iBookstore Top United States History Ebooks

Chart of the most popular and best selling United States history ebooks at the Apple iBookstore.

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History Ebook Best Sellers

Top United States History Ebooks

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The Rush - Nathaniel Philbrick Cover Art

The Rush

The Rush California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World by Nathaniel Philbrick

A New York Times Most Anticipated Nonfiction Book of 2026 · A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Fall National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Heart of the Sea and Mayflower , reveals how California’s Gold Rush forged the modern United States—and lit the long fuse to civil war In January 1848, a carpenter spotted flecks of gold in a shallow stream at Sutter’s Mill in California, triggering the greatest voluntary migration in U.S. history, as hundreds of thousands raced west in pursuit of sudden wealth, reinvention, and power. From the feverish gold-mining camps of the Sierra Nevada mountains to the wharves and vigilance committees of San Francisco, Nathaniel Philbrick renders a combustible, all-world society: Chilean brothers reinventing themselves to outrun prejudice; Native communities navigating dispossession and violence; the merchant-showman Samuel Brannan, drawn into the center of early vigilantism; and the politicians vying for control of California’s future—the ambitious Free-Soil political boss David Broderick, who squared off against William Gwin, the Southern power broker intent on tilting the state toward slavery and the Confederacy. In The Rush , Nathaniel Philbrick transforms the Gold Rush from a tale of sudden riches into the origin story of America’s modern contradictions—capital consolidated at dizzying speed, democracy in thrall to private power, xenophobia weaponized in the name of liberty—and a stubborn belief in the American experiment that refuses to die. This is the story of a nation tearing at the seams and a republic tested by its own ideals. Not until ayear after the outbreak of the Civil War, when President Lincoln signed legislation that would unite the nation east to west by building a transcontinental railroad, was California’s loyalty secured. Philbrick follows the gold as it moves from riverbed to countinghouse to the halls of power, revealing how vigilantism hardened into law and how debates over slavery in the West tipped the balance in Washington. The result is a clear, human story of how a scramble for wealth reshaped ideas of freedom, labor, and belonging—and how California's rise helped push a fractured nation toward war. The Rush is alive with characters whose choices still reverberate: a searing, panoramic epic that captures both the fury and the promise of America.

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The Demon of Unrest - Erik Larson Cover Art

The Demon of Unrest

The Demon of Unrest A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War in this “riveting reexamination of a nation in tumult” ( Los Angeles Times ). “A feast of historical insight and narrative verve . . . This is Erik Larson at his best, enlivening even a thrice-told tale into an irresistible thriller.”— The Wall Street Journal A PARADE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter. Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.” At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between them. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous secretary of state, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans. Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.

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Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here - Jonathan Blitzer Cover Art

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer

A National Bestseller • A New York Times Top 10 Book of 2024 • Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker , Chicago Tribune , Newsweek , PBS NewsHour, LitHub , Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Lunch , Christian Science Monitor, and Counterpunch • One of Barack Obama's Summer Reading List Picks • Named a Notable Book by New York Times and Washington Post • Nominated for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence and the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction “What an incredibly thorough documentation of the causes of the immigration crisis, the discussions that have been going on through multiple administrations.” —Jon Stewart, The Daily Show “ Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is sure to take its place as one of the definitive accounts of the U.S. and Central American immigration puzzle. . . . Hopefully, those with the power to change things will listen. ” — Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post An epic, heartbreaking, and deeply reported history of the disastrous humanitarian crisis at the southern border told through the lives of the migrants forced to risk everything and the policymakers who determine their fate, by New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer Everyone who makes the journey faces an impossible choice. Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far from their homes. For years, the majority came from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, but many more have begun their journey much farther away. Some flee persecution, others crime or hunger. They may have already been deported, but the United States remains their only hope for safety and prosperity. They will take their chances. As Jonathan Blitzer dramatizes with forensic, unprecedented reporting, this crisis is the result of decades of misguided policy and sweeping corruption. Brilliantly weaving the stories of Central Americans whose lives have been devastated by chronic political conflict and violence with those of American activists, government officials, and the politicians responsible for the country’s tragically tangled immigration policy, Blitzer reveals the full, layered picture of this vast and unremitting conflict. Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here tells the epic story of the people whose lives ebb and flow across the border, delving into the heart of American life itself. This vital and remarkable story has shaped the nation’s turbulent politics and culture in countless ways—and will almost certainly determine its future.

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A Fever in the Heartland - Timothy Egan Cover Art

A Fever in the Heartland

A Fever in the Heartland The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction • An NPR Best Book of the Year • A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year • A Chicago Review of Books Best Book of the Year • A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year • A Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist "With narrative elan, Egan gives us a riveting saga of how a predatory con man became one of the most powerful people in 1920s America, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, with a plan to rule the country—and how a grisly murder of a woman brought him down. Compelling and chillingly resonant with our own time." —Erik Larson, author of The Splendid and the Vile “Riveting…Egan is a brilliant researcher and lucid writer.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of the Klan's rise to power in the 1920s, the cunning con man who drove that rise, and the woman who stopped them. The Roaring Twenties—the Jazz Age—has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson. Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows – their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman – Madge Oberholtzer – who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees. A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND marries a propulsive drama to a powerful and page-turning reckoning with one of the darkest threads in American history.

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Roots: The Enhanced Edition - Alex Haley Cover Art

Roots: The Enhanced Edition

Roots: The Enhanced Edition The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley

First published forty years ago, Roots electrified the nation: it received a Pulitzer Prize and was a #1 New York Times bestseller for 22 weeks. In the four decades since then, the story of the young African slave Kunta Kinte and his descendants has lost none of its power to enthrall and provoke. Roots: The Enhanced Edition features rare interviews with author Alex Haley from the NBC News Archives that took place as the Roots phenomenon unfolded over 30 years ago. There are also photos, footage, and recordings from the Haley family, all of which provide a unique understanding of Alex Haley's journey researching and writing the book. In new video interviews NBC's Tom Brokaw and David Wilson reflect on the story's lasting impact. Roots is a groundbreaking story of history and family that spanned continents and touched generations. One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, Roots galvanized the nation and created an extraordinary political, racial, social and cultural dialogue that hadn't been seen since the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin . The book sold over one million copies in the first year, and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130 million people. It also won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Roots opened up the minds of Americans of all colors and faiths to one of the darkest and most painful parts of America's past, and we continue to feel its reverberations today. Roots: The Enhanced Edition is truly definitive--adding unmatched, sweep, context and insight to this ever-relevant classic. The Enhanced Edition features: Full text of the bookVideo introduction and interview with David WilsonNew video interview with Tom BrokawFootage of author Alex Haley provided by the NBC News Archives and the Haley family, including Today Show interviews with Tom Brokaw, Roots -related events in the 1970s, an extended interview about the book, and more (45 minutes of video)Recordings of Alex Haley speaking about researching and writing the book (30 minutes of audio)10 rare photos from the Haley familyEssay by Alex HaleyReading Group GuideIntroduction by Michael Eric DysonExtended biography of Haley

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The Great Stain - Noel Rae Cover Art

The Great Stain

The Great Stain Witnessing American Slavery by Noel Rae

"Eyewitness testimonies to the culture and commerce of slavery . . . coupled with smart commentary" from an acclaimed historian. "Essential." ( Kirkus Reviews)   In this important book, Noel Rae integrates firsthand accounts into a narrative history that brings the reader face to face with slavery's everyday reality.  From the travel journals of sixteenth-century Spanish settlers who offered religious instruction and "protection" in exchange for farm labor, to the diaries of Reverend Cotton Mather, to Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted's travelogue about the "cotton states," to an 1880 speech given by Frederick Douglass, Rae provides a comprehensive portrait of the antebellum history of the nation. Most significant are the testimonies from former slaves themselves, ranging from the famous Solomon Northup to the virtually unknown Mary Reynolds, who was sold away from her mother as child. Drawing on thousands of original sources, The Great Stain tells of a society based on the exploitation of labor and fallacies of racial superiority. Meticulously researched, this is a work of history that is profoundly relevant to our world today.   "Noel Rae expertly assembles the most consequential accounts from the era of the American slave trade. . . . A vivid and comprehensive picture." —Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America   "Uniquely immediate, multivoiced, specific, arresting, and illuminating." — Booklist   "Many histories have been written of slavery in America, but far too few have let the participants, and particularly the victims, speak so directly for themselves. Rae has helped to fill that historical vacuum in this important work, and the voices are intense, eloquent, and haunting." — National Book Review

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Shadow Before the Flame - Catherine Grace Katz Cover Art

Shadow Before the Flame

Shadow Before the Flame The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War by Catherine Grace Katz

*GLIBA Regional Bestseller* “Narrative history at its best.” — Air Mail The gripping, definitive history of the Hindenburg disaster, the rise of the Nazis, and the road to World War II as never before told On the evening of May 6, 1937, the majestic German zeppelin Hindenburg arrived before cheering crowds in Lakehurst, New Jersey, when suddenly, a titanic inferno lit up the sky. Thirty-four seconds later, the greatest airship ever to take flight was gone, destroyed in a ferocious blaze and eternally seared into historical memory. Acclaimed historian Catherine Grace Katz unites groundbreaking research with thrilling narrative that situates this famous disaster squarely on the collision course between the decade’s two prevailing currents. The Hindenburg began as a symbol of hope and progress, a gleaming technological marvel in the nascent age of aviation. But soon, the airship of dreams became a propaganda tool powering the rising Nazi regime. In this sweeping drama, Katz illustrates the story of the Hindenburg through the captivating passengers and crew caught in the grip of fate: an adventurous heiress, a renowned vaudeville star, a Chicago industrialist with German Jewish roots, an esteemed zeppelin captain, and a young cabin boy on his first voyage to the United States. Meanwhile, on the ground, two intrepid journalists’ reporting on the Hindenburg fundamentally changed breaking news, paving the way for modern media. In this rigorously researched, ticking-clock account, Shadow Before the Flame offers a portrait of an era when illusions of peace, fueled by the hubris of invention, hovered in suspended time as the clouds of an inevitable war loomed on the horizon. Above all, it is a story of humanity and of lives forever changed by a moment that served as a harbinger for the global conflagration yet to come.

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Nathanael Greene - Gerald M. Carbone Cover Art

Nathanael Greene

Nathanael Greene A Biography of the American Revolution by Gerald M. Carbone

"An engaging new biography . . . a rounded portrait" of an unsung hero of the American Revolution from the award-winning author ( The Washington Times ). When the Revolutionary War began, Nathanael Greene was a private in the militia, the lowest rank possible, yet he emerged from the war with a reputation as George Washington's most gifted and dependable officer—celebrated as one of three most important generals. Upon taking command of America's Southern Army in 1780, Nathanael Greene was handed troops that consisted of one,500 starving, nearly naked men. Gerald Carbone explains how within a year, the small worn-out army ran the British troops out of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina and into the final trap at Yorktown. Despite his huge military successes and tactical genius Greene's story has a dark side. Gerald Carbone drew on twenty-five years of reporting and researching experience to create his chronicle of Greene's unlikely rise to success and his fall into debt and anonymity. "Carbone gives a little-known Revolutionary War leader his due in this admiring biography . . . [A] lucid account of the Revolutionary War from the point of view of its most successful general." — Kirkus Reviews "To this much-needed new biography of America's most unjustly neglected Revolutionary War hero, Gerald Carbone brings a journalist's concision, a storyteller's eye for illuminating detail, a wry New England sensibility, and a historian's diligence." —Charles F. Price, award-winning author of Season of Terror

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Ghost Soldiers - Hampton Sides Cover Art

Ghost Soldiers

Ghost Soldiers The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission by Hampton Sides

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “The greatest World War II story never told” ( Esquire )—an enthralling account of the heroic mission to rescue the last survivors of the Bataan Death March—from the author of Blood and Thunder . On January 28, 1945, 121 hand-selected U.S. troops slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March thirty rugged miles to rescue 513 POWs languishing in a hellish camp, among them the last survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March. A recent prison massacre by Japanese soldiers elsewhere in the Philippines made the stakes impossibly high and left little time to plan the complex operation. In Ghost Soldiers Hampton Sides vividly re-creates this daring raid, offering a minute-by-minute narration that unfolds alongside intimate portraits of the prisoners and their lives in the camp. Sides shows how the POWs banded together to survive, defying the Japanese authorities even as they endured starvation, tropical diseases, and torture. Harrowing, poignant, and inspiring, Ghost Soldiers is the mesmerizing story of a remarkable mission. It is also a testament to the human spirit, an account of enormous bravery and self-sacrifice amid the most trying conditions.

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Confronting America - Bill O'Reilly & Josh Hammer Cover Art

Confronting America

Confronting America What Has to Change by Bill O'Reilly & Josh Hammer

The Instant New York Times and USA Today bestseller! What has to change in America--and why. The new book in the #1 bestselling series. America remains the world’s greatest land of opportunity, but too many Americans have lost sight of the values that made it work. Patriotism and civic responsibility have weakened. Families and schools too often fail to teach discipline, character, and personal responsibility. Hard work and self-reliance are losing ground to entitlement and dependency. Drugs, destructive popular culture, and social media are doing real damage. In Confronting America , Bill O’Reilly argues that the answer is not nostalgia or another government program. It is a return to informed citizenship, strong families, honest education, meaningful work, generosity, self-respect, and a willingness to put country and community ahead of self. His central challenge is straightforward: “Americans need to wise up.” How do we do that? Education: Our system--once the envy of the world--now ranks below many countries. Restore higher standards of performance so that grade, middle, and high schools prepare our young people for work and life...not unemployment or jail. Family: The collapse of stable family structures is disastrous for young people--especially boys, who need fathers to be present in their lives. Let's honor, rather than denigrate, the values that support two parent households. Drugs: For misguided reasons, we've legalized and enabled drug use through so-called "harm reduction"--with predictable results. The law must help--and require--drug addicts to get clean and be productive members of society. Work: It used to be normal and expected that people would work for a living. Now, not so much. We need to revive the importance of labor, of all kinds, at all levels, and honor the skills of all who show up and do their jobs. Religion: America is becoming increasingly godless, and the decline of spirituality has weakened shared concepts of right and wrong. Americans don’t have to join the “God Squad,” but religion can reinforce social order--and everyone should respect the law and practice decent behavior. Ultimately, Confronting America is both a warning and a challenge: America will improve when Americans do.

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The Fate of the Day - Rick Atkinson Cover Art

The Fate of the Day

The Fate of the Day The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780 by Rick Atkinson

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In the second volume of the landmark American Revolution trilogy by the acclaimed author of The British Are Coming, George Washington’s army fights on the knife edge between victory and defeat—perfect reading for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. “This is great history . . . compulsively readable . . . There is no better writer of narrative history than the Pulitzer Prize–winning Atkinson.” —The New York Times (Editors’ Choice) ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST ’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Kirkus Reviews • Winner of the American Battlefield Trust Prize for History and the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award The first twenty-one months of the American Revolution—which began at Lexington and ended at Princeton—was the story of a ragged group of militiamen and soldiers fighting to forge a new nation. By the winter of 1777, the exhausted Continental Army could claim only that it had barely escaped annihilation by the world’s most formidable fighting force. Two years into the war, George III is as determined as ever to bring his rebellious colonies to heel. But the king’s task is now far more complicated: fighting a determined enemy on the other side of the Atlantic has become ruinously expensive, and spies tell him that the French and Spanish are threatening to join forces with the Americans. Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson provides a riveting narrative covering the middle years of the Revolution. Stationed in Paris, Benjamin Franklin woos the French; in Pennsylvania, George Washington pleads with Congress to deliver the money, men, and materiel he needs to continue the fight. In New York, General William Howe, the commander of the greatest army the British have ever sent overseas, plans a new campaign against the Americans—even as he is no longer certain that he can win this searing, bloody war. The months and years that follow bring epic battles at Brandywine, Saratoga, Monmouth, and Charleston, a winter of misery at Valley Forge, and yet more appeals for sacrifice by every American committed to the struggle for freedom. Timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolution, Atkinson’s brilliant account of the lethal conflict between the Americans and the British offers not only deeply researched and spectacularly dramatic history, but also a new perspective on the demands that a democracy makes on its citizens.

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The Vietnam War - Geoffrey Wawro Cover Art

The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War A Military History by Geoffrey Wawro

“Remarkable… the best overview of America’s misadventure in Southeast Asia, and it is sure to become the standard one-volume book on the war.” – Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times The Vietnam War cast a shadow over the American psyche from the moment it began. In its time it sparked budget deficits, campus protests, and an erosion of US influence around the world. Long after the last helicopter evacuated Saigon, Americans have continued to battle over whether it was ever a winnable war. Based on thousands of pages of military, diplomatic, and intelligence documents, Geoffrey Wawro’s The Vietnam War offers a definitive account of a war of choice that was doomed from its inception. In devastating detail, Wawro narrates campaigns where US troops struggled even to find the enemy in the South Vietnamese wilderness, let alone kill sufficient numbers to turn the tide in their favor. Yet the war dragged on, prolonged by presidents and military leaders who feared the political consequences of accepting defeat. In the end, no number of young lives lost or bombs dropped could prevent America’s ally, the corrupt South Vietnamese regime, from collapsing the moment US troops retreated. Broad, definitive, and illuminating, The Vietnam War offers an unsettling, resonant story of the limitations of American power.

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The Devil in the White City - Erik Larson Cover Art

The Devil in the White City

The Devil in the White City A Saga of Magic and Murder at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile comes the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the cunning serial killer who used the magic and majesty of the fair to lure his victims to their death. “As absorbing a piece of popular history as one will ever hope to find.” — San Francisco Chronicle A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century • A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of the Last 30 Years Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction. Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake. The Devil in the White City draws the reader into the enchantment of the Guilded Age, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. Erik Larson’s gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.

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All the President's Men - Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein Cover Art

All the President's Men

All the President's Men by Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein

50th Anniversary Edition—now with a new foreword on what Watergate means today. “The work that brought down a presidency...perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history” ( Time )—from the #1 New York Times bestselling authors of The Final Days. The most devastating political detective story of the century: two Washington Post reporters, whose brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation smashed the Watergate scandal wide open, tell the behind-the-scenes drama the way it really happened. One of Time magazine’s All-Time 100 Best Nonfiction Books, this is the book that changed America. Published just months before President Nixon’s resignation, All the President’s Men revealed the full scope of the scandal and introduced for the first time the mysterious “Deep Throat.” Beginning with the story of a simple burglary at Democratic headquarters and then continuing through headline after headline, Bernstein and Woodward deliver a riveting firsthand account of their reporting. Their explosive reports won a Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post , toppled the president, and have since inspired generations of reporters. All the President’s Men is a riveting detective story, capturing the exhilarating rush of the biggest presidential scandal in US history as it unfolded in real time.

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The Dust Bowl - Dayton Duncan & Ken Burns Cover Art

The Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl An Illustrated History by Dayton Duncan & Ken Burns

This "riveting" companion to the PBS documentary "clarifies our understanding of the 'worst manmade ecological disaster in American history'" ( Booklist ). In this riveting chronicle, Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns capture the profound drama of the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Terrifying photographs of mile-high dust storms, along with firsthand accounts by more than two dozen eyewitnesses, bring to life this heart-wrenching catastrophe, when a combination of drought, wind, and poor farming practices turned millions of acres of the Great Plains into a wasteland, killing crops and livestock, threatening the lives of small children, burying homesteaders' hopes under huge dunes of dirt—and setting in motion a mass migration the likes of which the nation had never seen. Burns and Duncan collected more than three hundred mesmerizing photographs, some never before published, scoured private letters, government reports, and newspaper articles, and conducted in-depth interviews to produce a document that may likely be the last recorded testimony of the generation who lived through this defining decade.

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The River of Doubt - Candice Millard Cover Art

The River of Doubt

The River of Doubt Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait—the bestselling author of River of the Gods brings us the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth. “A rich, dramatic tale that ranges from the personal to the literally earth-shaking.” — The New York Times The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows; piranhas glide through its waters; boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron. After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever. Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide. The River of Doubt brings alive these extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived. From the soaring beauty of the Amazon rain forest to the darkest night of Theodore Roosevelt’s life, here is Candice Millard’s dazzling debut. Look for Candice Millard’s latest book, River of the Gods.

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The Earth Is Weeping - Peter Cozzens Cover Art

The Earth Is Weeping

The Earth Is Weeping The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West by Peter Cozzens

Bringing together Custer, Sherman, Grant, and other fascinating military and political figures, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo, this “sweeping work of narrative history” ( San Francisco Chronicle ) is the fullest account to date of how the West was won—and lost. After the Civil War the Indian Wars would last more than three decades, permanently altering the physical and political landscape of America. Peter Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly intimate detail. He illuminates the intertribal strife over whether to fight or make peace; explores the dreary, squalid lives of frontier soldiers and the imperatives of the Indian warrior culture; and describes the ethical quandaries faced by generals who often sympathized with their native enemies. In dramatically relating bloody and tragic events as varied as Wounded Knee, the Nez Perce War, the Sierra Madre campaign, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, we encounter a pageant of fascinating characters, including Custer, Sherman, Grant, and a host of officers, soldiers, and Indian agents, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud and the warriors they led. The Earth Is Weeping is a sweeping, definitive history of the battles and negotiations that destroyed the Indian way of life even as they paved the way for the emergence of the United States we know today.

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The Fourth Turning - William Strauss & Neil Howe Cover Art

The Fourth Turning

The Fourth Turning What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny by William Strauss & Neil Howe

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Discover the game-changing theory of the cycles of history and what past generations can teach us about living through times of upheaval—with deep insights into the roles that Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials have to play—now with a new preface by Neil Howe. “One of the best efforts to give us an integrated vision of where we are going.”— The Wall Street Journal First comes a High, a period of confident expansion. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion. Then comes an Unraveling, in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis—the Fourth Turning—when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history. William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world—and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict what comes next. Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history. The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four twenty-year eras—or “turnings”—that comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth. Illustrating this cycle through a brilliant analysis of the post–World War II period, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for this rendezvous with destiny.

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The Civil War: A Narrative - Shelby Foote Cover Art

The Civil War: A Narrative

The Civil War: A Narrative Volume 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote

This first volume of Shelby Foote's classic narrative of the Civil War opens with Jefferson Davis’s farewell to the United Senate and ends on the bloody battlefields of Antietam and Perryville, as the full, horrible scope of America’s great war becomes clear. Exhaustively researched and masterfully written, Foote’s epic account of the Civil War unfolds like a classic novel.    Includes maps throughout.   "Here, for a certainty, is one of the great historical narratives…a unique and brilliant achievement, one that must be firmly placed in the ranks of the masters."—Van Allen Bradley, Chicago Daily News "A stunning book full of color, life, character and a new atmosphere of the Civil War, and at the same time a narrative of unflagging power. Eloquent proof that an historian should be a writer above all else." —Burke Davis "To read this great narrative is to love the nation—to love it through the living knowledge of its mortal division. Whitman, who ultimately knew and loved the bravery and frailty of the soldiers, observed that the real Civil War would never be written and perhaps should not be. For me, Shelby Foote has written it.... This work was done to last forever." —James M. Cox, Southern Review

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Wagons West - Frank McLynn Cover Art

Wagons West

Wagons West The Epic Story of America's Overland Trails by Frank McLynn

An acclaimed historian's "compellingly told" year-by-year account of the pioneering efforts to conquer the American West in the mid-nineteenth century ( The Guardian ).   In all the sagas of human migration, few can top the drama of the journey by Midwestern farmers to Oregon and California from 1840 to 1849—between the era of the fur trappers and the beginning of the gold rush. Even with mountain men as guides, these pioneers literally plunged into the unknown, braving all manner of danger, including hunger, thirst, disease, and drowning.   Employing numerous illustrations and extensive primary sources, including original diaries and memoirs, McLynn underscores the incredible heroism and dangerous folly on the overland trails. His authoritative narrative investigates the events leading up to the opening of the trails, the wagons and animals used, the roles of women, relations with Native Americans, and much else.   The climax arrives in McLynn's expertly re-created tale of the dreadful Donner party, and he closes with Brigham Young and the Mormons beginning communities of their own. Full of high drama, tragedy, and triumph, "rarely has a book so wonderfully brought to life the riveting tales of Americans' trek to the Pacific" ( Publishers Weekly ).

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The Half Has Never Been Told - Edward E. Baptist Cover Art

The Half Has Never Been Told

The Half Has Never Been Told Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist

The classic history demonstrating that America's economic supremacy was built on the backs of enslaved people. "Gripping." — New York Times “A stinging indictment of slavery.” — NPR Books? Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution—the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told , the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy. Told through the intimate testimonies of survivors of slavery, plantation records, newspapers, as well as the words of politicians and entrepreneurs, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American history. Winner of the Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians Winner of the Sidney Hillman Prize

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The Barn - Wright Thompson Cover Art

The Barn

The Barn The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson

The instant New York Times bestseller • Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post , Slate , Vanity Fair , TIME , Buzzfeed , Smithsonian , BookPage , KCUR , Kirkus , and Boston Globe • Nominated for a PEN America Literary Award “It literally changed my outlook on the world…incredible.” —Shonda Rhimes "The Barn is serious history and skillful journalism, but with the nuance and wallop of a finely wrought novel … The Barn describes not just the poison of silence and lies, but also the dignity of courage and truth.” — The Washington Post “The most brutal, layered, and absolutely beautiful book about Mississippi, and really how the world conspired with the best and worst parts of Mississippi, I will ever read…Reporting and reckoning can get no better, or more important, than this.” —Kiese Laymon “An incredible history of a crime that changed America.” —John Grisham "With integrity, and soul, Thompson unearths the terrible how and why, carrying us back and forth through time, deep in Mississippi—baring sweat, soil, and heart all the way through.” —Imani Perry A shocking and revelatory account of the murder of Emmett Till that lays bare the long lead-up to the crime and how the truth was hidden for so long In summer 1955, two men, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, were charged with the torture and murder of the fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi, and acquitted in a mockery of justice, leaving behind an ink cloud of a false confession. In The Barn , Wright Thompson reveals the true nature and location of the long night of hell that August: inside the barn of one of the killers, within the six-square-mile grid whose official name is Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, fabled in the Delta of myth as the birthplace of the blues, and twenty-three miles from Thompson’s own family farm. Wright Thompson has a deep, local understanding of this story—the world of the families of both Emmett Till and his killers, the historical forces that brought them together in the same place, and how the crime came to loom so large. Putting the killing floor of the barn on the map of West Half, and the Delta, and America, is a way onto the road this country must travel if we are to heal our oldest, deepest wound.

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Rebel Yell - S. C. Gwynne Cover Art

Rebel Yell

Rebel Yell The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson by S. C. Gwynne

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the epic New York Times bestselling Civil War biography of Confederate general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, who became a great and tragic national hero. Stonewall Jackson has long been a figure of legend and romance. As much as any person in the Confederate pantheon—even Robert E. Lee—he embodies the romantic Southern notion of the virtuous lost cause. Jackson is also considered, without argument, one of our country’s greatest military figures. In April 1862, however, he was merely another Confederate general in an army fighting what seemed to be a losing cause. But by June he had engineered perhaps the greatest military campaign in American history and was one of the most famous men in the Western world. Jackson’s strategic innovations shattered the conventional wisdom of how war was waged; he was so far ahead of his time that his techniques would be studied generations into the future. In his “magnificent Rebel Yell …S.C. Gwynne brings Jackson ferociously to life” (New York Newsday ) in a swiftly vivid narrative that is rich with battle lore, biographical detail, and intense conflict among historical figures. Gwynne delves deep into Jackson’s private life and traces Jackson’s brilliant twenty-four-month career in the American Civil War, the period that encompasses his rise from obscurity to fame and legend; his stunning effect on the course of the war itself; and his tragic death, which caused both North and South to grieve the loss of a remarkable American hero.

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The Vietnam War - Geoffrey C. Ward & Ken Burns Cover Art

The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War An Intimate History by Geoffrey C. Ward & Ken Burns

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Based on the celebrated PBS television series, the complete text of an engrossing history of America’s least-understood conflict, “a significant milestone [that] will no doubt do much to determine how the war is understood for years to come.” — The Washington Post More than forty years have passed since the end of the Vietnam War, but its memory continues to loom large in the national psyche. In this intimate history, Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns have crafted a fresh and insightful account of the long and brutal conflict that reunited Vietnam while dividing the United States as nothing else had since the Civil War. From the Gulf of Tonkin and the Tet Offensive to Hamburger Hill and the fall of Saigon, Ward and Burns trace the conflict that dogged three American presidents and their advisers. But most of the voices that echo from these pages belong to less exalted men and women—those who fought in the war as well as those who fought against it, both victims and victors—willing for the first time to share their memories of Vietnam as it really was. A magisterial tour de force, The Vietnam War is an engrossing history of America’s least-understood conflict.

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The First Frontier - Scott Weidensaul Cover Art

The First Frontier

The First Frontier The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, & Endurance in Early America by Scott Weidensaul

"Excitement abounds in Scott Weidensaul's detailed history of the first clashes between European settlers and Native Americans on the East Coast."—Nancy Marie Brown, author of The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman    Frontier: the word carries the inevitable scent of the West. But before Custer or Lewis and Clark, before the first Conestoga wagons rumbled across the Plains, it was the East that marked the frontier—the boundary between complex Native cultures and the first colonizing Europeans.   Here is the older, wilder, darker history of a time when the land between the Atlantic and the Appalachians was contested ground—when radically different societies adopted and adapted the ways of the other, while struggling for control of what all considered to be their land.   The First Frontier traces two and a half centuries of history through poignant, mostly unheralded personal stories—like that of a Harvard-educated Indian caught up in seventeenth-century civil warfare, a mixed-blood interpreter trying to straddle his white and Native heritage, and a Puritan woman wielding a scalping knife whose bloody deeds still resonate uneasily today. It is the first book in years to paint a sweeping picture of the Eastern frontier, combining vivid storytelling with the latest research to bring to life modern America's tumultuous, uncertain beginnings.   "Exciting and revealing . . . a stirring panorama of the land and the peoples who made their mark on it from the late sixteenth to eighteenth centuries . . . This is a rich tableau that both excites and informs about the forging of early American society."— Booklist "Weidensaul's delightful storytelling brings to life the terrors and hopes of the earliest days of America."— Publishers Weekly

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The Victors - Stephen E. Ambrose Cover Art

The Victors

The Victors Eisenhower And His Boys The Men Of World War Ii by Stephen E. Ambrose

From America’s preeminent military historian and bestselling author of Band of Brothers , Stephen E. Ambrose, comes the definitive telling of the average Americans who fought in the eleven month campaign, beginning with D-Day, that ultimately liberated Western Europe and ended the Nazi regime. In The Victors , acclaimed historian Stephen E. Ambrose delivers a sweeping account of the final year of World War II in Europe, drawing from his landmark works D-Day , Citizen Soldiers , Pegasus Bridge , Band of Brothers , and Eisenhower . Combining strategic insight with vivid eyewitness testimony, Ambrose chronicles the Allied campaign from the beaches of Normandy to the collapse of Nazi Germany. The stories within this volume encompass the war’s defining battles and daring operations: British airborne troops seizing Pegasus Bridge in the opening engagement of D-Day, American paratroopers fighting from Utah Beach through the Battle of the Bulge, and Allied forces advancing toward Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. Ambrose also illuminates the momentous decisions made by Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, and other commanders as they directed the invasion and the bloody drive across Europe. Yet the heart of The Victors belongs to the ranks, the ordinary boys and men, who endured the terror, exhilaration, hunger, cold, and filth of combat. Drawing on thousands of interviews and oral histories, Ambrose captures the intimate world of the individual rifleman alongside the vast scale of the European theater, revealing how civilians were transformed into a formidable fighting force. Comprehensive and deeply human, The Victors is both a history of Allied triumph and a tribute to the men who made it possible. Through their courage, sacrifice, and perseverance, Ambrose re-creates the extraordinary campaign that liberated Western Europe and brought the Nazi regime to an end.

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Against All Odds - Alex Kershaw Cover Art

Against All Odds

Against All Odds A True Story of Ultimate Courage and Survival in World War II by Alex Kershaw

*The instant New York Times bestseller* The untold story of four of the most decorated soldiers of World War II—all Medal of Honor recipients—from the beaches of French Morocco to Hitler’s own mountaintop fortress, by the national bestselling author of The First Wave “Pitch-perfect.”— The Wall Street Journal • “Riveting.”— World War II magazine • “Alex Kershaw is the master of putting the reader in the heat of the action.”—Martin Dugard As the Allies raced to defeat Hitler, four men, all in the same unit, earned medal after medal for battlefield heroism. Maurice “Footsie” Britt, a former professional football player, became the very first American to receive every award for valor in a single war. Michael Daly was a West Point dropout who risked his neck over and over to keep his men alive. Keith Ware would one day become the first and only draftee in history to attain the rank of general before serving in Vietnam. In WWII, Ware owed his life to the finest soldier he ever commanded, a baby-faced Texan named Audie Murphy. In the campaign to liberate Europe, each would gain the ultimate accolade, the Congressional Medal of Honor.   Tapping into personal interviews and a wealth of primary source material, Alex Kershaw has delivered his most gripping account yet of American courage, spanning more than six hundred days of increasingly merciless combat, from the deserts of North Africa to the dark heart of Nazi Germany. Once the guns fell silent, these four exceptional warriors would discover just how heavy the Medal of Honor could be—and how great the expectations associated with it. Having survived against all odds, who among them would finally find peace?

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The Gales of November - John U. Bacon Cover Art

The Gales of November

The Gales of November The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Smithsonian • 10 Best History Books of 2025 Bookpage • Best Books of 2025 "A work of spectral beauty destined to be a classic. Readers of Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm, Erik Larsen’s Dead Wake, and Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea will love this deeply reported tale." —Hampton Sides, New York Times best-selling author of The Wide Wide Sea and In the Kingdom of Ice “The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ has been told and retold by authors and bards. But never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful and compelling book.... Dead men tell no tales, but their loved ones do. Mr. Bacon tracked them down and listened.” —John J. Miller, Wall Street Journal On the fiftieth anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald’s sinking, the bestselling author of The Great Halifax Explosion tells the definitive story of the “Mighty Fitz.” For three decades following World War II, the Great Lakes overtook Europe as the epicenter of global economic strength. The region was the beating heart of the world economy, possessing all the power and prestige Silicon Valley does today. And no ship represented the apex of the American Century better than the 729-foot-long Edmund Fitzgerald—the biggest, best, and most profitable ship on the Lakes. But on November 10, 1975, as the “storm of the century” threw 100 mile-per-hour winds and 50-foot waves on Lake Superior, the Mighty Fitz found itself at the worst possible place, at the worst possible time. When she sank, she took all 29 men onboard down with her, leaving the tragedy shrouded in mystery for a half century. In The Gales of November, award-winning journalist John U. Bacon presents the definitive account of the disaster, drawing on more than 100 interviews with the families, friends, and former crewmates of those lost. Bacon explores the vital role Great Lakes shipping played in America’s economic boom, the uncommon lives the sailors led, the sinking’s most likely causes, and the heartbreaking aftermath for those left behind—"the wives, the sons, and the daughters,” as Gordon Lightfoot sang in his unforgettable ballad. Focused on those directly affected by the tragedy, The Gales of November is both an emotional tribute to the lives lost and a propulsive, page-turning narrative history of America’s most-mourned maritime disaster.

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The American Revolution - Gordon S. Wood Cover Art

The American Revolution

The American Revolution A History by Gordon S. Wood

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Radicalism of the Revolution comes “an elegant, concise, and lucid summary of the Revolution’s origins, the war itself, and the social and political changes wrought by the struggle for American independence” ( The Wall Street Journal ). “This slim book tells a big story: one that invites the reader to contemplate the relationships between liberty, power, rights, and the unpredictable outcomes of human action.”— Los Angeles Times Book Review When Abraham Lincoln sought to define the significance of the United States, he naturally looked back to the American Revolution. He knew that the Revolution not only had legally created the United States, but also had produced all of the great hopes and values of the American people. Our noblest ideals and aspirations-our commitments to freedom, constitutionalism, the well-being of ordinary people, and equality-came out of the Revolutionary era. Lincoln saw as well that the Revolution had convinced Americans that they were a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty. The Revolution, in short, gave birth to whatever sense of nationhood and national purpose Americans have had. No doubt the story is a dramatic one: Thirteen insignificant colonies three thousand miles from the centers of Western civilization fought off British rule to become, in fewer than three decades, a huge, sprawling, rambunctious republic of nearly four million citizens. But the history of the American Revolution, like the history of the nation as a whole, ought not to be viewed simply as a story of right and wrong from which moral lessons are to be drawn. It is a complicated and at times ironic story that needs to be explained and understood, not blindly celebrated or condemned. How did this great revolution come about? What was its character? What were its consequences? These are the questions this short history seeks to answer. That it succeeds in such a profound and enthralling way is a tribute to Gordon Wood’s mastery of his subject, and of the historian’s craft.

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Stony the Road - Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Cover Art

Stony the Road

Stony the Road Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

“Stony the Road presents a bracing alternative to Trump-era white nationalism. . . . In our current politics we recognize African-American history—the spot under our country’s rug where the terrorism and injustices of white supremacy are habitually swept. Stony the Road lifts the rug." —Nell Irvin Painter, New York Times Book Review A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that resubjugated them, by the bestselling author of The Black Church and The Black Box. The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked "a new birth of freedom" in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the "nadir" of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance. Through his close reading of the visual culture of this tragic era, Gates reveals the many faces of Jim Crow and how, together, they reinforced a stark color line between white and black Americans. Bringing a lifetime of wisdom to bear as a scholar, filmmaker, and public intellectual, Gates uncovers the roots of structural racism in our own time, while showing how African Americans after slavery combatted it by articulating a vision of a "New Negro" to force the nation to recognize their humanity and unique contributions to America as it hurtled toward the modern age. The story Gates tells begins with great hope, with the Emancipation Proclamation, Union victory, and the liberation of nearly 4 million enslaved African-Americans. Until 1877, the federal government, goaded by the activism of Frederick Douglass and many others, tried at various turns to sustain their new rights. But the terror unleashed by white paramilitary groups in the former Confederacy, combined with deteriorating economic conditions and a loss of Northern will, restored "home rule" to the South. The retreat from Reconstruction was followed by one of the most violent periods in our history, with thousands of black people murdered or lynched and many more afflicted by the degrading impositions of Jim Crow segregation. An essential tour through one of America's fundamental historical tragedies, Stony the Road is also a story of heroic resistance, as figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells fought to create a counter-narrative, and culture, inside the lion's mouth. As sobering as this tale is, it also has within it the inspiration that comes with encountering the hopes our ancestors advanced against the longest odds.

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No Ordinary Time - Doris Kearns Goodwin Cover Art

No Ordinary Time

No Ordinary Time Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic about the relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, and how it shaped the nation while steering it through the Great Depression and the outset of World War II. With an extraordinary collection of details, Goodwin masterfully weaves together a striking number of story lines—Eleanor and Franklin’s marriage and remarkable partnership, Eleanor’s life as First Lady, and FDR’s White House and its impact on America as well as on a world at war. Goodwin effectively melds these details and stories into an unforgettable and intimate portrait of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and of the time during which a new, modern America was born.

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The 1619 Project - Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times Magazine, Caitlin Roper, Ilena SIlverman & Jake Silverstein Cover Art

The 1619 Project

The 1619 Project A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times Magazine, Caitlin Roper, Ilena SIlverman & Jake Silverstein

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER • A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present. “[A] groundbreaking compendium . . . bracing and urgent . . . This collection is an extraordinary update to an ongoing project of vital truth-telling.”— Esquire NOW AN EMMY-WINNING HULU ORIGINAL DOCUSERIES • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY • AN OPRAH DAILY BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE PAST TWO DECADES • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Esquire, Marie Claire, Electric Lit, Ms. magazine, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty people stolen from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States. The New York Times Magazine ’s award-winning 1619 Project issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself. This book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation’s founding and construction—and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life. Featuring contributions from: Leslie Alexander • Michelle Alexander • Carol Anderson • Joshua Bennett • Reginald Dwayne Betts • Jamelle Bouie • Anthea Butler • Matthew Desmond • Rita Dove • Camille T. Dungy • Cornelius Eady • Eve L. Ewing • Nikky Finney • Vievee Francis • Yaa Gyasi • Forrest Hamer • Terrance Hayes • Kimberly Annece Henderson • Jeneen Interlandi • Honorée Fanonne Jeffers • Barry Jenkins • Tyehimba Jess • Martha S. Jones • Robert Jones, Jr. • A. Van Jordan • Ibram X. Kendi • Eddie Kendricks • Yusef Komunyakaa • Kevin M. Kruse • Kiese Laymon • Trymaine Lee • Jasmine Mans • Terry McMillan • Tiya Miles • Wesley Morris • Khalil Gibran Muhammad • Lynn Nottage • ZZ Packer • Gregory Pardlo • Darryl Pinckney • Claudia Rankine • Jason Reynolds • Dorothy Roberts • Sonia Sanchez • Tim Seibles • Evie Shockley • Clint Smith • Danez Smith • Patricia Smith • Tracy K. Smith • Bryan Stevenson • Nafissa Thompson-Spires • Natasha Trethewey • Linda Villarosa • Jesmyn Ward

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Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson Cover Art

Isaac's Storm

Isaac's Storm A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The riveting true story of the Galveston hurricane of 1900, still the deadliest natural disaster in American history—from the acclaimed author of The Devil in the White City “A gripping account ... fascinating to its core, and all the more compelling for being true.” — The New York Times Book Review September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over six thousand people—and Isaac Cline found himself the victim of a devastating personal tragedy. Using Cline's own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man's heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude.

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Scorpions - Noah Feldman Cover Art

Scorpions

Scorpions The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices by Noah Feldman

A group biography of the relationship between FDR and four of his Supreme Court justices, written by legal scholar Noah Feldman. A tiny, ebullient Jew who started as America's leading liberal and ended as its most famous judicial conservative. A Klansman who became an absolutist advocate of free speech and civil rights. A backcountry lawyer who started off trying cases about cows and went on to conduct the most important international trial ever. A self-invented, tall-tale Westerner who narrowly missed the presidency but expanded individual freedom beyond what anyone before had dreamed. Four more different men could hardly be imagined. Yet they had certain things in common. Each was a self-made man who came from humble beginnings on the edge of poverty. Each had driving ambition and a will to succeed. Each was, in his own way, a genius. They began as close allies and friends of FDR, but the quest to shape a new Constitution led them to competition and sometimes outright warfare. Scorpians tells the story of these four great justices: their relationship with Roosevelt, with each other, and with the turbulent world of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. It also serves as a history of the modern Constitution itself.

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The Emerald Mile - Kevin Fedarko Cover Art

The Emerald Mile

The Emerald Mile The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko

From one of Outside magazine’s “Literary All-Stars” comes the thrilling true tale of the fastest boat ride ever through the Grand Canyon, atop the legendary Colorado River flood of 1983. In the spring of 1983, massive flooding along the length of the Colorado River confronted a team of engineers at the Glen Canyon Dam with an unprecedented emergency that may have resulted in the most catastrophic dam failure in history. In the midst of this crisis, the decision to launch a small wooden dory named “The Emerald Mile” at the head of the Grand Canyon, just fifteen miles downstream from the Glen Canyon Dam, seemed not just odd, but downright suicidal. The Emerald Mile, at one time slated to be destroyed, was rescued and brought back to life by Kenton Grua, the man at the oars, who intended to use this flood as a kind of hydraulic sling-shot. The goal was to nail the all-time record for the fastest boat ever propelled—by oar, by motor, or by the grace of God himself—through the heart of the Grand Canyon atop the Colorado River from Lee’s Ferry to Lake Mead. Did he survive? Just barely. Now, this remarkable, epic feat unfolds here, in The Emerald Mile .

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Battle Cry of Freedom - James M. McPherson Cover Art

Battle Cry of Freedom

Battle Cry of Freedom The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson

Filled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, Battle Cry of Freedom will unquestionably become the standard one-volume history of the Civil War. James McPherson's fast-paced narrative fully integrates the political, social, and military events that crowded the two decades from the outbreak of one war in Mexico to the ending of another at Appomattox. Packed with drama and analytical insight, the book vividly recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the Civil War--the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry--and then moves into a masterful chronicle of the war itself--the battles, the strategic maneuvering on both sides, the politics, and the personalities. Particularly notable are McPherson's new views on such matters as the slavery expansion issue in the 1850s, the origins of the Republican Party, the causes of secession, internal dissent and anti-war opposition in the North and the South, and the reasons for the Union's victory. The book's title refers to the sentiments that informed both the Northern and Southern views of the conflict: the South seceded in the name of that freedom of self-determination and self-government for which their fathers had fought in 1776, while the North stood fast in defense of the Union founded by those fathers as the bulwark of American liberty. Eventually, the North had to grapple with the underlying cause of the war--slavery--and adopt a policy of emancipation as a second war aim. This "new birth of freedom," as Lincoln called it, constitutes the proudest legacy of America's bloodiest conflict. This authoritative volume makes sense of that vast and confusing "second American Revolution" we call the Civil War, a war that transformed a nation and expanded our heritage of liberty.

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Killing Reagan - Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard Cover Art

Killing Reagan

Killing Reagan The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency by Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard

From the bestselling team of Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard comes Killing Reagan , a page-turning epic account of the career of President Ronald Reagan that tells the vivid story of his rise to power--and the forces of evil that conspired to bring him down. The basis for the 2016 television movie available on streaming. Just two months into his presidency, Ronald Reagan lay near death after a gunman's bullet came within inches of his heart. His recovery was nothing short of remarkable -- or so it seemed. But Reagan was grievously injured, forcing him to encounter a challenge that few men ever face. Could he silently overcome his traumatic experience while at the same time carrying out the duties of the most powerful man in the world? Told in the same riveting fashion as Killing Lincoln , Killing Kennedy , Killing Jesus , and Killing Patton , Killing Reagan reaches back to the golden days of Hollywood, where Reagan found both fame and heartbreak, up through the years in the California governor's mansion, and finally to the White House, where he presided over boom years and the fall of the Iron Curtain. But it was John Hinckley Jr.'s attack on him that precipitated President Reagan's most heroic actions. In Killing Reagan , O'Reilly and Dugard take readers behind the scenes, creating an unforgettable portrait of a great man operating in violent times.

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The Small and the Mighty - Sharon McMahon Cover Art

The Small and the Mighty

The Small and the Mighty Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement by Sharon McMahon

A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From America’s favorite government teacher, a “fascinating and fun” (Adam Grant) portrait of twelve ordinary Americans whose courage formed the character of our country. In The Small and the Mighty , Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn’t make it into the textbooks. Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers. Through meticulous research, she discovers history’s unsung characters and brings their rich, riveting stories to light for the first time.   You’ll meet a woman astride a white horse riding down Pennsylvania Ave, a young boy detained at a Japanese incarceration camp, a formerly enslaved woman on a mission to reunite with her daughter, a poet on a train, and a teacher who learns to work with her enemies. More than one thing is bombed, and multiple people surprisingly become rich. Some rich with money, and some wealthy with things that matter more. This is a book about what really made America – and Americans – great. McMahon’s cast of improbable champions will become familiar friends, lighting the path we journey in our quest to make the world more just, peaceful, good, and free.

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Killing Kennedy - Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard Cover Art

Killing Kennedy

Killing Kennedy The End of Camelot by Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard

A riveting historical narrative of the shocking events surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the follow-up to mega-bestselling author Bill O'Reilly's Killing Lincoln More than a million readers have thrilled to Bill O'Reilly's Killing Lincoln , the page-turning work of nonfiction about the shocking assassination that changed the course of American history. Now the anchor of The O'Reilly Factor recounts in gripping detail the brutal murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy—and how a sequence of gunshots on a Dallas afternoon not only killed a beloved president but also sent the nation into the cataclysmic division of the Vietnam War and its culture-changing aftermath. In January 1961, as the Cold War escalates, John F. Kennedy struggles to contain the growth of Communism while he learns the hardships, solitude, and temptations of what it means to be president of the United States. Along the way he acquires a number of formidable enemies, among them Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and Alan Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency.  In addition, powerful elements of organized crime have begun to talk about targeting the president and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. In the midst of a 1963 campaign trip to Texas, Kennedy is gunned down by an erratic young drifter named Lee Harvey Oswald. The former Marine Corps sharpshooter escapes the scene, only to be caught and shot dead while in police custody. The events leading up to the most notorious crime of the twentieth century are almost as shocking as the assassination itself. Killing Kennedy chronicles both the heroism and deceit of Camelot, bringing history to life in ways that will profoundly move the reader.  This may well be the most talked about book of the year.

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The Greatest Sentence Ever Written - Walter Isaacson Cover Art

The Greatest Sentence Ever Written

The Greatest Sentence Ever Written by Walter Isaacson

America’s bestselling biographer reveals the origins of the most revolutionary sentence in the Declaration of Independence, the one that defines who we are as Americans—and explains how it should shape our politics today. “Isaacson uses a jeweler’s loupe to scan what gives his snappy little book its engaging title….Isaacson skillfully teases fresh pith and resonance out of those familiar words.” — The Wall Street Journal “A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.” — Kirkus Reviews To celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, Walter Isaacson takes readers on a fascinating deep dive into the creation of one of history’s most powerful sentences: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Drafted by Thomas Jefferson and edited by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, this line lays the foundation for the American Dream and defines the common ground we share as a nation. Isaacson unpacks its genius, word by word, illuminating the then-radical concepts behind it. Readers will gain a fresh appreciation for how it was drafted to inspire unity, equality, and the enduring promise of America. With clarity and insight, he reveals not just the power of these words but describes how, in these polarized times, we can use them to restore an appreciation for our common values.

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The Civil War: A Narrative - Shelby Foote Cover Art

The Civil War: A Narrative

The Civil War: A Narrative Volume 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian by Shelby Foote

Focused on the pivotal year of 1863, the second volume of Shelby Foote’s masterful narrative history brings to life the Battle of Gettysburg and Grant’s Vicksburg campaign and covers some of the most dramatic and important moments in the Civil War.   Includes maps throughout.   "This, then, is narrative history—a kind of history that goes back to an older literary tradition.... The writing is superb...one of the historical and literary achievements of our time." — The Washington Post Book World " Mr. Foote has an acute sense of the relative importance of events and a novelist's skill in directing the reader's attention to the men and the episodes that will influence the course of the whole war, without omitting items which are of momentary interest. His organization of facts could hardly be better." — Atlantic "Though the events of this middle year of the Civil War have been recounted hundreds of times, they have rarely been re-created with such vigor and such picturesque detail." — The New York Times Book Review "The lucidity of the battle narratives, the vigor of the prose, the strong feeling for the men from generals to privates who did the fighting, are all controlled by constant sense of how it happened and what it was all about. Foote has the novelist's feeling for character and situation, without losing the historian's scrupulous regard for recorded fact. The Civil War is likely to stand unequaled." —Walter Mills

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Franklin and Winston - Jon Meacham Cover Art

Franklin and Winston

Franklin and Winston An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship by Jon Meacham

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this “beautifully written and superbly researched dual biography” ( Los Angeles Times Book Review ), Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Jon Meacham “paints a powerful portrait of the enormous friendship between World War II allies [Franklin] Roosevelt and [Winston] Churchill” ( Vanity Fair ).   “Intense and compelling reading.”— The Washington Post Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were the greatest leaders of “the Greatest Generation.” In Franklin and Winston, Jon Meacham explores the fascinating relationship between the two men who piloted the free world to victory in World War II.  Born in the nineteenth century and molders of the twentieth and twenty-first, Roosevelt and Churchill had much in common. In their own time both men were underestimated, dismissed as arrogant, and faced skeptics in their own nations—yet both magnificently rose to the central challenges of the twentieth century. Theirs was a kind of love story, with an emotional Churchill courting an elusive Roosevelt. The British prime minister, who rallied his nation in its darkest hour, standing alone against Adolf Hitler, was always somewhat insecure about his place in FDR’s affections—which was the way Roosevelt wanted it. A man of secrets, FDR liked to keep people off balance, including his wife, Eleanor, his White House aides—and Winston Churchill. Meacham’s sources—including unpublished letters of FDR’ s great secret love, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the papers of Pamela Churchill Harriman, and interviews with people who were in FDR and Churchill’s joint company—shed light on the characters of both men as he engagingly chronicles the hours in which they decided the course of the struggle. Charting the personal drama behind the discussions of strategy and statecraft, Meacham has written the definitive account of the most remarkable friendship of the modern age.

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A Shadow Over the World - William I. Hitchcock Cover Art

A Shadow Over the World

A Shadow Over the World Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Rise of Fascism, and the Making of America's World War II by William I. Hitchcock

From New York Times bestselling author William I. Hitchcock, a riveting, revelatory portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the lead-up to World War II, tracing his—and America’s—awakening to the threat of fascism. How did FDR and the American public respond to the rise of dictators across Europe and Asia on the eve of World War II? The familiar narrative is that they reacted with indifference and embraced isolationism. Only with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were Americans reluctantly drawn into the global conflict. But distinguished historian William I. Hitchcock reveals a far more complex and surprising story. From the time Mussolini came to power in 1922 to America’s entry into the war in 1941, Americans engaged in a fraught national debate over the rising threat—and for some, the lure—of fascism. At the center of this debate was Roosevelt himself. When he took office in 1933, Roosevelt was determined to avoid foreign entanglements that would harm his ambitious domestic agenda of the New Deal. But over the course of his first two terms, a network of journalists, activists, advisers, and diplomats gradually awakened him to the global dangers of fascism. Roosevelt’s transformation was part of a larger national reckoning with authoritarianism around the world. A Shadow Over the World shines a light on a time when a coalition of courageous humanists gathered around a visionary leader to forge a new purpose for America: to protect democracy, oppose imperialism, support human rights, and lead a global fight for freedom. Their successful struggle against the dark forces of fascism holds powerful lessons for our own perilous times.

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This Vast Enterprise - Craig Fehrman Cover Art

This Vast Enterprise

This Vast Enterprise A New History of Lewis & Clark by Craig Fehrman

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A major revisionist history of the Lewis and Clark expedition: For the first time in a generation, This Vast Enterprise offers a fresh and more accurate account of one of the most important episodes in American history, humanizing forgotten figures and shattering long-held myths. “ This Vast Enterprise is a page-turner and a fantastic achievement.” — The New York Times • “Immensely engaging.” — The Wall Street Journal • “This is vivid, character-based history...It also makes for a ripping good read.” — The Boston Globe “Do we really need another book about the Lewis and Clark expedition?...My answer is an emphatic yes. The author has done a huge amount of research, shifting the focus away from the familiar pairing of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark...Each chapter unfolds from the viewpoint of a different individual and the result is a richly woven tapestry of voices...Fehrman reframes this well-known story, revealing it as more complex, and profoundly human.” —Andrea Wulf, The New York Times Book Review (front-cover review) In 1806, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark return from their journey—having led the Corps of Discovery across eight thousand miles of rapids, mountains, forests, and ravines—they bring an incredible tale starring themselves as courageous explorers, skilled survivalists, underrated scientists, and peaceful ambassadors. While there is truth in those descriptions, there is also distortion. From one of the most exciting new historians to emerge in the past decade, This Vast Enterprise offers a novel take on the expedition: a gripping narrative that draws on lost documents, stunning analysis, and Native perspectives. Craig Fehrman spent five years visiting more than thirty archives, interviewing more than a hundred sources, and collecting oral history passed down over centuries. He came to see that the success of Lewis and Clark depended on much more than just Lewis and Clark. We all know Sacajawea, and some of us know York, the Black man Clark enslaved. But here we meet John Ordway, a working-class soldier who fought grizzlies and towed the captains’ hulking barge. We hear from Wolf Calf, a Blackfoot teenager who watched his friend die in a battle with Lewis and his men. Each chapter moves to a different person’s point of view, describing their desires and contradictions. We see Thomas Jefferson operating in an age of bitter partisan unrest—his secret political maneuvers to fund the expedition, revealed here for the first time, are a case study in presidential power. We witness the strategy and strength of Black Buffalo, completely upending our understanding of Lakota-American diplomacy. York, in his chapters, finds ways to wield power and make choices in an era that didn’t allow him much of either. Clark is not a folksy Kentuckian but a student of the Enlightenment. (Fehrman discovered his college notebook; no previous biographer even realized that he went to college.) Lewis is someone willing to sacrifice everything for his country and his mentor, Jefferson. In the end, the captains are men who needed help—from Sacajawea, from the Corps, and from each other. Mile after mile, the expedition pushes on through hailstorms and flash floods, frostbite and infections, rattlesnakes and rabid wolves, with the Spanish cavalry in fierce pursuit. Fehrman balances the story’s adventure with the humanity of its protagonists. The result is a thrilling reminder that even the most familiar moments in history can still surprise us.

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The Last Stand of Fox Company - Bob Drury & Tom Clavin Cover Art

The Last Stand of Fox Company

The Last Stand of Fox Company A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat by Bob Drury & Tom Clavin

"The authors of the bestselling  Halsey's Typhoon  do a fine job recounting one brutal, small-unit action during the Korean War's darkest moment." — Publishers Weekly   November 1950, the Korean Peninsula. After General MacArthur ignores Mao's warnings and pushes his UN forces deeper into North Korea, his 10,000 First Division Marines find themselves surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by 100,000 Chinese soldiers near the Chosin Reservoir. Their only chance for survival is to fight their way south through the Toktong Pass, a narrow gorge that will need to be held open at all costs. The mission is handed to Captain William Barber and the 234 Marines of Fox Company, a courageous but undermanned unit of the First Marines. Barber and his men climb seven miles of frozen terrain to a rocky promontory overlooking the pass, where they will endure four days and five nights of nearly continuous Chinese attempts to take Fox Hill. Amid the relentless violence, three-quarters of Fox's Marines are killed, wounded, or captured. Just when it looks like they will be overrun, Lt. Colonel Raymond Davis, a fearless Marine officer who is fighting south from Chosin, volunteers to lead a daring mission that will seek to cut a hole in the Chinese lines and relieve the men of Fox. This is a fast-paced and gripping account of heroism in the face of impossible odds.

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The Wright Brothers - David McCullough Cover Art

The Wright Brothers

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize David McCullough tells the dramatic story-behind-the-story about the courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly: Wilbur and Orville Wright. On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two unknown brothers from Ohio changed history. But it would take the world some time to believe what had happened: the age of flight had begun, with the first heavier-than-air, powered machine carrying a pilot. Who were these men and how was it that they achieved what they did? David McCullough, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the surprising, profoundly American story of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Far more than a couple of unschooled Dayton bicycle mechanics who happened to hit on success, they were men of exceptional courage and determination, and of far-ranging intellectual interests and ceaseless curiosity, much of which they attributed to their upbringing. The house they lived in had no electricity or indoor plumbing, but there were books aplenty, supplied mainly by their preacher father, and they never stopped reading. When they worked together, no problem seemed to be insurmountable. Wilbur was unquestionably a genius. Orville had such mechanical ingenuity as few had ever seen. That they had no more than a public high school education, little money and no contacts in high places, never stopped them in their “mission” to take to the air. Nothing did, not even the self-evident reality that every time they took off in one of their contrivances, they risked being killed. In this thrilling book, master historian David McCullough draws on the immense riches of the Wright Papers, including private diaries, notebooks, scrapbooks, and more than a thousand letters from private family correspondence to tell the human side of the Wright Brothers’ story, including the little-known contributions of their sister, Katharine, without whom things might well have gone differently for them.

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The Last Stand - Nathaniel Philbrick Cover Art

The Last Stand

The Last Stand Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick

"An engrossing and tautly written account of a critical chapter in American history." — Los Angeles Times Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Hurricane's Eye , Pulitzer Prize finalist Mayflower , and Valiant Ambition , is a historian with a unique ability to bring history to life. The Last Stand is Philbrick's monumental reappraisal of the epochal clash at the Little Bighorn in 1876 that gave birth to the legend of Custer's Last Stand. Bringing a wealth of new information to his subject, as well as his characteristic literary flair, Philbrick details the collision between two American icons- George Armstrong Custer and Sitting Bull-that both parties wished to avoid, and brilliantly explains how the battle that ensued has been shaped and reshaped by national myth.

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New York Burning - Jill Lepore Cover Art

New York Burning

New York Burning Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan by Jill Lepore

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • ANISFIELD-WOLF AWARD WINNER • A revelatory study of the ways in which slavery both destabilized and created American politics. “Vivid and provocative; [Lepore] evokes eighteenth-century New York in all its moral and physical messiness.” — The New Yorker “A historical study that is both intellectually rigorous and broadly accessible. . . . The type of book that we need to read and historians need to write, more often.” — Newsday In New York Burning , Bancroft Prize-winning historian Jill Lepore recounts these dramatic events of 1741, when ten fires blazed across Manhattan and panicked whites suspecting it to be the work a slave uprising went on a rampage. In the end, thirteen black men were burned at the stake, seventeen were hanged and more than one hundred black men and women were thrown into a dungeon beneath City Hall. Even back in the seventeenth century, the city was a rich mosaic of cultures, communities and colors, with slaves making up a full one-fifth of the population. Exploring the political and social climate of the times, Lepore dramatically shows how, in a city rife with state intrigue and terror, the threat of black rebellion united the white political pluralities in a frenzy of racial fear and violence.

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We the People - Jill Lepore Cover Art

We the People

We the People A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore

WINNER OF THE 2026 PULITZER PRIZE FOR HISTORY | ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2025 | NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, New Yorker, Smithsonian, Bookpage, and the Chicago Public Library Winner of the Massachusetts Book Award for Nonfiction Shortlisted for the 2026 Cundill History Prize Longlisted for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction An Independent Press Bestseller "[Lepore's] 15th book, We the People, a history of the U.S. Constitution, may be her best yet, a capacious work that lands at the right moment, like a life buoy, as our ship of state takes on water." —Hamilton Cain, Los Angeles Times From the best-selling author of These Truths comes We the People, a stunning new history of the U.S. Constitution, for a troubling new era. The U.S. Constitution is among the oldest constitutions in the world but also one of the most difficult to amend. Jill Lepore, Harvard professor of history and law, explains why in We the People, the most original history of the Constitution in decades—and an essential companion to her landmark history of the United States, These Truths. Arriving on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding—the anniversary, too, of the first state constitutions—We the People offers a wholly new history of the Constitution. “One of the Constitution’s founding purposes was to prevent change,” Lepore writes. “Another was to allow for change without violence.” Relying on the extraordinary database she has assembled at the Amendments Project, Lepore recounts centuries of attempts, mostly by ordinary Americans, to realize the promise of the Constitution. Yet nearly all those efforts have failed. Although nearly twelve thousand amendments have been introduced in Congress since 1789, and thousands more have been proposed outside its doors, only twenty-seven have ever been ratified. More troubling, the Constitution has not been meaningfully amended since 1971. Without recourse to amendment, she argues, the risk of political violence rises. So does the risk of constitutional change by presidential or judicial fiat. Challenging both the Supreme Court’s monopoly on constitutional interpretation and the flawed theory of “originalism,” Lepore contends in this “gripping and unfamiliar story of our own past” that the philosophy of amendment is foundational to American constitutionalism. The framers never intended for the Constitution to be preserved, like a butterfly, under glass, Lepore argues, but expected that future generations would be forever tinkering with it, hoping to mend America by amending its Constitution through an orderly deliberative and democratic process. Lepore’s remarkable history seeks, too, to rekindle a sense of constitutional possibility. Congressman Jamie Raskin writes that Lepore “has thrown us a lifeline, a way of seeing the Constitution neither as an authoritarian straitjacket nor a foolproof magic amulet but as the arena of fierce, logical, passionate, and often deadly struggle for a more perfect union.” At a time when the Constitution’s vulnerability is all too evident, and the risk of political violence all too real, We the People, with its shimmering prose and pioneering research, hints at the prospects for a better constitutional future, an amended America.

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A Short History of the Confederate States of America - Jefferson Davis Cover Art

A Short History of the Confederate States of America

A Short History of the Confederate States of America by Jefferson Davis

A Short History of the Confederate States of America is a memoir written by Jefferson Davis, completed shortly before his death in 1889. Davis wrote most of this book while staying at Beauvoir along the Mississippi Gulf Coast near Biloxi, Mississippi. The book is much less a Davis memoir than an articulation of the secession argument. In Davis' earlier work, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, he had written what is probably the most thorough exegesis of the compact theory of the United States Constitution in existence, devoting the first fifteen chapters of the book to that topic. Fearful that his readers might not understand, or might forget, he repeated the explanation every second or third chapter after that. Still concerned that people might not understand the compact theory of the Constitution, he wrote A Short History of the Confederate States of America shortly before his death. Jefferson Finis Davis (1808 – 1889) was an American politician who served as the President of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He was a member of the Democratic Party who represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives prior to becoming president of the Confederacy. He was the 23rd United States Secretary of War, serving under U.S. President Franklin Pierce from 1853 to 1857.

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