A Short History of Humanity

A Short History of Humanity

$27.00
More Info
"Thrilling . . . a bracing summary of what we have learned [from] 'archaeogenetics'--the study of ancient DNA . . . Krause and Trappe capture the excitement of this young field."--Kyle Harper, The Wall Street Journal

Johannes Krause is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a brilliant pioneer in the field of archaeogenetics--archaeology augmented by DNA sequencing technology--which has allowed scientists to reconstruct human history reaching back hundreds of thousands of years before recorded time.

In this surprising account, Krause and journalist Thomas Trappe rewrite a fascinating chapter of this history, the peopling of Europe, that takes us from the Neanderthals and Denisovans to the present. We know now that a wave of farmers from Anatolia migrated into Europe 8,000 years ago, essentially displacing the dark-skinned, blue-eyed hunter-gatherers who preceded them. This Anatolian farmer DNA is one of the core genetic components of people with contemporary European ancestry. Archaeogenetics has also revealed that indigenous North and South Americans, though long thought to have been East Asian, also share DNA with contemporary Europeans.

Krause and Trappe vividly introduce us to the prehistoric cultures of the ancient Europeans: the Aurignacians, innovative artisans who carved flutes and animal and human forms from bird bones more than 40,000 years ago; the Varna, who buried their loved ones with gold long before the Pharaohs of Egypt; and the Gravettians, big-game hunters who were Europe's most successful early settlers until they perished in the ice age.

Genetics has earned a reputation for smuggling racist ideologies into science, but cutting-edge science makes nonsense of eugenics and "pure" bloodlines. Immigration and genetic exchanges have always defined our species; who we are is a question of culture, not biological inheritance. This revelatory book offers us an entirely new way to understand ourselves, both past and present.

Four Seasons in Rome : On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World

Four Seasons in Rome : On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World

$17.99
More Info
From the author of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning #1 New York Times bestseller All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land, a "dazzling" (Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran) memoir about art and adventures in Rome.Anthony Doerr has received many awards--from the New York Public Library, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Library Association. Then came the Rome Prize, one of the most prestigious awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and with it a stipend and a writing studio in Rome for a year. Doerr learned of the award the day he and his wife returned from the hospital with newborn twins. Exquisitely observed, Four Seasons in Rome describes Doerr's varied adventures in one of the most enchanting cities in the world. He reads Pliny, Dante, and Keats--the chroniclers of Rome who came before him--and visits the piazzas, temples, and ancient cisterns they describe. He attends the vigil of a dying Pope John Paul II and takes his twins to the Pantheon in December to wait for snow to fall through the oculus. He and his family are embraced by the butchers, grocers, and bakers of the neighborhood, whose clamor of stories and idiosyncratic child-rearing advice is as compelling as the city itself. This intimate and revelatory book is a celebration of Rome, a wondrous look at new parenthood, and a fascinating story of a writer's craft--the process by which he transforms what he sees and experiences into sentences.
Greek to Me

Greek to Me

$25.95
More Info

In her New York Times bestseller Between You & Me, Mary Norris delighted readers with her irreverent tales of pencils and punctuation in The New Yorker's celebrated copy department. In Greek to Me, she delivers another wise and funny paean to the art of self-expression, this time filtered through her greatest passion: all things Greek.

Greek to Me is a charming account of Norris's lifelong love affair with words and her solo adventures in the land of olive trees and ouzo. Along the way, Norris explains how the alphabet originated in Greece, makes the case for Athena as a feminist icon, goes searching for the fabled Baths of Aphrodite, and reveals the surprising ways Greek helped form English. Filled with Norris's memorable encounters with Greek words, Greek gods, Greek wine--and more than a few Greek men--Greek to Me is the Comma Queen's fresh take on Greece and the exotic yet strangely familiar language that so deeply influences our own.

History  of  the  Captivity  of  Napoleon  at  St.  Helena
History  of  the  Captivity  of  Napoleon  at  St.  Helena
History  of  the  Captivity  of  Napoleon  at  St.  Helena
History  of  the  Captivity  of  Napoleon  at  St.  Helena

History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena

$295.00
More Info

Charles-Tristan Montholon (1783-1853) was Napoleon's companion in exile and his "testamentary executor." 

Philadelphia: E. Ferrett & Co., 1846-1847. 3 (of 4) volumes bound in one; 3/4 black leather over black cloth with gilt trim; four raised bands on spine with gilt lettering; spine edges worn and chipped; hinges and corners worn; marbled endpapers; former owner's bookplate (William G. Mather) affixed to front pastedown; endpapers and title page lightly foxed; some foxing and toning throughout; binding good. G

Hope Expired Life Persists

$4.99
More Info
The book is a biography of Dr. Jacob Stupay, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, who was the author's uncle. The book deals with Polish history in the 1920s and 1930s and later the brutal occupation of Poland by the Nazis. It also covers the German plan to first force Jews into ghettos, and later to remove them from Europe or to exterminate them, obliterating their history and culture. The author discusses conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto, and highlights the little-known ghetto medical school and the hunger research project. The author provides some details on how the Nazis implemented their plan for the total destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. Jacob Stupay survived the war after losing 27 members of his immediate family. The author discusses the impact of this catastrophic loss and how and why he choose to live. The author ends with the possible meaning of this tragedy for humanity.
King, Kaiser, Tsar: Three Royal Cousins Who Led the World to War (1st US printing) (USED)

King, Kaiser, Tsar: Three Royal Cousins Who Led the World to War (1st US printing) (USED)

$13.00
More Info

The extraordinary family story of George V, Wilhelm II, and Nicholas II: they were tied to one another by history, and history would ultimately tear them apart.

Known among their families as Georgie, Willy, and Nicky, they were, respectively, the royal cousins George V of England, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and Nicholas II of Russia--the first two grandsons of Queen Victoria, the latter her grandson by marriage. In 1914, on the eve of world war, they controlled the destiny of Europe and the fates of millions of their subjects. The outcome and their personal endings are well known--Nicky shot with his family by the Bolsheviks, Willy in exile in Holland, Georgie still atop his throne. Largely untold, however, is the family saga that played such a pivotal role in bringing the world to the precipice.

Drawing widely on previously unpublished royal letters and diaries, made public for the first time by Queen Elizabeth II, Catrine Clay chronicles the riveting half century of the royals' overlapping lives, and their slow, inexorable march into conflict. They met frequently from childhood, on holidays, and at weddings, birthdays, and each others' coronations. They saw themselves as royal colleagues, a trade union of kings, standing shoulder to shoulder against the rise of socialism, republicanism, and revolution. And yet tensions abounded between them.

Clay deftly reveals how intimate family details had deep historical significance: the antipathy Willy's mother (Victoria's daughter) felt toward him because of his withered left arm, and how it affected him throughout his life; the family tension caused by Otto von Bismarck's annexation of Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark (Georgie's and Nicky's mothers were Danish princesses); the surreality surrounding the impending conflict. "Have I gone mad?" Nicholas asked his wife, Alexandra, in July 1914, showing her another telegram from Wilhelm. "What on earth does Willy mean pretending that it still depends on me whether war is averted or not?" Germany had, in fact, declared war on Russia six hours earlier. At every point in her remarkable book, Catrine Clay sheds new light on a watershed period in world history.

Memoirs of a Russian Lady: Drawings and Tales of Life Before the Revolution (USED)

Memoirs of a Russian Lady: Drawings and Tales of Life Before the Revolution

$45.00
More Info

The work's subtitle describes it well. Dax, the editor, has prepared for publication the manuscripts of a distant relative, Davydoff. This Russian aristocratic lady spent her life up to the Revolution in the Ukraine on the large estates of the gentry. Privately educated and trained in watercoloring, she wrote and painted for her heirs from memory after fleeing the Revolution. As published, the stories and drawings are wonderfully matched, sharing a simplicity and wistfulness for a lost society, while vividly portraying a sense of life and leisure. The watercolors combine detail with whimsy. A lovely addition to subject collections and for those interested in the cultural and social life of the era. Rena Fowler, Northern Michigan Univ. Lib., Marquette (Library Journal, 1986)

1st edition; dust jacket has only minor scuffs; blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine; binding tight; text clean and bright. VG/VG

On Persephone's Island

On Persephone's Island

$16.95
More Info
An American woman residing in Sicily for the past twenty years portrays the Sicilian landscape and customs--both rural and urban--from the perspectives of both a "foreigner" and a resident.
Paris to the Moon

Paris to the Moon

$18.00
More Info
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "The finest book on France in recent years."--Alain de Botton, The New York Times Book Review

In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of Paris. In the grand tradition of Stein, Hemingway, Baldwin, and Liebling, Gopnik set out to enjoy the storied existence of an American in Paris--walks down the paths of the Tuileries, philosophical discussions in cafés, and afternoon jaunts to the Musée d'Orsay.

But as readers of Gopnik's beloved and award-winning "Paris Journal" in The New Yorker know, there was also the matter of raising a child and carrying on with la vie quotidienne--the daily, slightly less fabled life. As Gopnik discovers in this tender account, the dual processes of navigating a foreign city and becoming a parent are not completely dissimilar--both promise new routines, new languages, and a new set of rules by which each day is to be lived. With singular wit and insight, Gopnik manages to weave the magical with the mundane in this wholly delightful book that Entertainment Weekly deemed "magisterial."