The young Benjamin Franklin sought his fortune on a trip to England, but instead discovered a world of intellectual ferment in the coffeehouses and salons of London. He brought home to Philadelphia the intense hunger for knowledge that buzzed in a Europe where Newton, Bacon and Galileo had made epochal discoveries. With the "first Drudgery" of settling the American colonies now behind them, Franklin announced in 1743, it was high time that the colonists...

"Travel back in time to the 1920s and 1930s to the sounds of jazz in nightclubs and the 24-hours-a-day bustle of the famous Black neighborhood of Harlem in uptown Manhattan. It was a dazzling time when there was an outpouring of the arts of African Americans--the poetry of Langston Hughes, the novels of Zora Neale Hurston, the sculptures of Augusta Savage, and that brand-new music called jazz as only Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong could play it....

Christine Stansell is the Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor in United States History at the University of Chicago. She is also the author of City of Women: Sex and Class in New York City, 1789-1860, and her essays and reviews appear regularly in the New Republic. In the early twentieth century, an exuberant brand of gifted men and women moved to New York City, not to get rich but to participate in a cultural revolution. For them, the...

Excerpt: "Next day, upon resuming our journey, it pleased me to try to find the trail to Betatakin, the most noted, and surely the most wonderful and beautiful ruin in all the West. In many places there was no trail at all, and I encountered difficulties, but in the end without much loss of time I entered the narrow rugged entrance of the canyon I had named Surprise Valley. Sight of the great dark cave thrilled me as I thought it might have thrilled...

The author offers a tour of the English capital and its literary significance, tracking the footsteps of some of her favorite fictional characters throughout London.

"A history of the artists and renegades who found refuge on the island of Capri"--

We wouldn't be able to snap selfies today without the invention of photography over a century ago, but how did this marvelous technology begin? This fascinating book introduces readers to the birth of photography and other innovations from Europe. They'll encounter many innovations throughout history that are crucial to our daily life in modern times. Stunning full-color photographs let readers explore incredible inventions up close. Fun fact boxes...

2006 National Jewish Book Award, Modern Jewish Thought Long the object of curiosity, admiration, and gossip, rabbis' wives have rarely been viewed seriously as American Jewish religious and communal leaders. We know a great deal about the important role played by rabbis in building American Jewish life in this country, but not much about the role that their wives played. The Rabbi's Wife redresses that imbalance by highlighting the unique contributions...