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

1

American Gunfight - Stephen Hunter Cover Art

American Gunfight

American Gunfight The Plot to Kill Harry Truman--and the Shoot-out that Stopped It by Stephen Hunter

A fast-paced, definitive, and breathtakingly suspenseful account of an extraordinary historical event—the attempted assassination of President Harry Truman in 1950 by two Puerto Rican Nationalists and the bloody shoot-out in the streets of Washington, D C, that saved the president's life. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner and New York Times bestselling novelist Stephen Hunter, and John Bainbridge, Jr., an experienced journalist and lawyer, American Gunfight is at once a groundbreaking work of meticulous historical research and the vivid and dramatically told story of an act of terrorism that almost succeeded. They have pieced together, at last, the story of the conspiracy that nearly doomed the president and how a few good men—ordinary guys who were willing to risk their lives in the line of duty—stopped it. It begins on November 1, 1950, an unseasonably hot afternoon in the sleepy capital. At 2:00 P.M. in his temporary residence at Blair House, the president of the United States takes a nap. At 2:20 P.M., two men approach Blair House from different directions. Oscar Collazo, a respected metal polisher and family man, and Griselio Torresola, an unemployed salesman, don’t look dangerous, not in their new suits and hats, not in their calm, purposeful demeanor, not in their slow, unexcited approach. What the three White House policemen and one Secret Service agent cannot guess is that under each man's coat is a 9mm automatic pistol and in each head, a dream of assassin's glory. At point-blank range, Collazo and then Torresola draw and fire and move toward the president of the United States. Hunter and Bainbridge tell the story of that November day with narrative power and careful attention to detail. They are the first to report on the inner workings of this conspiracy; they examine the forces that led the perpetrators to conceive the plot. The authors also tell the story of the men themselves, from their youth and the worlds in which they grew up to the women they loved and who loved them to the moment the gunfire erupted. Their telling commemorates heroism—the quiet commitment to duty that in some moments of crisis sees some people through an ordeal, even at the expense of their lives.

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The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783 - Joseph J. Ellis Ph.D. Cover Art

The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783

The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783 by Joseph J. Ellis Ph.D.

New York Times Book Review — Editors’ Choice • Chicago Tribune — "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch — "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" Challenging conventional wisdom, The Cause offers a “necessary” (John S. Gardner, Guardian) account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America’s revolutionary era. For Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis, The Cause marks the culmination of a lifetime of engagement with the founding era, completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers. Here Ellis, countering popular histories that romanticize the “Spirit of ’76,” demonstrates through “evocative profiles of British loyalists, slaves, Native Americans and soldiers uncertain of what was being founded” (Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune) that the rebels fought not for a nation but under the mantle of “The Cause,” a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle all but destined to give rise to the warring factions of later American history. Combining action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with characteristically trenchant insight, The Cause “deftly foreshadows all the issues that would complicate America’s trajectory” (Richard Stengel, New York Times Book Review), forcing us to finally reconsider the story we have long told ourselves about our origins—as a people, and as a nation. “At the intersection of his expertise and our need for coherence about our national founding arrives historian Joseph J. Ellis. . . . Ellis is no apologist, but he is a chronicler of the entire revolution, its best aspirations, its worst contradictions, and its ongoing dilemmas.” —Hugh Hewitt, Washington Post

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American Creation - Joseph J. Ellis Cover Art

American Creation

American Creation by Joseph J. Ellis

From the first shots fired at Lexington to the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase, Joseph J. Ellis guides us through the decisive issues of the nation’s founding, and illuminates the emerging philosophies, shifting alliances, and personal and political foibles of our now iconic leaders–Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and Adams. He casts an incisive eye on the founders’ achievements, arguing that the American Revolution was, paradoxically, an evolution–and that part of what made it so extraordinary was the gradual pace at which it occurred. He explains how the idea of a strong federal government was eventually embraced by the American people, and details the emergence of the two-party system, which stands as the founders’ most enduring legacy. Ellis is equally incisive about their failures, and he makes clear how their inability to abolish slavery and to reach a just settlement with the Native Americans has played an equally important role in shaping our national character. With eloquence and insight, Ellis strips the mythic veneer of the revolutionary generation to reveal men both human and inspired, possessed of both brilliance and blindness. American Creation is an audiobook that delineates an era of flawed greatness, at a time when understanding our origins is more important than ever.

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Waking Giant - David S. Reynolds Cover Art

Waking Giant

Waking Giant America in the Age of Jackson by David S. Reynolds

A definitive history of America’s vibrant and tumultuous rise during the Jacksonian era, from the Bancroft Prize-winning author of  Walt Whitman’s America . A  New York Times  Notable Book “Reynolds’s book shines a bright light on the cultural, social, intellectual, and artistic currents buffeting the nation. . . . Reynolds is a thoughtful historian and  Waking Giant  is as engaging and insightful a narrative of this critical interregnum as any written in years.” — New York Times Book Review America experienced unprecedented growth and turmoil in the years between 1815 and 1848. It was an age when Andrew Jackson redefined the presidency and James K. Polk expanded the nation’s territory. Historian and literary critic David S. Reynolds captures the turbulence of a democracy caught in the throes of the controversy over slavery, the rise of capitalism, and the birth of urbanization. He brings to life the reformers, abolitionists, and temperance advocates who struggled to correct America’s worst social ills, and he reveals the shocking phenomena that marked the age: violent mobs, P. T. Barnum’s freaks, all-seeing mesmerists, polygamous prophets, and rabble-rousing feminists. Meticulously researched and masterfully written,  Waking Giant  is a brilliant chronicle of America’s vibrant and tumultuous rise. “Kaleidoscopic. . . . A happy mosaic of an era that may well be, just as the author suggests, the “richest” in American history.” — The Wall Street Journal

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The Quartet - Joseph J. Ellis Cover Art

The Quartet

The Quartet Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 by Joseph J. Ellis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Founding Brothers tells the unexpected story of America’s second great founding and of the men most responsible—Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, John Jay, and James Madison. Ellis explains of why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselves anew. These men, with the help of Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris, shaped the contours of American history by diagnosing the systemic dysfunctions created by the Articles of Confederation, manipulating the political process to force the calling of the Constitutional Convention, conspiring to set the agenda in Philadelphia, orchestrating the debate in the state ratifying conventions, and, finally, drafting the Bill of Rights to assure state compliance with the constitutional settlement, created the new republic. Ellis gives us a dramatic portrait of one of the most crucial and misconstrued periods in American history: the years between the end of the Revolution and the formation of the federal government. The Quartet unmasks a myth, and in its place presents an even more compelling truth—one that lies at the heart of understanding the creation of the United States of America.

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The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe Cover Art

The Right Stuff

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe at his very best" ( The New York Times Book Review ), The Right Stuff is t he basis for the 1983 Oscar Award-winning film of the same name and the 8-part Disney+ TV mini-series. From "America's nerviest journalist" ( Newsweek )--a breath-taking epic, a magnificent adventure story, and an investigation into the true heroism and courage of the first Americans to conquer space. " Millions of words have poured forth about man's trip to the moon, but until now few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of the adventure; namely, what went on in the minds of the astronauts themselves - in space, on the moon, and even during certain odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner life of the astronauts, that Tom Wolfe describes with his almost uncanny empathetic powers, that made The Right Stuff a classic.

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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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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

In the second volume of the landmark American Revolution trilogy by the Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The British Are Coming, George Washington’s army fights on the knife edge between victory and defeat. 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 Nazis Next Door - Eric Lichtblau Cover Art

The Nazis Next Door

The Nazis Next Door How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men by Eric Lichtblau

A Newsweek Best Book of the Year: “Captivating . . . rooted in first-rate research” ( The  New York Times Book Review ).   In this New York Times bestseller, once-secret government records and interviews tell the full story of the thousands of Nazis—from concentration camp guards to high-level officers in the Third Reich—who came to the United States after World War II and quietly settled into new lives.   Many gained entry on their own as self-styled war “refugees.” But some had help from the US government. The CIA, the FBI, and the military all put Hitler’s minions to work as spies, intelligence assets, and leading scientists and engineers, whitewashing their histories. Only years after their arrival did private sleuths and government prosecutors begin trying to identify the hidden Nazis. Now, relying on a trove of newly disclosed documents and scores of interviews, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Eric Lichtblau reveals this little-known and “disturbing” chapter of postwar history ( Salon ).  

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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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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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Gettysburg - Allen C. Guelzo Cover Art

Gettysburg

Gettysburg The Last Invasion by Allen C. Guelzo

Winner of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History An Economist Best Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year The Battle of Gettysburg has been written about at length and thoroughly dissected in terms of strategic importance, but never before has a book taken readers so close to the experience of the individual soldier. Two-time Lincoln Prize winner Allen C. Guelzo shows us the face, the sights and the sounds of nineteenth-century combat: the stone walls and gunpowder clouds of Pickett’s Charge; the reason that the Army of Northern Virginia could be smelled before it could be seen; the march of thousands of men from the banks of the Rappahannock in Virginia to the Pennsylvania hills. What emerges is a previously untold story of army life in the Civil War: from the personal politics roiling the Union and Confederate officer ranks, to the peculiar character of artillery units. Through such scrutiny, one of history’s epic battles is given extraordinarily vivid new life.

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The Accidental President - A J Baime Cover Art

The Accidental President

The Accidental President Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World by A J Baime

A hypnotically fast-paced, masterful reporting of Harry Truman’s first 120 days as president, when he took on Germany, Japan, Stalin, and a secret weapon of unimaginable power—marking the most dramatic rise to greatness in American history. Chosen as FDR’s fourth-term vice president for his well-praised work ethic, good judgment, and lack of enemies, Harry S. Truman was the prototypical ordinary man. That is, until he was shockingly thrust in over his head after FDR’s sudden death. The first four months of Truman’s administration saw the founding of the United Nations, the fall of Berlin, victory at Okinawa, firebombings in Tokyo, the first atomic explosion, the Nazi surrender, the liberation of concentration camps, the mass starvation in Europe, the Potsdam Conference, the controversial decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the surrender of imperial Japan, and finally, the end of World War II and the rise of the Cold War. No other president had ever faced so much in such a short period of time. The Accidental President escorts readers into the situation room with Truman during a tumultuous, history-making 120 days, when the stakes were high and the challenges even higher. “[A] well-judged and hugely readable book . . . few are as entertaining.” —Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

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Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America - Russell Shorto Cover Art

Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America

Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America by Russell Shorto

One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 The author of The Island at the Center of the World offers up a thrilling narrative of how New York—that brash, bold, archetypal city—came to be. In 1664, England decided to invade the Dutch-controlled city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, had dreams of empire, and their archrivals, the Dutch, were in the way. But Richard Nicolls, the military officer who led the English flotilla bent on destruction, changed his strategy once he encountered Peter Stuyvesant, New Netherland’s canny director general. Bristling with vibrant characters, Taking Manhattan reveals the founding of New York to be an invention, the result of creative negotiations that would blend the multiethnic, capitalistic society of New Amsterdam with the power of the rising English empire. But the birth of what might be termed the first modern city is also a story of the brutal dispossession of Native Americans and of the roots of American slavery. The book draws from newly translated materials and illuminates neglected histories—of religious refugees, Indigenous tribes, and free and enslaved Africans. Taking Manhattan tells the riveting story of the birth of New York City as a center of capitalism and pluralism, a foundation from which America would rise. It also shows how the paradox of New York’s origins—boundless opportunity coupled with subjugation and displacement—reflects America’s promise and failure to this day. Russell Shorto, whose work has been described as “astonishing” (New York Times) and “literary alchemy” (Chicago Tribune), has once again mined archival sources to offer a vibrant tale and a fresh and trenchant argument about American beginnings.

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Keeping the Faith - Brenda Wineapple Cover Art

Keeping the Faith

Keeping the Faith God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation by Brenda Wineapple

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Brenda Wineapple’s wonderful account of the Scopes trial sheds light not only on the battles of the past but on the struggles of the present.”—Jon Meacham “History at its most delicious.”— The New York Times Book Review (front page review, Editors’ Choice) The dramatic story of the 1925 Scopes trial, which captivated the nation and exposed profound divisions in America that still resonate today—divisions over the meaning of freedom, religion, education, censorship, and civil liberties in a democracy “Propulsive . . . a terrific story about a pivotal moment in our history.”—Ken Burns ONE OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE ’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “No subject possesses the minds of men like religious bigotry and hate, and these fires are being lighted today in America.” So said legendary attorney Clarence Darrow as hundreds of people descended on the sleepy town of Dayton, Tennessee, for the trial of a schoolteacher named John T. Scopes, who was charged with breaking the law by teaching evolution to his biology class in a public school. Brenda Wineapple, the award-winning author of The Impeachers, explores how and why the Scopes trial quickly seemed a circus-like media sensation, drawing massive crowds and worldwide attention. Darrow, a brilliant and controversial lawyer, said in his electrifying defense of Scopes that people should be free to think, worship, and learn. William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic nominee for president, argued for the prosecution that evolution undermined the fundamental, literal truth of the Bible and created a society without morals, meaning, and hope. In Keeping the Faith, Wineapple takes us into the early years of the twentieth century—years of racism, intolerance, and world war—to illuminate, through this pivotal legal showdown, a seismic period in American history. At its heart, the Scopes trial dramatized conflicts over many of the fundamental values that define America, and that continue to divide Americans today.

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Confronting the Presidents - Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard Cover Art

Confronting the Presidents

Confronting the Presidents No Spin Assessments from Washington to Biden by Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard

Instant #1 New York Times and USA Today nonfiction bestseller! Every American president, from Washington to Biden: Their lives, policies, foibles, and legacies, assessed with clear-eyed authority and wit. Authors of the acclaimed Killing books, the #1 bestselling narrative history series in the world, Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard begin a new direction with Confronting the Presidents. From Washington to Jefferson, Lincoln to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Kennedy to Nixon, Reagan to Obama and Biden, the 45 United States presidents have left lasting impacts on our nation. Some of their legacies continue today, some are justly forgotten, and some have changed as America has changed. Whether famous, infamous, or obscure, all the presidents shaped our nation in unexpected ways. The authors' extensive research has uncovered never before seen historical facts based on private correspondence and newly discovered documentation, such as George Washington's troubled relationship with his mother. In Confronting the Presidents, O’Reilly and Dugard present 45 wonderfully entertaining and insightful portraits of each president, with no-spin commentary on their achievements—or lack thereof. Who best served America, and who undermined the founding ideals? Who were the first ladies, and what were their surprising roles in making history? Which presidents were the best, which the worst, and which didn’t have much impact? How do decisions made in one era, under the pressure of particular circumstances, still resonate today? And what do presidents like to eat, drink, and do when they aren’t working—or even sometimes when they are? These and many more questions are answered in each fascinating chapter of Confronting the Presidents . Written with O’Reilly and Dugard’s signature style, authority, and eye for telling detail, Confronting the Presidents will delight all readers of history, politics, and current affairs, especially during the 2024 election season.

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Blood and Thunder - Hampton Sides Cover Art

Blood and Thunder

Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Ghost Soldiers comes an eye-opening history of the American conquest of the West—"a story full of authority and color, truth and prophecy" ( The New York Times Book Review ) . In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness. At the center of this sweeping tale is Kit Carson, the trapper, scout, and soldier whose adventures made him a legend. Sides shows us how this illiterate mountain man understood and respected the Western tribes better than any other American, yet willingly followed orders that would ultimately devastate the Navajo nation. Rich in detail and spanning more than three decades, this is an essential addition to our understanding of how the West was really won.

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Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County - Kristen Green Cover Art

Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County

Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle by Kristen Green

The provocative true story of one Virginia school system’s refusal to integrate after the US Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional. A New York Times  Bestseller A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year In the wake of the Supreme Court’s unanimous  Brown v. Board of Education  decision, Virginia’s Prince Edward County refused to obey the law. Rather than desegregate, the county closed its public schools, locking and chaining the doors. The community’s white leaders quickly established a private academy, commandeering supplies from the shuttered public schools to use in their all-white classrooms. Meanwhile, black parents had few options: keep their kids at home, move across county lines, or send them to live with relatives in other states. For five years, the schools remained closed. Kristen Green, a longtime newspaper reporter, grew up in Farmville and attended Prince Edward Academy, which did not admit black students until 1986. In her journey to uncover what happened in her hometown before she was born, Green tells the stories of families divided by the school closures and of 1,700 black children denied an education. As she peels back the layers of this haunting period in our nation’s past, her own family’s role—no less complex and painful—comes to light. Praise for Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County “[Green’s] thoughtful book is a gift to a new generation of readers who need to know this story.” — Washington Post “A gripping narrative. . . . [Green’s] writing is powerful and persuasive.” — New York Times Book Review “Intimate and candid.” — Richmond Times-Dispatch “Not easily forgotten.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

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A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn Cover Art

A People's History of the United States

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

With a new introduction by Anthony Arnove, this updated edition of the classic national bestseller reviews the book’s thirty-five year history and demonstrates once again why it is a significant contribution to a complete and balanced understanding of American history. Since its original landmark publication in 1980, A People's History of the United States has been chronicling American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official version of history taught in schools—with its emphasis on great men in high places—to focus on the street, the home, and the, workplace. Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History of the United States is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of—and in the words of—America's women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers. As historian Howard Zinn shows, many of our country's greatest battles—the fights for a fair wage, an eight-hour workday, child-labor laws, health and safety standards, universal suffrage, women's rights, racial equality—were carried out at the grassroots level, against bloody resistance. Covering Christopher Columbus's arrival through President Clinton's first term, A People's History of the United States, which was nominated for the American Book Award in 1981, features insightful analysis of the most important events in our history. 

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1776 - David McCullough Cover Art

1776

1776 by David McCullough

America’s beloved and distinguished historian presents, in a book of breathtaking excitement, drama, and narrative force, the stirring story of the year of our nation’s birth, 1776, interweaving, on both sides of the Atlantic, the actions and decisions that led Great Britain to undertake a war against her rebellious colonial subjects and that placed America’s survival in the hands of George Washington. In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence—when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper. Based on extensive research in both American and British archives, 1776 is a powerful drama written with extraordinary narrative vitality. It is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. And it is the story of the King’s men, the British commander, William Howe, and his highly disciplined redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known. Written as a companion work to his celebrated biography of John Adams, David McCullough’s 1776 is another landmark in the literature of American history.

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The Chosen Few - Gregg Zoroya & Admiral William H. McRaven Cover Art

The Chosen Few

The Chosen Few A Company of Paratroopers and Its Heroic Struggle to Survive in the Mountains of Afghanistan by Gregg Zoroya & Admiral William H. McRaven

The never-before-told story of one of the most decorated units in the war in Afghanistan and its fifteen-month ordeal that culminated in the 2008 Battle of Wanat, the war's deadliest A single company of US paratroopers--calling themselves the "Chosen Few"--arrived in eastern Afghanistan in late 2007 hoping to win the hearts and minds of the remote mountain people and extend the Afghan government's reach into this wilderness. Instead, they spent the next fifteen months in a desperate struggle, living under almost continuous attack, forced into a slow and grinding withdrawal, and always outnumbered by Taliban fighters descending on them from all sides. Month after month, rocket-propelled grenades, rockets, and machine-gun fire poured down on the isolated and exposed paratroopers as America's focus and military resources shifted to Iraq. Just weeks before the paratroopers were to go home, they faced their last--and toughest--fight. Near the village of Wanat in Nuristan province, an estimated three hundred enemy fighters surrounded about fifty of the Chosen Few and others defending a partially finished combat base. Nine died and more than two dozen were wounded that day in July 2008, making it arguably the bloodiest battle of the war in Afghanistan. The Chosen Few would return home tempered by war. Two among them would receive the Medal of Honor. All of them would be forever changed.

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Stamped from the Beginning - Ibram X. Kendi Cover Art

Stamped from the Beginning

Stamped from the Beginning The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

 The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society. Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America -- it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit. In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis. As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities. In shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope.

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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 Warmth of Other Suns - Isabel Wilkerson Cover Art

The Warmth of Other Suns

The Warmth of Other Suns The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S FIVE BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY • A LOS ANGELES TIMES BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE LAST 30 YEARS “A brilliant and stirring epic . . . Ms. Wilkerson does for the Great Migration what John Steinbeck did for the Okies in his fiction masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath ; she humanizes history, giving it emotional and psychological depth.”—John Stauffer, The Wall Street Journal “What she’s done with these oral histories is stow memory in amber.”—Lynell George, Los Angeles Times WINNER: The Mark Lynton History Prize • The Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction • The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize • The Hurston-Wright Award for Nonfiction • The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism • NAACP Image Award for Best Literary Debut • Stephen Ambrose Oral History Prize FINALIST: The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction • Dayton Literary Peace Prize ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times • USA Today • Publishers Weekly • O: The Oprah Magazine • Salon • Newsday • The Daily Beast ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker • The Washington Post • The Economist • Boston Globe • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • Entertainment Weekly • Philadelphia Inquirer • The Guardian • The Seattle Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Christian Science Monitor In this beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson presents a definitive and dramatic account of one of the great untold stories of American history: the Great Migration of six million Black citizens who fled the South for the North and West in search of a better life, from World War I to 1970. Wilkerson tells this interwoven story through the lives of three unforgettable protagonists: Ida Mae Gladney, a sharecropper’s wife, who in 1937 fled Mississippi for Chicago; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, and Robert Foster, a surgeon who left Louisiana in 1953 in hopes of making it in California. Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous cross-country journeys by car and train and their new lives in colonies in the New World. The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is a modern classic.

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Dereliction of Duty - H. R. McMaster Cover Art

Dereliction of Duty

Dereliction of Duty Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff by H. R. McMaster

"The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of the New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C."  —H. R. McMaster (from the Conclusion) Dereliction Of Duty is a stunning analysis of how and why the United States became involved in an all-out and disastrous war in Southeast Asia. Fully and convincingly researched, based on transcripts and personal accounts of crucial meetings, confrontations and decisions, it is the only book that fully re-creates what happened and why. McMaster pinpoints the policies and decisions that got the United States into the morass and reveals who made these decisions and the motives behind them, disproving the published theories of other historians and excuses of the participants. A page-turning narrative, Dereliction Of Duty focuses on a fascinating cast of characters: President Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, General Maxwell Taylor, McGeorge Bundy and other top aides who deliberately deceived the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Congress and the American public. McMaster’s only book, Dereliction of Duty is an explosive and authoritative new look at the controversy concerning the United States involvement in Vietnam.

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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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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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Red Scare - Clay Risen Cover Art

Red Scare

Red Scare Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America by Clay Risen

As relevant as it is comprehensive, Red Scare tells the story of McCarthyism and the Red Scare—based in part on newly declassified sources—by an award-winning writer of history and New York Times reporter. The film Oppenheimer has awakened interest in this vital period of American history. Now, for the first time in a generation, Red Scare presents a narrative history of the anti-Communist witch hunt that gripped America in the decade following World War II. The cultural phenomenon, most often referred to as McCarthyism, was an outgrowth of the conflict between social conservatives and New Deal progressives, coupled with the terrifying onset of the Cold War. This defining moment in American history, unlike any that preceded it, was marked by an unprecedented degree of political hysteria. Drawing upon newly declassified documents, journalist Clay Risen recounts how politicians like Joseph McCarthy, with the help of an extended network of other government officials and organizations, systematically ruined thousands of lives in their deluded pursuit of alleged Communist conspiracies. Beginning with the origins of the era after WWI through to its conclusion in 1957, Risen brings to life the politics, patriotism, opportunism, courage, and delirium of those years through the lives and experiences of a cast of towering historical figures, including President Eisenhower, Roy Cohn, Paul Robeson, Robert Oppenheimer, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Richard Nixon, and many more individuals known and unknown. Red Scare takes us beyond the familiar story of McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklists to a fuller understanding of what the country went through at a time of moral questioning and perceived threat from the left, and what we were capable of doing to each other as a result. An urgent, accessible, and important history, Red Scare reveals an all-too-familiar pattern of illiberal conspiracy-mongering and political and cultural backlash that speaks directly to the antagonism and divisiveness of our contemporary moment.

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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 how forces from around the world converged on the Mississippi Delta in the long lead-up to the crime, and how the truth was erased for so long Wright Thompson’s family farm in Mississippi is 23 miles from the site of one of the most notorious and consequential killings in American history, yet he had to leave the state for college before he learned the first thing about it. To this day, fundamental truths about the crime are widely unknown, including where it took place and how many people were involved. This is no accident: the cover-up began at once, and it is ongoing. In August 1955, two men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were charged with the torture and murder of the 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. After their inevitable acquittal in a mockery of justice, they gave a false confession to a journalist, which was misleading about where the long night of hell took place and who was involved. In fact, Wright Thompson reveals, at least eight people can be placed at the scene, which was inside the barn of one of the killers, on a plot of land 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 on nearby Dockery Plantation. Even in the context of the racist caste regime of the time, the four-hour torture and murder of a Black boy barely in his teens for whistling at a young white woman was acutely depraved; Till’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley’s decision to keep the casket open seared the crime indelibly into American consciousness. Wright Thompson has a deep understanding of this story—the world of the families of both Emmett Till and his killers, and all the forces that aligned to place them together on that spot on the map. As he shows, the full horror of the crime was its inevitability, and how much about it we still need to understand. Ultimately this is a story about property, and money, and power, and white supremacy. It implicates all of us. In The Barn , Thompson brings to life the small group of dedicated people who have been engaged in the hard, fearful business of bringing the truth to light. Putting the killing floor of the barn on the map of Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, and the Delta, and America, is a way of mapping the road this country must travel if we are to heal our oldest, deepest wound.

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The British Are Coming - Rick Atkinson Cover Art

The British Are Coming

The British Are Coming The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 by Rick Atkinson

Winner of the George Washington Prize Winner of the Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American History Winner of the Excellence in American History Book Award Winner of the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award From the bestselling author of the Liberation Trilogy comes the extraordinary first volume of his new trilogy about the American Revolution Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army at Dawn and two other superb books about World War II, has long been admired for his deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative histories. Now he turns his attention to a new war, and in the initial volume of the Revolution Trilogy he recounts the first twenty-one months of America’s violent war for independence. From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, American militiamen and then the ragged Continental Army take on the world’s most formidable fighting force. It is a gripping saga alive with astonishing characters: Henry Knox, the former bookseller with an uncanny understanding of artillery; Nathanael Greene, the blue-eyed bumpkin who becomes a brilliant battle captain; Benjamin Franklin, the self-made man who proves to be the wiliest of diplomats; George Washington, the commander in chief who learns the difficult art of leadership when the war seems all but lost. The story is also told from the British perspective, making the mortal conflict between the redcoats and the rebels all the more compelling. Full of riveting details and untold stories, The British Are Coming is a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. Rick Atkinson has given stirring new life to the first act of our country’s creation drama.

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The Fifteen - William Geroux Cover Art

The Fifteen

The Fifteen Murder, Retribution, and the Forgotten Story of Nazi POWs in America by William Geroux

The revelatory true story of the long-forgotten POW camps for German soldiers erected in hundreds of small U.S. towns during World War II, and the secret Nazi killings that ensnared fifteen brave American POWs in a high-stakes showdown. “In the pantheon of American history, it’s very hard to find compelling, original stories, and even harder to find authors worthy of them. In The Fifteen , William Geroux delivers the goods.”—John U. Bacon, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Halifax Explosion The American government was faced with an unprecedented challenge: where to house the nearly 400,000 German prisoners of war plucked from the battlefield and shipped across the Atlantic. On orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Department of War hastily built hundreds of POW camps in the United States. Today, traces of those camps—which once dotted the landscape from Maine to California—have all but vanished. Forgotten, too, is the grisly series of killings that took place within them: Nazi power games playing out in the heart of the United States. Protected by the Geneva Convention, German POWs were well-fed and housed. Many worked on American farms, and a few would even go on to marry farmers’ daughters. Ardent Nazis in the camps, however, took a dim view of fellow Germans who befriended their captors. Soon, the killings began. In camp after camp, Nazis attacked fellow Germans they deemed disloyal. Fifteen were sentenced to death by secret U.S. military tribunals for acts of murder. In response, German authorities condemned fifteen American POWs to the same fate, and, in the waning days of the war, Germany proposed an audacious trade: fifteen German lives for fifteen American lives. Drawing on extensive research, journalist and author William Geroux shines a spotlight on this story of murder and high-stakes diplomacy, and on the fifteen American lives that hung in the balance—from a fearless P-51 Mustang fighter pilot to a hot-tempered lieutenant colonel nicknamed “King Kong.” Propulsive and vividly rendered, The Fifteen reminds us that what happens to soldiers after they exit the battlefield can be just as harrowing as what they experience on it.

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The Invisible Spy - Thomas Maier Cover Art

The Invisible Spy

The Invisible Spy Churchill's Rockefeller Center Spy Ring and America’s First Secret Agent of World War II by Thomas Maier

The untold WWII story of a former NFL player turned White House insider who worked with Churchill’s undercover agents in New York City to conduct the biggest foreign spy operation ever within the US, and inspired Ian Fleming's James Bond, for fans of Ben Macintyre and Erik Larson. As a tough but smart Italian American kid, Ernest Cuneo played Ivy League football at Columbia University and was in the old Brooklyn Dodgers NFL franchise before becoming a city hall lawyer and “Brain Trust'' aide to President Roosevelt. He was on the payroll of national radio columnist Walter Winchell and mingled with the famous and powerful. But his status as a spy remained a secret, hiding in plain sight. During this time, Cuneo began a close friendship with British spy Ian Fleming and helped inspire Fleming's James Bond novels. He also began a love affair with one of Churchill's agents at Rockefeller Center—Margaret Watson, a beautiful Canadian woman with a photographic memory ideal for spycraft. In one nighttime attack, Watson was nearly smothered to death by a Nazi assassin inside her women’s dormitory near Rockefeller Center. Cuneo’s transformation from a gridiron athlete into a high-stakes intelligence go-between and political influencer is one of the great untold stories of American espionage. He has remained “invisible” in the public eye—until now, with this unveiled look into his life. From the bestselling author and producer of two hit TV series, Mafia Spies and Masters of Sex, Thomas Maier delves into the little-known tales behind the Rockefeller Center spy operation and the origins of American intelligence. The Invisible Spy  weaves Cuneo’s remarkable personal story with vivid insights about many top twentieth-century figures, including Churchill, FDR and later JFK. Full of action and fascinating characters, this untold history reveals how Cuneo, as America's first WWII spy, helped the British launch a covert campaign against Nazi conspirators hidden in America, an espionage war unbeknownst to many. 

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Hayek's Bastards - Quinn Slobodian Cover Art

Hayek's Bastards

Hayek's Bastards Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right by Quinn Slobodian

How neoliberals turned to nature to defend inequality after the end of the Cold War Neoliberals should have seen the end of the Cold War as a total victory—but they didn’t. Instead, they saw the chameleon of communism changing colors from red to green. The poison of civil rights, feminism, and environmentalism ran through the veins of the body politic and they needed an antidote. To defy demands for equality, many neoliberals turned to nature. Race, intelligence, territory, and precious metal would be bulwarks against progressive politics. Reading and misreading the writings of their sages, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, they articulated a philosophy of three hards—hardwired human nature, hard borders, and hard money—and forged the alliances with racial psychologists, neoconfederates, ethnonationalists, and goldbugs that would become known as the alt-right. Following Hayek’s bastards from Murray Rothbard to Charles Murray to Javier Milei, we find that key strains of the Far Right emerged within the neoliberal intellectual movement not against it. What has been reported as an ideological backlash against neoliberal globalization in recent years is often more of a frontlash. This history of ideas shows us that the reported clash of opposites is more like a family feud.

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Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation - Kristin Kobes Du Mez Cover Art

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.

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The Greater Journey - David McCullough Cover Art

The Greater Journey

The Greater Journey Americans in Paris by David McCullough

The #1 bestseller that tells the remarkable story of the generations of American artists, writers, and doctors who traveled to Paris, fell in love with the city and its people, and changed America through what they learned, told by America’s master historian, David McCullough. Not all pioneers went west. In The Greater Journey , David McCullough tells the enthralling, inspiring—and until now, untold—story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, and others who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, hungry to learn and to excel in their work. What they achieved would profoundly alter American history. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America, was one of this intrepid band. Another was Charles Sumner, whose encounters with black students at the Sorbonne inspired him to become the most powerful voice for abolition in the US Senate. Friends James Fenimore Cooper and Samuel F. B. Morse worked unrelentingly every day in Paris, Morse not only painting what would be his masterpiece, but also bringing home his momentous idea for the telegraph. Harriet Beecher Stowe traveled to Paris to escape the controversy generated by her book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin . Three of the greatest American artists ever—sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent—flourished in Paris, inspired by French masters. Almost forgotten today, the heroic American ambassador Elihu Washburne bravely remained at his post through the Franco-Prussian War, the long Siege of Paris, and the nightmare of the Commune. His vivid diary account of the starvation and suffering endured by the people of Paris is published here for the first time. Telling their stories with power and intimacy, McCullough brings us into the lives of remarkable men and women who, in Saint-Gaudens’ phrase, longed “to soar into the blue.”

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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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All That She Carried - Tiya Miles Cover Art

All That She Carried

All That She Carried The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a “deeply layered and insightful” ( The Washington Post ) testament to people who are left out of the archives.   WINNER: Frederick Douglass Book Prize, Harriet Tubman Prize, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, Lawrence W. Levine Award, Darlene Clark Hine Award, Cundill History Prize, Joan Kelly Memorial Prize, Massachusetts Book Award ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Slate, Vulture, Publishers Weekly “A history told with brilliance and tenderness and fearlessness.”—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States   In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag for her with a few items, and, soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley’s granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the sack in spare, haunting language.    Historian Tiya Miles carefully traces these women’s faint presence in archival records, and, where archives fall short, she turns to objects, art, and the environment to write a singular history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, in the United States. All That She Carried is a poignant story of resilience and love passed down against steep odds. It honors the creativity and resourcefulness of people who preserved family ties when official systems refused to do so, and it serves as a visionary illustration of how to reconstruct and recount their stories today.   FINALIST: MAAH Stone Book Award, Kirkus Prize, Mark Lynton History Prize, Chatauqua Prize, Women’s Prize ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, NPR, Time, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Smithsonian Magazine, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, Book Riot, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist

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Code Girls - Liza Mundy Cover Art

Code Girls

Code Girls The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II by Liza Mundy

The award-winning New York Times bestseller about the American women who secretly served as codebreakers during World War II--a "prodigiously researched and engrossing" ( New York Times ) book that "shines a light on a hidden chapter of American history" ( Denver Post). Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them. A strict vow of secrecy nearly erased their efforts from history; now, through dazzling research and interviews with surviving code girls, bestselling author Liza Mundy brings to life this riveting and vital story of American courage, service, and scientific accomplishment.

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The Pursuit of Happiness - Jeffrey Rosen Cover Art

The Pursuit of Happiness

The Pursuit of Happiness How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America by Jeffrey Rosen

A New York Times bestseller and an “enriching…brilliant” (David W. Blight, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Frederick Douglass ) examination of what “the pursuit of happiness” meant to our nation’s Founders and how that famous phrase defined their lives and became the foundation of our democracy. The Declaration of Independence identified “the pursuit of happiness” as one of our unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. Jeffrey Rosen, the president of the National Constitution Center, profiles six of the most influential founders—Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton—to show what pursuing happiness meant in their lives, and to give us the “best and most readable introduction to the ideas of the Founders that we have” (Gordon Wood, author of Power and Liberty ). By reading the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers who inspired the Founders, Rosen shows us how they understood the pursuit of happiness as a quest for being good, not feeling good—the pursuit of lifelong virtue, not short-term pleasure. Among those virtues were the habits of industry, temperance, moderation, and sincerity, which the Founders viewed as part of a daily struggle for self-improvement, character development, and calm self-mastery. They believed that political self-government required personal self-government. For all six Founders, the pursuit of virtue was incompatible with enslavement of African Americans, although the Virginians betrayed their own principles. “Immensely readable and thoughtful” (Ken Burns), The Pursuit of Happiness is more than an elucidation of the Declaration’s famous phrase; it is a revelatory journey into the minds of the Founders, and a deep, rich, and fresh understanding of the foundation of our democracy.

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Only the Brave - Don Keith Cover Art

Only the Brave

Only the Brave July 1944--The Epic Battle for Guam by Don Keith

For Dutton Caliber's American War Heroes series, a World War II narrative on the American liberation of Guam in 1944, focusing on the twenty days of intense combat as the Marine Corps took the island back from the Japanese. On July 21, 1944, a US Marine division landed on the beaches of Guam, a once sleepy island in the Pacific that had been seized from the Americans by the Japanese in the hours after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese would not be giving Guam up easily. The large enemy force defended the island viciously, punching holes through the American lines, attacking from the flanks, and eventually resorting to banzai suicide attacks. The fighting was bloody and brutal, every bit as deadly as Iwo Jima or Okinawa would be. Now, acclaimed author Don Keith offers up a compelling account of one of the toughest fights of the Pacific War, a battle that led to ten thousand American casualties and four Medals of Honor.

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Book and Dagger - Elyse Graham Cover Art

Book and Dagger

Book and Dagger How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham

The untold story of the academics who became OSS spies, invented modern spycraft, and helped turn the tide of the war At the start of WWII, the U.S. found itself in desperate need of an intelligence agency. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to today’s CIA, was quickly formed—and, in an effort to fill its ranks with experts, the OSS turned to academia for recruits. Suddenly, literature professors, librarians, and historians were training to perform undercover operations and investigative work—and these surprising spies would go on to profoundly shape both the course of the war and our cultural institutions with their efforts. In Book and Dagger, Elyse Graham draws on personal histories, letters, and declassified OSS files to tell the story of a small but connected group of humanities scholars turned spies. Among them are Joseph Curtiss, a literature professor who hunted down German spies and turned them into double agents; Sherman Kent, a smart-mouthed history professor who rose to become the head of analysis for all of Europe and Africa; and Adele Kibre, an archivist who was sent to Stockholm to secretly acquire documents for the OSS. These unforgettable characters would ultimately help lay the foundations of modern intelligence and transform American higher education when they returned after the war. Thrillingly paced and rigorously researched, Book and Dagger is an inspiring and gripping true story about a group of academics who helped beat the Nazis—a tale that reveals the indelible power of the humanities to change the world.

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The Watchdog - Steve Drummond Cover Art

The Watchdog

The Watchdog How the Truman Committee Battled Corruption and Helped Win World War Two by Steve Drummond

*WINNER OF THE 2024 HARRY S. TRUMAN BOOK AWARD* The story of how a little-known junior senator fought wartime corruption and, in the process, set himself up to become vice president and ultimately President Harry Truman. Months before Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt knew that the United States was on the verge of entering another world war for which it was dangerously ill-prepared. The urgent times demanded a transformation of the economy, with the government bankrolling the unfathomably expensive task of enlisting millions of citizens while also producing the equipment necessary to successfully fight—all of which opened up opportunities for graft, fraud and corruption. In The Watchdog, Steve Drummond draws the reader into the fast-paced story of how Harry Truman, still a newcomer to Washington politics, cobbled together a bipartisan team of men and women that took on powerful corporate entities and the Pentagon, placing Truman in the national spotlight and paving his path to the White House. Drawing on the largely unexamined records of the Truman Committee as well as oral histories, personal letters, newspaper archives and interviews, Steve Drummond—an award-winning senior editor and executive producer at NPR—brings the colorful characters and intrigue of the committee’s work to life. The Watchdog provides readers with a window to a time that was far from perfect but where it was possible to root out corruption and hold those responsible to account. It shows us what can be possible if politicians are governed by the principles of their office rather than self-interest.

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When Broadway Was Black - Caseen Gaines Cover Art

When Broadway Was Black

When Broadway Was Black The Triumphant Story of the All-Black Musical that Changed the World by Caseen Gaines

The triumphant story of how an all-Black Broadway cast and crew changed musical theatre—and the world—forever. "This musical introduced Black excellence to the Great White Way. Broadway was forever changed and we, who stand on the shoulders of our brilliant ancestors, are charged with the very often elusive task of carrying that torch into our present."— Billy Porter, Tony, Grammy, and Emmy Award-winning actor "The 1920s were the years of Manhattan's Black Renaissance. It began with Shuffle Along ." — Langston Hughes If Hamilton , Rent , or West Side Story captured your heart, you'll love this in-depth look into the rise of the 1921 Broadway hit, Shuffle Along , the first all-Black musical to succeed on Broadway. No one was sure if America was ready for a show featuring nuanced, thoughtful portrayals of Black characters—and the potential fallout was terrifying. But from the first jazzy, syncopated beats of composers Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, New York audiences fell head over heels. When Broadway Was Black is the story of how Sissle and Blake, along with comedians Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, overcame poverty, racism, and violence to harness the energy of the Harlem Renaissance and produce a runaway Broadway hit that launched the careers of many of the twentieth century's most beloved Black performers. Born in the shadow of slavery and establishing their careers at a time of increasing demands for racial justice and representation for people of color, they broke down innumerable barriers between Black and white communities at a crucial point in our history. Author and pop culture expert Caseen Gaines leads readers through the glitz and glamour of New York City during the Roaring Twenties to reveal the revolutionary impact one show had on generations of Americans, and how its legacy continues to resonate today. Praise for When Broadway Was Black : "A major contribution to culture."—Brian Jay Jones, New York Times bestselling author of Jim Henson: The Biography "With meticulous research and smooth storytelling, Caseen Gaines significantly deepens our understanding of one of the key cultural events that launched the Harlem Renaissance."—A Lelia Bundles, New York Times bestselling author of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker "Absorbing..."— The Wall Street Journal Previously published as Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way

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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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Golden State - Michael Hiltzik Cover Art

Golden State

Golden State The Making of California by Michael Hiltzik

NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Superb. Hiltzik makes a compelling case that California is the heartbeat of our nation.”—Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of Silent Spring Revolution From Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Hiltzik, a definitive new history of California—from the Spanish conquistadors to the Gold Rush to the state’s meteoric rise as a tech powerhouse and bulwark of progressivism—and of its indelible mark on the United States and the world. California has long reigned as the land of plenty, a place where the sun always shines and opportunity beckons. Even prior to its statehood in 1850, it captured the world’s imagination. We think of bearded prospectors lured by the promise of gold; we imagine its early embrace of immigrant labor during the railroad boom as prologue to its diverse social fabric today. But what lies underneath the myth is far more complicated. Thanks to extensive research by Michael Hiltzik, one of our longstanding voices on California, Golden State uncovers the unvarnished truth about the state we think we know well. From Spanish incursions into what became known as Alta California to the rise of Big Tech, the history of California is one of stark contradictions. In rich, previously overlooked detail, we see its earliest statesmen wreak havoc among native peoples while racing to draft their own constitution even ahead of statehood. Gold-hungry settlers venture into the Sierra foothills only to leave with little, while a handful of their suppliers turn themselves into millionaire railroad magnates. Wars erupt in the name of water as Los Angeles booms, and early efforts to tame the vast landscape create a haven for fossil fuel extraction and environmental conservation alike. Hollywood politicians stoke fear, contributing to a centuries-long tradition of anti-Asian violence, and, remarkably, legal redlining and free higher education take root together. Golden State brings a fresh critical eye to the origins of the state against which the rest of the country measures itself. From its very start, Hiltzik shows, the story of the United States was written in California. 

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Disunited Nations - Peter Zeihan Cover Art

Disunited Nations

Disunited Nations The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World by Peter Zeihan

Should we stop caring about fading regional powers like China, Russia, Germany, and Iran? Will the collapse of international cooperation push France, Turkey, Japan, and Saudi Arabia to the top of international concerns? Most countries and companies are not prepared for the world Peter Zeihan says we’re already living in. For decades, America’s allies have depended on its might for their economic and physical security. But as a new age of American isolationism dawns, the results will surprise everyone. In Disunited Nations, geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan presents a series of counterintuitive arguments about the future of a world where trade agreements are coming apart and international institutions are losing their power.  Germany will decline as the most powerful country in Europe, with France taking its place. Every country should prepare for the collapse of China, not North Korea. We are already seeing, as Zeihan predicts, a shift in outlook on the Middle East: It is no longer Iran that is the region’s most dangerous threat, but Saudi Arabia. The world has gotten so accustomed to the “normal” of an American-dominated order that we have all forgotten the historical norm: several smaller, competing powers and economic systems throughout Europe and Asia.  America isn’t the only nation stepping back from the international system. From Brazil to Great Britain to Russia, leaders are deciding that even if plenty of countries lose in the growing disunited chaos, their nations will benefit. The world isn’t falling apart—it’s being pushed apart. The countries and businesses prepared for this new every-country-for-itself ethic are those that will prevail; those shackled to the status quo will find themselves lost in the new world disorder. Smart, interesting, and essential reading, Disunited Nations is a sure-to-be-controversial guidebook that analyzes the emerging shifts and resulting problems that will arise in the next two decades. We are entering a period of chaos, and no political or corporate leader can ignore Zeihan’s insights or his message if they want to survive and thrive in this uncertain new time.

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Black Fortunes - Shomari Wills Cover Art

Black Fortunes

Black Fortunes The Story of the First Six African Americans Who Escaped Slavery and Became Millionaires by Shomari Wills

“By telling the little-known stories of six pioneering African American entrepreneurs, Black Fortunes makes a worthy contribution to black history, to business history, and to American history.”—Margot Lee Shetterly, New York Times Bestselling author of Hidden Figures Between the years of 1830 and 1927, as the last generation of blacks born into slavery was reaching maturity, a small group of industrious, tenacious, and daring men and women broke new ground to attain the highest levels of financial success. Mary Ellen Pleasant, used her Gold Rush wealth to further the cause of abolitionist John Brown. Robert Reed Church, became the largest landowner in Tennessee. Hannah Elias, the mistress of a New York City millionaire, used the land her lover gave her to build an empire in Harlem. Orphan and self-taught chemist Annie Turnbo-Malone, developed the first national brand of hair care products. Mississippi school teacher O. W. Gurley, developed a piece of Tulsa, Oklahoma, into a “town” for wealthy black professionals and craftsmen that would become known as “the Black Wall Street.” Although Madam C. J Walker was given the title of America’s first female black millionaire, she was not. She was the first, however, to flaunt and openly claim her wealth—a dangerous and revolutionary act. Nearly all the unforgettable personalities in this amazing collection were often attacked, demonized, or swindled out of their wealth. Black Fortunes illuminates as never before the birth of the black business titan.

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Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies: The Patriots - David Fisher Cover Art

Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies: The Patriots

Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies: The Patriots by David Fisher

The must-have companion to Bill O'Reilly's historical docudrama Legends and Lies: The Patriots , an exciting and eye-opening look at the Revolutionary War through the lives of its leaders The American Revolution was neither inevitable nor a unanimous cause. It pitted neighbors against each other, as loyalists and colonial rebels faced off for their lives and futures. These were the times that tried men's souls: no one was on stable ground and few could be trusted. Through the fascinating tales of the first Americans, Legends and Lies: The Patriots reveals the contentious arguments that turned friends into foes and the country into a warzone. From the riots over a child's murder that led to the Boston Massacre to the suspicious return of Ben Franklin, the "First American;" from the Continental Army's first victory under George Washington's leadership to the little known southern Guerilla campaign of "Swamp Fox" Francis Marion, and the celebration of America's first Christmas, The Patriots recreates the amazing combination of resourcefulness, perseverance, strategy, and luck that led to this country's creation. Heavily illustrated with spectacular artwork that brings this important history to vivid life, and told in the same fast-paced, immersive narrative as the first Legends and Lies, The Patriots is an irresistible, adventure-packed journey back into one of the most storied moments of our nation's rich history.

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The Immortal Irishman - Timothy Egan Cover Art

The Immortal Irishman

The Immortal Irishman The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero by Timothy Egan

In the New York Times bestseller The Immortal Irishman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Timothy Egan illuminates the dawn of the great Irish American story, with all its twists and triumphs, through the life of one heroic man. A dashing young orator during the Great Hunger of the 1840s, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony for life. But two years later he was “back from the dead” and in New York, instantly the most famous Irishman in America. Meagher’s rebirth included his leading the newly formed Irish Brigade in many of the fiercest battles of the Civil War. Afterward, he tried to build a new Ireland in the wild west of Montana — a quixotic adventure that ended in the great mystery of his disappearance, which Egan resolves convincingly at last. “This is marvelous stuff. Thomas F. Meagher strides onto Egan's beautifully wrought pages just as he lived — powerfully larger than life. A fascinating account of an extraordinary life.”—Daniel James Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Facing the Mountain

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The Sisterhood - Liza Mundy Cover Art

The Sisterhood

The Sisterhood The Secret History of Women at the CIA by Liza Mundy

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A “rip-roaring” (Steve Coll), “staggeringly well-researched” ( The New York Times ) history of three generations at the CIA, “electric with revelations” ( Booklist ) about the women who fought to become operatives, transformed spycraft, and tracked down Osama bin Laden, from the bestselling author of Code Girls A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • A FOREIGN POLICY AND SMITHSONIAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR In development as a series from Lionsgate Television, executive produced by Scott Delman ( Station Eleven ) Created in the aftermath of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency relied on women even as it attempted to channel their talents and keep them down. Women sent cables, made dead drops, and maintained the agency’s secrets. Despite discrimination—even because of it—women who started as clerks, secretaries, or unpaid spouses rose to become some of the CIA’s shrewdest operatives. They were unlikely spies—and that’s exactly what made them perfect for the role. Because women were seen as unimportant, pioneering female intelligence officers moved unnoticed around Bonn, Geneva, and Moscow, stealing secrets from under the noses of their KGB adversaries. Back at headquarters, women built the CIA’s critical archives—first by hand, then by computer. And they noticed things that the men at the top didn’t see. As the CIA faced an identity crisis after the Cold War, it was a close-knit network of female analysts who spotted the rising threat of al-Qaeda—though their warnings were repeatedly brushed aside. After the 9/11 attacks, more women joined the agency as a new job, targeter, came to prominence. They showed that data analysis would be crucial to the post-9/11 national security landscape—an effort that culminated spectacularly in the CIA’s successful effort to track down bin Laden in his Pakistani compound. Propelled by the same meticulous reporting and vivid storytelling that infused Code Girls , The Sisterhood offers a riveting new perspective on history, revealing how women at the CIA ushered in the modern intelligence age, and how their silencing made the world more dangerous

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