The heretics in question are the Cathars, a self-contained, anti-clerical sect made up of Believers and Perfecteds. The author is a lapsed Catholic freelance writer deeply interested in them. Believing in a world in which good and evil... Read More

Historians and general readers will welcome Frugé and Harlow’s well-illustrated, fully annotated translation of Duhaut-Cilly’s journals of his 1826-1829 trading voyage. The French captain’s two years in Alta and Baja California... Read More

In his concise account of the fifty-year crisis (AD 235-285) that threatened the Roman Empire’s survival, Grant concentrates on three factors: weak, short-lived emperors imposed, deposed, and murdered by the military; invasions by... Read More

An attempt to review Gotham in a brief notice is as reckless as presenting the Himalayas in a three-minute, two-slide, one-question lecture. This disciplined yet exuberant narrative from the Dutch purchase of Indian land in the 1620s to... Read More

Founded by the Romans as an administrative center, London has had 2000 years of history. Throughout these two millennia the city has almost continuously developed as a trade mart, stronghold, center of government and, increasingly after... Read More

On April 29, 1945, the Seventh Army’s 42nd Rainbow and 45th Thunderbolt divisions liberated Dachau concentration camp. This book compiles the personal accounts of some 60 officers and men of the 42nd, presenting the horror they... Read More

This engaging history of the young white elephant that King Manuel I of Portugal gave to Pope Leo X in 1514 explores far more than Hanno’s brief life as a darling of the public and a catalyst to the burgeoning interest in natural... Read More

This is a substantially revised edition of the well received, but out-of-print Forbidden Journey: The Life of Alexandra David-Neel (Harper & Row, 1987), then indisputably the best biography of its amazing subject. The revised edition... Read More