Charles River Editors

The man known to most of the world as Emperor Hirohito ruled during some of the most tumultuous years in Japanese history. When he came to the throne in 1926, he inherited control of a country which had only recently emerged as a major industrial and world power....

Though often remembered today merely for the modern word “epicurean,” which has become associated with luxurious food and refined tastes, the actual philosophy of Epicureanism was far more complex and intellectually ambitious than simple indulgence.

In terms of geopolitics, perhaps the most seminal event of the Middle Ages was the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been an imperial capital as far back as the fourth century, when Constantine the Great shifted the power center of the Roman Empire there...

Explains the formation of a new constitution, as well as the democratization and demilitarization processes Includes a bibliography for further reading Includes a table of contents The American occupation of Japan holds a singular and problematic place in the histories both of Japan and of...

Today, the Salem Witch Trials are often remembered as being a relic of a superstitious past. But it was deadly serious in 1692, when 19 men and women found themselves taken to "Gallows Hill"....

When one thinks of the world’s first cities, Sumer, Memphis, and Babylon are some of the first to come to mind, or if the focus then shifts to India, then Harappa and Mohenjo-daro will likely come up. But archaeologists recently uncovered a site thousands of years older than any of those...

Japan's blissful isolation changed with the arrival of American Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853. In awe of the American weapons and ships, the Tokugawa shogunate quickly realized that they needed to evolve and modernize their military to survive, and a time of rapid change descended on Japan.

“The study of history lies at the foundation of all sound military conclusions and practice.” Alfred Thayer Mahan is arguably the most influential military strategist in American history, and one of the world’s most important naval theorists. His work has been nearly as influential as the...

The Dissolution of Yugoslavia: The History of the Yugoslav Wars and the Political Problems that Led to Yugoslavia’s Demise examines how the multicultural nation broke apart in the 1980s and 1990s....

In many ways it is fitting that Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794) is one of the best known figures of the French Revolution, if not its most famous....

Before the Vietnam War, most Americans would have been hard pressed to locate Vietnam on a map. South Vietnamese president Diem's regime was extremely unpopular, and war broke out between Communist North Vietnam and South Vietnam at the end of the 1950s. Kennedy's administration tried to prop up...

"Unquestionably, it was going to be highly dangerous. Yet I felt it was quite natural to jump at the task. After all, if you don't like action and excitement, you don't go into police work. And, what the hell, I figured, nobody lives forever!" - Eliot Ness On February 14, 1929, members of Bugs...

It was as though Bacall was simply wiped away with the death of her husband....

"My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people.... I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble...

In virtually all fields of human endeavor, Classical Athens was so much at the forefront of dynamism and innovation that the products of its most brilliant minds remain not only influential but still relevant to this day.

Although the Sumerians continue to get second or even third billing compared to the Babylonians and Assyrians, perhaps because they never built an empire as great as the Assyrians or established a city as enduring and great as Babylon, they were the people who provided the template of civilization t

"As the spring and summer of 1848 advanced, the reports came faster and faster from the gold-mines at Sutter's sawmill. Stories reached us of fabulous discoveries, and spread throughout the land. Everybody was talking of "Gold! gold!!" until it assumed the character of a fever. Some of our...

"To hold a pen is to be at war." (Voltaire) "Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it means one always has some battle to wage against oneself." (Rousseau) The grand narrative of the Enlightenment, usually recounted and understood in terms of progress and modernity, generally appears as a...

Sixteenth-century Russia remains, for most Western audiences, a dark and terrifying space, wrapped in mystery and myth and isolated from states such as England or France, whose heroes are well-known throughout Europe. The traditional dichotomy between East and West is most apparent in the...

"Most versed in nautical charts, he knew better than any other the true art of navigation, of which it is certain proof that he by his genius, and his intrepidity, without anyone having given him the example, how to attempt the circuit of the globe which he had almost completed.... The glory of...