Blood Royal: A True Tale of Crime and Detection in Medieval Paris

Eric Jager (Get this book)
Few works of fiction will grab readers' attention as well as Jager's riveting story of a 1407 murder mystery that split the royal family of France. When Louis of Orleans, brother and frequent regent of King Charles VI, was brutally murdered in a Paris street, the provost of Paris, Guillaume de Tignonville was under pressure to solve the crime quickly. He had just overseen the execution of two murderers, whose claim to the right of "clergy" would eventually come back to haunt him. Jager shares his extensive knowledge of medieval Paris, employing entertainingly meticulous descriptions throughout the book. An impressive combination of mystery, crime story, and social and political history.--Kirkus

Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America

Annie Jacobsen (Get this book)
The story of how perpetrators of World War II were treated as spoils of war, brought to light with new information in this diligent report. Generations after Germany was defeated, disturbing revelations about the recruitment of Nazi scientists expands previous material with the use of documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, as well as personal interviews, memoirs, trial evidence and obscure dossiers. It's not a pleasant story. She provides snapshots of the scores of villains and the few heroes involved in collusion of the Nazis and U.S. military and intelligence agencies. Throughout, the author delivers harrowing passages of immorality, duplicity and deception, as well as some decency and lots of high drama.--Kirkus

The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court

Anna Whitelock (Get this book)
Whitelock follows up on her 2010 biography of Mary I, Mary Tudor, with a history of the reign of Mary's younger sister and successor to the English throne, Elizabeth I. Maintaining the health and safety of the queen's physical body was essential to maintaining peace within the realm, Whitelock argues, in a monograph that explores both the merging and diverging of Elizabeth's private life and public persona. This intimate portrait of Elizabeth's private life, as refracted through her relationships with the ladies of her bedchamber, will engage any readers wishing for a more balanced portrait of Elizabeth the flawed human being, as opposed to simply another rehashing of the mythical representations of her as Gloriana.--Publisher's Weekly

The Parthenon Enigma

Joan Breton Connelly (Get this book)
Universally recognized as a symbol of Western democracy, the Parthenon emerges in Connelly's bold new analysis as a shrine memorializing myths radically alien to modern politics. Newly recovered classical literary texts and surprising archaeological finds compel readers to acknowledge the implausibility of the usual interpretation of the Parthenon's frieze sculptures as a depiction of fifth-century Athenians celebrating their Panathenaic Festival. Newly aware of the potent message embedded in the Parthenon frieze as a whole, many readers will endorse Connelly's concluding appeal to British authorities, asking them to return to Greece the priceless pieces of the frieze that have long been held in London. An explosive reinterpretation of a classical icon.--Booklist

Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (Get this book)
Taking on the conventional Anglo-centrism of American history, this superb survey offers a different way of looking at the nation's past. A leading scholar of the Americas at the University of Notre Dame, Fernandez-Armesto brilliantly reveals the U.S.'s deep roots in Spanish and Hispanic culture and aspirations. With convincing arguments and deftly told stories, he shows how Spain and Hispanics have influenced American history from well before the British arrived. A first-person, opinionated, learned, wide-ranging, and delightfully written book, this is responsible revisionist history at its very best and deserves the widest possible attention.--Publisher's Weekly

Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives!: A World Without World War I

Richard Ned Lebow (Get this book)
An alternate history of how the world would have emerged if World War I had not occurred. World War I brought devastation on the 20th century, mowing down an entire generation of young men, dismantling empires, introducing ethnic cleansing, disease, revolution and civil war, and, ultimately, sowing the rotten global political and economic yield that gave rise to Adolf Hitler. Yet seasoned political scientist Lebow reminds us that WWI was entirely avoidable and indeed reluctantly embarked upon by the prevailing powers. Astute, challenging exercises in consequence and contingency.--Kirkus

Cairo: Memoir of a City Transformed

Ahdaf Soueif (Get this book)
A deeply personal, engaged tribute by the far-flung Egyptian novelist and journalist as she returned to witness the revolution in her hometown. It has taken the next generation, her children's, to prevail, and Soueif declares gallantly: "We follow them and pledge what's left of our lives to their effort." Early on, the author offers an in-the-moment account of the crucial first days of street action, often messy, confused and involving violent clashes with the police, though undertaken by friends, family and strangers alike with heartwarming camaraderie. Soueif offers both an extraordinary eyewitness document and a sense of the historical import of the revolution.--Kirkus

Our One Common Country: Abraham Lincoln and the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of 1865

James B. Conroy (Get this book)
A brilliant account of the doomed effort to end the Civil War through diplomacy. In February 1865 three "commissioners," all prominent members of the Confederate government, met with Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward on a riverboat near Hampton Roads, Va., to explore the possibility of a negotiated end to the Civil War, an event briefly portrayed in the recent film Lincoln. The project appeared hopeless from the start; schemes were launched to derail the conference before it could begin, deftly defeated by further chicanery on the parts of the commissioners and Ulysses Grant. A splendid addition to any Civil War library.--Kirkus

America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East

Hugh Wilford (Get this book)
By turns admiring and critical play-by-play of CIA Arabists as they directed the Cold War's Middle East chessboard. As the blowback from America's meddling in the Middle East continues to return in the form of the toppling of dictators long supported by Washington, Wilford spotlights the activities of several prominent CIA Arabists who helped manipulate the Cold War regimes in Egypt, Iran, Syria, Jordan and others, often to contradictory and devastating effect. A mostly insightful examination of these "Mad Men on the Nile."--Kirkus