"Chilling initiations. Big banks and money manipulations. Possible links to the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Adamses, and Bushes. Reviewing the evidence, documents, and connections, The Illuminati: The Secret Society That Hijacked the World by award-winning journalist and author Jim Marrs shines a light on the history, workings, continuing influence, and pernicious and hidden power of this secret order. Surveying experts-from those who dismiss the Illuminati...

"A structural engineer examines the seven most basic building blocks of engineering that have shaped the modern world"-- "Some of humanity's mightiest engineering achievements are small in scale--and, without them, the complex machinery on which our modern world runs would not exist. In Nuts and Bolts, structural engineer Roma Agrawal examines seven of these extraordinary elements: the nail, the wheel, the spring, the magnet, the lens, the string,...

The Victorians continue to be a vital presence in the modern world. Victorian cultural legacies, especially art, science, and literature, are still celebrated. Contemporary Britain still lives with their transport systems, their social structures, and even their vocabularies. And we are increasingly aware of the ways their global actions shaped, for good and ill, the world around us. In this Very Short Introduction, Martin Hewitt offers a historical...

"Chinese was the earliest truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese laborers began to settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world's best-loved culinary traditions and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of its richness and sophistication--but...

"This is a story about a dangerous idea--one which ignited revolutions in America, France, and Haiti; burst across Europe in the revolutions of 1848; and returned to inflame a new generation of intellectuals to lead the abolition movement--the idea that all men are created equal. In their struggle against the slaveholding oligarchy of their time, America's antislavery leaders found their way back to the rationalist, secularist, and essentially atheist...

"Shocking revelations of a wife's adultery explode in an incendiary nineteenth-century trial, exposing upper-crust New York society and its secrets. What could possibly go wrong in a wealthy matriarch's country home when her dilettante son, his restless wife, and his widowed brother live there together? Strong Passions, rooted in the beguiling times of Edith Wharton's 'old New York,' recounts the true story of a tumultuous marriage. In 1862, Mary...

Hawaii, 1941. War clouds with Japan are gathering and the islands of Hawaii have become battlegrounds of spies, intelligence agents, and military officials - with the island's residents caught between them. Toiling in the shadows are Douglas Wada, the only Japanese American agent in naval intelligence, and Takeo Yoshikawa, a Japanese spy sent to Pearl Harbor to gather information on the U.S. fleet. Douglas Wada's experiences in his native Honolulu...

"The History of Sketch Comedy will appeal to all kinds of comedy fans as well as fans of Keegan-Michael Key. With epic personal tangents and hilarious asides, their story takes you on an illuminating look at all facets of comedy from the stock characters of commedia del arte in the 16th century, to the rise of vaudeville and burlesque, the golden age of television comedy, the influence of the most well-known comedy schools, and ascension of comedy...

"From a visionary Mexican author, a hallucinatory, revelatory, colonial revenge story that reimagines the fall of Tenochtitlan. One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés entered the city of Tenochtitlan - today's Mexico City. Later that day, he would meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures. Cortés was accompanied by his nine captains, his troops, and his two translators: Friar...

"The first major history of Mormonism in a decade, drawing on newly available sources to reveal a profoundly divided faith that has nevertheless shaped the nation"--