The Nobel Prize—winning author's masterful novella of eros and obsession, presented alongside other short works of lyrical beauty and psychological depth. In Thomas Mann's immortal novella A Death in Venice, renowned author Gustave Aschenbach faces both middle age and a severe case of writer's block. He resolves to go on holiday in search of inspiration, only to find himself awestruck by the classical beauty of a fourteen-year-old boy. Submitting...

"From the author of Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939--a riveting account of the dictator's final years, when he got the war he wanted but his leadership led to catastrophe for his nation, the world, and himself."-- Summer, 1939. Hitler was at the zenith of his power. The Nazis had consolidated political control in Germany and a series of foreign-policy coups had restored Germany to the status of a major world power. He embarked on his lifelong ambition:...

"Scholars and laymen alike have long projected their fantasies onto the great expanse of the global North, whether it be as a frozen no-man's-land, an icy realm of marauding Vikings, or an unspoiled cradle of prehistoric human life. Bernd Brunner reconstructs the encounters of adventurers, colonists, and indigenous communities that led to the creation of a northern "cabinet of wonders" and imbued Scandinavia, Iceland, and the Arctic with a perennial...

"November 1918. The Great War has left Europe in ruins, but with the end of hostilities, a radical new start seems not only possible, but essential, even unavoidable. Unorthodox ideas light up the age: new politics, new societies, new art and culture, new thinking. The struggle to determine the future has begun. Sculptor Käthe Kollwitz, whose son died in the war, is translating sorrow and loss into art. Captain Harry Truman is running a men's haberdashery...