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Stones of Aran: Labyrinth By Tim Robinson Introduction by John Elder Robinson's stunning and erudite explorations of Ireland's Aran Islands show what travel writing at its very best can do: inform, inspire, and transform our ideas of place and history. "Robinson has done for the west of Ireland what Ruskin did for Venice, Proust for the voids and vasts of time." —Telegraph Price: $17.21 (25% off)

From Heaven to Arcadia (paperback) Written and with a new preface by Ingrid D. Rowland "Ingrid Rowland's amazing essays are over the top and down the other side. They pop, they sparkle, they inform, and they add up to a rich and vivid mosaic of Renaissance culture, its ancient sources, and its contemporary interpreters. Above all, they show us why deep scholarship and high style matter so much in this gray age of the world's history."—Anthony Grafton Price: $14.36 (20% off)

Defeat By Philippe-Paul de Ségur Translated from the French by J. David Townsend Introduction by Mark Danner Ségur's eye-witness account of what remains one of the greatest military disasters of all time is a masterpiece of military history and was an essential source for Tolstoy's War and Peace. It is also a reminder of the risks of imperial hubris. Price: $11.96 (25% off)

Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage By Tim Robinson Introduction by Robert Macfarlane Mapmaker Tim Robinson moved to the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland in the 1970s and fell in love with their geography and history. In Pilgrimage, he walks the perimeter of Árainn, its largest island, and the result is "a loving anatomy...in which the point where nature and culture meet in the island is observed with great beauty and precision." (Colm Tóibín) Price: $14.21 (25% off)

Miami and the Siege of Chicago By Norman Mailer Introduction by Frank Rich 1968 was one of the most tumultuous years in American politics and society, the effects of which reverberate today. Norman Mailer was on the ground, covering Nixon's relentlessly stage-managed nomination in Miami as well as the Democratic convention in Chicago—where the violence at the heart of the American dream exploded on the streets. Price: $11.21 (25% off)

Names on the Land By George R. Stewart Introduction by Matt Weiland Organized thematically (sample chapters: "Yankee Flavor," "America Discovers Columbus," and "How Names Were Symbols of Empire") this lighthearted book will be a delight for anyone who ever wondered how their hometown, or (more likely) the next town over, could be called that. Price: $14.96 (25% off)

Born Under Saturn By Margot and Rudolf Wittkower Introduction by Joseph Connors A rare art history classic that The New York Times calls a "delightful, scholarly and gossipy romp through the character and conduct of artists from antiquity to the French Revolution." Price: $14.21 (25% off)

A Savage War of Peace By Alistair Horne Not only essential reading for anyone who wishes to investigate this dark stretch of history, but a lasting monument of the historian's art. Price: $14.96 (25% off)

The Jeffersonian Transformation By Henry Adams Introduction by Garry Wills The ideal introduction and companion to Adams's "massive and magisterial" history of the administrations of Jefferson and Madison, presenting an indelible picture of America's startling rise to world power. Price: $11.21 (25% off)

The Age of Conversation (paperback) By Benedetta Craveri Translated by Teresa Waugh An award-winning look at French salons and the women who presided over them. Price: $15.16 (20% off)

The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual By Harold W. Cruse Introduction by Stanley Crouch A landmark work of African-American thought written in a period of immense social ferment. Price: $13.46 (25% off)

The Thirty Years War By C.V. Wedgwood Foreword by Anthony Grafton The only comprehensive account of the war in English, C.V. Wedgwood's magisterial book is a triumph of literary history that brings to life the war's campaigns, battles, and negotiations, as well as its terrible human toll. Price: $14.96 (25% off)

Moura By Nina Berberova Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz Richard D. Sylvester In this legendary biography, an unusual labor of love, Berberova paints a portrait of the ultimate survivor, a woman who made her life a triumph of fiction. Price: $18.71 (25% off)

From Heaven to Arcadia By Ingrid D. Rowland In these essays, most of them originally published in The New York Review of Books, Ingrid Rowland explores topics in the art and culture of Renaissance Italy. Price: $19.96 (20% off)

War and the Iliad By Rachel Bespaloff Simone Weil Translated from the French by Mary McCarthy Introduction by Christopher Benfey Afterword by Hermann Broch These essays do more than prove the permanent relevance of Homer's great poem. They analyze the logic of war itself, and explore how intoxicating violence defines the human condition. Price: $11.21 (25% off)

The Bog People By P.V. Glob Introduction by Elizabeth Wayland Barber Paul T. Barber Translated from the Danish by Rupert Bruce-Mitford Conceived as a kind of a detective story, this classic of archaeological history—out of print for over thirty years—is a fascinating account of the religion, culture, and daily life of the Iron Age in Europe. Price: $12.71 (25% off)

Part of Our Time By Murray Kempton Introduction by David Remnick Through brilliant portraits of real persons who created the myths and realities of the 1930s, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Murray Kempton brings that turbulent decade to life. Price: $12.71 (25% off)

Sacagawea's Nickname (paperback) By Larry McMurtry In this acclaimed collection, Larry McMurtry profiles explorers and martyrs, hucksters and scholars—figures in the West's enduring yet ever-shifting mixture of myth and reality. Price: $11.96 (20% off)

Looking Back (paperback) By Russell Baker In these eleven essays, all originally published in The New York Review of Books, Russell Baker looks back on a group of iconic public figures from his own past. Price: $10.36 (20% off)

The Moro Affair By Leonardo Sciascia Translated from the Italian by Sacha Rabinovitch Introduction by Peter Robb The Moro Affair presents a chilling picture of how a secretive government and a ruthless terrorist faction help to keep each other in business. Price: $9.71 (25% off)

Paris and Elsewhere By Richard Cobb Preface by Julian Barnes Collecting memoirs, portraits of favorite haunts, appreciations of Simenon and Queneau, René Clair and Brassaï, and including the famous polemic "The Assassination of Paris," Paris and Elsewhere shows us a France unglimpsed by tourists. Price: $13.46 (25% off)

American Humor By Constance Rourke Introduction by Greil Marcus Constance Rourke's pioneering "study of the national character" examines such legendary figures as the Yankee, the backwoodsman, and the minstrel singer to show how the popular comic imagination contributed to America's changing self-awareness. Price: $11.96 (25% off)

My Century By Aleksander Wat Translated from the Polish by Richard Lourie Foreword by Czeslaw Milosz The great Polish poet Aleksander Wat's memoirs provide a powerful and moving account of life in Eastern Europe in the terrible twentieth century. Price: $12.71 (25% off)

Peking Story By David Kidd Preface by John Lanchester "Kidd's pieces are simple, graceful, comic, mournful miniatures of an ominous catastrophe, the unprecedently swift death of a uniquely ancient civilization." —John Updike Price: $10.50 (25% off)

To the Finland Station By Edmund Wilson Foreword by Louis Menand Wilson combines his polymathic talents as critic, journalist, historian, and novelist, making this one of the greatest works by twentieth-century America's greatest man of letters. Price: $14.96 (25% off)

The World of Odysseus By M.I. Finley Introduction by Bernard Knox The World of Odysseus provides a vivid picture of the Greek Dark Ages, its men and women, works and days, morals and values. Price: $11.21 (25% off)

The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain By B. Netanyahu Essential reading and an indispensable reference book for both the interested layman and the scholar of history and religion. Price: $30.00 (20% off)

Letters from Russia By Astolphe de Custine Introduction by Anka Muhlstein The Marquis de Custine's record of his trip to Russia in 1839 is a brilliantly perceptive, even prophetic, account of one of the world's most fascinating and troubled countries. Price: $18.71 (25% off)

Looking Back By Russell Baker In these eleven essays, all originally published in The New York Review of Books, Russell Baker looks back on a group of iconic public figures from his own past. Price: $15.96 (20% off)

Sacagawea's Nickname By Larry McMurtry Once again Larry McMurtry casts a keen and elegaic eye not only on the often harsh truths of the West, but also on the power of western illusions. Price: $15.96 (20% off)

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