History of the Americas Books

Book SynopsisIn the tradition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all. Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second is the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches. Although readers may be more familiar with the tribal names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined just how and when the American West opened up. Comanche boys became adept bareback riders by age six; full Comanche braves were considered the best horsemen who ever rode. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana. White settlers arriving in Texas from the eastern United States were surprised to find the frontier being rolled backward by Comanches incensed by the invasion of their tribal lands. Against this backdrop Gwynne presents the compelling drama of Cynthia Ann Parker, a nine-year-old girl who was kidnapped by Comanches in 1836. She grew to love her captors and became infamous as the "White Squaw" who refused to return until her tragic capture by Texas Rangers in 1860. More famous still was her son Quanah, a warrior who was never defeated and whose guerrilla wars in the Texas Panhandle made him a legend. S. C. Gwynne's account of these events is meticulously researched, intellectually provocative, and, above all, thrillingly told.Trade ReviewNothing short of a revelation. Gwynne doesn't merely retell the story of Parker's life. he pulls his readers through an American frontier roiling with extreme violence, political intrigue, bravery, anguish, coruption, love, knives, rifles and arrows. Lots and lots of arrow. This book will leave dust on your jeans. * New York Times *Cuts through all the BS - from the left and right - about how the West was won from the Indians and how America began to lose its soul. * James Patterson *A rivetting book. * Economist *Sam Gwynne is a master story-teller and a dogged reporter, and in this book he makes history come to life in a way that everyone will find irresistible. I couldn't put it down. * The Texas Tribune. *S.C. Gwynne's Empire of the Summer Moon is many things-a thrilling account of the Texas frontier in the nineteenth century, a vivid description of the Comanche nation, a fascinating portrait of Cynthia Ann Parker and her son, the mysterious, magnificent Quanah-but most of all it is a ripping good read. Gwynne writes history with a pounding pulse and a beating heart....I couldn't put it down. * Jake Silverstein, Editor, Texas Monthly. *In this sweeping work, S.C. Gwynne recreates the Comanche's lost world with gusto and style-and without sentimentality. * Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder. *Excellent. * Sunday Times *Gwynne has set out to write a western epic, and his narrative is enormously entertaining, but it is hard to discern a coherent historical thesis. * London Review of Books *... an unashamedly exciting narrative of the American West. * Sunday Times *

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Book Synopsis***THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER***''Hancock''s books provide a fascinating, alternative version of prehistory. America Before, detailed and wide-ranging, turns what was myth and legend into a new story of the past.'' Daily MailWas an advanced civilization lost to history in the global cataclysm that ended the last Ice Age? Graham Hancock, the internationally bestselling author and television presenter, has made it his life''s work to find out -- and in America Before, he draws on the latest archaeological and DNA evidence to bring his quest to a stunning conclusion.We''ve been taught that North and South America were empty of humans until around 13,000 years ago - amongst the last great landmasses on earth to have been settled by our ancestors. But new discoveries have radically reshaped this long-established picture and we know now that the Americas were first peopled more than 130,000 years ago - many tens of thousaTrade ReviewHancock's books provide a fascinating, alternative version of prehistory. America Before, detailed and wide-ranging, turns what was myth and legend into a new story of the past. * Daily Mail *Praise for Graham Hancock * : *A great yarn... [Hancock] is a writer with a first-rate feel for colour and ambience. * The Sunday Times *Hancock's book is an absorbing big-picture analysis as well as a cautionary tale. * Nexus *

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Book SynopsisTHE GLOBAL PHENOMENON THAT HAS TOUCHED THE HEARTS OF OVER 9 MILLION READERS''Mitch Albom sees the magical in the ordinary'' Cecelia Ahern__________Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher or a colleague? Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, and gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it? For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn''t you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you?Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man''s life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neurone disease - Mitch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final ''class'': lessons in how to live.Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie''s lasting gift with the world.Don''t miss Mitch''s uplifting new novel THE LITTLE LIAR, available to pre-order now.__________WHAT READERS SAY ABOUT TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE''You cannot put the book down until you reach the end . . . Too good to be missed. It is really an all-time hit''''One of the most beautiful books I''ve read in a long, long time . . . It will always be one of my favourite books''''This book moved me immensely and its teachings will stay with me''''A simple yet moving account of love and loss - but also hope for something better''''A book I will read and re-read''Trade ReviewMitch Albom sees the magical in the ordinary -- Cecilia AhernPowerful . . . Albom has touched the lives of a lot of people he never even knew * Time *Compelling and uplifting -- IndependentA writer with soul -- Los Angeles TimesAlbom breaks hearts with his stories -- Mirror

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Book SynopsisThe best, the fastest, the hippest and the most unorthodox account ever published of the US presidential electoral process in all its madness and corruption.In 1972 Hunter S. Thompson, the creator and king of Gonzo journalism, covered the US presidential campaign for Rolling Stone magazine alongside the establishment newsmen of Washington. The result is a classic piece of subversive reportage and a fantastic ride on the rollercoaster of Hunter's uniquely savage imagination. In his own words, written years before Watergate: It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.'Trade Review‘The best stuff on the campaign I’ve read anywhere.’Nicholas Von Hoffman, Washington Post ‘Obscene, horrid, repellent … driving, urgent, candid, searing … a fascinating, compelling book!’New York Post ‘Hunter S. Thompson is the most creatively crazy and vulnerable of the New Journalists. His books are brilliant and honorable and valuable … the literary equivalent of Cubism: all rules are broken.’Kurt Vonnegut Jr ‘Gaze in awe … Hunter Thompson does in his own mad way betray a profound democratic concern for the polity. And in its own mad way, it’s darned refreshing.’New York Times ‘Shocks you into laughter.’Detroit Free Press ‘Unnerving!’Newsweek

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewAny debate over the relative merits and demerits of regime change as a legitimate tool of foreign-policy needs to begin with Lindsey A. O'Rourke's fantastic book. It's a well-written, important work that should productively inform foreign-policy debates going forward. Essential reading. * The National Interest *This is a book for scholars and policy makers; the footnotes are copious and extensive. * Choice *Covert Regime Change is a valuable book that sheds light on an important issue. * Survival: Global Politics and Strategy *Unlike many other books built around accounts of CIA plots, Covert Regime Change takes a scholarly and quantitative approach. It provides charts, graphs, and data sets. Meticulous analysis makes this not the quickest read of any book on the subject, but certainly one of the best informed. O'Rourke injects a dose of rigorous analysis into a debate that is often based on emotion. * Global Research *O'Rourke's work provides ample evidence that attempts at forcible regime-change are unlikely to achieve desired ends at a reasonable cost. * Christopher Preble, War on the Rocks *Well researched and argued, it places the initial debate over covert action within the national security decisionmaking process during the first years of the Cold War. * International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence *In this well-researched and clearly written book, Lindsay A. O'Rourke vigorously argues that during the Cold War U.S. officials repeatedly launched covert interventions in foreign countries, even though most of the operations failed to effect regime changes, because the officials saw them as cheap ways to enhance U.S. security and power.... A well-executed, valuable study. * Journal of American History *O'Rourke's book offers a onestop shop for understanding foreignimposed regime change. Covert Regime Change is an impressive book and required reading for anyone interested in understanding hidden power in world politics. * Political Science Quarterly *O'Rourke's contribution to the history of US foreign relations, intelligence history, and international relations theory is not just valuable but also original. O'Rourke's dataset identifies more than 60 covert efforts to bring about regime change... pursued by the United States between 1947 and 1989. Few authors have sought to chronicle and analyze them as comprehensively and systematically as O'Rourke, and no one has succeeded as she has. We owe her a great debt. * Parameters *Table of ContentsList of Figures and Tables Acknowledgments 1. The False Promise of Covert Regime Change 2. Causes: Why Do States Launch Regime Changes? 3. Conduct: Why Do States Intervene Covertly versus Overtly? 4. Consequences: How Effective Are Covert Regime Changes? 5. Overview of U.S.-backed Regime Changes during the Cold War 6. Rolling Back the Iron Curtain 7. Containment, Coup d'état and the Covert War in Vietnam 8. Dictators and Democrats in the Dominican Republic 9. Covert Regime Change after the Cold War Notes Index

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Book SynopsisTHE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERHis masterpiece' Antony Beevor, SpectatorA masterful performance' Sunday TimesBy far the best book on the Vietnam War' Gerald Degroot, The Times, Book of the YearVietnam became the Western world's most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and less familiar battles such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh's warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed 2 million people.Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners' victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, Huey pilots from Arkansas.No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings' readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the 21st century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.Trade Review SHORTLISTED FOR THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON MEDAL FOR MILITARY HISTORY 2019 ‘Masterpiece … manages with great skill to combine the accumulation of strategic and political disaster with the real experience of those fighting on the ground’ Antony Beevor, Spectator ‘Will surely set the benchmark for years to come… This may be his best … Exhaustively researched and superbly written, it is both a balanced account of how and why the war unfolded as it did, and a gripping narrative on what it was like to take part…History as it should be: objective, immersive and compelling’ Daily Telegraph, 5* ‘Magnificent… One by one, the sacred canons of right and left are obliterated. The war is laid bare, with all its uncomfortable truths exposed’ The Times ‘Powerful and chilling… Hastings is masterful at describing the conditions faced by young American soldiers… [he] is second to none in his ability to describe military strategy with a clarity that makes things entirely understandable to the layman’ Mail on Sunday, 5* ‘An altogether magnificent historical narrative’ Tim O’Brien ‘A masterpiece’ Frank Scotton ‘Magnificent, his best work … full of extraordinary and compelling detail and thoroughly informed by his own personal experience of so much of the war. It's written in unputdownable style, with a dispassionate, liberal-minded understanding of the detail of the war, which draws on testimony from every side and doesn't favour anyone. I've never read a better history of the wars in Vietnam, and it’s hard to see how anyone will be able to improve on this’ John Simpson ‘Neophytes and experts alike will find Hastings’s book stimulating, informative – and above all, riveting’ New Statesman ‘This fabulous work offers up a gut-wrenching glimpse of the reality of war’ The Sun, 5* ‘Impressive… A fast-paced, poignant and eye-opening read’ Literary Review

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Book SynopsisIntroducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience classics which will endure for generations to come.You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug especially when it's waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in your eyes'Roaring down the desert highway, Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo are seeking out the dark side of the American Dream. Armed with a drug arsenal of stupendous proportions, they confront casino operators, police officers and assorted Middle Americans, in surreal, chemically enhanced encounters.Hilarious, hallucinogenic and subversive, Hunter S. Thompson's semi-autobiographical novel is a cult classic and a masterpiece of gonzo journalism.A scorching epochal sensation' Tom WolfeTrade Review‘A classic of our time’ Cormac McCarthy ‘Peers into the best and worst mysteries of the American heart’ Rolling Stone ‘There are only two adjectives writers care about…”brilliant” and “outrageous”. Hunter Thompson has a freehold on both of them. Fear and Loathing is a scorching epochal sensation.’ Tom Wolfe ‘What goes on in these pages makes Lenny Bruce seem angelic… the whole book boils down to a mad, corrosive prose poetry that picks up where Norman Mailer’s An American Dream left off and explores what Tom Wolfe left out’ New York Times

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Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.''We said there warn''t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don''t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.''Huck Finn escapes from his alcoholic father by faking his own death and so begins his journey through the Deep South, seeking independence and freedom. On his travels, Huck meets an escaped slave, Jim, who is a wanted man, and together they journey down the Mississippi River. Raising the timeless and universal l issues of prejudice, bravery and hope, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was and still is considered the great American novel.

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Book SynopsisFrancis Cogliano revisits the relationship between Washington and Jefferson, arguing that their vaunted differences mask mutual investments in the Revolution itself. Their later divergence demonstrates how wartime unity gave way to competing visions for the new nation, making clear that there was no single founding ideal—only compromise.Trade ReviewCogliano considers the relationship between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in this measured and clarifying account…This deeply researched and accessible narrative sheds new light on a consequential friendship. * Publishers Weekly *It is hard to believe no one has written a detailed account of the difficult friendship between the two Virginian revolutionaries George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. We now have Cogliano’s meticulously researched, insightful, and fluidly written account of their history with each other. This book is just what we need as we approach the 250th anniversary of what these two men helped put in motion, the American Revolution. -- Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American FamilySuperb, compelling history. Deftly interweaving the personal and the political, Cogliano shows that Washington and Jefferson had a much closer relationship than is typically acknowledged, first as political allies, then as trusted friends and confidants, but the party strife of the young republic made them bitter opponents. -- Eliga H. Gould, author of Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World EmpireA persuasively argued, well-written biography that illuminates and enlivens its subjects and their relationship. Avoiding the pitfalls of both the celebratory national narrative and its revisionist counterpoint, Cogliano enables readers to make better sense of the complicated circumstances—and complicated people—who revolutionized America, for better and for worse. -- Peter S. Onuf, author of Jefferson and the Virginians: Democracy, Constitutions, and EmpireA fantastic work of comparative history. Washington and Jefferson’s collaboration endured for three highly productive decades, but then, as now, even the warmest friendships sometimes got pulverized by politics. Cogliano’s poignant reminder that Washington and Jefferson never reconciled inspires me, as it may you, to try to rebuild bridges. -- Woody Holton, author of Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution

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Book Synopsis''This was much more than a bunch of guys out on an exploring and collecting expedition. This was a military expedition into hostile territory''. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a pioneering voyage across the Great Plains and into the Rockies. It was completely uncharted territory; a wild, vast land ruled by the Indians. Charismatic and brave, Lewis was the perfect choice and he experienced the savage North American continent before any other white man. UNDAUNTED COURAGE is the tale of a hero, but it is also a tragedy. Lewis may have received a hero''s welcome on his return to Washington in 1806, but his discoveries did not match the president''s fantasies of sweeping, fertile plains ripe for the taking. Feeling the expedition had been a failure, Lewis took to drink and piled up debts. Full of colourful characters - Jefferson, the president obsessed with conquering the west; William Clark, the rugged frontiersman; Sa

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Book SynopsisThe 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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Book SynopsisThebrilliant account of the Nixon era, from his 1968 election to his spectacular 1974 demise, now in paperback.Trade Review"A richly detailed descent into the inferno -- that is, the years when Richard Milhous Nixon, 'a serial collector of resentments,' ruled the land." -- Kirkus Reviews"Nixonland is a grand historical epic. Rick Perlstein has turned a story we think we know -- American politics between the opposing presidential landslides of 1964 and 1972 -- into an often surprising and always fascinating new narrative. This riveting book, full of colorful detail and great characters, brings back to life an astonishing era -- and shines a new light on our own." -- Jeffrey Toobin author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court"This is a terrific read. What a delight it is to discover the new generation of historians like Rick Perlstein not only getting history correct but giving us all fresh insights and understanding of it." -- John W. Dean Nixon's White House counsel"Rick Perlstein has written a fascinating account of the rise of Richard Nixon and a persuasive argument that this angry, toxic man will always be part of the American landscape." -- Richard Reeves author of President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination"Rick Perlstein's Nixonland digs deep into a decisive period of our history and brings back a past that is all the scarier for its intense humanity. With a firm grasp on the larger meaning of countless events and personalities, many of them long forgotten, Perlstein superbly shows how paranoia and innuendo flowed into the mainstream of American politics after 1968, creating divisive passions that have survived for decades." -- Sean Wilentz Princeton University, author of The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008"The best book written about the 1960s." -- Newsweek

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Book SynopsisThe story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman''s most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents and written by a descendant of one of the participants. Most Americans know of Harriet Tubman''s legendary life: escaping enslavement in 1849, she led more than 60 others out of bondage via the Underground Railroad, gave instructions on getting to freedom to scores more, and went on to live a lifetime fighting for change. Yet the many biographies, children''s books, and films about Tubman omit a crucial chapter: during the Civil War, hired by the Union Army, she ventured into the heart of slave territory--Beaufort, South Carolina--to live, work, and gather intelligence for a daring raid up the Combahee River to attack the major plantations of Rice Country, the breadbasket of the Confederacy.Edda L. Fields-Black--herself a descendent of one of the participants in the raid--shows how Tubman commanded a ring of spies, scouts, and pilots and participated in military expeditions behind Confederate lines. On June 2, 1863, Tubman and her crew piloted two regiments of Black US Army soldiers, the Second South Carolina Volunteers, and their white commanders up coastal South Carolina''s Combahee River in three gunboats. In a matter of hours, they torched eight rice plantations and liberated 730 people, people whose Lowcountry Creole language and culture Tubman could not even understand. Black men who had liberated themselves from bondage on South Carolina''s Sea Island cotton plantations after the Battle of Port Royal in November 1861 enlisted in the Second South Carolina Volunteers and risked their lives in the effort.Using previous unexamined documents, including Tubman''s US Civil War Pension File, bills of sale, wills, marriage settlements, and estate papers from planters'' families, Fields-Black brings to life intergenerational, extended enslaved families, neighbors, praise-house members, and sweethearts forced to work in South Carolina''s deadly tidal rice swamps, sold, and separated during the antebellum period. When Tubman and the gunboats arrived and blew their steam whistles, many of those people clambered aboard, sailed to freedom, and were eventually reunited with their families. The able-bodied Black men freed in the Combahee River Raid enlisted in the Second South Carolina Volunteers and fought behind Confederate lines for the freedom of others still enslaved not just in South Carolina but Georgia and Florida. After the war, many returned to the same rice plantations from which they had escaped, purchased land, married, and buried each other. These formerly enslaved peoples on the Sea Island indigo and cotton plantations, together with those in the semi-urban port cities of Charleston, Beaufort, and Savannah, and on rice plantations in the coastal plains, created the distinctly American Gullah Geechee dialect, culture, and identity--perhaps the most significant legacy of Harriet Tubman''s Combahee River Raid.

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for DramaNow a major motion picture, available on Disney Plus.Goodreads best non-fiction book of 2016From Tony Award-winning composer-lyricist-star Lin-Manuel Miranda comes a backstage pass to his groundbreaking, hit musical Hamilton.Lin-Manuel Miranda''s groundbreaking musical Hamilton is as revolutionary as its subject, the poor kid from the Caribbean who fought the British, defended the Constitution, and helped to found the United States. Fusing hip-hop, pop, R&B, and the best traditions of theater, this once-in-a-generation show broadens the sound of Broadway, reveals the storytelling power of rap, and claims the origins of the United States for a diverse new generation.HAMILTON: THE REVOLUTION gives readers an unprecedented view of both revolutions, from the only two writers able to provide it. Miranda, along with Jeremy McCarter, a cultural critic and theater artTrade ReviewIt is a magnificent book, unlike any previous book about a play * Chicago Tribune *The best piece of art in any form that I have ever seen in my life -- Michelle Obama, on Hamilton

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Book SynopsisIn his major New York Times bestseller, Jimmy Carter looks back from ninety years of age and “reveals private thoughts and recollections over a fascinating career as businessman, politician, evangelist, and humanitarian” (Booklist).At ninety, Jimmy Carter reflects on his public and private life with a frankness that is disarming. He adds detail and emotion about his youth in rural Georgia that he described in his magnificent An Hour Before Daylight. He writes about racism and the isolation of the Carters. He describes the brutality of the hazing regimen at Annapolis, and how he nearly lost his life twice serving on submarines and his amazing interview with Admiral Rickover. He describes the profound influence his mother had on him, and how he admired his father even though he didn’t emulate him. He admits that he decided to quit the Navy and later enter politics without consulting his wife, Rosalynn, and how appalled he is in retrospect. In his “warm and detailed memoir” (Los Angeles Times), Carter tells what he is proud of and what he might do differently. He discusses his regret at losing his re-election, but how he and Rosalynn pushed on and made a new life and second and third rewarding careers. He is frank about the presidents who have succeeded him, world leaders, and his passions for the causes he cares most about, particularly the condition of women and the deprived people of the developing world. “Always warm and human…even inspirational” (Buffalo News), A Full Life is a wise and moving look back from this remarkable man. Jimmy Carter has lived one of our great American lives—from rural obscurity to world fame, universal respect, and contentment. A Full Life is an extraordinary read from a “force to be reckoned with” (Christian Science Monitor).Trade Review“A warm and detailed memoir of his youth followed by a clear-eyed assessment of the issues he tackled as president and afterward . . . a sweeping overview of a broad range of issues and frequent credit to his wife Rosalynn . . . Carter puts the long arc of his story together the way he sees it. The book includes his accomplishments as a negotiator and peacemaker in the humblest way — as a man who was at work on a larger project, something he continues to be. A primer for the generations who don't know his work and a personal retelling for those who do, A Full Life may herald the reappraisal he deserves.” * Los Angeles Times *“Carter reveals private thoughts and recollections over a fascinating career as businessman, politician, evangelist,and humanitarian.” * Booklist *“A Full Life is understated like the man, always warm and human, and in a few instances, even inspirational.” * Buffalo News *“The former president is yet a force to be reckoned with. . . . The author takes the reader on an engaging personal journey through the later half of the 20th century, as he saw it.” * Christian Science Monitor *“The drawings and poems by the author add even more of a personal touch, though crises in his marriage and his ‘estrangement’ from the Obama presidency offer the most noteworthy revelations. A memoir that reads like an epilogue to a life of accomplishment.” * Kirkus Reviews *

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Book SynopsisBlackshirts & Reds explores some of the big issues of our time: fascism, capitalism, communism, revolution, democracy, and ecology--terms often bandied about but seldom explored in the original and exciting way that has become Michael Parenti's trademark. Parenti shows how rational fascism renders service to capitalism, how corporate power undermines democracy, and how revolutions are a mass empowerment against the forces of exploitative privilege. He also maps out the external and internal forces that destroyed communism, and the disastrous impact of the free-market victory on eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He affirms the relevance of taboo ideologies like Marxism, demonstrating the importance of class analysis in understanding political realities and dealing with the ongoing collision between ecology and global corporatism. Written with lucid and compelling style, this book goes beyond truncated modes of thought, inviting us to entertain iconoclastic views, and to ask

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Book SynopsisIn this highly anticipated follow-up to The Rifle, Andrew Biggio brings to light more untold stories from the quickly vanishing ranks of the veterans of World War II.Ordinary Men with Extraordinary PurposeThey are called the Greatest Generation, but they were also ordinary men, sharing in all of humanity’s weaknesses and flaws while responding to the call of duty. These are their unforgettable stories—first-person accounts from the last of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who fought the most dreadful war in history, all collected by a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The idea was simple: travel across the country with a 1945 M1 Garand, the basic U.S. fighting rifle of World War II, ask combat veterans of that war to sign it, and listen carefully as the sight, touch, and feel of that rifle evoke a flood of memories and emotions. In this highly anticipated follow-up to The Rifle, Andrew Biggio once again reveals the astonishing effect his M1 Garand had on the old warriors who held it. The passage of time is swiftly snatching from us the last of those men, but the memories of those who remain are vivid and strong. It’s astonishing to see how grasping that rifle brings out those memories—good, bad, terrifying, and heroic. In Biggio’s riveting account, you will learn:• What it was like to fight for freedom in the various theaters of World War II • The obstacles these world-conquerors faced on returning home and how they overcame them • The special meaning these recollections hold for later combat vets, confirming the brotherhood of warriors • The importance to veterans of memory and respectWar and the weapons with which it is waged shape men forever. Biggio’s inspirational second collection is a must-read for anyone interested in the service and sacrifices of our veterans.

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Book SynopsisThis brief history of America will span the earliest migrations to the present, reflecting Paul S. Boyer''s interests in social, intellectual, and cultural history, including popular culture and religion. It will reflect his personal view of American history, in which a sense of paradox and irony loom large. While noting positive achievements--political, economic, social, and cultural--he will also discuss the United States''s failures to live up to its oft-stated ideals; although America has figured in the world''s imagination (and its own self-image) as a land of opportunity offering liberty and justice for all, the reality has often fallen short.For example, the establishment of the North American colonies had very different meanings for colonists from the British Isles and Europe, for Native peoples, and for enslaved Africans brought against their will. The late nineteenth century saw not only impressive industrial expansion and the creation of vast fortunes but also appalling conditions in urban-immigrant slums and a degraded, exploited labor force. The twentieth-century emergence of a suburban society of consumer abundance meant a better life for many and laid the groundwork for impressive cultural creativity, yet left behind crime-ridden inner cities and spawned a stultifying mass culture. The immigrants who have renewed and revitalized the nation have also stirred hostility and resentment. While American popular culture has demonstrated global appeal, the projection of U.S. military power abroad, from the Philippines early in the twentieth century to Iraq early in the twenty-first, has sometimes failed in its purpose and damaged the nation''s international standing. Although this book will not be a muckraking exposé or anachronistic moral tract, neither will it be a celebratory panegyric or a bland recital of facts. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Trade Review"Paul Boyer, a scholar's scholar and a teacher's teacher, has here encompassed the entirety of American history in an account that testifies on every page to his lifetime of deep and thoughtful learning, and to his remarkable powers of synthesis, concision, balance, and trenchantly lucid writing."--David M. Kennedy, author of Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945Table of ContentsList of illustrations ; Preface ; Chapter 1: Beginnings: Prehistory to 1763 ; Chapter 2: 1763-1789: Revolution, constitution, a new nation ; Chapter 3: 1789-1850: The promise and perils of nationhood ; Chapter 4: 1850-1865: Slavery and civil war ; Chapter 5: 1866-1899: Industrialization and its consequences ; Chapter 6: 1900-1920: Reform and war ; Chapter 7: 1920-1945: From conflict to global power ; Chapter 8: 1945-1968: Affluence and social unrest ; Chapter 9: To the present ; References ; Further reading ; Index

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Book SynopsisThe most sweeping account of how neoliberalism came to dominate American politics for nearly a half century before crashing against the forces of Trumpism on the right and a new progressivism on the left.The epochal shift toward neoliberalism--a web of related policies that, broadly speaking, reduced the footprint of government in society and reassigned economic power to private market forces--that began in the United States and Great Britain in the late 1970s fundamentally changed the world. Today, the word neoliberal is often used to condemn a broad swath of policies, from prizing free market principles over people to advancing privatization programs in developing nations around the world.To be sure, neoliberalism has contributed to a number of alarming trends, not least of which has been a massive growth in income inequality. Yet as the eminent historian Gary Gerstle argues in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, these indictments fail to reckon with the full contours of what neoliberalism was and why its worldview had such persuasive hold on both the right and the left for three decades. As he shows, the neoliberal order that emerged in America in the 1970s fused ideas of deregulation with personal freedoms, open borders with cosmopolitanism, and globalization with the promise of increased prosperity for all. Along with tracing how this worldview emerged in America and grew to dominate the world, Gerstle explores the previously unrecognized extent to which its triumph was facilitated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist allies. He is also the first to chart the story of the neoliberal order''s fall, originating in the failed reconstruction of Iraq and Great Recession of the Bush years and culminating in the rise of Trump and a reinvigorated Bernie Sanders-led American left in the 2010s.An indispensable and sweeping re-interpretation of the last fifty years, this book illuminates how the ideology of neoliberalism became so infused in the daily life of an era, while probing what remains of that ideology and its political programs as America enters an uncertain future.Trade ReviewFascinating and incisive. * Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times *Enlightening . . . Gerstle carefully recreates the new order Reagan wanted . . . [and] emphasizes its market side . . . [A] fine book. * The New York Times Book Review *It's rare that one can use the term instant classic in a book review, but Gary Gerstle's latest economic history, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, warrants the praise. * Rana Foroohar, Financial Times *Gerstle offers a rich and sophisticated discussion of neoliberalism . . . an important and beautifully written book. * The Washington Post *His American focus might also finally allow British readers to escape their factional trenches and appreciate the shape of neoliberalism. It is a terrific service . . . . a joy to read. * Tom Clark, Prospect *Masterfully blends compelling analysis with a propulsive narrative. * Irish Times *Brilliantly conceived, capaciously argued, and written with great clarity . . . For those interested in a meaningful historical perspective on where we are now, I can think of no better book. * Steven Hahn, The Nation *A cogent, erudite historical analysis. * Kirkus Reviews *[A] splendid and stimulating history of neo-liberalism's rise and possible 'fall.' * Australian Book Review *This book is an interesting account of what is exceptional about "America". * Michael Laver, Society *Essential reading. * Adam Tooze, author of Crashed *One of the smartest, most perceptive books I've read in years. * Christopher Leonard, author of The Lords of Easy Money *Anyone baffled at how the U.S. could possibly have moved over a half-century from embracing a state-centered New Deal to relentlessly unraveling it will be greatly enlightened by Gerstle's beautifully written, engrossing, and powerful telling of the rise of the neoliberal order. And some may take heart from his claim that it too is in free-fall, albeit leaving behind enduring vestiges of free market orthodoxy. I know no better guide to the complex transformations that have shaped our own times. * Lizabeth Cohen, Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies, Harvard University, and author of Saving America's Cities *Gerstle's important book offers us an illuminating and rich interpretation of the power and popularity of neoliberalism in America. A true history of the movement, situating neoliberalism in relation to classical liberalism, the New Deal and global Communism. Essential reading. * Adam Tooze, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History, Columbia University *Expertly synthesizing a vast body of new scholarship—on international trade, the Cold War, race, polarization, Ralph Nader, the labor movement, and the rise of conservatism—Gary Gerstle delivers the most compendious and commanding history of neoliberal America to date. Along the way he opens new windows on the unexpected collaboration between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich in deregulating America into the internet future. Gerstle also provides the best account I've read of how neoliberal" came to be the word of choice for an order that promises liberation and delivers subjection, that divides our two parties on some issues but conjoins them on others. * Corey Robin, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center *Among the foremost chroniclers of the American past, Gary Gerstle deploys in this bold book the powerful notion of 'political order' to examine our most recent history—the past forty years when the nation fastened its fortunes to marketization, global economic integration, a harsh penal state and sharpening inequality. By charting the rise and fall of the neoliberal order, this fast-paced account helps us make sense of the arch of American history from Ronald Reagan to Bernie Sanders, from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump. A must read for anyone interested in the world we inhabit today, with all its mortal dangers and yet-to-be fulfilled promises. * Sven Beckert, Laird Bell Professor of History, Harvard University *Gary Gerstle offers a brilliant, engaging, and provocative first-draft history of the last half century, a period sorely in need of scrutiny. With characteristic big-think flair, he shows that the neoliberal wisdom of that era—that markets would bring democracy, that the age of big government was over—emerged from specific historical forces and circumstances. He also suggests that many of those ideas can and should now be consigned to the past. * Beverly Gage, Professor of History & American Studies, Yale University *Just beneath the surface of our fractured and polarized polity, Gary Gerstle argues that there has been a Neoliberal Order under which both parties worked in the 1990s and early 2000s. Even as they bitterly disagreed, the nation's political debate moved far away from the class-based pillars of the New Deal. In another of his characteristically eye-opening analyses, Gerstle takes readers through the rise and fall of the political order that has shaped our leaders and electorate—that is, until powerful forces over the past decade, on the right and left, have opened the door to a new era. * Julian Zelizer, author of Abraham Joshua Heschel *Gerstle, a political historian specializing in contemporary history of the U.S., provides a comprehensive political history of the U.S. over the past six decades (Gerstle 2022)...Full of revelations. * Thomas König, Austrian Journal of Political Science *Southern historians might best use it as a provocation for graduate students regarding the role of the South in the rise and decline of neoliberalism. * William D. Goldsmith, Journal of Southern History *Gerstle's book has achieved the rare feat of both critical success and popular acclaim, having been shortlisted for the FT Business Book of the Year Award in 2022. It deserves it. * The OEconomia *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Part I: The New Deal Order, 1930-1980 Chapter 1: Rise Chapter 2: Fall Part II: The Neoliberal Order, 1970-2020 Chapter 3: Beginnings Chapter 4: Ascent Chapter 5: Triumph Chapter 6: Hubris Chapter 7: Coming Apart Chapter 8: The End Notes Index

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Book SynopsisIn The Great Reset: And the War for the World, the most controversial man on earth Alex Jones gives you a full analysis of The Great Reset, the global elite's international conspiracy to enslave humanity and all life on the planet. From central bankers, corporate billionaires, and corrupted government officials, global elites have been organizing a historic war on humanity under a trans-humanist, scientific dictatorship. Alex Jones was the first major figure to expose the World Economic Forum’s agenda. He has dedicated the last 30 years of his life to studying The Great Reset, conducting tens of thousands of interviews with top-level scientists, politicians, and military officials in order to reverse engineer their secrets and help awaken humanity. The Great Reset: And the War for the World chronicles the history of the global elites' rise to power and reveals how they’ve captured the governments of the world and financed The Great Reset to pave the way for The New World Order. Once dubbed a conspiracy theory, but now openly promoted by the most powerful corporations and governments, The Great Reset is a planned attempt to redistribute all the world’s wealth and power into the hands of banks, corporations, billionaires, and The World Economic Forum. If you read one book in a lifetime, this is it. In The Great Reset: And the War for the World, you will discover from the self-appointed controllers of the planet in their own words, their plan for what they call the final revolution, or The Great Reset. The only way this corporate fascist conspiracy can succeed is if the people of the world are not aware of it. And this book lays out their sinister blueprint and how to stop it. While many great books have been written to help awaken people to this sinister agenda, no author has ever spent as much time and research on The Great Reset as Alex Jones. The Great Reset: And the War for the World is the undisputed trailblazer for understanding what’s happening and how to stop it. Trade Review“Alex is right about far more than he is wrong about.... He’s the most misunderstood guy on the planet.”—JOE ROGAN“We are actually at War—a hybrid war of economics, cyber, psychology, and, yes, information. One of the field Commanders is Alex Jones of Austin, Texas—brilliant, irascible, tenacious. Alex has done his countrymen a great service: in one book he has given the structure and dynamics, the history and the processes of a New Order we see evolving daily. The Great Reset: And the War for the World is your battle map for what is ahead. Alex Jones is feared and relentlessly attacked by the very architects of this power structure. That is why he must be read and studied now.”—STEVE BANNON“If Alex Jones is just a crackpot, why are the most powerful people in the country trying to silence him? No one bothers to censor the flat-earthers. Maybe Alex Jones is onto something. Read this book and decide for yourself who’s crazy.”—TUCKER CARLSON“Alex has done an excellent job of bringing the globalists’ plans into the light. When we shine the light on darkness, the darkness can’t hide. It can only retreat.”—DR. MERCOLA, founder of Mercola.com, the most visited natural health site on the internet for the last twenty years“In The Great Reset, Alex Jones boldly showcases the history of engineered global collapse as it is unfolding in the present. No person living today has spent more time dissecting and exposing this anti-human, anti-freedom agenda than Alex Jones, and this book will one day be seen as a critical marker in the history of the fall (and rebuilding) of human civilization.”—MIKE ADAMS, founder, NaturalNews.com and Brighteon.com“Alex Jones may be the most maligned patriot in the country, but virtually every threat to our liberty that he has predicted has come to pass.”—ROGER STONE"[Alex Jones'] reputation is amazing."—DONALD TRUMP

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Book SynopsisPetitioning has a forgotten but essential role in the history of modern democracy. In the antebellum era, petitions gave North Americans, especially the disenfranchised, a critical tool to shape the political agenda. Daniel Carpenter shows how mass petitioning facilitated civil rights, voting, organizing, and other advances in liberty and equality.Trade ReviewA tour de force of prodigious research and muscular analysis. Carpenter persuasively demonstrates that petitions were critical to the process of democratization in nineteenth-century North America. Along the way, he sheds new light on a wide range of issues and episodes, many of which have previously escaped the notice of historians and political scientists. The book, quite simply, is eye-opening. -- Alexander Keyssar, author of Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?Democracy by Petition presents a magisterial view of an evolving political practice in which individuals and groups across North America seized the right to petition higher authorities for aid, redress, protection, or access. With riveting examples and clarifying analyses, Daniel Carpenter illuminates how Native Americans, African Americans, Irish Americans, Mexicans, French Canadians, women of all backgrounds, and many more became agents of political change, sharpening the possibility for real democracy by means of an antiquated though often effective tool: the paper prayer. A monumental achievement of political history, this book is crucial reading for anyone seeking to learn how democratic practices are forged through unexpected and ‘emergent’ politics. -- Tiya Miles, author of The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the StraitsIn this landmark book, Daniel Carpenter demonstrates the essential role that petitioning has played in the politics of democratization. Drawing upon a massive data collection effort and deep archival research, Carpenter offers a new way of thinking about how the dialogue between government and citizens shapes political development. -- Eric Schickler, author of Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932–1965An astonishing piece of scholarship, such as comes along once in a generation. Democracy by Petition urges us to reconsider what democracy is, how it extends beyond electoral politics, and how governance in North America actually works. -- Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896Daniel Carpenter illuminates petitions as active agents of democratization, harnessed by diverse and divergent groups across North America—including Indigenous nations who refused removal and Black abolitionists who refused containment by an emergent ‘settler republic.’ As Democracy by Petition reveals, these efforts refashioned the petition itself from a humble plea into an instrument of political power. -- Lisa Brooks, author of Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s WarPossibly the most original work on democracy in 2021…Offers lessons that transcend the American experience, because it allows us to think about democracy and democratization as something far more diverse than the package of the Western Consensus. * Democracy Paradox *Daniel Carpenter’s Democracy by Petition is an extraordinary tour de force. In this extensively researched book, Carpenter places petitions at the forefront of the development of democracy in North America. He demonstrates how groups as distinct as French Canadians in Lower Canada, Indigenous nations throughout the continent as well as African Americans and women used petitions to seek redress and promote political change. Carpenter's book reshapes our understanding of the emergence of democracy in North America. It foregrounds the role of a largely overlooked set of diverse civil society actors and their novel political strategies in prompting democratic development. -- Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award Selection Committee

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Book SynopsisA definitive analysis of the weapons, equipment, deployment, tactics and motivation of these national forces, as well as fascinating detail of day-to-day life for the soldiers that fought the battles

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Book SynopsisBy long convention, American history began during the early seventeenth century along the Atlantic Seaboard with the English colonies at Jamestown in Virginia and Plymouth in New England. From that eastern origin, America supposedly expanded westward, reaching only the Appalachian mountains by the end of the colonial period. In this version of history, earlier Spanish and contemporary French settlements seemed irrelevant except as enemies that brought out the best in the English as they remade themselves into Americans. Indians appeared only as wild and primitive peoples engaged in an ultimately futile resistance to American destiny. And historians formerly treated African slaves in passing as unfortunate aberrations in a fundamentally upbeat story of Englishmen becoming freer and more prosperous by colonizing an abundant continent of free land. During the past generation, however, historians have broadened our understanding of colonial America by adopting both a trans-Atlantic and a trans-continental perspective, examining the interplay of Europe, Africa, and the Americas through the flows of goods, people, plants, animals, capital, and ideas. In this Very Short Introduction, Alan Taylor presents the current scholarly understanding of colonial America to a broader audience.American colonization derived from a global expansion of European exploration and commerce, beginning in the fifteenth century. In an Atlantic and global perspective, the English had to share the stage with the French, Spanish, Dutch, and Russians, each of whom created alternative Americas. By comparing the diverse colonies of rival empires, Taylor aims to recover what was truly distinctive about the English enterprise in North America. In particular, he intends to pay greater attention to slavery as central to the economy, culture, and political thought of the colonists and, by taking a Continental approach, to restore the importance of native peoples to the colonial story. To adapt to the new land, the colonists needed the expertise, guidance, alliance, and trade of the Indians who dominated the interior. The new historical approach emphasizes the ability of the diverse natives to adapt to the newcomers and to compel concessions from them.In sum, colonial America produced an unprecedented mixing of radically diverse peoples--African, European, and Indian--under stressful circumstances for all. The colonial intermingling of peoples,microbes, plants, and animals from different continents was unparalleled in speed and volume in global history. Everyone had to adjust to a new world of unpredictable social and cultural hybrids that compromised and complicated the ambitious plans of empire-builders.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Table of ContentsList of illustrations ; Introduction ; Chapter 1: Encounters ; Chapter 2: New Spain ; Chapter 3: New France ; Chapter 4: Chesapeake colonies ; Chapter 5: New England ; Chapter 6: West Indies and Carolina ; Chapter 7: British America ; Chapter 8: Empires ; Timeline ; Further reading ; Index

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Book SynopsisSince its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx. Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe. Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses sciTrade ReviewA superbly written, excellently translated, and powerfully persuasive expos which all students of Latin American and U.S. history must read.-Choice Well written and passionately stated, this is an intellectually honest and valuable study.-Library Journal A dazzling barrage of words and ideas.-History

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Book SynopsisThe untold history of America’s mid-twentieth-century program of hepatitis infection research, its scientists’ aspirations, and the damage the project caused human subjectsTrade Review“Halpern’s story is chilling, told with clarity and commendable brevity and, most importantly, is of crucial relevance today. The emergence of Covid-19 galvanised calls for the creation of experiments in which volunteers would be infected with SARS-CoV-2 to help understand how the disease spreads and behaves. Some of these studies continue.”—Robin McKie, The Observer“Sydney Halpern has written a compelling, if unsettling, history of hepatitis research during World War II and the Cold War. It will become a must-read for anyone interested in bioethics and medical history.”—Susan E. Lederer, author of Subjected to Science and Flesh and Blood“An immensely important account of decades of human experiments that raised serious moral questions, not only in hindsight as is often claimed, but also at the time they were conducted.”—Jonathan D. Moreno, coauthor of Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die: Bioethics and the Transformation of Healthcare in America“Sydney Halpern’s Dangerous Medicine, a scandal-strewn history of hepatitis research, provides a frighteningly timely reminder of the dangers vulnerable patients face when medical research attacks disease in time of war.”—Paul A. Lombardo, author of Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell

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Book SynopsisSecret Service agent Clint Hill reveals the stories behind the iconic images of the five tragic days surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in this 60th anniversary edition of the New York Times bestseller.On November 22, 1963, three shots were fired in Dallas, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the world stopped for four days. For an entire generation, it was the end of an age of innocence. That evening, a photo ran on the front pages of newspapers across the world, showing a Secret Service agent jumping on the back of the presidential limousine in a desperate attempt to protect the President and Mrs. Kennedy. That agent was Clint Hill. Now Hill commemorates the sixtieth anniversary of the tragedy with this stunning book containing more than 150 photos, each accompanied by his incomparable insider account of those terrible days. A story that has taken Hill half a century to tell, this is a “riveting, stunning narrative” (Herald & Review, Illinois) of personal and historical scope. Besides the unbearable grief of a nation and the monumental consequences of the event, the death of JFK was a personal blow to a man sworn to protect the first family, and who knew, from the moment the shots rang out in Dallas, that nothing would ever be the same.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Cinematic and deeply engaging. . . . a tour de force of storytelling.” -- Brent Staples * The New York Times Book Review *"Absorbing and even moving . . . Mr. Blight displays his lifelong interest in Douglass on almost every page, and his own voice is active and eloquent throughout the narrative. It is a book that speaks to our own time as well as Douglass’s. . . . A brilliant book.” -- John Stauffer * The Wall Street Journal *“The first major biography of Douglass in nearly three decades. . . . Blight isn’t looking to overturn our understanding of Douglass, whose courage and achievements were unequivocal, but to complicate it — a measure by which this ambitious and empathetic biography resoundingly succeeds.” -- Jennifer Szalai * The New York Times *“Extraordinary. . . . Blight has certainly written, in the book’s texture and density and narrative flow—one violent and provocative incident arriving right after another—a great American biography." -- Adam Gopnik * The New Yorker *“A consistently engrossing book that is likely to remain the definitive account of Douglass’s life for many years to come.” -- Eric Foner * The Nation *“A stunning achievement. Blight captures an icon in full humanity. From riveting drama in slavery and Civil War, his Douglass rises into clairvoyant genius on the blinkered centrality of race in our struggle for freedom.” -- Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of America in the King Years“Extraordinary. . . . In Blight’s pages, [Douglass’s] voice again rings out loud and clear, melancholy and triumphant — still prophesying, still agitating, still calling us to action.” -- Adam Goodheart * The Washington Post *“David Blight has written the definitive biography of Frederick Douglass. With extraordinary detail he illuminates the complexities of Douglass’s life and career and paints a powerful portrait of one of the most important American voices of the 19th century. . . . Magisterial.” -- Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. * The Boston Globe *

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Book SynopsisNorman Ohler is an award-winning novelist and screenwriter. He is the author of The Infiltrators and the New York Times bestseller Blitzed, as well as the novels Die Quotenmaschine (the world's first hypertext novel), Mitte and Stadt des Goldes (translated into English as Ponte City) and the historical crime novel Die Gleichung des Lebens. He lives in Berlin.

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Book SynopsisThe incredible and heart-breaking true stories of victims of a notorious adoption scandal - inspired by No.1 bestselling novel Before We Were YoursFrom the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a corrupt baby business at the Tennessee Children''s Home Society in Memphis. She offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents - hiding the fact that many weren''t orphans at all, but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers, and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died.In Before and After, many survivors set out to trace their roots and find their birth families. Before and AFter includes moving and shocking accounts of the ways in which adoptees were separated from their first families. Often raised as only children, many have joyfully reunited with siblings in the final decades of their lives. There are stories of first meetings that are all the sweeter and more intense for t

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Book SynopsisColonial Americans were enamored with the rich colors and silky surface of mahogany. As this exotic wood became fashionable, demand for it set in motion a dark, hidden story of human and environmental exploitation. Anderson traces the path from source to sale, revealing how prosperity and desire shaped not just people’s lives but the natural world.Trade Review[A] fascinating book about the most coveted wood in early America and, indeed, the 18th-century British Empire… This enlightening…study does for mahogany what others long ago did for sugar and tobacco, chocolate and coffee, rubber and bananas… From an impressive number of archival sources [Anderson] has assembled a vibrant collective portrait of colonial grandees—Benjamin and William Franklin, among them—declaring their social dominance through hard-won mahogany possessions. -- Kirk Davis Swinehart * Wall Street Journal *Anderson details the history of the search for, trade in, and use of mahogany. Though the title directs readers to early America, for Anderson, America is in reality the Atlantic world. Most of the author’s time is spent among the islands of the Caribbean or near the Bay of Honduras in Belize, where mahogany was harvested. Anderson paints a picture of the Atlantic world in which travel and trade were the norm and families lived and worked up and down the coasts of North and Central America as well as on numerous Caribbean islands. -- S. A. Jacobe * Choice *From the 1720s to the mid-19th century, mahogany was the preeminent medium for conspicuous consumption on both sides of the Atlantic… However, as Anderson’s superb [book] makes abundantly clear, the polished luster of these immaculate objects came from exploitative labor practices, ecological devastation, and phenomenal business failures, all of which attested to the commodity’s natural and human cost… Anderson’s is a remarkable contribution to Atlantic history that…will be much enjoyed by anyone interested in the history of trade in colonial America and the Caribbean. -- Brian Odom * Library Journal *Anderson’s evocative and stunning Mahogany reminds us of both the deep ties between humans and trees and the sharp consequences of allowing our passion for beauty to trump nature’s capacity to sustain a species. -- Peter C. Mancall, author of Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry HudsonAnderson has crafted a rich blend of the cultural history of mahogany, the social history of logging, the economic history of the mahogany timber trade, the environmental history of Caribbean forests, and the history of the natural history of mahogany. The result is an elegant essay in Atlantic history. -- J. R. McNeill, author of Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620–1914This superb study of a vital early American commodity focuses on its production, distribution, and consumption from the age of sail to the era of steam. Mahogany’s sumptuousness came at a severe price, somewhat offset by enhanced knowledge of its properties and opportunities in its harvesting. With its highly nuanced and sophisticated argument, this book deserves a wide readership. -- Philip Morgan, author of Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry‘When you drink the water, think of the well-digger,’ is folk wisdom around the world. Anderson wisely adds, when you see elegant mahogany furniture, think of the hard-handed African slave hacking away, under deadly working conditions, at a tall hardwood tree in a hot, dense Caribbean rainforest. Like Sidney Mintz’s classic study of sugar, Sweetness and Power, this book makes us see the familiar in new and disturbing ways. -- Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship: A Human History

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Book SynopsisFrom ESPN reporter Marc Raimondi comes a compelling, gripping narrative history of professional wrestling’s legendary faction, The NWO (New World Order), from their inception in 1996 to their influence on American pop culture today. In 1996, professional wrestling was one of the most watched sports on cable television, with more than 5 million people tuning in every week. And in the late 1990s, pro-wrestling was the hottest thing in American pop culture, with companies making millions in action figures, video games, and simple black t-shirts emblazoned with three little letters: NWO. The NWO, or New World Order, became a business like no other, and was responsible for the explosive ratings and rabid fanbase. It started with an ingenious storyline starring Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and the titular Hollywood Hogan—Hulk Hogan gone bad. Together, they formed a new era of characters to root for: The Bad Guys. Never before had audiences cheered for the villains, rooting for them over the heroes. The NWO broke down wrestling’s fourth wall in a clever new way, blurring the lines between fiction and reality. And suddenly, watching professional wrestling not only became socially acceptable, but a necessity if you wanted to stay up to date with pop culture. Their impact was infectious and long-lasting. It was entertainment that shaped a generation. Written by Marc Raimondi, a current ESPN reporter with nearly twenty years of experience in journalism, this narrative history explores professional wrestling’s most popular faction and how their existence influenced American culture like never before.

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Book SynopsisA definitive, illustrated, single-volume history of the American West, from the bestselling author of BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE, Dee Brown.

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Book SynopsisThis is a surprising portrait of the pastel city, a masterly study of Cuban immigration and exile, and a sly account of vile moments in the Cold War. Miami may be the sunniest place in America but this is Didion's darkest book, in which she explores American efforts to overthrow the Castro regime, Miami's civic corruption and racist treatment of its large black community.

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Book Synopsis''Hilarious, heartbreaking and utterly extraordinary.'' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times Books of the YearSuperbly entertaining.' Financial TimesJaw-dropping.' Sunday TimesFascinating.' GuardianGripping.' The TimesTerrific . . . A page-turning history of imperial hubris and nemesis, deceit and delusion, love and betrayal on a grand scale.' Sunday TimesIn 1864, a young Austrian archduke by the name of Maximilian crossed the Atlantic to assume a faraway throne. He had been lured into the voyage by a duplicitous Napoleon III. Keen to spread his own interests abroad, the French emperor had promised Maximilian a hero's welcome. Instead, he walked into a bloody guerrilla war. With a head full of impractical ideals and a penchant for pomp and butterflies the new emperor' was singularly ill-equipped for what lay in store.This is the vivid history of this barely known, barely b

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Book SynopsisThe foremost experts on the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation come together to discuss its role in the rescue, recovery, and future of our wildlife resources. At the end of the nineteenth century, North America suffered a catastrophic loss of wildlife driven by unbridled resource extraction, market hunting, and unrelenting subsistence killing. This crisis led powerful political forces in the United States and Canada to collaborate in the hopes of reversing the process, not merely halting the extinctions but returning wildlife to abundance. While there was great understanding of how to manage wildlife in Europe, where wildlife management was an old, mature profession, Continental methods depended on social values often unacceptable to North Americans. Even Canada, a loyal colony of England, abandoned wildlife management as practiced in the mother country and joined forces with like-minded Americans to develop a revolutionary system of wildlife conservation. In time, and suTrade ReviewThis new book offers a wealth of valuable [and] accessible information about how North American wildlife has been and is presently managed. Indeed, all those who hold an interest in North American lands and the wide range of wildlife species living thereupon would be very much benefited from discovering for themselves just how those who hold responsibility for these species think about them, what their goals for them are, and how they go about their respective work.—Johannes E. Riutta, The Well-Read NaturalistTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsAbout the Contributors1 The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation: Setting the Stage for EvaluationShane P. Mahoney, Valerius Geist, and Paul R. Krausman2 North American Ecological History as the Foundation of the ModelValerius Geist and Shane P. Mahoney3 The Social Context for the Emergence of the North American ModelJohn Sandlos4 The Great Early ChampionsJames Peek5 Critical Legislative and Institutional Underpinnings of the North American ModelJames L. Cummins6 The Landscape Conservation MovementWilliam Porter and Kathryn Frens7 Hunting and Vested Interests as the Spine of the North American ModelJames R. Heffelfinger and Shane P. Mahoney8 Science and the North American Model: Edifice of Knowledge, Exemplar for ConservationJames A. Schaefer9 North American Waterfowl Management:An Example of a Highly Effective International Treaty Arrangement for Wildlife ConservationShane P. Mahoney10 Private-Public Collaboration and Institutional Successes in North American ConservationJohn F. Organ11 Social, Economic, and Ecological Challenges to the North American Model of Wildlife ConservationLeonard A. Brennan, David G. Hewitt, and Shane P. Mahoney12 A Comparison of the North American Model to Other Conservation ApproachesRosie Cooney13 The Model in Transition: From Proactive Leadership to Reactive ConservationShane P. MahoneyIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Splendid. . . . haunting and beautifully written. . . . This is a terrific book.” — Washington Post "An incredible story." — People “A dramatic tale expertly told of rapacious ambition, decadent excess, and covert and overt tyranny and trauma. . . . With resplendent detail, the authors capture the gasp-eliciting extravagance of the Vanderbilt Gilded Age mansions. . . . With its intrinsic empathy and in-depth profiles of women, this is a distinctly intimate, insightful, and engrossing chronicle of an archetypal, self-consuming American dynasty. . . . Irresistible.” — Booklist (starred review) “Marked by meticulous research and deep emotional insight, this is a memorable chronicle of American royalty.” — Publishers Weekly “A remarkably frank and tender undertaking.” — The New York Times on The Rainbow Comes and Goes "Meaningful, revealing." — The Wall Street Journal on The Rainbow Comes and Goes “Fascinating, forthright, philosophical, and inspiring, these mother-and-son musings on family, life, death, forgiveness, fame, and perseverance are at once uniquely personal and deeply human.” — Booklist (starred review) on The Rainbow Comes and Goes “Cooper is a storyteller with plenty of heart. . . . A smart, soulful page-turner. . . . Strong stuff, and in Cooper’s hands, well told.” — People on Dispatches from the Edge “His vignettes from the world’s horrorscapes rise above the swagger of many journalistic memoirs because Cooper writes with competence as well as feeling. . . . Intriguing.” — Washington Post Book World on Dispatches from the Edge

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Book SynopsisMust the sins of America’s past poison its hope for the future? Lately the American Left, withdrawing into the halls of academe to rue the nation’s shame, has answered yes in word and deed. Rorty challenges this lost generation to understand its potential role in the tradition of democratic intellectual labor that began with Whitman and Dewey.Trade ReviewRichard Rorty [is] John Dewey’s ablest intellectual heir and one of the most influential philosophers alive… In lively prose, [Achieving Our Country] offers a pointed and necessary reminder that left academics have too often been content to talk to each other about the theory of hegemony while the right has been busy with the practice of it. If those criticized in the book dismiss it the way they brush aside the Blooms and D’Souzas of the world, an opportunity will be lost. Rorty invites a serious conversation about the purposes of intellectual work and the direction of left politics. I wouldn’t want him to have the last word, but the conversation should be joined. If it is conducted with the verve of Achieving Our Country, and if it shares Rorty’s genuine commitment to revitalizing the left as a national force, it will be a very good thing. * The Nation *Achieving Our Country is an appeal to American intellectuals to abandon the intransigent cynicism of the academic, cultural left and to return to the political ambitions of Emerson, Dewey, Herbert Croly and their allies. What Rorty has written—as deftly, amusingly and cleverly as he always writes—is a lay sermon for the untheological… [Americans] do not need to know what God wants but what we are capable of wanting and doing… [Rorty argues] that we would do better to try to improve the world than lament its fallen condition. On that he will carry with him a good many readers. -- Alan Ryan * New York Times Book Review *Richard Rorty is remarkable not just for being a gadfly to analytical philosophers, but for his immense reading, his lively prose and his obvious moral engagement with the issues… The conversation of philosophy would be much poorer without him… Achieving Our Country is a valuable addition to Rorty’s writings… He has things to say that are important and timely… They are said powerfully. -- Hilary Putnam * Times Literary Supplement *In his philosophically rigorous new book, Achieving Our Country, Richard Rorty raises a provocative if familiar question: Whatever happened to national pride in this country? …[and] he offers a persuasive analysis of why such pride has been lost. -- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt * New York Times *The heart of Achieving Our Country is Professor Rorty’s critique of the ‘cultural left.’ Barricaded in the university, this left has isolated itself, he asserts, from the bread-and-butter issues of economic equality and security and the practical political struggles that once occupied the reform tradition… Controversies are seeded like land mines in every paragraph of this short book. -- Peter Steinfels * New York Times *Richard Rorty’s Achieving Our Country is short, comprehensible and urges a civic and political agenda—the re-engagement of the Left… Rorty seeks to revive the vision of Walt Whitman and John Dewey, and what he sees as the real American Dream—a compassionate society held together by nothing more absolute than consensus and the belief that humane legal and economic agreements stand at the centre of democratic civilisation. -- Brian Eno * The Guardian *[In this] slim, elegantly written book…Rorty scolds other radical academics for abandoning pride in the nation’s democratic promise; in their obsession with ‘victim studies,’ he argues, they have neglected to inspire the ‘shared social hope’ that motivated every mass movement against injustice from the abolitionists to the voting rights campaign. -- Michael Kazin * Washington Post Book World *A succinct, stimulating, crisply written book… Rorty proposes a return to the liberal values that animated American reform movements for the first two-thirds of this century: from the long struggle of labor unions to obtain better conditions for workers, to the efforts of leaders like Woodrow Wilson, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson to redistribute the nation’s wealth more equitably… Although Rorty is an academic philosopher, in this book, addressed to the general reader, he employs clear, vigorous language that makes reading a pleasure rather than a chore. -- Merle Rubin * Christian Science Monitor *Achieving Our Country criticizes academic theorists and reminds us that left-wing reformers in previous periods of American history either made their careers outside the university or, at least, developed strong links with the decidedly non-academic labor movement… Rorty’s distinction between a ‘cultural Left’ and a ‘reformist Left’ is useful. As Freud replaced Marx in the imagination of academic theorists, Rorty explains, a cultural left—one that ‘thinks more about stigma than about money, more about deep and hidden psychosexual motivations than about shallow and evident greed’—came into being. -- Alan Wolfe * The Chronicle of Higher Education *It is refreshing to find so hard-hitting a portrait of the contemporary academic Left in the work of one of its own. -- Peter Berkowitz * Commentary *On behalf of countless readers whose reaction to most left academic writing over the past two decades has increasingly been not so much either agreement or disagreement as an overpowering sense of So what?, the eminent philosopher Richard Rorty has composed a marvelous philippic against the entrenched irrelevance of much of the American left… Rorty’s most important insight is into the political worldview of the academic left: that it is essentially nonpolitical… He offers a withering comparison of the core beliefs of the current cultural left with those of one of its forebears, Walt Whitman. -- Harold Meyerson * Dissent *Mr. Rorty calls for a left which ‘dreams of achieving’ America, a patriotic left he recognises from the days of the New Deal and which he remembers from the early 1960s when, for example, people campaigned for civil-rights laws to make their country better. Where, he wonders, has such reformist pride gone? In place of ‘Marxist scholasticism’, Mr. Rorty wants a left which makes reducing inequalities part of a ‘civic religion’. Yet material differences are not the only sort of thing that bothers Mr. Rorty about the contemporary United States. On a communitarian note, he argues that the ‘civic religion’ he advocates should include commitment to shared values that rise above ethnic or minority loyalties. * The Economist *Rorty made us realise how much poorer we are if Jefferson, Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Stowe, Peirce, William James, Santayana and Dewey are not familiar landmarks in our intellectual scenery… If we [scoff] at Rorty’s patriotic American leftism, we may find that it sets off some doubts that will come back to haunt us. When we quibble over his interpretations of our favourite thinkers, are we not confirming his stereotype of left pedantry? When we sniff at him for keeping company with rightists and renegades, do we not bear out his idea of a Left that is keener on its own purity than on fighting for the poor? As we look down our noses at the etiolation of socialism in America, should we not reckon the costs and benefits of European mass movements, and reflect on the political history of the anti-Americanism that comes to us so easily? Before leftist subjects of Her Majesty get snooty about American democracy, we might stop and wonder whose interests are served by our unshakable optimism about the past. The unguarded naiveties of Achieving Our Country are not quite as negligent as they look, and the book may well turn out to be one of the first signs of a long-delayed breaking of the ice in socialist politics following the end of the Cold War. The fact that Rorty’s old-style American leftism is closer to British New Labour than to good old socialism may prove not that he is confused, but that it is time to reset our political chronometers. -- Jonathan Rée * London Review of Books *Politically progressive academics should consider carefully Rorty’s arguments… They pose important questions about American politics and public intellectual practice. -- Harvey Kaye * Times Higher Educational Supplement *There is much to be debated, much that will probably infuriate, in Rorty’s picture of contemporary Left intellectuals… Achieving Our Country is meant to be pointedly polemical, and Rorty…[has] succeeded at stirring up emotions as well as thoughts. -- Vincent J. Bertolini * American Literature *Richard Rorty is an inspirational writer who makes a valiant effort in this book to create an atmosphere of cooperation among those he characterizes as ‘the Reformist Left.’ He wants us to return to the ideals of John Dewey and Walt Whitman and achieve the greatness that is possible in a country of our wealth and dominance. -- Edward J. Bander * Bimonthly Review of Law Books *Rorty offers a resolute defense of pragmatic and reformist politics, coupled with a sophisticated rereading of the history of 20th-century American leftist thought. The result is a book that ends up reaffirming the great achievements of American left liberalism—strong unions, Social Security, and the principled regulation of corporate power—even as it illuminates the ways in which the cultural myopia of today’s academic left has placed those achievements in jeopardy… In his insistence that there is a great American tradition of leftist reform, and that this rendition can be reinvigorated only by a return to the idea of the nation, Rorty has constructed as humane and as hopeful a defense of patriotism as one can imagine. -- James Surowiecki * Boston Phoenix *A bracing tonic against the jejune profundities and the self-centered talking points by the far Right that find their way into the media. In sharply etched arguments Rorty weaves in philosophical and historical perspectives… His message isn’t one of resignation, rather of hope grounded in the Left’s potential for reinventing itself. He thinks it’s time for the Left to stop demonizing capitalist America and to develop once again a political program of its own. -- Terry Doran * Buffalo News *For many years now, Rorty has been one of the most important American pragmatists, defending the experimental modes of inquiry first propounded by John Dewey from both traditionalists and postmodernists… In Achieving Our Country, a brief but eloquent book, Rorty begs his academic colleagues to return to the real world. ‘I am nostalgic for the days,’ he writes, ‘when leftist professors concerned themselves with issues in real politics (such as the availability of health care to the poor and the need for strong labor unions) rather than with academic politics.’ -- Jefferson Decker * In These Times *Richard Rorty is considered by many to be America’s greatest living philosopher. That assessment is firmly supported in this short, profound, and lucid volume. In Achieving Our Country, Rorty does what many of us think philosophers ought to do, namely, lay a foundation and establish a framework within which we as individuals and as a society can conceptualize and fashion operational theories by which to live and prosper together… I can think of no more important book that I have read in recent years or one that I could more fervently recommend to the readers of this journal that Rorty’s Achieving Our Country. -- Thomas R. DeGregori * Journal of Economic Issues *‘Achieving our country’ (the phrase is culled from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time) isn’t just a redeemable aim, it’s what good radical politics has always been about. -- Gideon Calder * Radical Philosophy *Rorty’s new book urges a return to American liberalism’s days of hope, pride, and struggle within the system… Subtle without being dense, good-natured in its defiance of a whole spectrum of conventional wisdoms, Achieving Our Country is a rare book. It should be compulsory reading—if that weren’t contrary to all it stands for. -- Richard Lamb * The Reader's Catalog *A deeply considered diagnosis, a vital set of prophecies. * Publishers Weekly *[The] book contains criticism for the political left as earnestly constructive and thoughtfully formulated as any I have encountered…[Rorty’s] book is worth revisiting as the Democratic Party smarts from losses in recent special elections and considers how it might win back the House in the 2018 midterms. -- Conor Friedersdorf * The Atlantic *Table of ContentsAmerican National Pride: Whitman and Dewey The Eclipse of the Reformist Left A Cultural Left Appendixes Movements and Campaigns The Inspirational Value of Great Works of Literature Notes Acknowledgments Index

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Book SynopsisJames McPherson is Professor Emeritus of American History at Princeton University. Battle Cry of Freedom won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 2003.Trade ReviewThe definitive study, meticulous in its scholarship and compulsive in its readability * Financial Times *McPherson is wonderfully lucid... Above all, everything is in a living relationship with everything else ... Omitting nothing important, whether military, political or economic, he yet manages to make everything he touches drive the narrative forward ... historical writing of the highest order * The New York Times *A distinguished contribution to American history ... He has succeeded brilliantly. He has written what will surely become the standard one-volume history of the great conflict which forged America as a united nation * Independent *Absolutely brilliant ... McPherson has fresh approaches to the war's background, the four years of struggle and the aftermath * Washington Post Book World *McPherson wears with equal ease the hats of biographer, economist, sociologist and military historian .. Probably the best single-volume history of America's Civil War yet written * Economist *Table of ContentsPrologue: from the halls of Montezuma. The United States of midcentury; Mexico will poison us; an empire for slavery; slavery, rum and Romanism; the crime against Kansas; mudsills and greasy mechanics for A. Lincoln; the revolution of 1860; the counterrevolution of 1861; facing both ways - the upper south's dilemma; amateurs go to war; farewell to the 90 Days' War; blockade and beachead - the Salt-Water War, 1861-1862; the River War in 1862; the sinews of war; Billy Yank's chickhominy blues; we must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued; carry me back to Old Virginny; John Bull's Virgina Reel; three rivers in winter, 1862-1863; fire in the rear; long remember - the summer of '63; Johnny Reb's Chattanooga Blues; when this cruel war is over; if it takes all summer; after four years of failure; we are going to be wiped off the Earth; South Carolina must be destroyed; we are all Americans. Epilogue: to the shoals of victory.

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Book SynopsisFrom Superman and Batman to the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, these pop-culture juggernauts, with their "powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men," thrilled readers and audiences. The author shows how creators turned to science fiction to convey the reality of the paranormal they experienced in their lives.Trade Review"Intriguing." (Times Literary Supplement) "The message is that we need to step backwards from our culture to see these hidden patterns, and in this endeavor Kripal provides new maps of the secret world of superpowers. To access these deep strata of reality and to achieve a measure of self-realisation, we need to embrace this strangeness and not be frightened of it.... Kripal has a lively style and a deep love of (perhaps reverence for) his subject matter." (Fortean Times)

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Book Synopsis2018 Edgar Award Finalist—Best Fact Crime“A thoroughly readable, thoroughly chilling account of a brilliant con man and his all-too vulnerable prey” (The Boston Globe)—the definitive story of preacher Jim Jones, who was responsible for the Jonestown Massacre, the largest murder-suicide in American history, by the New York Times bestselling author of Manson.In the 1950s, a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the gospel and Marxism. His congregation was racially mixed, and he was a leader in the early civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California, where he got involved in electoral politics and became a prominent Bay Area leader. But underneath the surface lurked a terrible darkness. In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his early days as an idealistic minister to a secret life of extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing, before the fateful decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died—including almost three hundred infants and children—after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink. Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. The Road to Jonestown is “the most complete picture to date of this tragic saga, and of the man who engineered it…The result is a disturbing portrait of evil—and a compassionate memorial to those taken in by Jones’s malign charisma” (San Francisco Chronicle).Trade Review“I have to say that it is weird to find out the background of things that I grew up hearing about around the dinner table. The level of research and detail in The Road to Jonestown is the best ever, and really lets readers understand not only what happened, but how and why. This book tells the Jim Jones story better than anything I have read to date.” -- Jim Jones, Jr.“Jeff Guinn offers what might be the most complete picture to date of this tragic saga, and of the man who engineered it. . . . The result is a disturbing portrait of evil — and a compassionate memorial to those taken in by Jones’ malign charisma.” -- Kevin Canfield * The San Francisco Chronicle *"A thoroughly readable, thoroughly chilling account of a brilliant con man and his all-too vulnerable prey. . . . Generates a bizarre — dare I say Manson-like? — magnetic force that pulls the reader through its many pages. Noir thriller morphs into horror story." -- Dan Cryer * The Boston Globe *"Magisterial. . . . Guinn's exhaustive research, shrewd analysis, and engaging prose illuminate a monstrous yet tragic figure--and the motives of those who lost their souls to him." * Publishers Weekly *"A vivid, fascinating revisitation of a time and series of episodes fast receding into history even as their forgotten survivors still walk among us." * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) *"A powerful account of Jones's life. . . . Guinn's blow-by-blow account of Jonestown's final days in the book's last chapters is riveting." * BookPage *

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