The very name Lucrezia Borgia conjures up everything that was sinister and corrupt about the Renaissance—incest, political assassination, papal sexual abuse, poisonous intrigue, unscrupulous power grabs. Yet as bestselling biographer Sarah Bradford reveals in this breathtaking new portrait, the truth is far more fascinating than the myth. Neither a vicious monster nor a seductive pawn, Lucrezia Borgia was a shrewd, determined woman who used her beauty and intelligence to secure a key role in the political struggles of her day. <P> Born the illegitimate daughter of Rodrigo Cardinal Borgia and his scheming mistress, Vannozza Cattanei, Lucrezia was twelve when her father became Pope Alexander VI and thirteen when she was forced into her first marriage. She would marry twice more, gaining increasing power with each match, until she came into her own as duchess of the city-state of Ferrara. Bradford argues that in her maturity Lucrezia was an enlightened ruler, kind and decisive in time of war, generous to the poets and artists of her court, passionate in love, and utterly indifferent to sexual morality.<P> Drawing from a trove of contemporary documents and fascinating firsthand accounts, Bradford brings to life the art, the pageantry, and the dangerous politics of the Renaissance world Lucrezia Borgia helped to create. Bradford is an expert on the Borgia family and in Lucrezia she has found a subject ideally suited to her gift for narrative and psychological insight. Sex, gossip, murder, astonishing beauty, and ambition— this is the Renaissance at its most irresistible.

   Named one of the Best Books of 1999 by the <i>Los Angeles Times</i>, <i>The Pianist </i>is now a major motion picture directed by Roman Polanski and starring Adrien Brody (<i>Son of Sam</i>). <i>The Pianist</i> won the Cannes Film Festival’s most prestigious prize—the Palme d’Or.<br><br>On September 23, 1939, Wladyslaw Szpilman played Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor live on the radio as shells exploded outside—so loudly that he couldn’t hear his piano. It was the last live music broadcast from Warsaw: That day, a German bomb hit the station, and Polish Radio went off the air.<br><br>Though he lost his entire family, Szpilman survived in hiding. In the end, his life was saved by a German officer who heard him play the same Chopin Nocturne on a piano found among the rubble. Written immediately after the war and suppressed for decades, <i>The Pianist </i>is a stunning testament to human endurance and the redemptive power of fellow feeling.<br>

   The shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews.

   A psychotherapist and the founding director of the Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers presents case stories of individuals who risked their lives to rescue Jews and explains the motivations and personality profiles of such individuals. Reprint. <i>NYT. </i>

   A recognized classic of cultural anthropology, this book explores the political, religious, and economic life of Japan from the seventh century through the mid-twentieth, as well as personal family life.

   Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Three men changed Seabiscuit s fortunes:<br><br>Charles Howard was a onetime bicycle repairman who introduced the automobile to the western United States and became an overnight millionaire. When he needed a trainer for his new racehorses, he hired Tom Smith, a mysterious mustang breaker from the Colorado plains. Smith urged Howard to buy Seabiscuit for a bargain-basement price, then hired as his jockey Red Pollard, a failed boxer who was blind in one eye, half-crippled, and prone to quoting passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Over four years, these unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon. <br><br>Author Laura Hillenbrand brilliantly re-creates a universal underdog story, one that proves life is a horse race.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>

   According to Jewish tradition, 36 "just men" are born in every generation to take the burden of the world's suffering upon themselves. This book tells the story of two Jews, divided by eight centuries, who are persecuted to death, becoming part of the catastrophic history of the Jewish people.

   A description of life in the Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division, US Army, from the time of their rigorous training in Georgia in 1942 to D-Day and victory. Drawing on interviews, journals and letters, the author tells - often in their own words - the story of these American heroes.

   <DIV><DIV>In 1874, when Martha Summerhayes came as a bride to Fort Russell in Wyoming Territory, she "saw not much in those first few days besides bright buttons, blue uniforms, and shining swords," but soon enough the hard facts of army life began to intrude. Remonstrating with her husband, Jack, that she had only three rooms and a kitchen instead of "a whole house," she was informed that "women are not reckoned in at all in the War Department," which also failed to appreciate that "'lieutenants' wives needed quite as much as colonels’ wives." In fact, Martha had only a short time to enjoy her new quarters, for in June her husband’s regiment was ordered to Arizona, "that dreaded and then unknown land."<DIV> <DIV>Although Martha Summerhayes’s recollections span a quarter of a century and life at a dozen army posts, the heart of this book concerns her experiences during the 1870s in Arizona, where (as Dan L. Thrapp observes in his introduction) the harsh climate and "perennial natural inconveniences from rattlesnakes to cactus thorns and white desperadoes, all made [it] a less than desirable posting for the married man and his wife." First privately printed in 1908, Vanished Arizona was so well-received that in 1910 Mrs. Summerhayes prepared a new edition (reprinted here), which was published in 1911, the year of her death. Among "the essential primary records of the frontier-military West," the book "retains its place securely because of the narrative skill of the author, her delight in life—all life, including even, or perhaps principally, army life and people—and because it is such a joy to read.</DIV></div></div></div>

   This mesmerizing portrait of a proud man who, through three decades and successive repressive regimes, heroically braved persecution to bring books to the people of Kabul has elicited extraordinary praise throughout the world and become a phenomenal international bestseller. <i>The Bookseller of Kabul</i> is startling in its intimacy and its details - a revelation of the plight of Afghan women and a window into the surprising realities of daily life in today's Afghanistan.