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When the Cold War ended and left the United States without one clear, monolithic enemy or ideology to battle, a hint of confusion and indecisiveness entered U.S. foreign policy, revealing weaknesses in the American diplomatic tradition. However, According to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Walter A. McDougall, this confusion was not a result of the Cold War, but rather made more visible by the absence of a looming conflict. Reaching back to 1776 to analyze the foreign policy decisions made during the U.S. progression to superpower, McDougall reveals the numerous paradoxes present in American foreign policy.

Beginning with the original intentions of the Founding Fathers and the various interpretations of those ideals over the years, he deconstructs the role of the U.S. in global affairs, questioning both the logic and motives of how the nation deals with friend and foe. One of McDougall's major contentions centers on efforts to affect other countries' policies and governments by projecting U.S. standards or choices on them. He is particularly concerned with what he views as an overextension of resources and wisdom, and the glaring hypocrisy such efforts reveal. He points to several examples of how time and energy was wasted trying to change those who were uninterested or unwilling. As McDougall points out lucidly and convincingly in Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter With the World Since 1776, one nation cannot cure the major ills of another, and the price of such an attempt is too great to risk..
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For detective Dave Robicheaux, memories -- including those of a strange and violent summer from his youth -- are best left alone. But a dying man's confession forces Robicheaux to resurrect a decades-old mystery with a missing woman at its heart. Her name may or may not have been Ida Durbin, and Robicheaux's half brother, Jimmie, paid a brutal price for entering her world. Now the truth will plunge Robicheaux into the manipulations of New Orleans' wealthiest family, into a complex love affair of his own, and into hot pursuit of a killer expanding his territory beyond the Big Easy at a frightening pace.

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This biography traces the dramatic life and career of Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese explorer whose voyages played a pivotal role in expanding the Portuguese empire and creating an impressive Asian spice trade during the age of exploration in the 15th and 16th century.

The titles in the Library of World Biography series make ideal supplements for World History survey courses or other courses in the history curriculum where figures in history are explored. Paperback, brief and inexpensive, each interpretative biography in this series focuses on a figure whose actions and ideas significantly influenced the course of World history. At the same time, each biography relates the life of its subject to the broader themes and developments of the times.

Deified by some and vilified by others, Vasco Da Gama was born a minor noble who rose to a position of great wealth, prestige, and power during the golden age of Portuguese maritime exploration in the 15th and 16th century. He played a pivotal role in expanding the Portuguese Empire along the west coast of Africa, India, and eventually the entire Indian Ocean through his expeditions bringing back valuable spices from Asia. His epic first voyage to India from 1497-1499 was a seminal event in developing the beginnings of the global economy and society in which we live today. Da Gama was a new type of crusader who sought both riches and the conversion of those he encountered to Christianity. In his travels and in court life, da Gama demonstrated a single-minded zeal in navigating complex situations sometimes with brutal force. Many of the economic, political, and religious issues that confronted da Gama have contemporary relevance today.

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From the fall of the Roman Empire to the last days of Nazi power, marine archaeologist Jack Howard and his team of adventurers are hot on the trail of history’s most elusive and desired treasure: the lost golden menorah of Jerusalem And what they discover could change the world forever….

Deep beneath the windswept waters near Istanbul, Jack and his crack team of experts have uncovered a surprising clue to the location of the fabled treasure plundered during the Crusades. Meanwhile, in a dusty cathedral library, someone unearths a long-forgotten medieval map. Together the two discoveries will solve an ancient mystery—and spark a race to stop a present-day conspiracy of staggering proportions.

From diving into the core of an arctic iceberg to the last stand of a Viking warship to an extraordinary revelation deep in the jungles of Central America, Jack is headed straight into a globe-spanning clash of civilizations, into an astounding underground labyrinth steeped in blood and horrors—and to a confrontation with a killer on a shattering crusade of his own..
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Something is amiss in quiet little Blootinville Someone has replaced all the food with Chef Nibble's disgusting ultrachemical Snoodles and Cheaze. To make matters worse, a roving band of second graders calling themselves the Nibblettes have immobilized the town with their goopy gravy snack cup bombs. This looks like a job for the Cupcaked Crusader! But Horace is out of his little sister Melody's superpower cupcakes, and she's nowhere to be found! Can Horace whip up a batch in time, or will the rampaging second graders gravy-nate all of Blootinville..
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Based on extraordinary research: a major reassessment of Ronald Reagan's lifelong crusade to dismantle the Soviet Empire–including shocking revelations about the liberal American politician who tried to collude with USSR to counter Reagan's efforts

Paul Kengor's God and Ronald Reagan made presidential historian Paul Kengor's name as one of the premier chroniclers of the life and career of the 40th president. Now, with The Crusader, Kengor returns with the one book about Reagan that has not been written: The story of his lifelong crusade against communism, and of his dogged–and ultimately triumphant–effort to overthrow the Soviet Union.

Drawing upon reams of newly declassified presidential papers, as well as untapped Soviet media archives and new interviews with key players, Kengor traces Reagan's efforts to target the Soviet Union from his days as governor of California to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of what he famously dubbed the "Evil Empire." The result is a major revision and enhancement of what historians are only beginning to realize: That Reagan not only wished for the collapse of communism, but had a deep and specific understanding of what it would take––and effected dozens of policy shifts that brought the USSR to its heels within a decade of his presidency.

The Crusader makes use of key sources from behind the Iron Curtain, including one key memo that implicates a major American liberal politician–still in office today–in a scheme to enlist Soviet premier Yuri Andropov to help defeat Reagan's 1984 reelection bid. Such new finds make The Crusader not just a work of extraordinary history, but a work of explosive revelation that will be debated as hotly in 2006 as Reagan's policies were in the 1980s.

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It's a bird! It's a plane! It's the Cupcaked Crusader! Otherwise known as the smallest ten-year-old with the biggest ideas in town-Horace Splattly. Horace, victim of his brilliant little sister's experiments, empowered by her chemically altered cupcakes and mortified by the purple costume she makes him wear, flies through the skies of Blootinville, breathing fire and foiling evil. But not much goes on in Horace's notoriously quiet town. Until one fateful day, when a gigantic, man-eating, furry monster appears on the playground at sunset! Can the Cupcaked Crusader save the town, or will Horace become monster chow?.
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