Simon Vance

"In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies, the world turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. For Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur, and their fellow victors, the questions of justice seemed clear: Japan's leaders needed to be tried and punished for the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor; shocking atrocities against citizens in China, the Philippines, Korea, and elsewhere; rampant abuses of POWs....

How to Hold a Cockroach is about discovering and freeing ourselves from the beliefs that cause us to suffer. With a message both surprising and simple, it is a love letter to humankind, a book for those who are free and don't know it. An Inspirational Tale A struggling boy begins a life-changing journey when a disgusting guest disturbs his dinner. As he continues to encounter sources of suffering, the boy must investigate fundamental truths he has...

Hergé created only twenty-four Tintin books which have been translated into more than seventy languages and sold 230 million copies worldwide. The Real Hergé: The Inspiration Behind Tintin takes an in-depth look at the man behind the cultural phenomenon and the history that helped shape these books. As well as focusing on the controversies that engulfed Hergé, this biography will also look at his personal life, as well as the relationships and...

Can religious beliefs survive in the scientific age? Are they resoundingly outdated? Or, is there something in them of great importance, even if the way they are expressed will have to change given new scientific context? These questions are among those at the core of the science-religion dialogue. In The Big Questions in Science and Religion, Keith Ward, an Anglican priest who was once an atheist, offers compelling insights into the often contentious...

When he is given a desperate battlefield promotion, he may face a grisly end … or a dark new beginning. Kaith knows he's been luckier than most. Born to a blacksmith, he's grateful that hard work and good fortune have granted him a position as a man-at-arms in the Countess's service. But when he accompanies her entourage to a joyful annual festival, the young man is shocked to find the village besieged, the people cursed, and Her Excellency's knights...

"In a few years hence, it will be possible for nations to fight without armies, ships or guns, by weapons far more terrible to the destructive action and range of which there is virtually no limit. Any city at any distance whatsoever from the enemy can be destroyed by him and no power on Earth can stop him from doing so."-Nikola Tesla, circa 1925 Drawing on forty years of research and a treasure trove of new information, Tesla: Wizard at War provides...

Scientists have long counseled against interpreting animal behavior in terms of human emotions, warning that such anthropomorphizing limits our ability to understand animals as they “really” are. Yet what are we to make of a female gorilla in a German zoo who spent days mourning the death of her baby? Or a wild female elephant who cared for a younger one after she was injured by a rambunctious teenage male? Or a rat who refused to push a lever...

"When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave--only to discover that the...

An eclectic collection of many of the spookiest classic tales of horror, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The New Catacomb, A.M. Burrage's Smee, Edgar Allan Poe's Masque of the Red Death, Hop-Frog and The Cask of Amontillado, W.W. Jacobs' The Monkey's Paw, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, and Algernon Blackwood's The Willows.