coalition wars in Afghanistan, as well as guerilla conflicts in Africa and South America. Conflict culminates with a bracing look at Putin's disastrous invasion of Ukraine, yet another case study in the tragic results when leaders refuse to learn from history, and an assessment of the nature of future warfare. Filled with sharp insight and the wisdom of experience, Conflict is not only a critical assessment of our recent past, but also an essential primer of modern warfare that provides crucial knowledge for waging battle today as well as for understanding what the decades ahead will bring.

A Short History of Relations Between Peoples traces how the cultural attitudes that different peoples and nations had toward each other have undergone a profound and positive change during the last 500 years.

For most of recorded history, neighboring countries, tribes, and peoples everywhere in the world regarded each other with apprehension--when not outright fear and loathing. Tribal or racial attitudes were virtually universal, no one group being much better or worse in this respect than any other--and for good reason given the conditions of life before the modern era. But in the last 500 years, relations between different peoples have undergone a slow but profound change.

In this book, John Ellis explains how a confluence of discoveries, inventions, explorations, as well as social and political changes gave birth to a new attitude, one expressed succinctly in the Latin phrase: gens una sumus--we are all one people. This sentiment has by now become a modern orthodoxy, however inconsistently or even hypocritically it may sometimes be espoused. Ellis tells the story of how the transition happened, setting out the crucial stages in its progress as well as the key events that moved it forward, and identifying the individuals and groups that brought about the eventual dominance of this new outlook.

This is a compelling story in its own right, but it is also a useful inoculation against the destructive ideas of today's race hustlers. An accurate grasp of how this crucial change happened contradicts everything that they want us to believe. Ideologies such as Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion have everything touching on race and racism completely backwards.

The villains of their ignorant version of history are really the heroes. In explaining how the historical record makes nonsense of CRT, Ellis's book amounts to the most fundamental and complete refutation of that pernicious ideology.

A fascinating persuasive history of how sugar has shaped the world, from European colonies to our modern diets

In this eye-opening study, Sidney Mintz shows how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life, and how it changed the history of capitalism and industry. He discusses the production and consumption of sugar, and reveals how closely interwoven are sugar's origins as a slave crop grown in Europe's tropical colonies with is use first as an extravagant luxury for the aristocracy, then as a staple of the diet of the new industrial proletariat. Finally, he considers how sugar has altered work patterns, eating habits, and our diet in modern times.

Like sugar, Mintz is persuasive, and his detailed history is a real treat. -San Francisco Chronicle

Enlightenment studies are currently in a state of flux, with unresolved arguments among its adherents about its dates, its locations, and the contents of the 'movement'. This book cuts the Gordian knot.

There are many books claiming to explain the Enlightenment, but most assume that it was a thing. J. C. D. Clark shows what it actually was, namely a historiographical concept. Currently 'the Enlightenment' is a term widely accepted across popular culture and in a variety of academic disciplines, notably history, philosophy, political theory, political science, literary studies, and theology; Clark calls for a fundamental reconsideration in each.

The Enlightenment: An Idea and Its History provides a critical historical analysis of the Enlightenment in England, Scotland, France, Germany, and the United States from c. 1650 to the present. It argues that the degree of commonality between social and intellectual movements in each--and, more broadly, between the five societies--has been overstated for polemical purposes. Clark shows that the concept of 'the Enlightenment' was not widely adopted in those societies until the mid-twentieth century; indeed, that it was unknown in the eighteenth. Without the concept, people at the time were unable to act in ways that would have created the Enlightenment as a coherent movement. Since the conventional account has held that the Enlightenment was a phenomenon, the idea could be used as a component of what has been called a 'civil religion': a summing up of the myths of origin, aims, and essential values of a society from which dissent is not permitted. An appreciation that it was instead a historiographical concept undermines, in turn, the idea that there was any great transition to what came to be called 'modernity'.

Since the brutal massacre perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October and the subsequent bombing and invasion of Gaza, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been thrust back to the centre of the world's attention. How can this deep-rooted conflict, stretching back for more than 75 years, be brought to an end? What kind of political structure might one day enable Israelis and Palestinians to overcome the seemingly interminable cycle of violence and live in peace with one another?

For many years, politicians and citizens of different persuasions have called for a two-state solution - two independent states, Israel and Palestine, co-existing side by side. This was Shlomo Sand's view too: a distinguished Israeli historian and political activist on the left, he had long supported the idea of a two-state solution. But as more and more settlements were built in the occupied West Bank and millions of Palestinians were forced to live in a situation of de facto apartheid, deprived of their basic civil rights and political freedoms, he came to the conclusion that the two-state solution had become an empty formula that no one seriously intended to implement.

It was in this context that Sand sought to find an alternative way out of the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio. His journey into the dark corners of Zionism's ideological past threw up some surprises. He discovered that some Zionists and other Jewish intellectuals had rejected the idea of an exclusive Jewish state and had supported moves to create a bi-national federation. They believed that only egalitarian integration within the framework of a common state would ensure that Israel could be a safe haven for all of its inhabitants. While the chances of realizing this egalitarian vision may seem remote in the current hostile context, it may well be that a bi-national state in which Israelis and Palestinians are treated as equals is the only realistic solution in the end.


Also available as an audiobook

This inspiring work profiles sixteen heroic Catholic men and women who defied the odds to advance civil and human rights around the world. Spanning from the birth of the United States to World War II Germany to the current Latin American immigration crisis, this book features people whose faith drove them to courageously defend the dignity of the children of God, especially the most vulnerable, transforming many lives and paving the way for a more equitable society.

To understand human rights, however, we need theology. Supported by official Church documents, each chapter is themed on one of the pillars of Catholic social teaching--freedom, perseverance, hope, justice, and conscience. These short, compelling biographies of figures who exemplify each pillar demonstrate how the teachings of Christ, through his Church, can drive ordinary believers to do extraordinary deeds.

Among the heroes are former slave Venerable Father Augustine Tolton, Austrian farmer Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, Native American catechist Nicholas Black Elk, Servant of God Dorothy Day, Saint Katharine Drexel, Saint Teresa of Calcutta, and Saint Oscar Romero.

The Odd Fellows' Primer is a work cut from the same cloth as the great 19th century manuals written by luminaries such as Rev. Aaron Grosh and Paschal Donaldson, designed to give the initiate everything they need to practice and live Odd Fellowship in the lodge and beyond.

This comprehensive work explores and explains concepts of fraternalism and parliamentary procedure and the deeper spiritual and ethical facets of this ancient and venerable tradition.

Richly and beautifully illustrated by Ainslie Heilich and written by Michael Greenzeiger, the Odd Fellows' Primer is designed to both inform and inspire. It is sure to become a treasured addition to any fraternal library.

For fourteen days in the winter of 1999, just blocks away from the site of Dr. King's assassination, one of the most infamous assassination mysteries was being solved in Memphis, Tennessee, before a circuit court judge and twelve impaneled jurors. While the national media turned a blind eye toward this trial, day by day the facts from the actual witnesses came forth to attempt to prove the truth behind what really happened on April 4th, 1968, to Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. This book is the actual trial transcript, from beginning to end with no editing, no deletions, no opinions or commentary. Based upon the testimonies, you can become the 13th juror, and make up your own mind about what happened on that fateful day.

A meticulously researched (The New York Times Book Review) examination of energy transitions over time and an exploration of the current challenges presented by global warming, a surging world population, and renewable energy--from Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author Richard Rhodes.

People have lived and died, businesses have prospered and failed, and nations have risen to world power and declined, all over energy challenges. Through an unforgettable cast of characters, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes explains how wood gave way to coal and coal made room for oil, as we now turn to natural gas, nuclear power, and renewable energy. Entertaining and informative...a powerful look at the importance of science (NPR.org), Rhodes looks back on five centuries of progress, through such influential figures as Queen Elizabeth I, King James I, Benjamin Franklin, Herman Melville, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford.

In his magisterial history...a tour de force of popular science (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), Rhodes shows how breakthroughs in energy production occurred; from animal and waterpower to the steam engine, from internal-combustion to the electric motor. He looks at the current energy landscape, with a focus on how wind energy is competing for dominance with cast supplies of coal and natural gas. He also addresses the specter of global warming, and a population hurtling towards ten billion by 2100.

Human beings have confronted the problem of how to draw energy from raw material since the beginning of time. Each invention, each discovery, each adaptation brought further challenges, and through such transformations, we arrived at where we are today. A beautifully written, often inspiring saga of ingenuity and progress...Energy brings facts, context, and clarity to a key, often contentious subject (Booklist, starred review).

The instant New York Times bestseller.

A brilliant recasting of the turning points in world history, including the one we're living through, as a collision between old power hierarchies and new social networks.

Captivating and compelling. --The New York Times

Niall Ferguson has again written a brilliant book...In 400 pages you will have restocked your mind. Do it. --The Wall Street Journal

The Square and the Tower, in addition to being provocative history, may prove to be a bellwether work of the Internet Age. --Christian Science Monitor

Most history is hierarchical: it's about emperors, presidents, prime ministers and field marshals. It's about states, armies and corporations. It's about orders from on high. Even history from below is often about trade unions and workers' parties. But what if that's simply because hierarchical institutions create the archives that historians rely on? What if we are missing the informal, less well documented social networks that are the true sources of power and drivers of change?

The 21st century has been hailed as the Age of Networks. However, in The Square and the Tower, Niall Ferguson argues that networks have always been with us, from the structure of the brain to the food chain, from the family tree to freemasonry. Throughout history, hierarchies housed in high towers have claimed to rule, but often real power has resided in the networks in the town square below. For it is networks that tend to innovate. And it is through networks that revolutionary ideas can contagiously spread. Just because conspiracy theorists like to fantasize about such networks doesn't mean they are not real.

From the cults of ancient Rome to the dynasties of the Renaissance, from the founding fathers to Facebook, The Square and the Tower tells the story of the rise, fall and rise of networks, and shows how network theory--concepts such as clustering, degrees of separation, weak ties, contagions and phase transitions--can transform our understanding of both the past and the present.

Just as The Ascent of Money put Wall Street into historical perspective, so The Square and the Tower does the same for Silicon Valley. And it offers a bold prediction about which hierarchies will withstand this latest wave of network disruption--and which will be toppled.

Excellent, accessible textbook for courses in general and comparative colonial history. Includes not only overseas empires but also continental colonial expansion (USA, Latin America, South Africa, Australia and Russia). Most recent comprehensive book in the field.

There is nothing that terrorized Russian and Chinese-backed guerillas fighting Rhodesia's bush war in the 1970s more than the famed Selous Scouts. The very name of the unit struck fear into the very heart and soul of even the most battle-hardened guerillas. Too afraid to even whisper the name amongst themselves, they referred to soldiers of the unit simply as Skuzapu, or pickpockets. It was not for nothing that history has recorded the Selous Scouts Regiment as being one of the deadliest and most effective killing machines in modern counter-insurgency warfare.

The Selous Scouts comprised specially selected black and white soldiers of the Rhodesian army, supplemented with the inclusion of hardcore terrorists captured on the battlefield. Dressed and equipped as communist guerrillas and with faces and arms blackened, members of this elite Special Forces unit would slip silently into the shadows of the night to seek and destroy real terrorist gangs. It became a deadly game of hide-and-seek played out between gangs and counter-gangs in the harsh and unforgiving landscape of the African bush. So successful were the Selous Scouts at being able to locate and destroy terrorist in their lairs that by the mid-1970s, they had begun to dominate Rhodesia's battle space. Working in close conjunction with the elite airborne assault troops of the Rhodesian Light Infantry, the Selous Scouts accounted for an extraordinary high proportion of terrorist killed in Rhodesia's bush war. Not content with restricting themselves to hunting guerrillas inside Rhodesia, the Selous Scouts began conducting external vehicle-borne assaults against terrorist camps situated deep inside neighboring countries with devastating loss to the terrorists.

Survival in this cauldron of battle was never guaranteed. In this special 'deluxe' edition of author Tim Bax's hugely acclaimed Three Sips of Gin, we follow Tim on his missions into the silence of the shadows. As his story unfolds, we begin to understand how he managed to survive and it is here you will find the significance of 'three sips of gin' revealed. Readers of the earlier edition of the book will not want to miss reading this 'deluxe' edition, which, for the first time, is illustrated with dozens of photographs of every facet of Tim's amazing journey, including stark, never before seen images of the war.

Three Sips of Gin is not just a book about war. It is a remarkable book about a remarkable man's life journey. Tim tells his story with the wit, candor and self-deprecating humor for which he has become so well known. His amazing journey is one, which few could ever have experienced.

This volume deals with a tumultuous yet transformative era in Greek history. During the twentieth century, most Greeks abandoned the countryside for the cities or the expanding global diaspora. Greek and Cypriot societies became urbanised, secularised and more 'western'. Since the Balkan Wars they have also lurched from crisis to crisis, having experienced two destructive war decades (1912-1922 and 1940-1949), the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and the economic crises of the 2010s.
Focusing on the relationship between state and society, as well as on Greeks' place in the wider world, this book considers how Greeks have engaged with global change and the impact of international factors on their lives.

The Potato tells the story of how a humble vegetable, once regarded as trash food, had as revolutionary an impact on Western history as the railroad or the automobile. Using Ireland, England, France, and the United States as examples, Larry Zuckerman shows how daily life from the 1770s until World War I would have been unrecognizable-perhaps impossible-without the potato, which functioned as fast food, famine insurance, fuel and labor saver, budget stretcher, and bank loan, as well as delicacy. Drawing on personal diaries, contemporaneous newspaper accounts, and other primary sources, this is popular social history at its liveliest and most illuminating.

Tamerlane, the Ottomans, the Mughals, the Manchus, the British, the Japanese, the Nazis, and the Soviets: All built empires meant to last forever; all were to fail. But, as John Darwin shows in this magisterial book, their empire-building created the world we know today.
From the death of Tamerlane in 1405, to America's rise to world hyperpower, to the resurgence of China and India as global economic powers, After Tamerlane is a grand historical narrative that offers a new perspective on the past, present, and future of empires.