"A riveting history of the city that led the west out of the ruins of the Roman Empire. At the end of the fourth century, as the power of Rome faded and Constantinople became the seat of empire, a new capital city was rising in the West. Here, in Ravenna on the coast of Italy, Arian Goths and Catholic Romans competed to produce an unrivaled concentration of buildings and astonishing mosaics. For three centuries, the city attracted scholars, lawyers,...

"Indonesia is the fabled Spice Islands of every school child's dreams--one of the most colorful and fascinating countries in history. These are the islands that Europeans set out on countless voyages to discover and later fought bitterly over in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. This was the land that Christopher Columbus sought and Magellan actually reached and explored. One tiny Indonesian island was even exchanged for the island of Manhattan in...

Roll the Bones tells the story of gambling: where it came from, how it has changed, and where it is now. This is the new Casino Edition. which updates and expands the global history of gambling to include a greater focus on casinos, from their development in European spas to their growth in Reno and Las Vegas. New material chronicles in greater depth the development of casino resorts on the Las Vegas Strip and their spread throughout the United States....

"The Cabaret of Plants is a masterful, globe-trotting exploration of the relationship between humans and the kingdom of plants by the renowned naturalist Richard Mabey,"--Amazon.com.

As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families...

"The car has shaped the modern era more profoundly than any other human invention. Its manufacture introduced mass-production to the world, bringing with it tarmac, suburbs, and car culture. In this comprehensive world history of the most important transport innovation of the modern age, historian Dr. Steven Parissien examines the impact, development, and significance of the automobile over its turbulent and colorful 130-year history. He tells the...

[This book] tells the... story of our Constitution through the eyes of ten extraordinary individuals- some renowned, like Alexander Hamilton and Woodrow Wilson, and some forgotten, like James Wilson and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. [The author] brings to life their struggles over our supreme law from its origins in revolutionary America to the era of Obama and Trump. Sweeping from settings as diverse as Gold Rush California to the halls of Congress, and...

In 1940, when the Nazi invasion of Norway reaches their village in the far north, twelve-year-old Peter and his friends use their sleds to transport nine million dollars worth of gold bullion past the German soldiers to the secret harbor where Peter's uncle keeps his ship ready to take the gold for safekeeping in the United States.

A 14th-century medieval allegory by Giovanni Boccaccio, told as a frame story coveriing 100 tales by ten young people. The bawdy tales of love in The Decameron range from the erotic to the tragic. Includes tales of wit, practical jokes, and life lessons and also documents life in 14th-century Italy.