Charles River Editors

The French Revolution was fueled by the Enlightenment ideals Maximilien Robespierre vocally supported. But history remembers Robespierre as instrumental in the Reign of Terror....

Joseph Pulitzer: The Life and Legacy of America’s Most Controversial Publisher examines the various roles Pulitzer played in American journalism and politics during his life, and how he shaped the industry....

Maimonides: The Life and Legacy of the Medieval Jewish Philosopher profiles the life and teachings of one of the Middle Ages’ most influential people....

It is hard to find an island on the map more central than Sicily. It has rarely been governed as an independent, unified state. The island has always occupied a front-row seat to some of the most important events in history, and nowhere is this more obvious than during antiquity....

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....

Benito Mussolini: The Life and Legacy of Italy’s Fascist Prime Minister profiles one of the 20th century’s most notorious leaders. You will learn about Mussolini like never before....

Nineteenth century Americans were all too happy for the transcontinental railroad to help speed their passage west and render overland paths obsolete. One early trail got its start in Independence, Missouri, one of many cities marked as starting points for pioneers, settlers, or traders....

Of all the things that a nation, or even an individual, need to survive a crisis, none is perhaps as necessary as hope....

In southern Iraq, a crushing silence hangs over the dunes. For nearly 5,000 years, the sands of the Iraqi desert have held the remains of the oldest known civilization: the Sumerians....

This audiobook explains the literary evolution of the legend of the Holy Grail. It also discusses the scholarship over the historicity of the Grail and theories....

In the opening pages of his seminal book-length study of Alfred Hitchcock, Hitchcock's Films (1965), Robin Wood famously asked, "Why Should We Take Hitchcock Seriously?"....

The library of Nag Hammadi, Egypt, is as significant in the study of early Christianity as the writings of the Essenes to the understanding of Judaism during the time of the Roman occupation....

The importance of Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (or as he was known from birth, Gaius Octavius “Octavian” Thurinus) to the course of Western history is hard to overstate....

Outnumbered against Napoleon's Franco-Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar, England scored one of the most decisive victories in the history of naval warfare....

Known as the Tokyo Trials, 11 countries contributed prosecutors as 28 Japanese faced trials for crimes against humanity....

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....

The Weimar Republic has become a byword for a failed, tragic, political experiment. The official period of its existence, 1919-1933, marked the interwar years in Germany and their related uncertainty, chaos, and the state’s ultimate collapse....

For millennia, people considered dragons to be real, and the vivid lore of dragons has touched societies from Central America to Europe, and from Egypt to China....

Debates over paper money and banking are older than the United States of America itself. Eighteenth and 19th century Americans were deeply ambivalent about paper money and central banks, and political fights over these issues were among the bitterest in American history....

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....