Travel north from the upper Midwest's metropolises, and before long you're "Up North"--a region that's hard to define but unmistakable to any resident or tourist. Crops give way to forests, mines (or their remains) mark the landscape, and lakes multiply, becoming ever clearer until you reach the vastness of the Great Lakes. How to characterize this region, as distinct from the agrarian Midwest, is the question North Country seeks to answer, as a congenial...

Focusing closely on the perpetrators and exploring the process of decision making, Longerich convincingly shows that anti-Semitism was not a mere by-product of the Nazis' political mobilization or an attempt to deflect the attention of the masses. Rather, from 1933 anti-Jewish policy was a central tenet of the Nazi movement's attempts to implement, disseminate, and secure National Socialist rule--and one which crucially shaped Nazi policy decisions.--From...

Maps the influence of America's Hispanic past, from the explorers and conquistadors who helped colonize Puerto Rico and Florida, to the missionaries and rancheros who settled in California and the 20th-century resurgence in major cities like Chicago and Miami.

In 1942, with the Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, the Franks and another family lived cloistered in the "Secret Annexe" of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present...