But the subject has been addressed less often by mainstream historians than by anti-Semites or apologists. In this book Jerry Muller, a leading historian of capitalism, separates myth from reality to explain why the Jewish experience with capitalism has been so important and complex--and so ambivalent. Drawing on economic, social, political, and intellectual history from medieval Europe through contemporary America and Israel, "Capitalism and the Jews" examines the ways in which thinking about capitalism and thinking about the Jews have gone hand in hand in European thought, and why anticapitalism and anti-Semitism have frequently been linked. The book explains why Jews have tended to be disproportionately successful in capitalist societies, but also why Jews have numbered among the fiercest anticapitalists and Communists. The book shows how the ancient idea that money was unproductive led from the stigmatization of usury and the Jews to the stigmatization of finance and, ultimately, in Marxism, the stigmatization of capitalism itself. Finally, the book traces how the traditional status of the Jews as a diasporic merchant minority both encouraged their economic success and made them particularly vulnerable to the ethnic nationalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Providing a fresh look at an important but frequently misunderstood subject, "Capitalism and the Jews" will interest anyone who wants to understand the Jewish role in the development of capitalism, the role of capitalism in the modern fate of the Jews, or the ways in which the story of capitalism and the Jews has affected the history of Europe and beyond, from the medieval period to our own.

    Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for history, this "wonderful history of the golden age of the movie moguls" (Chicago Tribune ) is a provocative, original, and richly entertaining group biography of the Jewish immigrants who were the moving forces behind the creation of America's motion picture industry.

    Examines the history and legacy of the warrior monks, discussing their successful capture of the city of Jerusalem during the Crusades, and their eventual demise.

    Even from the time of the Puritans, he reveals, America was no shining “city up on a hill” but an engine of commercial and territorial expansion that drove Native Americans, as well as French, Spanish, Russian, and ultimately even British power, from the North American continent. Even before the birth of the nation, Americans believed they were destined for global leadership. Underlying their ambitions, Kagan argues, was a set of ideas and ideals about the world and human nature. He focuses on the Declaration of Independence as the document that firmly established the American conviction that the inalienable rights of all mankind transcended territorial borders and blood ties. American nationalism, he shows, was always internationalist at its core. He also makes a startling discovery: that the Civil War and the abolition of slavery—the fulfillment of the ideals of the Declaration—were the decisive turning point in the history of American foreign policy as well. Kagan's brilliant and comprehensive reexamination of early American foreign policy makes clear why America, from its very beginning, has been viewed worldwide not only as a wellspring of political, cultural, and social revolution, but as an ambitious and, at times, dangerous nation.

    For the first time the lives of Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Saul, David and Solomon are examined from an historical perspective, as David Rohl explores their cities, palaces and tombs.

    In The Hope, his long-awaited return to historical fiction, he turns to one of the most thrilling stories of our time - the saga of Israel. In the grand, epic style of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, The Hope plunges the reader into the major battles, the disasters and victories, and the fragile periods of peace from the 1948 War of Independence to the astounding triumph of the Six-Day War in 1967. And since Israelis have seen their share of comic mishaps as well as heroism, this novel offers some of Herman Wouk's most amusing scenes since the famed "strawberry business" in The Caine Mutiny. First to last The Hope is a tale of four Israeli army officers and the women they love: Zev Barak, Viennese-born cultured military man; Benny Luria, ace fighter pilot with religious stirrings; Sam Pasternak, sardonic and mysterious Mossad man; and an antic dashing warrior they call Kishote, Hebrew for Quixote, who arrives at Israel's first pitched battle a refugee boy on a mule and over the years rises to high rank. In the love stories of these four men, the author of Marjorie Morningstar has created a gallery of three memorable Israeli women and one quirky fascinating American, daughter of a high CIA official and headmistress of a Washington girls school. With the authenticity, authority, and narrative force of Wouk's finest fiction, The Hope portrays not so much the victory of one people over another, as the gallantry of the human spirit, surviving and triumphing against crushing odds. In that sense it can be called a tale of hope for all mankind; a note that Herman Wouk has struck in all his writings, against the prevailing pessimism of our turbulent century.

    As a rebellious child seated beside the tyrannical Roman Emperor Tiberius, she first spies the powerful gladiator who will ultimately be her one true passion. Yet it is the ambitious magistrate Pontius Pilate who intrigues the impressionable young woman she becomes, and Claudia finds her way into his arms by means of a mysterious ancient magic. Pilate is her grand destiny, leading her to Judaea and plunging her into a seething cauldron of open rebellion. But following her friend Miriam of Magdala's confession of her ecstatic love for a charismatic religious radical, Claudia begins to experience terrifying visions—horrific premonitions of war, injustice, untold devastation and damnation . . . and the crucifixion of a divine martyr whom she must do everything in her power to save.

    leaders try to convince the world of their success in fighting al Qaeda, one member of the U.S. intelligence community would like to inform the public that we are, in fact, losing the war on terror. Further, until U.S. leaders recognize the errant path they have irresponsibly chosen, he says, our enemies will only grow stronger. According to the author Michael Scheuer, the greatest danger for Americans confronting the Islamist threat is to believe—at the urging of U.S. leaders—that Muslims attack us for what we are and what we think rather than for what we do. Blustering political rhetoric “informs” the public that the Islamists are offended by the Western world’s democratic freedoms, civil liberties, inter-mingling of genders, and separation of church and state. However, although aspects of the modern world may offend conservative Muslims, no Islamist leader has fomented jihad to destroy participatory democracy, for example, the national association of credit unions, or coed universities. Instead, a growing segment of the Islamic world strenuously disapproves of specific U.S. policies and their attendant military, political, and economic implications. Capitalizing on growing anti-U.S. animosity, Osama bin Laden’s genius lies not simply in calling for jihad, but in articulating a consistent and convincing case that Islam is under attack by America. Al Qaeda’s public statements condemn America’s protection of corrupt Muslim regimes, unqualified support for Israel, the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and a further litany of real-world grievances. Bin Laden’s supporters thus identify their problem and believe their solution lies in war. Scheuer contends they will go to any length, not to destroy our secular, democratic way of life, but to deter what they view as specific attacks on their lands, their communities, and their religion. Unless U.S. leaders recognize this fact and adjust their policies abroad accordingly, even moderate Muslims will join the bin Laden camp.

    . . a book that enriches our understanding of how the struggle to think new thoughts is shared across time and space and people.”—The Sunday Telegraph (London)Christmas, 1859. Just one month after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin received an unsettling letter. He had expected criticism; in fact, letters were arriving daily, most expressing outrage and accusations of heresy. But this letter was different. It accused him of failing to acknowledge his predecessors, of taking credit for a theory that had already been discovered by others. Darwin realized that he had made an error in omitting from Origin of Species any mention of his intellectual forebears. Yet when he tried to trace all of the natural philosophers who had laid the groundwork for his theory, he found that history had already forgotten many of them.Darwin’s Ghosts tells the story of the collective discovery of evolution, from Aristotle, walking the shores of Lesbos with his pupils, to Al-Jahiz, an Arab writer in the first century, from Leonardo da Vinci, searching for fossils in the mine shafts of the Tuscan hills, to Denis Diderot in Paris, exploring the origins of species while under the surveillance of the secret police, and the brilliant naturalists of the Jardin de Plantes, finding evidence for evolutionary change in the natural history collections stolen during the Napoleonic wars. Evolution was not discovered single-handedly, Rebecca Stott argues, contrary to what has become standard lore, but is an idea that emerged over many centuries, advanced by daring individuals across the globe who had the imagination to speculate on nature’s extraordinary ways, and who had the courage to articulate such speculations at a time when to do so was often considered heresy.With each chapter focusing on an early evolutionary thinker, Darwin’s Ghosts is a fascinating account of a diverse group of individuals who, despite the very real dangers of challenging a system in which everything was presumed to have been created perfectly by God, felt compelled to understand where we came from. Ultimately, Stott demonstrates, ideas—including evolution itself—evolve just as animals and plants do, by intermingling, toppling weaker notions, and developing over stretches of time. Darwin’s Ghosts presents a groundbreaking new theory of an idea that has changed our very understanding of who we are.

    Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager who contributed to Trump's historic bid for the White House, teams up with David N. Bossie, the consummate political pro who helped steer the last critical months of the Trump Campaign, to offer the first insiders' account of the most historic campaign in modern political history. Starting from the months leading up to Trump's announcement all the way through staff shakeups within the White House, Let Trump Be Trump offers eyewitness accounts of the real stories behind some of the most sensational headlines. At turns surprising, raw with emotion, and hilarious, Let Trump Be Trump is a book destined to be beloved by Trump supporters and cited by even Trump critics as the first and most definitive insider account of the 2016 campaign.

    It committed Britain to supporting the establishment in Palestine of “a National Home for the Jewish people,” and its reverberations continue to be felt to this day. Now the entire fascinating story of the document is revealed in this impressive work of modern history.With new material retrieved from historical archives, scholar Jonathan Schneer recounts in dramatic detail the public and private battles in the early 1900s for a small strip of land in the Middle East, battles that started when the governing Ottoman Empire took Germany’s side in World War I. The Balfour Declaration paints an indelible picture of how Arab nationalists, backed by Britain, fought for their future as Zionists in England battled diplomatically for influence. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to either side or even to most members of the British government, Prime Minister David Lloyd George was telling Turkey that she could keep her flag flying over the disputed territory if only she would agree to a separate peace.The key players in this watershed moment are rendered here in nuanced and detailed relief: Sharif Hussein, the Arab leader who secretly sought British support; Chaim Weizmann, Zionist hero, the folksmensch who charmed British high society; T. E. Lawrence, the legendary “super cerebral” British officer who “set the desert on fire” for the Arabs; Basil Zaharoff, the infamous arms dealer who was Britain’s most important back channel to the Turks; and the other generals and prime ministers, soldiers and negotiators, who shed blood and cut deals to grab or give away the precious land.A book crucial to understanding the Middle East as it is today, The Balfour Declaration is a rich and remarkable achievement, a riveting volume about the ancient faiths and timeless treacheries that continue to drive global events.

    The most important book on the subject of race for many years.--National Review.

    As an outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery in the United States, Lincoln won the Republican Party nomination in 1860 and was elected president later that year. During his term, he helped preserve the United States by leading the defeat of the secessionist Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. He introduced measures that resulted in the abolition of slavery, issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoting the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865."

    And from Hobbes and Burke through Lord Salisbury and Calvin Coolidge, up to Pat Buchanan and Mark Steyn in our own time, these beliefs have kept the human race from blindly chasing its utopian dreams right off a cliff.Recently, though, various comforting yet fundamentally idiotic notions of political correctness and wishful thinking have taken root beyond the "Kumbaya"-singing, we're-all-one crowd. These ideas have now infected conservatives, the very people who really should know better. The Republican Party has been derailed by legions of fools and poseurs wearing smiley-face masks. Think rescuing the economy by condemning our descendents to lives of spirit-crushing debt. Think nation-building abroad while we slowly disintegrate at home. Think education and No Child Left Behind. . . . But don't think about it too much, because if you do, you'll quickly come to the logical conclusion: We are doomed.Need more convincing? Dwell on the cheerful promises of the diversity cult and the undeniable reality of the oncoming demographic disaster. Contemplate the feminization of everything, or take a good look at what passes for art these days. Witness the rise of culturism and the death of religion. Bow down before your new master, the federal apparatchik. Finally, ask yourself: How certain am I that the United States of America will survive, in any recognizable form, until, say, 2022? A scathing, mordantly funny romp through today's dismal and dismaler political and cultural scene, We Are Doomed provides a long-overdue dose of reality, revealing just how the GOP has been led astray in recent years–and showing that had conservatives held on to their fittingly pessimistic outlook, America's future would be far brighter. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to embrace the Audacity of Hopelessness.

    They’ve humiliated the Iraqi Army we trained and seized territory in Iraq that we had secured at the cost of so many American lives. They’ve beheaded American journalists on camera in a direct challenge to the power and resolve of the United States. And now ISIS is calling for “city wolves” across the United States to act on their dedication to the Islamic State’s blood-drenched ideology and murder innocent American citizens at random.Who is ISIS? Where did it come from, and what is driving its successful campaign of murder and conquest? Our government and our media alike seemed to be blindsided by the Islamic State’s blitzkrieg-like advance, which forced American troops back into Iraq. ISIS has conquered a territory roughly the size of the state of Indiana, rules over eight million terrorized souls, and has even revived the practice of legal slavery. And yet the true motivations, inner workings, and future plans of this terror state and its mysterious caliph seem almost as obscure as when ISIS first burst onto the world scene. In ISIS Exposed, veteran investigative reporter Erick Stakelbeck gets inside the story of the new caliphate and reveals just how clear and present a threat it is.