Across 1400 years and six continents (sorry, Australia), Impossible Histories examines pivotal moments in history from both sides—what happened and what would have happened had things gone differently. The results are by turns strange, hilarious, tragic...and always fascinating. Imagine a world in which... - Hitler builds a thousand-year Reich - Columbus gets driven from the Americas by mounted knights - Robespierre decapitates Caesar Augustus - The Inca Empire has an air force - Jimmy Carter presses the Button These brave new worlds are merely our own, familiar world—if something small had happened differently. We're all one elephant away from peace in the Middle East, one knife thrust away from nuclear Armageddon. This book examines twenty pivotal moments in history, asks what if?...,and drags the answers kicking and screaming into the light. History--factual and counterfactual has never been so entertaining. A whirlwind ride through history as it never happened--but could have.

The first critical survey of the largely unknown avant-garde movements of the former Yugoslavia.

Modern scholars often find it difficult to account for the profound eccentricities in the work of William Blake, dismissing them as either ahistorical or simply meaningless. But with this pioneering study, Saree Makdisi develops a reliable and comprehensive framework for understanding these peculiarities. According to Makdisi, Blake's poetry and drawings should compel us to reconsider the history of the 1790s. Tracing for the first time the many links among economics, politics, and religion in his work, Makdisi shows how Blake questioned and even subverted the commercial, consumerist, and political liberties that his contemporaries championed, all while developing his own radical aesthetic.

A bold new history of the American presidency, arguing that the successful presidents of the past created unrealistic expectations for every president since JFK, with enormously problematic implications for American politics In The Impossible Presidency, celebrated historian Jeremi Suri charts the rise and fall of the American presidency, from the limited role envisaged by the Founding Fathers to its current status as the most powerful job in the world. He argues that the presidency is a victim of its own success-the vastness of the job makes it almost impossible to fulfill the expectations placed upon it. As managers of the world's largest economy and military, contemporary presidents must react to a truly globalized world in a twenty-four-hour news cycle. There is little room left for bold vision. Suri traces America's disenchantment with our recent presidents to the inevitable mismatch between presidential promises and the structural limitations of the office. A masterful reassessment of presidential history, this book is essential reading for anyone trying to understand America's fraught political climate.

In Past Futures, Ged Martin advocates examining the decisions that people take, most of which are not the result of a 'process, ' but are reached intuitively.

The ninth book in the bestselling series tells the story of John Wesley Powell, the one-armed geologist who explored the Grand Canyon John Wesley Powell (1834–1902) always had the spirit of adventure in him. As a young man, he traveled all over the United States exploring. When the Civil War began, Powell went to fight for the Union, and even after he lost most of his right arm, he continued to fight until the war was over. In 1869 he embarked with the Colorado River Exploring Expedition, ten men in four boats, to float through Grand Canyon. Over the course of three months, the explorers lost their boats and supplies, nearly drowned, and were in peril on multiple occasions. Ten explorers went in, only six came out. Powell would come to be known as one of the most epic explorers in history! Equal parts gruesome and hilarious, this latest installment in the bestselling series takes readers on an action-packed adventure through American history.

Chronicles the development of feminist ideas and women's rights in America from the Salem witchcraft trials of the seventeenth century through the appointment of the first woman secretary of state in the late twentieth century.