The Thumpin’ is the story of that historic victory and the man at the center on whom Democratic hopes hinged: Congressman Rahm Emanuel, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Chicago Tribune reporter Naftali Bendavid had exclusive access to Emanuel and the DCCC in the year and a half leading up to the elections and ended up with the story of a lifetime, the thrilling blow-by-blow account of how Emanuel remade the campaign in his own ferocious image. Responsible for everything from handpicking Congressional candidates to raising money for attack ads, Emanuel, a talented ballet dancer better known in Washington for his extraordinary intensity and his inexhaustible torrents of profanity, threw out the playbook on the way Democrats run elections.Instead of rallying the base, Rahm sought moderate-to-conservative candidates who could attract more traditional voters. Instead of getting caught in the Democrats’ endless arguments about their positions, he went on the attack, personally vilifying Republicans from Tom DeLay to Christopher Shays. And instead of abiding by the gentlemen’s agreements of good-old-boy Washington, he broke them, attacking his counterpart in the Republican party and challenging Howard Dean, the chairman of his own party. In 2005, no one believed victory was within the Democrats’ grasp. But as the months passed, Republicans were caught in wave after wave of scandal, support for the war in Iraq steadily declined, and the president’s poll numbers plummeted. And in Emanuel, the Democrats finally had a killer, a ruthless closer like Karl Rove or Lee Atwater, poised to seize the advantage and deliver what President Bush would call “a thumpin.’”Taking its cues from classic political page-turners like Showdown at Gucci Gulch and documentaries like The War Room, The Thumpin’ takes us inside the key races and the national strategy-making that moved the Democrats from forecasted gains of three seats in 2005 to a sweeping gain of thirty seats when the votes were finally counted. Through this masterful account of Rahm’s rout, Bendavid shows how the lessons the Democrats learned in 2006—to fight for every vote, to abandon litmus tests, and to take no prisoners—will be crucial to the party’s future electoral success, and shape the political course the nation will take in the twenty-first century.From the Hardcover edition.

    In 2014, Richard Fidler and his son Joe made a journey to Istanbul. Fired by Richard's passion for the rich history of the dazzling Byzantine Empire - centred around the legendary Constantinople - we are swept into some of the most extraordinary tales in history. The clash of civilizations, the fall of empires, the rise of Christianity, revenge, lust, murder. Turbulent stories from the past are brought vividly to life at the same time as a father navigates the unfolding changes in his relationship with his son.GHOST EMPIRE is a revelation: a beautifully written ode to a lost civilization, and a warmly observed father-son adventure far from home.

    This book looks at the savage spectacles of Rome and traces their development from entertainment to hysterical obsession until their eventual decline and disappearance.

    Athens had entered upon her brief and magnificent flowering of genius which so molded the world of mind and of spirit that our mind and spirit today are different... What was then produced of art and of thought has never been surpasses and very rarely equalled, and the stamp of it is upon all the art and all the thought of the Western world."A perennial favorite in many different editions, Edith Hamilton's best-selling The Greek Way captures the spirit and achievements of Greece in the fifth century B.C. A retired headmistress when she began her writing career in the 1930s, Hamilton immediately demonstrated a remarkable ability to bring the world of ancient Greece to life, introducing that world to the twentieth century. The New York Times called The Greek Way a "book of both cultural and critical importance."

    Proven with mathematics this book describes genuine ancient knowledge that conflicts with modern science but upholds the Biblical story of Genesis.

    Scipio Africanus, surely the greatest general that Rome produced, suffered both these fates. Today scholars celebrate the importance of Hannibal, even though Scipio defeated the legendary general in the Second Punic War and was the central military figure of his time. In this scholarly and heretofore unmatched military biography of the distinguished Roman soldier, Richard A. Gabriel establishes Scipio’s rightful place in military history as the greater of the two generals.  Before Scipio, few Romans would have dreamed of empire, and Scipio himself would have regarded such an ambition as a danger to his beloved republic. And yet, paradoxically, Scipio’s victories in Spain and Africa enabled Rome to consolidate its hold over Italy and become the dominant power in the western Mediterranean, virtually ensuring a later confrontation with the Greco-Macedonian kingdoms to the east as well as the empire’s expansion into North Africa and the Levant. The Roman imperium was being born, and it was Scipio who had sired it. Gabriel draws upon ancient texts, including those from Livy, Polybius, Diodorus, Silius Italicus, and others, as primary sources and examines all additional material available to the modern scholar in French, German, English, and Italian. His book offers a complete bibliography of all extant sources regarding Scipio’s life. The result is a rich, detailed, and contextual treatment of the life and career of Scipio Africanus, one of Rome’s greatest generals, if not the greatest of them all.

    Partha Chatterjee's retelling of the notoriously famous 'Bhawal Sannyasi Case' - one of India's best known and most historic legal battles - is narrative history of the finest kind. It is an epic story of war within a household which spills out into the social life of colonial Bengal; and beyond, into the administrative and legal fabric of India during the heyday of nationalism; and then beyond that again, into spirituality and philosophy, legend and folklore, theatre and cinema.

    The book also includes some of her best fiction pieces.

    Twenty-two years later, he did. April 1945 – Berlin. The world had been at war for more than five-and-a-half years – approximately seventy million people were dead across the globe. The epicentre of the twelve-year-old Third Reich was now surrounded, enveloped by bitter Soviet forces hardened by Nazi barbarity in the east over the last four years. As the buildings were blasted into rubble, pounded by Russian guns and bombs, before their troops and tanks, Hitler was hunkered down in his last headquarters – the dark and damp bunker under the Reich Chancellery. As the Third Reich began to crumble as fast as the city’s buildings, what was the state of mind of the tyrant? Only his closest and fanatical allies saw the collapse, none more so than Hitler’s servants, Otto Gunsche and Heinz Linge – two individuals which witnessed the final act of their regime. An act tinged over the last ten days in late April with selfish betrayal, increasingly forlorn hope, pleas, desperation and eventually suicide. As the Soviets closed in with impending vigour, in the concrete tomb below ground and under the thunderous booms of the petrifying battle for Berlin, the mind of the dictator disintegrated into drugs, delusion and a determination to die. Not by the enemy bullet but one of his own. This is the story of the people who held a unique place in world history – the ones who were there when the nightmare of Nazism and the horrors which accompanied it was finally banished as a dark chapter in the story of the human race.

    In 1960, as a suicidal teenager, Sawyer was institutionalized, misdiagnosed, and suffered through 89 electroshock treatments before being transfered, labeled as “unimproved.” The damage done has haunted her life. Discharged in 1966, after finally receiving proper psychiatric care, Sawyer kept her past secret and moved on to graduate from Yale University, raise two children, and become a respected psychotherapist. That is, until 2001, when she reviewed her hospital records and began to remember a broken childhood and the even more broken mental health system of the 1950s and 1960s, Revisiting scenes from her childhood and assembling the pieces of a lost puzzle, her autobiography is a cautionary tale of careless psychiatric diagnosis and treatment, both 50 years ago and today. It is an informative story about understanding PTSD and making emotional sense of events that can lead a soul to darkness. Most of all, it’s a story of perseverance: pain, acceptance, healing, hope, and success. Hers is a unique voice for this generation, shedding light on an often misunderstood illness.

    You also study what it was like to live in the late antique world: How did people earn their livings?What was the role of women in society? What distinguished the great cities of the era?Nothing in Rome's previous experience compared with the ferment of late antiquity, which saw the unpredictable growth of new institutions, states, religions, and arts. After taking this course you will never think of the barbarians and the "fall" of Rome in quite the same way again. Your imagination will be alive with the incidents, innovations, and peoples of an exciting era that gave birth to us all: late antiquity.

    And they weren't just in one place. There was a global pattern to them. This pattern showed a lost science and technology. That's when he knew someone had to speak up. This content was of tremendous value.-MACHINERY: Did you know that the Egyptians bored into granite rock with drills that turned 500 times faster than modern power drills?-ANCIENT AMERICA: Did you know that a Chinese mapping survey of North America in 2200 BC described a sunrise over the Grand Canyon, black opals and gold nuggets in Nevada, and seals frolicking in San Francisco Bay?This is the most amazing archaeology book you'll ever see!Dead Men's Secrets is an assemblage of astonishing discoveries.....A lost super science emerges from the sea floor, jungle and desert sands of our planet... over 1,000 forgotten secrets. It will SHOCK you. SEE this world as you've never seen it before. DISCOVER answers you never had. GAIN a new enjoyment. HAVE FACTS at your fingertips to amaze your friends.International explorer, archaeologist and author Jonathan Gray has traveled the world to gather data on ancient mysteries. He has penetrated some largely unexplored areas, including parts of the Amazon headwater. The author has also led expeditions to the bottom of the sea and to remote mountain and desert regions of the world. He lectures internationally.

    Cato grappled with homegrown terrorists, a public and private debt crisis, a yawning gap between rich and poor, and a fractious ruling class whose lives took on the dimensions of soap opera.This is the story of this uncompromising man’s formation in a time of crisis and his lifelong battle to save the Republic.

    With the fortunes of the Peloponnesian War turning inexorably against it, a beleaguered Athens badly needed a victory – and it got one. The Battle of Arginusae, won by raw recruits against a battle-hardened Spartan armada, saved Athens from disaster at a heavy cost in sunken ships. Yet in the confusion following the battle, neither the survivors nor the bodies of the dead were ever recovered.When the fleet returned to an apprehensive, overcrowded Athens, recriminations between its leaders escalated into a vicious, hysterical witch-hunt which convulsed the democracy and swept aside custom, sense, and law. In an extraordinary and chilling sequence of events, six victorious generals were arrested and put on trial for their lives before the Athenian people.On a day of violent passions, before a crowd of thousands, a handful of brave men including the philosopher Socrates struggled to save Athens from itself. As public anger and political tensions were stoked by inflammatory speeches, the principles of democracy would be tested to breaking point. The final verdict of the Trial of the Generals would haunt Athens for ever – and decide the outcome of the war.Anselm Audley holds BA and Master’s degrees in ancient history from Oxford, as well as a degree in planetary science from University College London. He is a published fantasy novelist, the author of Heresy, Inquisition, Crusade, and Vespera.

    But, as it turns out, 'time immemorial' may not have been all that long ago. To tell us the story of our ancestry, journalist Tony Joseph goes 65,000 years into the past—when a band of modern humans, or Homo sapiens, first made their way from Africa into the Indian subcontinent. Citing recent DNA evidence, he traces the subsequent large migrations of modern humans into India—of agriculturalists from Iran between 7000 and 3000 BCE and pastoralists from the Central Asian Steppe between 2000 and 1000 BCE, among others. As Joseph unravels our history using the results of genetic and other research, he takes head-on some of the most controversial and uncomfortable questions of Indian history: Who were the Harappans? Did the 'Aryans' really migrate to India? Are North Indians genetically different from South Indians? And are the various castes genetically distinct groups? This book relies heavily on path-breaking DNA research of recent years. But it also presents earlier archaeological and linguistic evidence—all in an entertaining and highly readable manner. A hugely significant book, Early Indians authoritatively and bravely puts to rest several ugly debates on the ancestry of modern Indians. It not only shows us how the modern Indian population came to be composed as it is, but also reveals an undeniable and important truth about who we are: we are all migrants. And we are all mixed.