Strange Reckoning
/She was the daughter, the sister, and the wife of kings in one of England's most turbulent periods, but Alison Weir's new biography is the first to make us feel we really know Elizabeth of York.
Read MoreIt Was Fun, the Struggle
/The age of Roosevelt and Taft was also the age of Progressive reform - spearheaded by an amazing team of 'muckraking' writers the like of which the United States had never seen.
Read MoreJFK in the Senate
/Before he became one of America's most famous presidents, John Kennedy was a hot-shot senator and a photogenic winner of the Pulitzer Prize. But did the Senate years help to form the Oval Office years?
Read MoreFrom the Archives: In the Pocket of Satan
/A girl, a widow, a matriarch, a mother, a businesswoman, and a minister's slave: a new history traces the Salem Witch Trials through the lives of six women who paid dearly for their proximity to one of the most mysterious incidents in American history
Read MoreThe Empire Strikes Back
/King and Woolman's new book Assassination of the Archduke, boasts new sources, very close to Franz Ferdinand and his wife -- too close?
Read MoreBehold the Man
/The meek and peaceful Jesus has become the standard Christian image of the Messiah. Religious scholar Reza Aslan's controversial new book shatters that image and replaces it with something very different: a violent revolutionary who came not to bring peace but a sword.
Read MoreKeeping Up With The Tudors: Peace, Plenty, Love, Truth, Terror
/A debut novel of alternate history spins out one of the most tantalizing hypotheticals of the past: what if Anne Boleyn had managed to give King Henry VIII a healthy male heir? Some of the answers - and some of the resulting mysteries - may surprise you.
Read MoreThe Earl of Gallipoli
/The typical image of Winston Churchill comes from the dark days of World War II: a fat, old, bald Prime Minister eloquently defying Hitler's Germany. But before there was a monument there was a man, as an engaging new biography brings to light.
Read MoreEntred in a Spacious Court
/Ben Jonson said that the once wealthy and acclaimed Edmund Spenser died "for want of bread"; a new biography tries to disentangle myth from fact, and to make the case for the great poet's relevance today
Read MoreThe Power Season
/As Americans go to the polls this month to elect a president, some recent biographies examine the lives of five very different men who once held the office.
Read MoreKeeping Up With the Windsors - The Invisible Woman
/She's occupied the throne of Great Britain and the Commonwealth for 60 years, and in June Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Diamond Jubilee. Three new biographies try to understand the woman wearing the crown.
Read MoreHe survived years of dangerous exile, won his crown on the battlefield, and founded one of the most famous dynasties in human history - and yet we still haven't embraced Henry VII. A spirited biography seeks to change that.
Read MoreWhen She Was Lost
/One hundred years ago this month, the luxury liner Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, with the loss of over 1500 lives. The centenary has released a flood of books, including some gems not to be missed.
Read More'I am Thy Man'
/He fought a world war with France, survived the Black Death, and gave England a real Parliament. Froissart and Chaucer loved him, Shakespeare (almost) wrote about him, and the Victorians disparaged him. He was Edward III, and he has a king-sized new biography from Yale University Press.
Read MoreOn Reading a Five-Volume Biography of Prince Albert
/Maligned as nothing but handsome breeding stock, this German import did more to redefine the role of the monarchy than any subsequent royal, consort or king.
Read MoreThe Prince of Now and Then
/He lost his famous mother when he was a boy, became a teen idol, had a storybook wedding, and he's second in line to be King of England. The monarchy Prince William inherits will be like nothing his predecessors have experienced - if it exists at all. "A Year with the Windsors" concludes.
Read MoreChairman of the Board
/Lodestar or mirror? Passé or ne plus ultra? Elizabeth II has presided with consistency over an inconsistent age. And what have we learned of her?
Read MoreChangeable Camelion
/Courtier and cleric, adventurer and ascetic, man of faith and man of the world — John Donne was many things in his life, and a sprawling new Companion does its best to assess them all.
Read MoreA Very Ordinary Person
/When his brother the king abdicated, shy Prince Bertie suddenly became king - and he was just settling in when the World War II threw his kingdom into chaos. 'A Year with the Windsors' continues.
Read MorePrince Eddy and the Blackguards
/When the heir presumptive, Prince Eddy, died suddenly, the nation and empire was convulsed with mourning - and a century of speculation began! Had the lost prince been a simpleton, a saint, a catamite - even Jack the Ripper?
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