Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in History

Talk about a fish story! New York Times and Harper's columnist Mark Kurlansky offers "history filtered through the gills of the fish trade." David McCullough, the historian behind John Adams, says Kurlansky's "charming tale" of a "seemingly improbable idea" will change the way people think of the fish and the history.

Inhabiting the small corner where France meets Spain, the Basque speak their own language, Euskera. Evidence of their culture showed up as early as 218 BC, and now, with a population of 2.4 million, their influence on our world has been all-pervasive. In this "delectable portrait of an uncanny, indomitable nation," listeners will be enthralled as Kurlansky delves into the roots of an intriguing population, and shows us why they continue.

O Jerusalem! is the epic drama of 1948, when Arabs and Jews fought for control of the city of Jerusalem. This story traverses centuries and continents, covering the time between WWII and the creation of the independent state of Israel. Based on five years of intensive research and thousands of interviews, this is a story of courage, terrorism, heroism, and ultimately, war.

Discover an alternate history to the human race as the authors of Forbidden Archeology challenge one of the most fundamental components of the modern scientific world view. Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson discuss the work of researchers who, over the past 2 centuries, have found bones and artifacts showing that people like ourselves existed on earth millions of years ago.

Perhaps no figure in biblical scholarship has been the subject of more controversy and debate than Mary Magdalene. Although she is discussed in the gospels of Philip, Thomas, Peter, and Bartholomew in the collection of writings known as the Gnostic gospels that were rejected by the early Christian church, there is no better insight into this mysterious and influential woman than Mary's own gospel.

So much of our human body is made up of salt that we'd be dead without it. The fine balance of nature, the trade of salt as a currency of many nations and empires, the theme of a popular Shakespearean play... Salt is best selling author Mark Kurlansky's story of the only rock we eat.

 The author of Cod and The Basque History of the World takes an extraordinary look at an ordinary substance — salt, the only rock humans eat — and how it has shaped civilization from the very beginning. Mark Kurlansky has produced a kaleidoscope of history, a multi-layered masterpiece that blends economic, scientific, political, religious, and culinary records into a rich and memorable tale. 

David Morehouse was already a highly decorated third-generation army officer when a routine training operation radically changed his life. He was hit by a stray bullet, and after recovering he began to have out-of-body experiences. With his newfound psychic abilities, he became one of the top "remote reviewers" in a CIA espionage operation called "Stargate."

In 1968, with the publication of Carlos Castaneda's The Teachings of Don Juan, the spiritual search was revealed to be as incredibly exciting as any death-defying adventure which human beings may be drawn to undertake. As the years have passed, Dr. Castaneda has come to be seen as an anthropologist of the soul, showing us that the inner world has its own inaccessible mountains, forbidding deserts, and awesomely beautiful dangers which we are all called to confront.

Legendary folk singer and activist Woody Guthrie left us with this funny, cynical, earthy and tragic account of his life in an Oklahoma oil-boom town, of the Depression that followed, and of his subsequent travels in, on, and under trains, in stolen cars and on his feet, rounding an America going rotten from the top downwards. During the journey of discovery that was his life, Guthrie composed and sang words and music that have become a national heritage. His songs are merely part of his legacy. Woody Guthrie left us this remarkable autobiography.

Expanded from the original, Yes We Can! offers highlights from speeches by Barack Obama and includes his entire inaugural address as an added bonus. For this collection, speeches were chosen to showcase President Obama's powerful, inspiring rhetoric of hope and change and to represent his stands on issues such as climate, energy, service, and the Iraq war.

Beginning in the 1950s, William Masters and Virginia Johnson convinced hundreds of people to shed their clothes and copulate—in the name of science. For more than 40 years, the pair served as the nation's top experts on love, sex, and intimacy. In this eye-opening work, critically acclaimed biographer Thomas Maier presents an unprecedented look at the research team of Masters and Johnson, their pioneering studies of intimacy, and their lasting impact on the love lives of men and women. Masters of Sex offers a titillating portrait of the team's real-life story.

Henry Kissinger is one of the most controversial Secretaries of State in U.S. history—serving under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, never-before-seen transcripts of Kissinger's conversations, including top-secret talks with Beijing and Moscow, provide an unvarnished record of his brand of high-stakes diplomacy during the Nixon years. These transcripts provide an unparalleled view of historical events that shaped the world and rocked the way diplomacy is conducted in the United States.

This haunting memoir tells the brutal story of the Vietnam War from the perspective of an innocent victim whose childhood was dominated by violence, devastation, and conflicts between the teachings of her culture and the realities of war. The youngest in a close-knit Buddhist family, Le Ly Hayslip was 12 years old when U.S. helicopters landed in her village. She was raped and "ruined" for marriage by Viet Cong soldiers, imprisoned and tortured by the South Vietnamese, and sentenced to death by the Viet Cong. Ultimately fleeing to the U.S. with her children, she finally found peace, and in 1986, she was reunited with her family in Vietnam. The story of her homecoming, interwoven with her memories of the war years, paints a vivid picture of a noble, optimistic woman and her native country.

Mark Kurlansky, winner of the James Beard Award for Excellence in Food Writing, leads us on a mouthwatering culinary tour around the world and through history and culture from the fifth century B.C. to the present day. This wonderful collection contains essays by Plato on the art of cooking, Pablo Neruda on french fries, and many other writers on the passions of cuisine.

In Hope Is not a Method, Sullivan and co-author Colonel Michael Harper tell us how they kept the army well-trained and equipped for traditional functions while preparing it for a wide range of new and complicated missions, all in the midst of a dramatic reduction in both human and financial resources. Their approach is based on continuity and change: maintaining their focus on the army's historic vision and values while introducing new problem-solving techniques and training methods.

Gallo Be Thy Name is the portrait of an American dynasty that rose from poverty in the early 1900s to become the most successful wine company in the world through toil, cunning, and crime. From selling ³Dago Red² to Al Capone during Prohibition to conquering America¹s wine market, and from the Great Depression to the roiling farm labor movements of the 60s and 70s, the Gallos rode the turbulent currents of history to triumph, with iconic brothers Ernest and Julio steering the ship.

On April 1On April 10, 1912, The RMS Titanic embarked on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. But on the night of April 14, the British passenger liner collided with an iceberg, which resulted in the loss of more than 1,500 lives. Merely one day after the Titanic survivors arrived in New York City, a United States Senate committee began an investigation into the wreck of the great "unsinkable" ship.

One hot Monday morning in 1976, Albert Spaggiari engineered the European crime of the century. A bank president in Nice, France found his vault welded shut—from the inside. Spaggiari and his gang of 20 men had dug a 25-foot tunnel from the city's sewer system into the bank, where they spent a weekend cooking meals, drinking wine, and clearing millions of dollars in gold, jewelry, gems, and cash. Here is the breathtakingly compelling story of Spaggiari, his “sewer gang,” and the most daring, outrageous theft of the 20th century.

This haunting memoir tells the brutal story of the Vietnam War from the perspective of an innocent victim whose childhood was dominated by violence, devastation, and conflicts between the teachings of her culture and the realities of war. Le Ly Hayslip—the youngest in a close-knit Buddhist family—was 12 years old when U.S. helicopters landed in her village. She was raped and "ruined" for marriage by Viet Cong soldiers, imprisoned and tortured by the South Vietnamese, and sentenced to death by the Viet Cong.