Knowledge = Power

From classicist James Romm comes a “striking…fascinating” (Booklist)  deep dive into the last decades of ancient Greek freedom leading up to  Alexander the Great’s destruction of Thebes - and the saga of the  greatest military corps of the time, the Theban Sacred Band, a unit  composed of 150 pairs of male lovers. The story of  the Sacred Band, an elite 300-man corps recruited from pairs of lovers,  highlights a chaotic era of ancient Greek history, four decades marked  by battles, ideological disputes, and the rise of vicious strongmen. At  stake was freedom, democracy, and the fate of Thebes, at this time the  leading power of the Greek world. The tale begins in  379 BC, with a group of Theban patriots sneaking into occupied Thebes.  Disguised in women’s clothing, they cut down the agents of Sparta, the  state that had cowed much of Greece with its military might. To counter  the Spartans, this group of patriots would form the Sacred Band, a corps  whose history plays out against a backdrop of Theban democracy, of  desperate power struggles between leading city-states, and the new  prominence of eros, sexual love, in Greek public life. After  four decades without a defeat, the Sacred Band was annihilated by the  forces of Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander in the Battle of  Chaeronea - extinguishing Greek liberty for two thousand years. Buried  on the battlefield where they fell, they were rediscovered in 1880 -  some skeletons still in pairs, with arms linked together. From  violent combat in city streets to massive clashes on open ground, from  ruthless tyrants to bold women who held their era in thrall, The Sacred Band recounts “in fluent, accessible prose” (The Wall Street Journal) the twists and turns of a crucial historical moment: the end of the treasured freedom of ancient Greece.

21st Century Monetary Policy takes readers inside the Federal Reserve, explaining what it does and why. In  response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve deployed an  extraordinary range of policy tools that helped prevent the collapse of  the financial system and the U.S. economy. Chair Jerome Powell and his  colleagues lent directly to U.S. businesses, purchased trillions of  dollars of government securities, pumped dollars into the international  financial system, and crafted a new framework for monetary policy that  emphasized job creation. These strategies would have  astonished Powell’s late-20th-century predecessors, from William  McChesney Martin to Alan Greenspan, and the advent of these tools raises  new questions about the future landscape of economic policy. In 21st Century Monetary Policy,  Ben S. Bernanke―former chair of the Federal Reserve and one of the  world’s leading economists―explains the Fed’s evolution and speculates  on its future. Taking a fresh look at the bank’s policymaking over the  past seventy years, including his own time as chair, Bernanke shows how  changes in the economy have driven the Fed’s innovations. He also lays  out new challenges confronting the Fed, including the return of  inflation, cryptocurrencies, increased risks of financial instability,  and threats to its independence. Beyond explaining  the central bank’s new policymaking tools, Bernanke also captures the  drama of moments when so much hung on the Fed’s decisions, as well as  the personalities and philosophies of those who led the institution.

Many appreciate Richard P. Feynman's contributions to  twentieth-century physics, but few realize how engaged he was with the  world around him -- how deeply and thoughtfully he considered the  religious, political, and social issues of his day. Now, a wonderful  book -- based on a previously unpublished, three-part public lecture he  gave at the University of Washington in 1963 -- shows us this other side  of Feynman, as he expounds on the inherent conflict between science and  religion, people's distrust of politicians, and our universal  fascination with flying saucers, faith healing, and mental telepathy.  Here we see Feynman in top form: nearly bursting into a Navajo war  chant, then pressing for an overhaul of the English language (if you  want to know why Johnny can't read, just look at the spelling of  "friend"); and, finally, ruminating on the death of his first wife from  tuberculosis. This is quintessential Feynman -- reflective, amusing, and  ever enlightening.

One  of the most famous science books of our time, the phenomenal national  bestseller that "buzzes with energy, anecdote and life. It almost makes  you want to become a physicist" (Science Digest). Richard  P. Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous  adventures. In this lively work that “can shatter the stereotype of the  stuffy scientist” (Detroit Free Press),  Feynman recounts his experiences trading ideas on atomic physics with  Einstein and cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply  held nuclear secrets―and much more of an eyebrow-raising nature. In his  stories, Feynman’s life shines through in all its eccentric glory―a  combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and  raging chutzpah. Included for this edition is a new introduction by Bill Gates.

Alexander the Great, perhaps the most commanding leader in  history, united his empire and his army by the titanic force of his  will. His death at the age of thirty-two spelled the end of that unity. The  story of Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire is known to many  readers, but the dramatic and consequential saga of the empire’s  collapse remains virtually untold. It is a tale of loss that begins with  the greatest loss of all, the death of the Macedonian king who had held  the empire together. With his demise, it was as if the sun had  disappeared from the solar system, as if planets and moons began to spin  crazily in new directions, crashing into one another with unimaginable  force. Alexander bequeathed his power, legend has it, “to the  strongest,” leaving behind a mentally damaged half brother and a  posthumously born son as his only heirs. In a strange compromise, both figures—Philip III and Alexander IV—were elevated to the kingship,  quickly becoming prizes, pawns, fought over by a half-dozen Macedonian  generals. Each successor could confer legitimacy on whichever general  controlled him. At the book’s center is the monarch’s most  vigorous defender; Alexander’s former Greek secretary, now transformed  into a general himself. He was a man both fascinating and entertaining, a  man full of tricks and connivances, like the enthroned ghost of  Alexander that gives the book its title, and becomes the determining  factor in the precarious fortunes of the royal family. James  Romm, brilliant classicist and storyteller, tells the galvanizing saga  of the men who followed Alexander and found themselves incapable of  preserving his empire. The result was the undoing of a world, formerly  united in a single empire, now ripped apart into a nightmare of warring  nation-states struggling for domination, the template of our own times.

The  Spartans were a society of warrior-heroes who were the living exemplars  of such core values as duty, discipline, self-sacrifice, and extreme  toughness. This book, written by one of the world’s leading experts on  Sparta, traces the rise and fall of Spartan society and explores the  tremendous influence the Spartans had on their world and even on ours.  Paul Cartledge brings to life figures like legendary founding father  Lycurgus and King Leonidas, who embodied the heroism so closely  identified with this unique culture, and he shows how Spartan women  enjoyed an unusually dominant and powerful role in this hyper-masculine  society. Based firmly on original sources, The Spartans is the definitive book about one of the most fascinating cultures of ancient Greece.

The New York Times best-selling sequel to "Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!" Like the "funny, brilliant, bawdy" (The New Yorker) "Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!" this book’s many stories―some funny, others intensely moving―display  Richard P. Feynman’s unquenchable thirst for adventure and unparalleled  ability to recount important moments from his life. Here  we meet Feynman’s first wife, Arlene, who taught him of love’s  irreducible mystery as she lay dying in a hospital bed while he worked  on the atomic bomb at nearby Los Alamos. We listen to the fascinating  narrative of the investigation into the space shuttle Challenger’s  explosion in 1986 and relive the moment when Feynman revealed the  disaster’s cause through an elegant experiment: dropping a ring of  rubber into a glass of cold water and pulling it out, misshapen. In "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" one of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century lets us see the man behind the genius.

“Plutarch  regularly shows that great leaders transcend their own purely material  interests and petty, personal vanities. Noble ideals actually do matter,  in government as in life.” —Michael Dirda, Washington Post Pompey,  Caesar, Cicero, Brutus, Antony: the names still resonate across  thousands of years. Major figures in the civil wars that brutally ended  the Roman republic, their lives pose a question that haunts us still:  how to safeguard a republic from the flaws of its leaders. This  reader’s edition of Plutarch delivers a fresh translation of notable  clarity, explanatory notes, and ample historical context in the Preface  and Introduction.

Timeless wisdom on death and dying from the celebrated Stoic philosopher Seneca "It  takes an entire lifetime to learn how to die," wrote the Roman Stoic  philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC–65 AD). He counseled readers to "study death  always," and took his own advice, returning to the subject again and  again in all his writings, yet he never treated it in a complete work. How to Die gathers in one volume, for the first time, Seneca's remarkable  meditations on death and dying. Edited and translated by James S. Romm, How to Die reveals a provocative thinker and dazzling writer who speaks with a  startling frankness about the need to accept death or even, under  certain conditions, to seek it out. Seneca believed that life is  only a journey toward death and that one must rehearse for death  throughout life. Here, he tells us how to practice for death, how to die  well, and how to understand the role of a good death in a good life. He  stresses the universality of death, its importance as life's final rite  of passage, and its ability to liberate us from pain, slavery, or  political oppression. Featuring beautifully rendered new translations, How to Die also includes an enlightening introduction, notes, the original Latin  texts, and an epilogue presenting Tacitus's description of Seneca's grim  suicide.

An  introduction to modern physics and to Richard Feynman at his witty and  enthusiastic best, discussing gravitation, irreversibility, symmetry,  and the nature of scientific discovery. Richard Feynman  was one of the most famous and important physicists of the second half  of the twentieth century. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965,  celebrated for his spirited and engaging lectures, and briefly a star on  the evening news for his presence on the commission investigating the  explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, Feynman is best known for his  contributions to the field of quantum electrodynamics. The Character of Physical Law,  drawn from Feynman's famous 1964 series of Messenger Lectures at  Cornell, offers an introduction to modern physics—and to Feynman at his  witty and enthusiastic best. In this classic book  (originally published in 1967), Feynman offers an overview of selected  physical laws and gathers their common features, arguing that the  importance of a physical law is not “how clever we are to have found it  out” but “how clever nature is to pay attention to it.” He discusses  such topics as the interaction of mathematics and physics, the principle  of conservation, the puzzle of symmetry, and the process of scientific  discovery. A foreword by 2004 Physics Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek  updates some of Feynman's observations—noting, however, “the need for  these particular updates enhances rather than detracts from the book.”  In The Character of Physical Law, Feynman chose to grapple with issues at the forefront of physics that seemed unresolved, important, and approachable.