Global warming is a reality, not for the first time in the past 130,000 years. The only question is how much of it is caused by nature, and how much by mankind. We examine the counterintuitive possibility that global warming may lead to an ice age, starting as early as our lifetimes. Our current epoch, the Holocene, began about 12,000 years ago. The Holocene has witnessed at least two warming episodes and several coolings. The ...

Why does Marie von Reibnitz Kent go by the monicker of Princess Michael? If you've ever wondered what the difference is between a duke, a grand duke, or an arch duke--and how and why such things came to be, here are some answers. It turns out that the ranks and titles of nobility follow a strict hierarchy that cuts across national boundaries and dates back to medieval and ancient times. As to military ranks, what ...

What really happened during that early twilight zone of human existence--after the last Ice Age, but before people started writing things down? We live in an epoch called the Holocene, which began about 12,000 years ago, and of which we know relatively little except for the past 6,000 years since writing was invented. But there are mysterious megaliths around the world, and strange cities built by skull cultists who kept their dead around--and other evidence ...

May 29, 1453: one of the world's great empires breathed its last breath and died under a pounding by the world's first super siege gun. That empire was the ancient Roman Empire--its surviving Eastern half, which outlived the Rome of the West by a thousand years. The people of Constantinople wouldn't know what 'Byzantine' meant--they considered themselves to be Romans. Orban's great bombard, named Basilica, pounded the impregnable walls for weeks. It was capable of ...

The area known as Dogtown--an isolated colonial ruin and surrounding 3,000-acre woodland in storied seaside Gloucester, Massachusetts--has long exerted a powerful influence over artists, writers, eccentrics, and nature lovers. But its history is also woven through with tales of witches, supernatural sightings, pirates, former slaves, drifters, and the many dogs Revolutionary War widows kept for protection and for which the area was named. In 1984, a brutal murder took place there: a mentally disturbed local ...

A wicked concoction of down-home hilarity and scathing political satire is served up in this provocative and entertaining look at the South's pervasive influence on America from one of the nation's funniest political observers.

The greatest historians are vivid storytellers, Robert Lacey reminds us, and in Great Tales from English History, he proves his place among them, illuminating in unforgettable detail the characters and events that shaped a nation. In this volume, Lacey limns the most important period in England's past, highlighting the spread of the English language, the rejection of both a religion and a traditional view of kingly authority, and an unstoppable movement toward intellectual and political ...

The USS Wahoo's performance in sinking Japanese ships in the farthest reaches of the empire is legendary.