Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II by Paul Kennedy (April)
In an engaging narrative reminiscent of his New York Times bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, celebrated historian Paul Kennedy tracks the movements of the major navies of the Allied and Axis alliances during World War II. Through naval battles, maritime campaigns, convoys, amphibious landings, and strikes from the sea, Kennedy shows how the strategic landscape for naval affairs was dramatically altered between 1936 and 1946. Victory at Sea is lavishly illustrated with full-color paintings by Ian Marshall.
Woman: The American History of an Idea by Lillian Faderman (March)
What does it mean to be a "woman" in America? Award-winning gender and sexuality scholar Lillian Faderman traces the evolution of the meaning from Puritan ideas to the sexual revolution of the 1960s and its reversals to the impact of such recent events as #metoo, the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, the election of Kamala Harris as vice president, and the transgender movement. Hailed as an "intelligently provocative, vital reading experience" (Kirkus Reviews), Woman is a chronicle of conflict, retreat, defeats, and hard-won victories.
Franz Kafka: The Drawings edited by Andreas Kilcher and Pavel Schmidt (May)
In the first book to publish the entirety of Franz Kafka's graphic output, including more than 100 newly discovered drawings, Franz Kafka: The Drawings illuminates a previously unknown side of the quintessential modernist author. Full of irresistible and fascinating figures ranging from realistic to the fantastic, the grotesque, and the uncanny, this collection illuminates what Kafka's literary executor Max Brod refers to as his "double talent." More than 240 illustrations, reproduced in full color, form this complete catalogue raisonné.
California: An American History by John Mack Faragher (May)
Beautifully crafted and elegantly written, John Mack Faragher tells the stories of a colorful cast of multicultural characters in this "masterful history" (Kirkus Reviews). Some famous, others mostly unknown, including African American Archy Lee, who sued for his freedom; Sinkyone Indian woman Sally Bell, who survived genocide; and Jewish schoolgirl Marilyn Greene, who spoke up for her Japanese friends after Pearl Harbor. California's multicultural diversity often led to conflict, turmoil, and violence, but also to invention, improvisation, and a struggle for multicultural democracy.
The Bin Laden Papers: How the Abbottabad Raid Revealed the Truth About al-Qaeda, its Leader and his Family by Nelly Lahoud (April)
Bin Laden's greatest fear was not capture or death, but the exposure of al-Qaeda's secrets. In this ground-breaking book, Nelly Lahoud dives into Bin Laden's files and meticulously distills the nearly 6,000 pages of Arabic private communications. For the first time, al-Qaeda's closely guarded secrets are laid bare through firsthand accounts of al-Qaeda from 9/11 until the elimination of Bin Laden.
Adventurer: The Life and Times of Giacomo Casanova by Leo Damrosch (May)
The bestselling author of The Club, Leo Damrosch now turns his attention to the world-famous libertine Giacomo Casanova. An alluring representative of the Enlightenment's shadowy underside, Casanova was an aspiring priest, an army officer, a fortune teller, a con man, a magus, a violinist, a mathematician, a Masonic master, an entrepreneur, a diplomat, a gambler, and a spy. Drawing on seldom used materials and probing deeply into the psychology, self-conceptions, and self-deceptions of one of the world's most famous con men and seducers, Damrosch offers a fast-paced, gripping, and devastating account of an Enlightenment man, freed from the bounds of moral convictions.