Charles River Editors

To the Aztecs, Huitzilopochtli wore a blue-green hummingbird helmet and was draped in pure white heron feathers. He carried a smoking mirror, an obsidian mirror, a shield, darts, and the serpent Xiuhcoatl that carried with it the fury and might of the sun....

As technological advances and the creation of flying aircraft became realities, the sighting of UFOs increased, as did the interest in potential contact with aliens....

The 19th century saw the rise of one of the largest, most powerful empires of the modern era. The sun never set on the British Empire, whose holdings spanned the globe, in one form or another....

Every account of Erwin Rommel's life must address what appears to be its inherent contradictions....

Ancient Greece and its mythology has fascinated people for thousands of years, and few elements have intrigued people quite like the Eleusinian Mysteries....

Worship of the Feathered Serpent can be traced back 2,000 years, and the Serpent’s cults appear all across Mesoamerica. The Olmec, the Aztec, and both the Yucatec and K’iche Mayans all had different names for this deity, including Kukulkan, Q’uq’umatz, and Tohil....

Today, the term "Philistine" is often used as a euphemism for a person who is particularly uncouth, uncultured, ignorant, and possibly violent....

Despite losing the 1948 War, Arab nations throughout the Middle East had still refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist. After the Suez Crisis, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser envisioned creating a unified Arab world, commonly referred to as pan-Arabism....

El estudio de los evangelios apócrifos - relatos de la vida o dichos de Jesús que no entraron al Nuevo Testamento - es una disciplina popular entre los académicos que llena ya varios estantes de cualquier biblioteca respetable....

The Partition of Ireland and the Troubles: The History of Northern Ireland from the Irish Civil War to the Good Friday Agreement analyzes the tumultuous events that marked the creation of Northern Ireland, and the conflicts fueled by the partition....

Native American Tribes: The History and Culture of the Blackfeet and Blackfoot Confederacy comprehensively covers the history and legacy of one of the Great Plains’ most famous Native American groups....

After the siege of Boston forced the British to evacuate that city in March 1776, Continental Army commander George Washington suspected that the British would move by sea to New York City....

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history....

The Pleistocene Era: The History of the Ice Age and the Dawn of Modern Humans looks at the development of the era, what life on Earth was like, and the origins of archaic humans....

Throughout the history of warfare, the practice of placing blame on innocent parties in order to justify attacking them has been a constant feature. In the 20th century, this practice began to be commonly referred to as a “false flag” operation....

In Charles River Editors’ American Legends series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of America’s most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute....

The OSS and CIA: The History of America’s Intelligence Community during World War II and the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency looks at the agencies’ organizational characteristics, historical inception, early Cold War growth, and recent influence....

By the time Christopher Columbus started setting east from the New World, he had explored San Salvador in the Bahamas (which he thought was Japan), Cuba (which he thought was China), and Hispaniola, the source of gold....

They say that judgment does not exist in Lourdes. Once one sets foot on this hallowed soil, all barriers of race, social status, background, and religious differences cease to exist....

As soon as man discovered writing, he began engaging in historiography (historical writing and philosophy), but paleoanthropology only really began in the late 1800s....