The Metaphysical Club
Louis Menand
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
$27.00 / $21.60

The story of an informal group that met in Cambridge in 1872 to talk about ideas. Included were Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William James, and Charles Sanders Pierce. Menand has written an absorbing narrative not only of the Club's members, but a social history of America.

Venice, Lion City: The Religion of Empire
Garry Wills
Simon & Schuster
$35.00 / $28.00

A tour de force- a scholarly, anecdotal, personality-filled history of a fascinating city during its Renaissance supremacy.

American Colonies: The Penguin History of the U.S.
Alan Taylor, series editor Eric Foner
Penguin Putnam
$34.95 / $27.96

In this inaugaral volume of a prestigious new history series, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alan Taylor challenges the traditional Anglocentric focus of colonial history by exploring the multitude of cultural influences out of which "America" ultimately emerged. Taylor traces the complex ecological, ethnic, and economic history and colonization of the New World from coast to coast, from the Canadian north to the Pacific rim.

London: The Biography
Peter Ackroyd
Bantam, Doubleday, Dell
$45.00 / $36.00

"This magnificent evocation of all that London has meant down the centuries...I cannot begin to describe the richness with which Ackroyd pursues his theme...A blend of virtuosity and deep affection that is truly bewitching. Ackroyd has performed a noble public service in preserving in these pages so many centuries of marvels, and secrecies."-Jan Morris

Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture, 1815-1914
Peter Gay
Norton
$27.95 / $22.36

We have always believed that corseted Queen Victoria defined the mores of the nineteenth century. Yet Peter Gay asserts in this provocative, seminal work that it is the sexually emboldened Viennese playwright, Arthur Schnitzler, who provides a better symbol for the age. Challenging many sacrosanct notions about middle-class prudery and hypocrisy, he shows that in important ways, the Victorians were not Victorians.

The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology
Simon Winchester
HarperCollins
$26.00 / $20.80

From the author of the best-selling The Professor and the Madman comes the fascinating story of William Smith, the orphaned son of an English country blacksmith, who became obsessed with creating the world's first geological map and ultimately became the father of modern geology.

Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture
Ross King
Penguin Putnam, pb
$13.00 / $10.40

Filippo Brunelleschi designed and erected the dome over the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, raising seventy million pounds of metal, wood, and marble hundreds of feet in the air in a feat of architectural daring that we continue to marvel at today. He literally reinvented the field of architecture amid the plagues, wars and political feuds of Renaissance Florence.