Washoe County Library System

"The Story of Russia is a fresh approach to the thousand years of Russia's history, concerned as much with the ideas that have shaped how Russians think about their past as it is with the events and personalities comprising it. No other country has reimagined its own story so often, in a perpetual effort to stay in step with the shifts of ruling ideologies. From the founding of Kievan Rus in the first millennium to Putin's war against Ukraine, Orlando...

"From one of the most respected historians in America, twice the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a new collection of essays that reflect a lifetime of erudition and accomplishments in history. The past has always been elusive: how can we understand people whose worlds were utterly different from our own without imposing our own standards and hindsight? What did things feel like in the moment when outcomes were uncertain? How can we recover the uncertainties...

"The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea traces the development and use of the rhetoric of Roman decline and renewal across 2200 years. Beginning in the Roman Republic at the turn of the 2nd century BC and stretching to the uses of Roman decline in the present day, the book argues that the use of this common rhetoric frequently blamed people for sparking Roman decline. It also evolves over time. In the Republic, politicians...