The Empire of the Habsburgs which was dissolved in 1918 had a unique character, out of time and out of place. Metternich, a European from the Rhineland, felt that the Habsburg Empire did not belong to Europe. "Asia," he said, "begins at the Landstrasse"- the road out of Vienna to the east. Francis Joseph was conscious that he belonged to the wrong century. He told Theodore Roosevelt:"You see in me the last monarch of the old school." The collection of territories ruled over by the House of Habsburg never found a settled description. Their broad lines were determined in 1526, when Ferdinand, pessessing already a variety of titles as ruler of the Alpine-Germanic lands, became King of Bohemia and King of Hungary; yet for almost three hundred years they had no common name.

A handsomely produced and illustrated history of an influential and mysterious 900-year-old order of Catholic knights, examining the order's formative years, its military significance during its reigns on Rhodes and Malta, its artistic and architectural legacy, and its branches in nations throughout Europe. The final section addresses more recent events in the order's history, from 100 years ago when the order had dwindled to only 1,000 knights drawn from the innermost circle of the European aristocracy, to the present number of 10,000 knights and exchange of ambassadors with some 60 governments.

In the past, Antonia Fraser's bestselling histories and biographies have focused on people and events in her native England, from Mary Queen of Scots to Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot. Now she crosses the Channel to limn the life of France's unhappiest queen, bringing along her gift for fluent storytelling, vivid characterization, and evocative historical background. Marie Antoinette (1755-93) emerges in Fraser's sympathetic portrait as a goodhearted girl woefully undereducated and poorly prepared for the dynastic political intrigues into which she was thrust at age 14, when her mother, Empress Maria Theresa, married her off to the future Louis XVI to further Austria's interests in France. Far from being the licentious monster later depicted by the radicals who sent her to the guillotine at the height of the French Revolution, young Marie Antoinette was quite prudish, as well as thoroughly humiliated by her husband's widely known failure to have complete intercourse with her for seven long years (the gory details were reported to any number of concerned royal parties, including her mother and brother). She compensated by spending lavishly on clothes and palaces, but Fraser points out that this hardly made her unique among 18th-century royalty, and in any case the causes of the Revolution went far beyond one woman's frivolities.

Drawing on thousands of pages of archival material and on interviews with surviving associates, presidential biographer Reeves paints a complex, sometimes disturbing portrait of the man forever enshrined as Tricky Dick.
"I have decided my major role is moral leadership," Nixon wrote in 1972 in one of his myriad memos to himself. (As Reeves writes, "Whatever else he accomplished, Richard Nixon produced more paper and tape than any president before or since.") That resolution quickly collapsed; instead, as the Vietnam War shaded into defeat and protests at home mounted, Nixon sank into a siege mentality, seeing himself as a lone crusader at war with the rest of the world. Reeves examines the cat-and-mouse quality of Nixon's relations with his inner circle and family, as well as the excruciating collapse of national leadership in the wake of missteps, miscalculations, and sheer crimes. Rigorous and thoughtful, Reeves's book adds much to our understanding of Nixon's troubled presidency--and of his troubled soul. --Gregory McNamee

For the last decade Liberia has been one of Africa's most violent trouble spots. In 1990, when thousands of teenage fighters, including young men wearing women's clothing and bizarre objects of decoration, laid siege to the capital, the world took notice. Since then Liberia has been through devastating civil upheaval and the most feared warlord, Charles Taylor, is now president. What began as a civil conflict has spread to other West African nations.
Western correspondents saw in the Liberian war a primeval, savage Africa-a "heart of darkness." They focused on sensational "primitive" aspects of the conflict such as the prevelance of traditional healers and soothsayers and shocked the international community with tales of cannibalism, especially the eating of the body parts of defeated opponents, which was widespread.
Eschewing popular stereotypes and simple explanations Stephen Ellis traces the history of the civil war that has blighted Liberia in recent years and looks at its political, ethnic and cultural roots. He focuses on the role religion and ritual have played in shaping and intensifying this brutal war.