History of the Americas Books

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Book SynopsisRecalls how much of the rebellious queer culture, cheap rents, and a vibrant downtown arts movement vanished almost overnight to be replaced by gay conservative spokespeople and mainstream consumerism.Trade Review"This bracing, powerful, and well-reasoned work reaffirms the author's stature as a distinctive American woman of letters... Highly recommended." -- Richard Drezen Library Journal "The book that's inspired me more than any other this year is Sarah Schulman's Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, a razor-sharp memoir of New York in the heyday of the AIDS crisis." -- Jason King Slate "Teeming with ideas, necessary commentary, refreshing connections and examination of the status quo." Lambda Literary "A brilliant critique of contemporary culture... This is the most important book of the year." -- Jeff Miller Cult MTL "Schulman's personal recollections... are sharp and vivid." Gay & Lesbian Review/Worldwide "This is a very good, very sad book about the aftershock of the AIDS crisis in New York. Schulman is a truly gifted thinker." -- Alex Frank Fader Magazine "The author, a true woman of letters, makes a persuasive case." -- Roberto Friedman Bay Area Reporter "This is why the book is so successful and demands our attention: through a focus on the pulse of the queer community (of the 80s), it touches upon the individual condition (of today)." -- Marcie Bianco Velvetpark "A polemic, a passionate, provocative ... account of disappearance, forgetfulness and untimely death." -- Olivia Laing New Statesman "No book has rocked my world in recent times more than Sarah Schulman's 'The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination' ... [it ranks] among the best alternative histories published in the last 50 years." -- Don Shewey Culturevulture.net "A galvanizing account of the transformation, both external and mental, in New York City life." -- Emily Douglas Los Angeles Review Of Books "The essence of what Schulman calls gentrification is to pretend that privilege and difference do not exist and that any attempt to remember that they do is mere 'political correctness' rather than facing up to the reality to who does what to whom. To forget these things, is to deceive ourselves-and Schulman's harsh, bitter prose is a useful way of waking ourselves up." -- Roz Kaveney Times Literary Supplement (TLS) "It's a beautifully written screed (not a bad word in my books)... Schulman shines when she taps her deep knowledge of the AIDS movement... She can be brilliant." -- Susan G. Cole NowTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Making Record from Memory Part I. Understanding the Past 1. The Dynamics of Death and Replacement 2. The Gentrification of AIDS 3. Realizing That They're Gone Part II. The Consequences Of Loss 4. The Gentrification of Creation 5. The Gentrification of Gay Politics 6. The Gentrification of Our Literature Conclusion: Degentrification--The Pleasure of Being Uncomfortable

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Book SynopsisJames Madison’s record of the Constitutional Convention traces day by day the debates held from May to September 1787 and presents the only complete picture we have of the strategy, interests, and ideas of the Founders at the convention itself.Trade Review“The one invaluable source for the Federal Convention is, of course, James Madison’s Notes of Debates…. essential for all libraries.” * Harvard Law Review *“An important book…. Certainly this volume should be added to the collection of every library.” * Choice *“In our day when the constitution is often interpreted out of context, or even in an alien context, all who truly revere the Constitution should be conversant with Madison’s Notes, in which are set forth the purposes of the Founding Fathers.” * Journal of Southern History *

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Book SynopsisThe eighth edition of the hugely successful American Civilization offers students the perfect background and introductory information on contemporary American life, examining the central dimensions of American society from geography and the environment to government and politics, religion, education, sports, media and the arts.Fully and comprehensively updated throughout with regard to events, processes, attitudes and major figures in society, culture and politics in the United States, this new edition brings the book up to date through: coverage of recent events including the 2020 US election and 2021 presidential inauguration; revised chapters on geography, women and minorities, and the media that incorporate more information on such themes as environmental legislation, the LGBTQ+ community, social media and people, all key themes in the study of American culture and society; the introduction of topical studies that connect small case studies to apposite illustrations to highlight key subjects within the field; and the inclusion of more discussion questions that require analysis and the use of evidence to substantiate argumentation to enable students to develop their own essay responses to typical questions that they may be asked. Supported by exercises and suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, a substantial chronology that covers key events in the history of the United States and a fully integrated companion website (www.routledge.com/cw/mauk), the textbook remains an essential introduction to American civilization, culture and society for American Studies students.Table of Contents1. The American Context 2. The Country 3. The People: Settlement and Immigration 4. The People: Women and Minorities 5. Religious Culture 6. Political Institutions: The Federal Government 7. Political Institutions: State and Local Government 8. Foreign Policy 9. The Legal System 10. The Economy 11. Social Services 12. Education 13. The Media 14. Arts, Sports and Leisure Cultures

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Book SynopsisOur Voices: Indigeneity and Architecture is an exciting advance in the field of architecture offering multiple indigenous perspectives on architecture and design theory and practice. Indigenous authors from Aotearoa NZ, Canada, Australia, and the USA explore the making and keeping of places and spaces which are informed by indigenous values and identities. The lack of publications to date offering an indigenous lens on the field of architecture belies the rich expertise found in indigenous communities in all four countries. This expertise is made richer by the fact that this indigenous expertise combines both architecture and design professional practice, that for the most part is informed by Western thought and practice, with a frame of reference that roots this architecture in the indigenous places in which it sits.

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Book SynopsisThe Epic New York Times Bestseller Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Texas Book Award Winner of the Oklahoma Book Award This stunning historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West “is nothing short of a revelation…will leave dust and blood on your jeans” (The New York Times Book Review).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 entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: 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.

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewEngrossing ... eye-opening ... an enormously refreshing treat -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times *With great skill the authors have managed to combine clarity and consistency, substance and fluency, historical precision and a text that is a joy to read * Lira Neto *A thoughtful and profound journey into the soul of Brazil...The Brazil that emerges from this book is, indeed, a fascinating, complex, multicoloured, contradictory and challenging organism, more like a living being than a political, cultural and geographical entity -- Laurentino Gomes * Folha de São Paulo *Coinciding with the election of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, this epic history of the world's sixth most populous country is a shocking, dramatic and utterly engrossing read. The details of Brazil's history, from the 19th-century empire to the suicide of the quasi-fascist dictator Getulio Vargas, are largely unknown to British readers, but that only makes its dark story all the more fascinating. * The Sunday Times, Books of the Year *Detailed and deeply reasoned . . . Illuminating, engrossing, and consistently thoughtful. -- Larry Rohter * The New York Review of Books *Compelling and insightful . . . One of Schwarcz and Starling's great strengths is their dissection of changing racial identity. -- Geoff Dyer * Financial Times *Evocative . . . Schwarcz and Starling adopt what they call a biographical approach: an attempt to tell the collective stories of the generations of Brazilians that have lived . . . They achieve this with flair in their rich evocations of colonial and imperial Brazil . . . Rich and absorbing. -- Patrick Wilcken * The Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisAnne L. Foster provides a comprehensive overview of the war on drugs, its failures and continued appeal, and the international consequences of US drug policy.Trade Review“The Long War on Drugs makes diplomatic history, the interaction between US domestic and regional drug policies, and social and cultural history work together to show how the present has been produced by the past. In beautiful prose, Anne L. Foster explains the diplomatic history of global prohibition and the various national interests it has supposedly served over time. Foster does a great job of bringing the current situation into view.” -- Nancy D. Campbell, author of * OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose *“A smart, compelling, and accessible soup-to-nuts narrative history of US drug wars at home and abroad. It’s a terrific survey for newcomers that also advances the field with fresh insights and synthesis.” -- David Herzberg, author of * White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. The Meaning of Drugs 1 1. The Many Uses of Drugs 5 Part I. The Battle for Prohibition, 1870–1940 15 2. Identifying the Problem 19 3. Deciding on Prohibition 31 4. International Conferences 42 5. Changing Practice and Policy in Medicine and Public Health 55 Part II. To a Declaration of a War on Drugs, 1940–1980 67 6. Opportunities of World War II and Its Aftermath 71 7. US Laws and International Conventions 82 8. Who Is Using? 96 9. War on Drugs Declared 109 Part III. Blurring the Lines, 1980–Present 123 10. Mandatory Minimums 127 11. Environmental Effects of the War on Drugs 139 12. Marijuana’s Different Path 152 13. New Challenges to the War on Drugs 164 Conclusion. Never-Ending War on Drugs? 175 Glossary 179 Notes 181 Suggestions for Further Reading 193 Index 199

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Book SynopsisThe fall of France in 1940 panicked US leaders, leading to their fateful decision to recognize the pro-Nazi Vichy government. Michael Neiberg takes readers back to the fraught early years of World War II, when America’s misguided policy on Vichy alienated its British ally and ensured tensions with Charles de Gaulle and the postwar French Republic.Trade ReviewDeeply researched and forcefully written…shed[s] light on an embarrassing period in American diplomacy…Neiberg offers a mesmerizing account of how the U.S., as it anticipated another European war, stumbled through attempts to neutralize Vichy France…Neiberg deftly explains the confused politics and diplomacy that bedeviled the war against the Nazis. -- Ronald C. Rosbottom * Wall Street Journal *Meticulously researched but extremely readable…[An] excellent book. -- Julian Jackson * Washington Post *Michael Neiberg is one of the very best historians on wartime France, and his approach to the fall of France and its consequences is truly original and perceptive as well as superbly written. -- Antony Beevor, author of The Second World WarIt is difficult to find WWII material that is both interesting and fresh, but this book qualifies. -- Tyler Cowen * Marginal Revolution *The fall of France shattered the illusion that the United States could stay on the sidelines while Nazi Germany carved up Europe. Writing with clarity and verve, deep knowledge of French sources, and a keen eye for human foibles, Neiberg explains how the defeat of June 1940 transformed America’s relationship with France and compelled a rethinking of America’s world role. A smart and fresh analysis of Franco–American relations in the darkest hour of our long friendship. -- William I. Hitchcock, author of The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950sNeiberg has rescued an important episode in the history of the Second World War from relative obscurity and done so in great style. His book, with its terrific cast of characters and fast-paced story, reads like a novel and is at the same time an outstanding piece of historical research and analysis. -- Margaret MacMillan, author of War: How Conflict Shaped UsAn utterly gripping account, the best to date, of relations within the turbulent triumvirate of France, Britain, and America in the Second World War. Neiberg vividly brings to life the extraordinary military, domestic, personal, and political pressures on giants such as Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Charles de Gaulle, while also showing the immediate practical effect their interactions had on ordinary people in the struggle against the Nazis. -- Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with DestinyAn excellent book, the product of deep research, clear thought, and gripping writing. Neiberg restores France and the French Empire to its rightful place in the history of the strategy of the Atlantic powers in the Second World War. In so doing, he allows us to understand anew how shocking the French defeat in 1940 was for American policymakers, and the profound consequences that reverberated from that shock for the subsequent course of the war. -- Daniel Todman, author of Britain’s War: A New World, 1942–1947Expertly researched and a pleasure to read, When France Fell fills an important gap in the history of World War II by analyzing American relations with Vichy and Free French forces, how the geopolitical position of France’s colonial holdings steered US policy, and how those decisions deeply strained Anglo–American relations. The story Neiberg tells is one of misguided calculations and ultimately tremendous luck that Americans’ ‘Vichy gamble’ did not cause more political and military turmoil. -- Brooke L. Blower, author of Becoming Americans in Paris: Transatlantic Politics and Culture between the World WarsNeiberg’s fascinating and compelling study places France back at the heart of the story of the Second World War. He crafts a vivid narrative of the extraordinary and radical transformations that accompanied the catastrophe in France. The consequences of defeat were profound for a divided Gallic nation, but they were also defining for Britain and America; the defeat of Europe’s premier land power put a nail in the coffin of one superpower and sparked the rise of another. Highly recommended! -- Jonathan Fennell, author of Fighting the People’s War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World WarAn important and fascinating book that examines U.S. policy towards Vichy—a policy which not only put the United States at odds with its wartime ally, Great Britain, but also was destined to fail…While numerous books have been written on the fall of France, U.S. policy toward Vichy has been curiously overlooked in recent years. Neiberg remedies this…Highly readable [and] filled with interesting, larger-than-life characters. -- Sean Durns * National Interest *This is an extremely well researched and readable book. And it is a reminder that in wartime, fighting the enemy can often be less complicated than dealing with your allies. -- Calum Henderson * Military History Matters *A superbly crafted synthesis of military, diplomatic, and political history…Neiberg concludes that America’s flirtation with Vichy did not go disastrously wrong, but cautions that this had little to do with wise decision-making in Washington…[An] excellent book. -- Carl Cavanagh Hodge * Michigan War Studies Review *Punctures the myths of the conventional American story of the Second World War…Important, well argued, deeply researched, and a pleasure to read, written by one of the most productive and accomplished American historians of both world wars. -- Richard Fogarty * H-Net Reviews *Neiberg’s important new book, When France Fell, chronicles the often-bungled attempts of the United States to redefine its strategy and navigate its relationship with Vichy France. It is one of the first, if not the first, work in English to address the strategic relationship between the United States and France during the Second World War…A timely reminder of the importance of statecraft in an age where international incivility runs rampant. -- Cameron Zinsou * H-Diplo *

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Book SynopsisThe interplay of psychology, design, and politics in experiments with urban open space As suburbanization, racial conflict, and the consequences of urban renewal threatened New York City with “urban crisis,” the administration of Mayor John V. Lindsay (1966–1973) experimented with a broad array of projects in open spaces to affirm the value of city life. Mariana Mogilevich provides a fascinating history of a watershed moment when designers, government administrators, and residents sought to remake the city in the image of a diverse, free, and democratic society.New pedestrian malls, residential plazas, playgrounds in vacant lots, and parks on postindustrial waterfronts promised everyday spaces for play, social interaction, and participation in the life of the city. Whereas designers had long created urban spaces for a broad amorphous public, Mogilevich demonstrates how political pressures and the influence of the psychological sciences led them to a new conception of public space that included diverse publics and encouraged individual flourishing. Drawing on extensive archival research, site work, interviews, and the analysis of film and photographs, The Invention of Public Space considers familiar figures, such as William H. Whyte and Jane Jacobs, in a new light and foregrounds the important work of landscape architects Paul Friedberg and Lawrence Halprin and the architects of New York City’s Urban Design Group.The Invention of Public Space brings together psychology, politics, and design to uncover a critical moment of transformation in our understanding of city life and reveals the emergence of a concept of public space that remains today a powerful, if unrealized, aspiration.Trade Review"Deeply researched and wonderfully written, The Invention of Public Space will inspire a re-thinking of a concept—public space—and a place and time—New York City in the 1960s and ’70s—that we thought we knew well. Mariana Mogilevich captures the unique excitement of that moment when the top-down framework of modernist urban design and planning had collapsed and a new world of open, inclusive, and participatory design seemed to be beginning."—Robert Fishman, Taubman College of Architecture + Planning, University of Michigan"Mariana Mogilevich avoids the expected judgements about the spaces she surveys—how ‘public’ were they, really?—and shows how the idea of ‘public space,’ with all its paradoxes and exclusions, was itself devised as a response to urban crisis in 1960s New York City. Pithy, clever, and wise, The Invention of Public Space is a much-needed reminder that ideas about self and society are at the heart of the cultural history of urbanism."—Samuel Zipp, coeditor of Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs"Thanks to the author's original research and acute analysis, this an important book, not just for the history of 20th-century New York but also for the history of urban America more broadly."—CHOICE"Design and planning of public space play an important role in creating the physical conditions for imagining and experiencing democratic citizenship. But rather than settling on a conclusion whether Lindsay, or later Bloomberg, failed in achieving this goal, Mogilevich leaves us with encouragement to continue the experiment."—Journal of Urban Design"Mogilevich successfully explores how design projects driven by high-minded ideals of spatial politics impacted or even contributed to ongoing racial injustice in the city, and often overlooked the experiences of communities whose lives designers and urbanists were seeking to improve."—ARLIS/NA"This timely book squashes naïveté and inspires, leaving the reader energized and better prepared to pursue spatial justice anew."—The Architect’s NewspaperTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: The Invention of Public Space1. Space and Politics in Lindsay’s New York2. Topographies of Experience: Jacob Riis Plaza3. Strangers and Neighbors: Residential Territories4. Open Space as Interface: Vest-Pocket Parks5. Pedestrian Experiments: Designs on the Street6. Metropolitan Environments: The Waterfront ParkEpilogue: The Deaths and Lives of Urban Public SpaceAcknowledgmentsAbbreviations for Frequently Cited Archival CollectionsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisNOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTUREOscar Nominated For Best Picture and Best Adapted ScreenplaySet amid the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA's African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America's space program.Before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as Human Computers', calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts, these colored computers' used pencil and paper to write the equations that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.Moving from World War II through NASA's golden age, touching on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War, and the women's rights movement, Hidden Figures interweaves a rich history of mankind's greatest adventure with the intimate stories of five courageous women whose work forever changed the world.Trade ReviewA TIME Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2016 ‘Clearly fueled by pride and admiration, a tender account of genuine transcendence and camaraderie.The story warmly conveys the dignity and refinements of these women’ New York Times Book Review ‘Much as Tom Wolfe did in The Right Stuff, Shetterly moves gracefully between the women’s lives and the broader sweep of history … Shetterly blends impressive research with an enormous amount of heart in telling these stories … Genuinely inspiring book’ Boston Globe ‘A fascinating and important document about the hitherto unknown impact of NASA’s endeavours’ BBC Sky at Night magazine ‘Shetterly’s highly recommended work offers up a crucial history that had previously and unforgivably been lost. We’d do well to put this book into the hands of young women who have long since been told that there’s no room for them at the scientific table’ Library Journal ‘Inspiring and enlightening’ Kirkus ‘Exploring the intimate relationships among blackness, womanhood, and 20th-century American technological development, Shetterly crafts a narrative that is crucial to understanding subsequent movements for civil rights’ Publishers Weekly ‘This an is incredibly powerful and complex story, and Shetterly has it down cold. The breadth of her well-documented research is immense, and her narrative compels on every level. The timing of this revelatory book could not be better, and book clubs will adore it’ Booklist ‘Meticulous … the depth and detail that are the book’s strength make it an effective, fact-based rudder with which would-be scientists and their allies can stabilise their flights of fancy’ Seattle Times

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Book SynopsisThe Katrina disaster was not a weather event of summer 2005. It was a disaster a century in the making, a product of lessons learned from previous floods, corporate and government decision making, and the political economy of the United States at large. New Orleans’s history is America’s history, and Katrina represents America’s possible future.Trade ReviewThe main thrust of Horowitz’s account is to make us understand Katrina—the civic calamity, not the storm itself—as a consequence of decades of bad decisions by humans, not an unanticipated caprice of nature…He leaves readers with a strong sense that it’s only a matter of time before there is a similar disaster in New Orleans, and that, in whatever lull there is between now and then, things aren’t great. -- Nicholas Lemann * New Yorker *Brilliant…If you want to read only one book to better understand why people in positions of power in government and industry do so little to address climate change, even with wildfires burning and ice caps melting and extinctions becoming a daily occurrence, this is the one… Horowitz shows—patiently and damningly—how the decisions made by Louisiana’s political and business elite systematically rendered the region vulnerable to disaster. -- Scott W. Stern * Los Angeles Review of Books *Easily the best book on the subject since Douglas Brinkley’s 2006 The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast…The fact that Katrina’s impact fell disproportionately on poor Louisianans raises a host of issues that Horowitz addresses better than any previous narrative history of the catastrophe. -- Steve Donoghue * Christian Science Monitor *Horowitz does a masterful job of describing the public and private engineering projects that made possible real estate construction, oil exploration, and other forms of economic expansion in New Orleans during the twentieth century, building fortunes for a few while putting thousands in the path of the next big storm… Disasters have the power to reveal who we are, what we value, what we’re willing—and unwilling—to protect. -- Eric Klinenberg * New York Review of Books *Horowitz is engrossed by the stark imbalance that pandering to the powerful industries of shipping and oil and gas has produced between ‘private profits and public liabilities.’ His story is a feisty blend of urban environmental history and history of political economy, of land subsidence (drained land sinks) and subsidized loans that create a false sense of impermeability…From start to finish, Horowitz’s necessary book is passionately political. -- Peter Coates * Times Literary Supplement *This masterful history opens nearly a century before the storm and examines how so many people came to live in such a vulnerable place. * The Economist *Horowitz chronicles an endless hustle in which governments and wealthy developers seize landscapes and mold them without regard to long-term consequences, and in which white people and moneyed interests have fixed advantages…A sadly predictable, distinctly American story. -- John McQuaid * Washington Monthly *Politicians and corporations, among others, have made poor communities of color vulnerable to climate disasters. As Katrina: A History demonstrates, political and economic choices traded the present and future lives of Louisiana’s poor (and especially poor Black) people for unevenly distributed short-term gain…Attentive to history, Horowitz has harsh words for climate utopians who look for technological solutions to the city’s problems. -- Elias Rodriques * Bookforum *Calling upon a century of history to tell the story of what many Americans limit to a span of days or weeks, Horowitz’s Katrina is a devastating and important text for understanding the deep-seated inequality, infrastructure failure, and government carelessness that led to one of America’s worst disasters…Reading Horowitz in the age of COVID-19, as the powerful determine who and what are expendable, feels especially instructive. -- Andru Okun * Los Angeles Review of Books *The definitive portrait of the ‘causes and consequences’ of Hurricane Katrina. Horowitz brilliantly explores the disastrous links between warming temperatures, systemic racism, government mismanagement, and corporate greed. Few books better capture the monumental threat that climate change poses to America’s cities. * Publishers Weekly *For those who are interested in getting through this current disaster by reading about other disasters…The whole idea is that Katrina was not just a tragic singular event that happened in 2005, but the result of centuries of terrible—often intentional—political and business decisions that had been made over the course of the hundred years prior…A super lively and engaging writer. * The Strategist *[A] sweeping overview of the historic, social and economic factors that played into the disaster and its aftermath. * The Times-Picayune *A vivid and persuasive chronicle of the ‘causes and consequences’ of Hurricane Katrina…Horowitz argues that a combination of environmental challenges, structural racism, and governmental misjudgment resulted in a massive loss of life…Even readers who have never visited the Crescent City will be moved by this incisive account. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *Incisive…Horowitz argues persuasively that the destruction incurred by Hurricane Katrina was not merely a meteorological event, but part of a long process of political, environmental, economic, and cultural decisions…An eye-opening environmental history. * Kirkus Reviews *Horowitz’s lucid, detailed, and balanced account of the long, crooked paths that led up to Katrina reinforces one of history’s most important lessons. * Daily Beast *Horowitz disrupts the narrative of disaster as exception…[Tells] the story of Katrina as a cycle of profit-driven and government-sanctioned growth and dispossession. -- Maia Silber * Public Books *Horowitz relentlessly pursues how the history of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the United States produced Katrina over the course of a century…Horowitz’s argument…has the potential to make a radical contribution to the history of technology…The writing is masterful, at times transcendent. -- Cornelis Disco * Technology and Culture *This thoroughly researched and clearly written book exposes the relationship between inequality and urban geography, offering a chilling glimpse of future disasters in the making. * Climate and Capitalism *Among the best histories of modern New Orleans. It is, moreover, a towering intervention in modern urban environmental and political history that shows not only how human actions shape disasters, but also how urban history is inseparable from metropolitan, regional, and national histories. Finally, it offers a warning that in an age of climate change and rising sea levels, no one may assume that future crises will visit themselves only on the disadvantaged in urban America. -- J. Mark Souther * The Metropole *Not only a definitive analysis of the storm as it affected New Orleans but also a peerless example of how historians should understand disasters—regardless of specialization—and why those events might matter even to scholars normally unconcerned with such seemingly extraordinary phenomena…As Horowitz goes on to illustrate in gripping detail, the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina is inextricable from decades of slow-moving, unexceptional events that are as much the province of social or political history as environmental history. -- Adam Mandelman * Environmental History *Horowitz is a gifted storyteller…This book is the best published history of Katrina. It is a major contribution to urban history, environmental history, and disaster studies, with relevance far beyond southern Louisiana. -- Josiah Rector * Journal of Southern History *Katrina: A History is a beautiful book about a long, ugly chapter in our nation’s history. Horowitz brilliantly demonstrates that the storm carried with it a century of poor decisions that both preceded and followed the disaster. Corporate greed, misguided policymaking, environmental blindness, corrupt politics, crippling racism, and class inequality: all these human failings were as significant as the broken levees and hurricane-force winds. This is not just a compelling history; it is a distressing warning about our future. -- Lizabeth Cohen, author of Saving America’s Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban AgeThis is by far the most important treatment of Hurricane Katrina—an extraordinarily valuable work of scholarship. Andy Horowitz offers a fresh perspective that serves both as a corrective and also an entirely different way of understanding one of the most critical chapters in the nation’s environmental and political history. -- Ari Kelman, author of A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New OrleansIn 2005, in the eyes of many, the history of New Orleans and lower Louisiana shrank to a single moment of natural disaster. Andy Horowitz’s Katrina recovers the all-too-human policies, limited perspectives, and sheer greed that created the conditions for the events of 2005 over the course of the previous century—conditions that prevented an equitable recovery process, and continue to obscure the ways in which ‘Katrina’ was not just about one unfortunate group of people, but also heralds our collective future. This book is an important reinterpretation of the history of New Orleans, the history of disaster, and the history of our nation. -- Leslie M. Harris, author of In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863This book sees not only the forest and the trees but the blades of grass between the trees. Horowitz properly places the disaster of Hurricane Katrina in the much larger context of regional history, national and local policy decisions, and societal mores which all added up to having tragic if—mostly—unintended consequences, while not losing sight of intimate details and the personal stories of those who experienced the storm and rebuilt the city. Well-written and at times gripping, this is the most important book about Katrina so far. -- John M. Barry, author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed AmericaAlthough it is difficult to imagine a fresh take, Andy Horowitz has provided one…Horowitz has made a superb contribution to the field. His long view of the conditions that created New Orleans’s particular vulnerability fundamentally shifts the paradigm for understanding both the impact of and recovery from the storm, and his extraordinary prose will make the reader stop and read twice just for the fun of it. -- Christopher Manning * Louisiana History *Meant to be read, and ought to be read, by anyone who wishes to be an engaged citizen in our current moment of climate change, racial reckoning, and vast economic inequality. -- Aaron Sachs * California History *Katrina is a masterful work that is multi-disciplinary in its approach to a very complex city situated in a hazardous environment…[and] a model for the evaluation of exposure and vulnerability in other cities and communities that experience geophysical events (such as earthquakes and tornadoes). It makes a strong case that ‘disasters’ are not natural. -- Gerald Mills * Society *

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Book SynopsisTHE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERLONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN''S PRIZE FOR NONFICTIONA New Yorker Best Book of 2024 An Esquire Best Book of Fall 2024 Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard First Book Prize''Reads like a legal thriller'' ESQUIRE''As propulsive and affecting as it is infuriating'' VANITY FAIRA powerful work of reportage and American history that braids together the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation's earliest days, and a small-town murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later.Before 2020, American Indian reservations made up roughly 55 million acres of land in the United States. By contrast, nearly 200 million acres are reserved for National Forests in the emergence of the United States as a nation, the government set aside more land for trees than for Indigenous peoples.In the 1830s, Muscogee people were rounded up by the US military at gunpoint and forced into exile halfway across the continent. At the time, they were promised this new land would be theirs for as long as the grass grew and the waters ran. But that promise was not kept. When Oklahoma was created on top of Muscogee land, the new state claimed their reservation no longer existed. Over a century later, a Muscogee citizen was sentenced to death for murdering another Muscogee citizen on tribal land. His defense attorneys argued that the murder occurred on the reservation of his tribe, and therefore Oklahoma didn't have the jurisdiction to execute him. Oklahoma asserted that the reservation no longer existed. In the summer of 2020, the Supreme Court settled the dispute. Its ruling would ultimately underpin multiple reservations covering almost half the land in Oklahoma, including the author's own Cherokee Nation.Here Rebecca Nagle recounts the generations long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma. By chronicling both the contemporary legal battle and historic acts of Indigenous resistance, By the Fire We Carry stands as a landmark work of American history.

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Book Synopsis'Wry, readable and often astonishing... A provocative and absorbing history of the United States' New York TimesThe United States denies having dreams of empire.We know America has spread its money, language and culture across the world, but we still think of it as a contained territory, framed by Canada above, Mexico below, and oceans either side. Nothing could be further from the truth.This is the story of the United States outside the United States – from nineteenth-century conquests like Alaska and Puerto Rico to the catalogue of islands, archipelagos and military bases dotted around the globe. Full of surprises and previously forgotten episodes, this fascinating book casts America’s history, and its present, in a revealing new light.Trade Review[A] smashing new book… fascinating -- Tim Stanley * Daily Telegraph *Lively and fascinating … [Immerwahr] is incapable of writing a dull page, and he has a real gift for making striking and unusual connections -- Noel Malcolm * Sunday Telegraph *To call this standout book a corrective would make it sound earnest and dutiful, when in fact it is wry, readable and often astonishing … It’s a testament to Immerwahr’s considerable storytelling skills that I found myself riveted by his sections on Hoover’s quest for standardized screw threads, wondering what might happen next. But beyond its collection of anecdotes and arcana, this humane book offers something bigger and more profound. How to Hide an Empire nimbly combines breadth and sweep with fine-grained attention to detail. The result is a provocative and absorbing history of the United States — ‘not as it appears in its fantasies, but as it actually is.’ * New York Times *There are many histories of American expansionism. How to Hide an Empire renders them all obsolete. It is brilliantly conceived, utterly original, and immensely entertaining - simultaneously vivid, sardonic and deadly serious. -- Andrew J. Bacevich, author of Twilight of the American CenturyThis book changes our understanding of the fundamental character of the United States as a presence in world history. By focusing on the processes by which Americans acquired, controlled, and were affected by territory, Daniel Immerwahr shows that the United States was not just another “empire,” but was a highly distinctive one the dimensions of which have been largely ignored. -- David A. Hollinger, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Protestants AbroadHow to Hide an Empire is a breakthrough, for both Daniel Immerwahr and our collective understanding of America’s role in the world. His narrative of the rise of our colonial empire outside North America, and then our surprising pivot from colonization to globalization after World War II, is enthralling in the telling -- and troubling for anyone pondering our nation’s past and future. The result is a book for citizens and scholars alike. -- Samuel Moyn, professor of law and history at Yale UniversityA deft disquisition on America, and America in the world, with a raconteur’s touch and keen sense of the absurd -- Stephen Phillips * Spectator *[A] lively new book… Immerwahr peppers his account with colourful characters and enjoyable anecdotes… [How to Hide an Empire] throws light on the histories of everything from the Beatles to Godzilla, the birth-control pill to the transistor radio * Economist *This is an easily readable and vividly written book, filled with numerous fascinating tales, some well known, but many obscure… [How to Hide an Empire] illuminate[s] the wider history of both the United States and its colonies -- Andrew Johnstone * BBC History *How to Hide an Empire…achieves a strong grounding in its sources material and the wider history of empire studies… [it] is timely and raises weighty questions on themes of identity and belong that are all very relevant today * All About History *[A] vivid, and sometimes quirky, retelling of American expansionism… The originality of Immerwahr’s book… [is] in his explanation of how Washington purposely avoided converting its occupations to annexations -- Gavin Jacobson * New Statesman *Daniel Immerwahr… writes in the manner of an entertaining and informative lecturer who cannot wait to tell the class his latest discovery from the archives -- James Michael * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisThe world’s leading expert on Osama bin Laden delivers for the first time the “riveting” (The New York Times) definitive biography of a man who set the course of American foreign policy for the 21st century and whose ideological heirs we continue to battle today.In The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden, Peter Bergan provides the first reevaluation of the man responsible for precipitating America’s long war with al-Qaeda and its decedents, capturing bin Laden in all the dimensions of his life: as a family man, as a zealot, as a battlefield commander, as a terrorist leader, and as a fugitive. The book sheds light on his many contradictions: he was the son of a billionaire yet insisted his family live like paupers. He adored his wives and children, depending on his two wives, both of whom had PhDs, to make critical strategic decisions. Yet, he also brought ruin to his family. He was fanatically religious but willing to kill thousands of civilians in the name of Islam. He inspired deep loyalty, yet, in the end, his bodyguards turned against him. And while he inflicted the most lethal act of mass murder in United States history, he failed to achieve any of his strategic goals. In his final years, the lasting image we have of bin Laden is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself, just as another dad flipping through the channels with his remote. In the end, bin Laden died in a squalid suburban compound, far from the front lines of his holy war. And yet, despite that unheroic denouement, his ideology lives on. Thanks to exclusive interviews with family members and associates, and documents unearthed only recently, Bergen’s “comprehensive, authoritative, and compelling” (H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World) portrait of Osama bin Laden reveals for the first time who he really was and why he continues to inspire a new generation of jihadists.Trade Review"Meticulously documented, fluidly written and replete with riveting detail... Equally revealing about the Americans and their pursuit of him." — The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) "Of the raft of books that are marking the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and its aftermath, few are likely to be as meticulously documented, as fluidly written or as replete with riveting detail as Peter Bergen’s The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden... A page-turner." — The New York Times Book Review "The portrait [Bergen] draws is intimate and detailed."— The Washington Post "The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden does much more than reveal a human side to a mass murderer, offering the general reader an authoritative and convincing portrait of a man whose misdeeds changed all our lives in many ways, none for the better." — The Guardian "Comprehensive, authoritative, and compelling." — H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewBryant has an encyclopedic knowledge of public affairs and popular culture ... The result is riveting, often revelatory, crammed with facts … The great strength of Bryant’s book is his ability to make large structural changes vivid through outsized personalities and his own personal experiences … Readable, powerful and instructive. * Washington Post *A masterclass from an outstanding chronicler of modern America ... Insightful, thoughtful, and beautifully written. -- Orla GuerinNick Bryant writes like a dream, and is one of those very rare things on TV - a man who makes you want to turn up the sound. His eye for description is sublime, and he has a way of showing you what you’ve been missing from the whole story, whilst never leaving you feeling stupid. -- Emily MaitlisAn absolutely belting achievement ... An elegy for a lost nation and a lost cause. -- Justin WebbThere are all too many people who can opine about the United States but there are very few with Nick Bryant’s depth of knowledge, experience and empathy for the country and his ability to communicate intelligently, engagingly and entertainingly. -- Nick RobinsonBryant is a genuine rarity, a Brit who understands America. * Washington Post *A scathing indictment of the polarization and degradation that has transformed the US … [A]n adroit political critique. * Kirkus Reviews *Few outsiders explain America better than Nick Bryant or write about it as well. This is a must-read guide to an extraordinary time. -- Katty Kay[Bryant] has a deeper understanding than many of the ebb and flow of history ... [His] breezy prose displays a keen eye for good quotations and telling anecdotes. * TLS *Listeners who want a perspective that’s both outside and inside and crucially, that comes from a place of love for the US, should look out for When America Stopped Being Great. * The New Statesman *Terrific. Very much recommended. * The Monocle Daily *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Face to Face with ‘The Donald’ 1 It’s Morning Again in America 2 Goodbye to the Greatest Generation 3 Bill and Newt 4 The Three Convulsions 5 No You Can’t 6 The Donald Trump Show 7 American Carnage 8 The Descent into January 6th Conclusion: Present at the Destruction Afterword: Code Red for American Democracy Acknowledgements Notes Index

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Book SynopsisMarcy Norton tells a new history of the European colonization of the Americas, one that places wildlife and livestock at the center of the story. She reveals that it was, above all, the encounters between European and Native American beliefs about animal life that transformed societies on both sides of the Atlantic.Trade ReviewRelationships—between animals and humans, and between humans and other humans—are at the heart of Marcy Norton’s original and ambitious The Tame and the Wild. -- Alexander Bevilacqua * London Review of Books *[Norton] argues that biology cannot be separated from culture — a stance that allows her to reconsider why animals were treated in a certain way in the past and how they could be treated in the future… A fascinating book. -- Henry Mance * Financial Times *The Tame and the Wild reads like a revelation. Norton’s groundbreaking work compellingly shows how the history of nonhuman animals in the Atlantic world, and their transformation from beings to things, is intrinsically entangled with the history of the early-modern European extractivist and genocidal colonial project in the Americas. At the same time, it luminously recovers and foregrounds early-modern American Indigenous ways of being in the world and knowing it that emphasize the shared nature of human and nonhuman flesh and subjectivity. Her book shows us new ways for writing both our histories and those of our ‘fellow creatures.’ -- Pablo F. Gómez, author of The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern AtlanticMarcy Norton offers an erudite and innovative perspective on the relationships between humankind and animals in the context of the European colonization of Mexico and South America. By analyzing the history of the clash between Indigenous and Western conceptions of hunting, domestication, and coexistence with pets, this book reveals the origins of consumption practices and objectification of the animal world, as well as the struggles to recognize animal rights. -- Guilhem Olivier, National Autonomous University of MexicoNorton revolutionizes our understanding of the world after 1492. Until now theories of ecological imperialism have conceived of animals a lot like diseases: as biological forces undermining colonized societies. She refutes that determinist story by showing animals as subjects in relationships—sometimes tender, sometimes violent, sometimes extractivist—with Indigenous people and Europeans in the Americas. The Tame and the Wild puts animals and human relationships at the center of the history of contact. -- Nancy J. Jacobs, author of Birders of Africa

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Book Synopsis**SOON TO BE A MINI-SERIES FROM PARAMOUNT+ IN SPRING 2024** From bestselling author and the producer of the hit cable series Masters of Sex, Thomas Maier, comes a true story of espionage and mobsters, based on the never-before-released JFK Files. From Vegas to Miami to Havana, the shocking connections between the CIA, the mob, and Sinatra’s Rat Pack—with new revelations and details. Mafia Spies is the definitive account of America’s most remarkable espionage plots ever—with CIA agents, mob hitmen, “kompromat” sex, presidential indiscretion, and James Bond-like killing devices together in a top-secret mystery full of surprise twists and deadly intrigue. In the early 1960s, two top gangsters, Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana, were hired by the CIA to kill Cuba’s Communist leader, Fidel Castro, only to wind up murdered themselves amidst Congressional hearings and a national debate about the JFK assassin

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsContents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction 1 • Internationalizing Struggle, 1977–1979 2 • Triumph and Consolidation, 1979–1980 3 • The Revolution under Attack, 1981–1982 4 • Creative Defense, 1983–1984 5 • Fundraising for the Revolution, 1985–1986 6 • Peace and Elections, 1987–1990 Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe United States is in the grip of a crisis of bad history. Distortions of the past promoted in the conservative media have led large numbers of Americans to believe in fictions over facts, making constructive dialogue impossible and imperilling our democracy. In Myth America, Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer have assembled an all-star team of fellow historians to push back against this misinformation. The contributors debunk narratives that portray the New Deal and Great Society as failures, immigrants as hostile invaders, and feminists as anti-family warriors-among numerous other partisan lies. Based on a firm foundation of historical scholarship, their findings revitalize our understanding of American history. Replacing myths with research and reality, Myth America is essential reading amid today's heated debates about our nation's past. With Essays ByAkhil Reed Amar Kathleen Belew Carol Anderson Kevin Kruse Erika Lee Daniel Immerwahr Elizabeth Hinton Naomi Oreskes Erik M. Conway Ari Kelman Geraldo Cadava David A. Bell Joshua Zeitz Sarah Churchwell Michael Kazin Karen L. Cox Eric Rauchway Glenda Gilmore Natalia Mehlman Petrzela Lawrence B. Glickman Julian E. Zelizer

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Book SynopsisOne of the Most Important Books on Civil Rights, Race, and Freedom Ever Written. “A groundbreaking challenge to white supremacy.” —The New York Times A classic work of American literature, African-American history, and sociology by W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk is a monumental collection of essays that examines race and racism in America during the early 1900s and prior. Du Bois derived much of the book’s content from his own personal experience as an African-American living during these tumultuous times, which resulted in an expertly crafted firsthand account of the trials of oppression and segregation existing in America. Many of the book’s essays formulated Du Bois’s then-perceived radical thought and platform for change, and eventually became catalysts that sparked protest movements across the country. Containing some of the most revered work on the topic of race, this stunning new trade edition of The Souls of Black Folk is perfect for anyone interested in African-America literature and history.

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Book SynopsisThis classic, scholarly history of the fur trappers and traders of the early nineteenth century focuses on the devices that enabled the opening of the untracked American west. Sprinkled with interesting facts and old western lore, this guide to traps and tools is also a lively history. The era of the mountain man is distinct in American history, and Russell’s exhaustive coverage on the guns, traps, knives, axes, and other iron tools of this era, along with meticulous appendices, is astonishing. The result of thirty-five years of painstaking research, this is the definitive guide to the tools of the mountain men.

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Book SynopsisThe newest volume in the Oxford History of the United States series, The Republic for Which It Stands argues that the Gilded Age, along with Reconstruction--its conflicts, rapid and disorienting change, hopes and fears--formed the template of American modernity.Trade ReviewFearless and peerless, Richard White leads us through a transformed and fragmented nation in turmoil, haunted by the slain Abraham Lincoln, where visions of freedom and equality were rapidly vanishing. In the rural South, in the urban North, and out West, from the terribly destitute to the stupendously wealthy, White brings together stories that historians have long told separately, untangling the anger and blame that grew so deeply entrenched in the Gilded Age. How did all this happen? Richard White explains everything. * Martha Hodes, author of Mourning Lincoln *Richard White has given us a brilliantly imagined narrative of astonishing breadth, thickly peopled with figures from familiar political lions to Lizzie Borden, Dorothy and Toto, that brings to vivid life one of the most challenging periods of American history. His is a twisting, often violent and above all ironic story of a nation finding its way from a time of both tragedy and optimism to one of prodigious wealth and colossal energy, of deepening divisions of class, blood, and ideas, of new meanings of everything from government to geographical space, and of a shaken, tempered faith in the century ahead. This is a masterful performance. * Elliott West, author of The Last Indian War *Richard White offers a remarkable new synthesis of the decades following the Civil War, showing the myriad ways in which a period about which most modern Americans know too little in fact laid the foundations for the nation we know today. This book will change the ways we think not just about the past, but about the present as well. * William Cronon, author of Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West *The Republic for Which It Stands illuminates every key aspect of the industrializing, expanding nation in the final third of the nineteenth century: racial, ecological, legal, political, economic, and cultural. In lucid, witty, and often dramatic prose, Richard White makes sense of them all in a way that powerfully echoes the inequalities and environmental degradation of our own day. Yet he also captures the mighty appeal of the developing capitalist economy that was becoming the envy of the world. This is the best book on the Gilded Age that has ever been written. * Michael Kazin, author of War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918 *This is a marvelous achievement of narrative history by a great historian. Written with immense learning, wit, indignation, fearless judgments, and imagination, the book will stand up for a long time as a new vision of two eras with reputation problems. White masterfully weaves the metaphor of the 'vanished twin' through the book and persuasively makes 'home' a central theme binding all Americans of every class or race: as dream, as reality, as racial and gendered place, and as politics. This is not your grandaddy's Gilded Age, although corruption - lots of it - oozes from the story. It is powerful and readable history that exudes all the 'hallmarks of modernity' we have claimed and soberingly invokes our own grave political moment. What 'vanished' is nothing less than the meaning of Union victory and the world the first Republican party struggled to achieve. White is our Mark Twain with archival authority and footnotes. * David W. Blight, Yale University *The Oxford History of the United States continues to surpass expectations with this latest contribution. For many Americans, Reconstruction is still remembered as a period of racial anarchy, political failure, and the humiliation of the defeated South. This volume presents detailed knowledge of what actually happened in the South between 1865 and 1876 and the years that followed. It is sometimes an inspiring but more often deeply shocking story that reveals a nation at its best and worst, when newly freed slaves and idealists, both black and white, struggled to preserve the rights Union armies had won on the battlefield and that Republican members of Congress affirmed in the years after the Civil War. * Frank J. Williams, President of The Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library and Association *The conclusion of the Civil War through the 1890s marked the transformation of the US from a rural and agrarian society of free laborers to a modern, urban, industrial nation where wages and possessions replaced liberty and individualism. White's rich, sweeping history chronicles the divide between the Radical Republicans (today's Libertarians) and those who saw the need for governmental protection of individual rights. White seamlessly incorporates political, economic, social, and legal history to show the birth of the modern US. Throughout, he includes fascinating anecdotes that captivate readers. Highly recommended. * Choice *The Republic for Which It Stands is a remarkably fresh and innovative way of looking at the Reconstruction and Gilded Age by an academic with unmatched academic credentials. No matter how much you have read on the Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, The Republic for Which It Stands has a lot to offer you. The Republic for Which It Stands should be a required part of any American history syllabus in all universities. * The Washington Book Review *Stanford professor Richard White's The Republic for Which It Stands, a sweeping history of the United States from 1865 to 1896 that just published last month. It's 941 pages but beautifully written and a gripping narrative of a tumultuous era. (White was one of my favorite professors at Stanford. I took two of his classes.) * Washington Post *There is almost nothing about the era that White fails to treat with intelligence and style,,,,Here is the constant American struggle, and Richard White has related a decisive part of its history with stamina and skill. * Sean Wilentz, The New York Times Book Review *White's masterful book offers a treasure trove of information about a pivotal time in American history, crafted with a compelling combination of well-written recreations of events and careful analysis based on the latest historical research. The Republic for Which It Stands is the best available guide to the period. * BookPage *Stanford historian White (Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, 2011) tells this tumultuous story with authority, an eye for detail, and a dash of moral outrage. A noted historian of the West, he covers monetary policy, land use, social history, literature, and biography as he examines America from 1865 to 1896. * Booklist *The Republic for Which It Stands is a thorough examination of late 19th-century America. White tracks the building of a nation and the growth of its industrial and economic power with an eye toward those left behind by the changes - a welcome focus at a moment when those being left behind by the equivalent changes of our time have just helped spark profound political upheaval by electing President Trump. And even when his analysis tends toward the negative, progressive view of American history, his detail nevertheless enlightens the reader. * Kyle Sammin, The National Review *In this monumental yet highly readable book, Mr. White has given us a panorama of an age that in many ways seems like our own. The volcanic turmoil of the late 19th century did much to shape the world that we live in today, with its creative and destructive cycles of industry, its quickening technological change, its extremes of wealth and poverty, its struggle to impose fairness in the jungle of the marketplace, its tug of war between freedom and regulation in the public interest. 'The Republic for Which It Stands' is, in no small part, the story of how we came to be who we are. * The Wall Street Journal *[White] is one of the outstanding historians of his generation. It is difficult to think of many others who can match the range, depth, originality and influence of his writings, which include a prize-winning account of the construction of the transcontinental railroads, an environmental history of the Columbia River Valley, a general history of the American West, and even a memoir of his mother's life as an emigrant from Ireland. * Times Literary Supplement" *In his impressive new book The Republic for Which It Stands, the latest volume in the ongoing 'Oxford History of the United States,' White links the Gilded Age with Reconstruction-the two 'gestated together,' he writes-and, in so doing, casts both in a different light while raising new questions about a nation born in the cauldron of civil war. * Steven Hahn, The Nation *Winner of the Ellis W. Hawley Prize of the Organization of American Historians“The Republic for Which It Stands demonstrates White's subtle understanding of a period that may once have been regarded as 'historical flyover country'-and of the American West…..Immigration, industrialization, failures of governance, class conflict and, importantly, the vestiges of Civil War, he shows, dominate and roil this period in ways that shaped the upheavals, inequities, and even the hopefulness, sometimes blinkered, that remain with us today.> * Brenda Wineapple, The New Republic *“White's fascinating and comprehensive book could not be more timely....When questions of race, economic inequality, and the rise of giant corporate monopolies and a plutocratic elite dominate U.S. politics, it is time to take another look at Reconstruction and the Gilded Age….Readers will thank White for the clear prose and strong narrative.> * Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs *White…is one of the outstanding historians of his generation. It is difficult to think of many others who can match the range, depth, originality and influence of his writings….His footnotes and bibliography reveal a remarkable command of the historical literature, which he uses to construct a vast, sprawling and often original panorama of the American economy, politics and society between 1865 and 1896….White has any number of interesting things to say about any number of subjects, many of them ignored in most books on the period.”-Eric Foner, Times Literary Supplement“Richard White is well qualified to cover this tumultuous era....He knows as much as anybody about the most important technology of the era. As a professor at Stanford University, he can see the era from the perspective of the west coast as well as the east....White's book should be read-not just because it has so much to say about the latter part of the 19th century, but also because it casts light on America's current problems with giant companies and roiling populism.” -Economist“White's great achievement is to capture the drabbest, least-redeeming three decades of American history with unimpeachable authority….[and] manages to imbue these ignoble years with the importance that they're due.”-Publishers Weekly (starred review)Table of ContentsList of Maps Editor's Introduction Introduction Part I: Reconstructing the Nation Prologue: Mourning Lincoln Chapter One: In the Wake of War Chapter Two: Radical Reconstruction Chapter Three: The Greater Reconstruction Chapter Four: Home Chapter Five: Gilded Liberals Chapter Six: Triumph of Wage Labor Chapter Seven: Panic Chapter Eight: Beginning a Second Century Part II: The Quest for Prosperity Chapter Nine: Years of Violence Chapter Ten: The Party of Prosperity Chapter Eleven: People in Motion Chapter Twelve: Liberal Orthodoxy and Radical Opinions Chapter Thirteen: Dying for Progress Chapter Fourteen: The Great Upheaval Chapter Fifteen: Reform Chapter Sixteen: Westward the Course of Reform Chapter Seventeen: The Center Fails to Hold Chapter Eighteen: The Poetry of a Pound of Steel Part III: The Crisis Arrives Chapter Nineteen: The Other Half Chapter Twenty: Dystopian and Utopian America Chapter Twenty-one: The Great Depression Chapter Twenty-two: Things Fall Apart Chapter Twenty-three: An Era Ends Conclusion Bibliographic Essay Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewExamine[s] how slavery laid the foundation of American capitalism, including the invention of financial instruments, such as bonds that used enslaved people as collateral. -- Parul Sehgal * New York Times *Slavery in the United States was a business. A morally reprehensible—and very profitable business. Much of the research around the business history of slavery focuses on the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the business interests that fueled it. The common narrative is that today’s modern management techniques were developed in the factories in England and the industrialized North of the United States, not the plantations of the Caribbean and the American South. According to a new book by historian Caitlin Rosenthal, that narrative is wrong… Rosenthal argues that slaveholders in the American South and Caribbean were using advanced management and accounting techniques long before their northern counterparts. Techniques that are still used by businesses today. * Marketplace *Absolutely compelling. -- Diane Coyle * Five Books *[This] history of the accounting and management of slave plantations in the Americas goes a long way towards puncturing common-sense narratives of free market economics. -- Martin Myers * Times Higher Education *Valuable…Rosenthal proves that precise calculation of labor productivity took root in the slave economy. The irony is that it was more aggressively calculated there than among many Northern manufacturers of the time. -- Jeremy Ray Jewell * Arts Fuse *Looks at how sugar and cotton plantations organised and tracked production. It is a fascinating yet horrifying history of how planters saw the slaves they profited from—and how they drove up production…Challenges many dominant ideas about capitalism, class and progress. -- Sadie Robinson * Socialist Worker *Full of insights into the history of Atlantic slavery, Accounting for Slavery will force its readers to look with fresh eyes at the many freedoms and unfreedoms of the modern American workplace. This is an original book, which uniquely draws from and speaks to many disciplines, while written compellingly for a wide audience. -- Jonathan Levy, University of ChicagoBy paying close attention to slaveholders’ methods of keeping accounts, Caitlin Rosenthal shows how and why they tried to reduce human beings to marks on a ledger. Anyone concerned with the sometimes dark history of management, data, and modern accounting practices needs to read this brilliant, carefully argued book. -- W. Caleb McDaniel, Rice University

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Book SynopsisThe classic The New York Times bestseller, with a new introduction from much-lauded The Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr.Trade Review"Lasch took in a remarkable range of contemporary experience, making many observations that, if anything, ring more true today." -- Lee Siegel - The New York Times"Morbidly clever, brilliantly on target, idiosyncratically compelling." -- Alan Wolfe - The New Republic"A bestseller in 1979, this outstanding analysis is enjoying a resurgence, being reissued with a new introduction by EJ Dionne Jr, who praises Lasch’s “intellectually rebellious spirit”." -- The Herald

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Book SynopsisMegan Black argues that the U.S. Department of the Interior, known for managing domestic natural resources and operating public parks, constantly supports and projects American power abroad. In the guise of sharing expertise globally, Interior has helped the U.S. maintain key benefits of empire without the burden of playing the imperialist villain.Trade ReviewBlack’s extraordinary book…demonstrates the remarkable reach of the Interior Department…By zooming in on the work of this important but too easily forgotten agency, The Global Interior deftly rearranges the last century and a half of American history in fresh and useful ways…Most notably, her book allows us to see how settler colonialism served as the staging ground for the United States’s rise to its superpower status. -- Dexter Fergie * Los Angeles Review of Books *The Global Interior offers unprecedented insights into the depth and staying power of American exceptionalism. Black offers a lively rendering of the torturous obfuscation of the inside and outside, domestic and foreign, as generations of policymakers sought to extend the reach of U.S. power globally while emphatically denying that the United States was an empire. -- Penny M. Von Eschen, author of Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold WarA smart, original, and ambitious book. Black demonstrates that the Interior Department has had a far larger, more invasive, and more consequential role in the world than one would expect from its carefully cultivated image of domestic scientific benevolence. -- Brian DeLay, author of War of a Thousand DesertsIn this stimulating book, Black succeeds in showing both the central importance of minerals in the development of American power and how the realities of empire could be obscured through a focus on modernization and the mantra of conservation. -- Ian Tyrrell, author of Crisis of the Wasteful Nation: Empire and Conservation in Theodore Roosevelt’s AmericaThe Global Interior is a model of how to seamlessly combine distinct literatures—environmental and diplomatic histories, Native American studies and the American West—in a fresh and important contribution to our understanding of the United States in the world. -- Gretchen Heefner, author of The Missile Next Door: The Minuteman in the American Heartland

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Book SynopsisOne of the greatest artists our country has is Benny Golson. He is not only a great musician, but an original and fabulous composer. He is inventive and creative and his work is loved the world over. Benny is a rare, creative genius. All I would like to say is THREE CHEERS for Benny Golson!Tony BennettComposer supreme, tenor man supreme, jazz man supreme, good guy supreme: that's BENNY GOLSON!Sonny RollinsBorn during thede factoinaugural era of jazz, saxophonist Benny Golson learned his instrument and the vocabulary of jazz alongside John Coltrane while Golson was still in high school in Philadelphia. Quickly establishing himself as an iconic fixture on the jazz landscape, Golson performed with dozens of jazz greats, from Sonny Rollins, Coleman Hawkins, and Jimmy Heath to Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, and many others. An acclaimed composer, Golson also wrote music for Hollywood films and television and composed such memorable jazz standards as Stablemates, Killer Joe, and Whisper NTable of ContentsPreface, by Jim Merod IntroductionPart I John Coltrane Chapter 1 One of a Kind: John Coltrane Chapter 2 John and I Meet Diz and Bird Chapter 3 John Becomes a Dynamo Part II The ’Hood and Youthful Reckonings Chapter 4 Uncle Robert and the Man Chapter 5 Two Heroes and a Night at Minton’s Chapter 6 Early Tragedies and Victories Chapter 7 Welfare Days, Hard TimesPart III Great People Chapter 8 No One Else: Bobbie Hurd Chapter 9 Moose and Bostic Chapter 10 Art Blakey’s Neophytes and Tadd Dameron’s Luck Chapter 11 Further Adventures with Tadd and an Evening with Louis Armstrong Chapter 12 The Duel: Clifford Brown and Fats Navarro Chapter 13 Wonder and Beauty: Betty Carter and Art Farmer Chapter 14 Genius Squared: Jimmy and Percy Heath Chapter 15 Unrivaled Aces: Sarah Vaughan and Bill Evans Chapter 16 Four "Brothers": Mulgrew Miller, Woody Herman, Henry Brant, and George RussellPart IV Hollywood Chapter 17 Starting Over Chapter 18 Gettin’ My Mojo Workin’ Chapter 19 M*A*S*H Chapter 20 Movie Stars Like Jazz, TooPart V Amazing Friendships Chapter 21 Quincy Jones Chapter 22 Sweets and Diz Chapter 23 Philly Joe Jones Chapter 24 Monk, Max, and Dinah Chapter 25 Curtis Fuller and The JazztetPart VI Music and Writing Chapter 26 Writing Chapter 27 Lessons Chapter 28 "Stablemates": My First Recorded Song Chapter 29 "Along Came Betty" Chapter 30 "I Remember Clifford" Chapter 31 The Ballad and "Weight"Part VII Icons Chapter 32 Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks Chapter 33 Duke and Strayhorn Chapter 34 Coleman Hawkins Chapter 35 Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk Chapter 36 Blakey and The Jazz Messengers Chapter 37 Kenny Dorham and Lee Morgan Chapter 38 Sonny Rollins Chapter 39 Great Performances: Oscar Pettiford, Ron Carter, Billy Higgins, Billy Taylor, and Walter Davis, Jr. Chapter 40 Charles Mingus, Benny Goodman, Gigi Gryce, and Horace Silver Chapter 41 Peggy Lee and Diana Ross Chapter 42 Milt "Bags" Jackson, Larry Young, Joe Farrell, and Tony Williams Chapter 43 Wynton Kelly and Chick Corea Chapter 44 Miles Davis and Geoffrey Keezer Chapter 45 Mickey Rooney, Redd Foxx, Jersey Joe Walcott, and Muhammad AliPart VIII Verses and a Coda Chapter 46 Notes on Starting Over Chapter 47 The Blues Chapter 48 Brielle Coda: A New Way of Life Acknowledgments Index

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Book SynopsisThe sister-in-law of Clyde Barrow chronicles the escapades of her famous brother-in-law and his paramour Bonnie Parker. For this book, Phillips supplements Blanche's memoir with notes and biographical information about Blanche and her accomplices. Illustrations. Maps.

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsPreface Colonial Prologue Part I: Independence and Turmoil 1. Background to Independence 2. The Coming of Independence to South America 3. The Independence Movements: On to Victory 4. The Aftermath of Independence 5. The Search for Political Order: 1830s-1850s Part II: Nation-Building 6. Order and Progress 7. Citizen and Nation on the Road to Progress 8. The Development of Nations: Mexico and Central America 9. The Development of Nations: South America 10. Inventing Latin America 11. Changing Worlds and New Empires Part III: Reform and Revolution 12. Early Populism in South America 13. Dictators of the Caribbean Basin 14. Divergent Paths to Modern Nationhood: Panama, Brazil, and Peru 15. Early Revolutionaries: Mexico, Brazil, and Nicaragua Part IV: Confronting Global Challenges 16. The 1930s: Years of Depression and Upheaval 17. Latin America in World War II 18. The Classic Populists Part V: Dictatorship, Development, and Democracy 19. Mexico since World War II 20. Colombian Conundrum 21. Caribbean Basin Countercurrents 22. The Cuban Revolution and its Aftermath 23. The National Security States 24. Democratization and Conflict in the Late Twentieth Century 25. Latin America in the Twenty-First Century Notes Bibliography Glossary Index

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Book SynopsisWhen the British wrested New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, the truth about its thriving, polyglot society began to disappear into myths about an island purchased for 24 dollars and a cartoonish peg-legged governor. But the story of the Dutch colony of New Netherland was merely lost, not destroyed. Drawing on the archives of the New Netherland Project, Russell Shorto has created a gripping narrative that transforms our understanding of early America.The Dutch colony pre-dated the ''original'' thirteen colonies, yet it seems strikingly familiar. Its capital was cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic, and its citizens valued free trade, individual rights, and religious freedom. Their champion was a progressive, young lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck, who emerges in these pages as a forgotten American patriot and whose political vision brought him into conflict with Peter Stuyvesant, the autocratic director of the Dutch colony. The struggle between these two strong-willed men laid Trade ReviewThe Island at the Center of the World must always be near the top of the list of great books about New York Guardian

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Book SynopsisSimon Bolivar was a revolutionary who freed six countries, an intellectual who argued the principles of national liberation, and a general who fought a cruel colonial war. This book illuminates the inner world of Bolivar, the dynamics of his leadership, his power to command, and his modes of ruling the diverse peoples of Spanish America.Trade Review"'A readable and up-to-date life, which will be the first resort of the curious for some time to come.' Economist 'Given the difficulty of separating man from myth, this soberly objective, well-researched biography is welcome. Professor Lynch has devoted much of his career as a Latin Americanist historian to the study of the independence war... It is fortunate that he has now chosen to bring it to bear on a biography which is both professional and readable. In all its complexity John Lynch's impressive, objective scholarship is an invaluable antidote to previous historians' and politicians' attempts to mould Bolivar to their particular ends.' David Gallagher, Times Literary Supplement 'expertly researched and elegantly written.' The Oldie"

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Book SynopsisIn Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor Tim Lawrence examines the city's party, dance, music, and art culture between 1980 and 1983, tracing the rise, apex, and fall of this inventive, vibrant, and tumultuous scene.Trade Review"Lawrence goes into remarkable depth to portray this world which, during its few short years, gained expansive popularity and had a significant impact on art, film, literature, and culture. His meticulous research, with details on the leading figures, trends, events, places, and music that made it all happen, also provides critical/analytical commentary on the social backdrop of the times, the genesis of the emerging and eclectic music/dance styles, and the essence of this artistic renaissance. In addition to the well-selected photographs, notes, and bibliography, set lists, discographies, and a filmography add to the title's impressive breadth. Cultural historians and those familiar with the 1980s milieu will find this informative and insightful." -- Carol J. Binkowski * Library Journal *"Through a comprehensive and lushly detailed text stuffed with original photos from dance floors, DJ booths, and parties, Lawrence imparts the mood, the music, the faces and the places from that remarkable era, with a nostalgic nod to nights where 'a new kind of freedom was set to rule the night.' ... Dance music historians will want this book for reference, while others who recall these days with a sense of longing will close its covers and dream of the days when nightlife amounted to a line of cocaine, a Madonna remix, and a dark, packed dance floor in a basement club in the Village." -- Jim Piechota * Bay Area Reporter *"Life and Death provides the most intensive mapping of this brief era of New York subculture we've yet seen. The book's strength is its depth of research, drawing on the realtime journalism of the era as well as many new interviews. The detail is fascinating, as Lawrence salvages ephemeral events, forgotten people, and lost places from the fog of faded memory." -- Simon Reynolds * Bookforum *"Exceptionally accessible (the author’s passion for his subject shows through on every page; it’s easy to imagine how his knowledge and genuine interest opened many a door and got people talking, telling tales recorded here that might not otherwise have seen the light of day), the raw, new energy of the city is accurately captured and conveyed. No small feat.... Seriously, when’s the last time you read a book you could actually dance to?" -- Tom Cardamone * Lambda Literary Review *"The focus here is clearly music. Mr. Lawrence even includes some D.J. playlists for the listener to investigate. But Life and Death is more expansive than that — it takes you deep into a time and place, the good-old-bad-old-days of pre-Rudolph Giuliani New York, which many have valorized for some time now. If the 1970s have been thoroughly examined, the early ’80s have been left relatively unexplored, and while Mr. Lawrence provides a lot of minutiae, he also delivers a story with some sweep." -- Michaelangelo Matos * New York Times *"[I]f you have no abiding love for New York, disco, hip-hop, studio techniques, or fast and dirty real-estate shuffles—there must be such people, statistically—perhaps Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor will not hold you. But if you care for any of those things, and even if that concern borders on the obsessive, you will benefit from Lawrence’s investigations." -- Sasha Frere-Jones * The New Yorker *"The cast of characters in the book can be staggering, the exhaustive accounts overwhelming — Lawrence interviewed or corresponded with more than 130 people, and he makes room for their voices — but that's part of the point: He wants a crowded and motley party. This is a scrupulously researched, marvelously detailed history." -- Megan Pugh * Village Voice *"[A] compelling tale, beautifully told. As one who was fortunate enough to have landed in New York during this timeframe, Lawrence does a cracking job capturing a time when even listening to the city’s black radio stations at noon could change your life. It was a surreal, magical period of ground-breaking activity which now seems hard to believe could actually happen at the same time in the same city. Finally, here’s the proof." -- Kris Needs * Record Collector *"[O]ffers fresh detail and insight on the clubs, DJs, parties and recordings that emerged from the scene. He even offers DJ playlists from different clubs." -- Andy Beta * Wall Street Journal *"Tim Lawrence's Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983, the definitive history of that fabled time in the city, is already taking on the status of a sacred text." -- David Hershkovits * Paper Magazine *"Reading Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor as a clubber in the city is to reflect not only on what’s been lost over the past three decades, but on how the sounds, events and characters at the center of Lawrence’s story still influence NYC’s nightlife. . . . [W]hat Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor makes acutely obvious, as both volume and prism, is not just the cultural value of the city’s party scene, but how it also serves as a moral compass – and how it still can." -- Piotr Olov * The Guardian *"Life & Death defines New York's unnamed era of invention. When Boy George was nicking from the cloakroom at Blitz, and everyone else was at The Batcave, this is how it ran in NYC. With hundreds of interviews, deep research and enlightening playlists, it's almost as invigorating as being there." * DJ Magazine *"Lawrence has mustered convincing evidence for the case that Madonna was not the most important cultural creation of early 1980s New York. . . . Lawrence is most convincing when he documents the remarkable variety and genre-blurring fecundity of sounds available to tuned-in city dwellers, a diversity that was even more bracing when contrasted with the monotonous airwaves stifling the rest of North America." -- Robert Anasi * TLS *"Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor is a remarkably intense piece of 'community history writing.' It breathes life into an iconic historical epoch and sociocultural scene without ever retreating into nostalgia or naive celebration. In fact, there's something unexpectedly electrifying about reading Lawrence's exceptionally well-researched historical studies. It is the sensation of remotely yet meaningfully becoming part of something hitherto only secretly known. One becomes slowly yet unequivocally aware of how that specific era's cultural and sociopolitical conditions, so thoroughly reconstructed in these works, resonate with the current sense of cultural and political impasse." -- Niels Van Tomme * The Wire *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xvii Introduction 1 Part I. 1980: The Recalibration of Disco 1. Stylistic Coherence Didn't Matter at All 11 2. The Basement Den at Club 57 30 3. Danceteria: Midtown Feels the Downtown Storm 48 4. Subterranean Dance 60 5. The Bronx-Brooklyn Approach 73 6. The Sound Became More Real 92 7. Major-Label Calculations 105 8. The Saint Peter of Discos 111 9. Lighting the Fuse 122 Part II. 1981: Accelerating Toward Pluralism 10. Explosion of Clubs 135 11. Artistic Maneuvers in the Dark 155 12. Downton Configures Hip Hop 170 13. The Sound of a Transcendent Future 184 14. The New Urban Street Sound 199 15. It Wasn't Rock and Roll and It Wasn't Disco 210 16. Frozen in Time or Freed into Infinity 221 17. It Felt Like the Whole City Was Listening 232 18. Shrouded Abatements and Mysterious Deaths 239 Part III. 1982: Dance Culture Seizes the City 19. All We Had Was the Club 245 20. Inverted Pyramid 257 21. Roxy Music 271 22. The Garage: Everybody Was Listening to Everything 279 23. The Planet Rock Groove 288 24. Techno Funksters 304 25. Taste Segues 314 26. Stormy Weather 320 27. Cusp of an Important Fusion 331 Part IV. 1983: The Genesis of Division 28. Cristal for Everyone 343 29. Dropping the Pretense and the Flashy Suits 369 30. Straighten It Out with Larry Levan 381 31. Stripped-Down and Scrambled Sounds 400 32. We Became Part of This Energy 419 33. Sex and Dying 430 34. We Got the Hits, We Got the Future 438 35. Behind the Groove 449 Epilogue. Life, Death, and the Hereafter 458 Notes 485 Selected Discography 515 Selected Filmography 529 Selected Bibliography 521 Index 537

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Book SynopsisA monumental work, decades in the making: the first atlas to illustrate the entire scope of the transatlantic slave tradeTrade Review"A monumental chronicle of this historical tragedy, one that records some 35,000 individual slaving voyages, roughly 80 percent of those made. . . . [This book] is a human document as well as a rigorous accounting. It is filled with moving poems, photographs, letters and diary entries."—Dwight Garner, New York Times"A monumental chronicle of this historical tragedy, one that records some 35,000 individual slaving voyages, roughly 80 percent of those made. The authors remind us that only 4 percent of the captives disembarked in what became the United States, while 95 percent arrived in the Caribbean and South America. Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade is a human document as well as a rigorous accounting. It is filled with moving poems, photographs, letters and diary entries."—Dwight Garner, New York Times"A remarkable resource. . . . The charts raise as many questions as they answer; this is entirely the point."—James Delbourgo, Times Higher Education". . . a ground-breaking project: the Atlas will be indispensable for all those interested in the slave trade."—Jane Webster, Times Literary Supplement". . . a beautifully produced volume . . . The whole is topped and tailed by two excellent essays: a masterly introduction by David Brion Davis and a rousing afterword by David Blight. The end result of all this international, scholarly effort is a remarkable book which is not only a pleasure to have on one's shelves, but a model of scholarly and publishing activity. . . . Here, and in their varied (and complex) work as individual scholars, Eltis and Richardson have revealed themselves to be among the most imaginative, influential and distinguished historians of their generation."—James Walvin, International Journal of Maritime History"This groundbreaking work provides the fullest possible picture of the extent and inhumanity of one of the largest forced migrations in History."—The Global Journal"Beautifully produced, with period images and contemporary quotations, this is in a work of commemoration, but the best memorial, the authors clearly feel, is the historic truth."—Michael Kerrigan, The Scotsman"We are indebted to Eltis and Richardson for opening up new evidence and pointing towards future projects. The importance of this book transcends the story of the slave trade itself."—James Walvin, Family & Community History Vol 14.2Winner of the 2010 R.R. Hawkins Award, given by the Association of American PublishersWinner of the PROSE Award for Excellence in Single Volume Reference/Humanities and Social Sciences category, as given by the Association of American PublishersReceived Honorable Mention for the 2011 Dartmouth Medal for outstanding referenceHonorable Mention in the General Non-Fiction category of the 2010 Los Angeles Book FestivalWinner of the 2011 Anisfield-Wolf Awards in the non-fiction category"A brilliant rendition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. This atlas is essential to the study of chattel slavery. No student of slavery should be without it."—Ira Berlin, University of Maryland"These magnificent maps—all 189—document almost every conceivable aspect of one of the world's worst crimes. An epic and gruesome drama receives a fitting representation. A superb contribution to scholarship."—Philip D. Morgan, Johns Hopkins University "This is a highly original work and represents a major contribution to historical analysis. There are no comparable works on this topic."—Stanley Engerman, University of Rochester"This is an important project that will add greatly to our understanding about the major, long-term patterns of trade between Africa and the Americas, help to map the African Diaspora, and place the transatlantic slave trade in larger world history context."—Steve Behrendt, Victoria University of Wellington"This is a major work of enormous consequence, without parallel in the literature, deeply researched, highly original, and of immeasurable value."—Harm J. de Blij, Michigan State University

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Book SynopsisA source book for American culture in the 1960s and 1970s: “suggested reading” from the Last Whole Earth Catalog, from Thoreau to James Baldwin.The Whole Earth Catalog was a cultural touchstone of the 1960s and 1970s. The iconic cover image of the Earth viewed from space made it one of the most recognizable books on bookstore shelves. Between 1968 and 1971, almost two million copies of its various editions were sold, and not just to commune-dwellers and hippies. Millions of mainstream readers turned to the Whole Earth Catalog for practical advice and intellectual stimulation, finding everything from a review of Buckminster Fuller to recommendations for juicers. This book offers selections from eighty texts from the nearly 1,000 items of “suggested reading” in the Last Whole Earth Catalog.After an introduction that provides background information on the catalog and its founder, Stewart Brand (interesting fact: Brand go

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"An excellent, well-researched, literate overview of 20th century warfare and the development of the fighter plane. Lords of the Sky will captivate history and aviation buffs alike." -- STEPHEN COONTS, New York Times bestselling author of Flight of the Intruder "Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this must-read chronological history of fighter pilots reads like a great literary novel. Dan Hampton has crafted an important work that is sure to become a classic within the historic lore of military aviation." -- CHRISTINA OLDS, co-author of Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds Praise for Viper Pilot: "Hampton's one of the most decorated pilots in Air Force history... We may never see his like again." -- New York Post "Dramatic, fast-paced, and definitive -- a pleasure for everyone who loves reading about aviation, and the life-and-death drama of air combat." -- MICHAEL KORDA, author of With Wings Like Eagles and Ike "An epic history of the fighter pilot world by a gifted author and historian with the trained eye of a combat pilot. This will be an enduring work of aviation literature. Experience the thrill, hear the wind, encounter the danger: Read this book!" -- Major General DON SHEPPERD (USAF Ret.), co-author of Bury Us Upside Down; former Director of the Air National Guard. "Superbly written. Paints a vivid picture of the skills, scares, scars, and science of air combat brilliantly, weaving them into a fascinating historical fabric that embraces technology, history, and politics. Buffs and the general public will agree that this is a first in the field!" -- Colonel WALTER BOYNE (USAF, Ret.), Former Director of the National Air & Space Museum and author of Beyond the Wild Blue: A History of the United States Air Force

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Book SynopsisA history of the Frankfurt School and its impact during its early years in Germany and the United States. This edition includes a new preface which reflects on the continuing relevance of the work of the Frankfurt School.Table of ContentsPreface to the 1996 Edition Foreword by Max Horkheimer Introduction Acknowledgments I. The Creation of the Institut fUr Sozialforschung and Its First Frankfurt Years 2. The Genesis of Critical Theory 3· The Integration of Psychoanalysis 4. The Institut's First Studies of Authority 5. The Institut's Analysis of Nazism 6. Aesthetic Theory and the Critique of Mass Culture 7· The Empirical Work of the Institut in the 1940's 8. Toward a Philosophy of History: The Critique of the Enlightenment Epilogue Chapter References Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA unique insiders' account of what CIA intelligence analysts do and why it mattersThe common perception of a CIA officer is someone who collects secret intelligence abroada spy. However, the critical link between secrets and policy is the intelligence analyst. The CIA Intelligence Analyst brings to light the vital, but often-unseen, work of these officers. Roger Z. George, Robert Levine, and the contributors to this book demystify the profession of intelligence analyst at the CIA and describe how the wide array of analytic specialtiesor disciplines in the language of the CIAfunction. The disciplines range from political, economic, leadership, and military matters to science and technology, cyber, counterterrorism, and counterintelligence. Each of the chapterswritten by former or current CIA analystsdiscusses how analysts interact with those who collect raw intelligence. Just as important, the chapters describe the relationships analysts develop with the diverse set of policymakers who use CIA analyses. The contributors reveal the key intelligence questions that analysts address, their methods, their products, and their challenges. This book will be an invaluable resource for scholars of national security and intelligence who want to develop a fuller picture of the internal workings of the CIA and for those who are considering a career as an analyst.

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Book SynopsisIn Means of Ascent, Book Two of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro brings alive Lyndon Johnson in his wilderness years. Here, Johnson’s almost mythic personality—part genius, part behemoth, at once hotly emotional and icily calculating—is seen at its most nakedly ambitious. This multifaceted book carries the President-to-be from the aftermath of his devastating defeat in his 1941 campaign for the Senate-the despair it engendered in him, and the grueling test of his spirit that followed as political doors slammed shut-through his service in World War II (and his artful embellishment of his record) to the foundation of his fortune (and the actual facts behind the myth he created about it).   The culminating drama—the explosive heart of the book—is Caro’s illumination, based on extraordinarily detailed investigation, of one of the great political mysteries of the century. Having immersed himself in Johnson’s life and world, Caro is able to reveal the true story of the fiercely contested 1948 senatorial election, for years shrouded in rumor, which Johnson was not believed capable of winning, which he “had to” win or face certain political death, and which he did win-by 87 votes, the “87 votes that changed history.”   Telling that epic story “in riveting and eye-opening detail,” Caro returns to the American consciousness a magnificent lost hero. He focuses closely not only on Johnson, whom we see harnessing every last particle of his strategic brilliance and energy, but on Johnson’s “unbeatable” opponent, the beloved former Texas Governor Coke Stevenson, who embodied in his own life the myth of the cowboy knight and was himself a legend for his unfaltering integrity. And ultimately, as the political duel between the two men quickens—carrying with it all the confrontational and moral drama of the perfect Western—Caro makes us witness to a momentous turning point in American politics: the tragic last stand of the old politics versus the new—the politics of issue versus the politics of image, mass manipulation, money and electronic dazzle.

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Book SynopsisUpending the conventional wisdom that Bretton Woods was the product of an amiable Anglo-American collaboration, the author shows that it was in reality part of a much more ambitious geopolitical agenda hatched within President Franklin D Roosevelt's Treasury and aimed at eliminating Britain as an economic and political rival.Trade ReviewWinner of the 2013 Spear's Book Award in Financial History Co-Winner of the 2014 Bronze Medal in Economics, Axiom Business Book Awards One of The Motley Fool's (John Reeves) 10 Great Books on American Economic History One of Financial Times (FT.com) Best History Books of 2013 One of Bloomberg News' Top Business Books of 2013 One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Nonfiction Books of the Year for 2013 in Business and Economics One of Bloomberg/Businessweek Best Books of 2013, as selected individually by Fredrik Erixon, Scott Minerd, Olli Rehn and Alan Greenspan Featured in The Sunday Times 2013 Holiday Roundup Shortlisted for the 2013 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards in Finance & Economics Honorable Mention for the 2014 Arthur Ross Book Award, Council on Foreign Relations Shortlisted for the 2014 Lionel Gelber Prize, Lionel Gelber Foundation "The Battle of Bretton Woods should become the gold standard on its topic. The details are addictive."--Fred Andrews, New York Times "Steil, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, understands the economic issues at stake and has done meticulous research on the history. Every good story that has ever been told about the major actors involved and the happening itself is in his book, and a few more besides. For those who come fresh to the subject, and even for those who know most of it, it is an excellent and revealing account."--Robert Skidelsky, New York Review of Books "A superb history. Mr. Steil ... is a talented storyteller."--James Grant, Wall Street Journal "[A] masterful (and readable) account of American realpolitik and British delusion."--Andrew Hilton, Financial World "Steil's book, engaging and entertaining, perceptive and instructive, is a triumph of economic and diplomatic history. Everything is here: political chicanery, bureaucratic skulduggery, espionage, hard economic detail and the acid humour of men making history under pressure."--Tony Barber, Financial Times "This is a fantastic book. Gold and money, two of my favorite topics. It's also brilliantly insightful history, and a gripping spy thriller to boot."--Larry Kudlow, CNBC "[T]he author masterfully translates the arcana of competing theories of monetary policy, and a final chapter explains how, while some of the institutions created by Bretton Woods endure--the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund--many of the conference's assumptions were swiftly overtaken by the Marshall Plan. Throughout Steil's sharp discussion runs the intriguing subplot of White's career-long, secret relationship with Soviet intelligence. A vivid, highly informed portrayal of the personalities, politics and policies dominating 'the most important international gathering since the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.'"--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "In his masterful account, The Battle of Bretton Woods, Steil situates the conference firmly in the tense, heightened atmosphere of the final months of World War II... Steil's book comes alive in his description of [Keynes' and White's] contrasting experiences at the conference."--Sam Knight, Bloomberg News "[H]ypnotically readable."--Peter Passell, Milken Institute Review "[T]hought provoking and well written."--Kathleen Burk, Literary Review "This is an excellent book... [It] also contains some explosive revelations about White's work as a Soviet spy, very well documented I might add."--Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution "If you think economics and finance are dry subjects at best, Steil's book offers a refreshing surprise. It's a political thriller in which the protagonists, one whom you think you know and one whom you probably don't, are much more intriguing (in both senses of the word) than they first appear."--Daniel Altman, Big Think "[I]n a new book explaining what really happened at Bretton Woods, Benn Steil shows that what happened in the mountains of New Hampshire that summer is not quite the story we have been told."--Neil Irwin, WashingtonPost.com "[Benn Steil's] new book The Battle of Bretton Woods is perhaps the most accessible study yet of a key moment in world economic history that nonetheless is poorly understood."--Kevin Carmichael, Globe & Mail "The clash between Keynes and White forms a central theme in Benn Steil's absorbing book, which should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the not-so-special relationship between the US and Britain."--Geoffrey Owen, Standpoint Magazine "[F]ascinating... Steil ... spins the tale of how U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, a close friend of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, allowed White, a little-known economist who wasn't even on the U.S. Treasury's regular payroll, to dominate the department's monetary and trade policies beginning in the 1930s."--John M. Barry, USA Today "[A] well-written, fascinating history of the Bretton Woods conference on the international monetary system in July 1941. The book is deep, well researched, and hard to put down. Benn Steil ... has produced a book that will help us to understand history, but also one we can use to contrast with the current international economic situation... This is a very good book."--John M. Mason, Seeking Alpha "I do hope the title of this riveting read does not put off readers who mistake Benn Steil's latest work for an arcane discussion of exchange rates, the gold standard and the stuff of debates in commons rooms. This book is more than that, much more. It is a tale of a battle of titans and of a war between nations, each intent on establishing the economic architecture that would ensure its postwar economic domination of world finance."--Irwin Stelzer, Sunday Times "[V]ivid personality portraits and a lively writing style."--Mike Foster, Financial News "[F]ascinating... [R]iveting... The Battle of Bretton Woods is chock-full of provocative and timely observations."--Glenn C. Altschuler, Tulsa World "President Obama would be wise to take it to Martha's Vineyard this summer."--John Tamny, Forbes.com "Benn Steil has just completed a fascinating book that looks at what really happened in the small New Hampshire town of Bretton Woods in 1944. Perhaps most surprising is that the real story that emerges isn't a tale of how 44 countries came together to rebuild the world. And the real story has different lessons for the 21st century than ambitious idealists might expect."--Andrew Sawers, Economia "[A] splendid book... If you want to understand the gold standard, the always-doomed dollar standard, why the IMF is in Washington, how the US deliberately humiliated Britain over debt before, during and after WWII as part of a very real currency war (but also out of genuine anti-colonial sentiment that the British never understood), this is the book for you... Every year publishers come out with a couple of purportedly serious books on FX, some by VIPs, and I read them all. This is the only one since Paul Volcker's Changing Fortunes in 1979 that is worth the price. It is non-partisan, well-written, thorough, and chock-full of the historical perspective that can so easily and so often get lost in the hurly-burly of the daily market."--Barbara Rockefeller, Harriman Intelligence blog "[A] provocative, lively and perceptive book that pulls together economics, politics, diplomacy and history and relates it to our current crisis."--Keith Simpson MP, Total Politics "This thorough, fascinating account of the international conference that culminated in the 1944 agreement to maintain stable exchange rates skillfully places it in its economic and geopolitical context... Steil not only recounts the intricacies of the deal making but also details the economic dimensions of Bretton Woods... With the help of 10 research assistants, Steil has tirelessly tracked down minute details of the Bretton Woods story and its epilogue... [Steil] offers excellent insight into the tribulations of the key players. He also tells the interesting tale of how, if not for the well-founded suspicions regarding Harry Dexter White's cooperation with Communist spies, the tradition of an American heading the World Bank and a European heading the IMF would have been reversed."--Financial Analysts Journal "Steil understands the economics at the heart of the tortuous negotiations, but he is also very good at explaining the politics, the power and the passions--the professional and personal rivalries--of the people at the negotiating table. He turns what could have been a dry account of economic accords into a thrilling story of ambition, drama, and intrigue."--Keith Richmond, Tribune Magazine, UK "[A] very well-written history, with lively personalities, [which] also serves as a great overview of the analytical issues in international monetary arrangements."--Diane Coyle, Enlightened Economist blog "Absorbing ... as an account of history-making at the highest level, this entertaining, informative, gossipy and, for the lay reader, often challenging book provides an excellent read."--Richard Steyn, Financial Mail "[A]n amazing true story ... highly entertaining."--Ian McMaster, Business Spotlight "An object lesson in how to make economic history at once entertaining and instructive."--Financial Times, "Books of the Year So Far" Summer Reading Guide "A valuable addition to the economic history literature."--Choice "It's always nice when you can combine outside reading for fun with something that is educational... [A] good read that is also good for you."--Daniel Shaviro, Jotwell "The book provides a terrifically written, gossipy account of the origins of Bretton Woods... Since the world spent several decades under the clumsy (and, to the U.S., costly) Bretton Woods regime, and since you sometimes hear people harkening back to that time as a golden age (which it surely was not), ... it is an important read for our day."--Dan Littman, Senior Payments Research Consultant and Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland "Benn Steil [of the] Council on Foreign Relations has written a fascinating book on the two main architects behind the Bretton Woods system... Steil's book is an outstanding piece of political science research ... extremely well written and well documented... It is strongly recommended."--Morten Balling, SUERF Newsletter "Benn Steil's remarkable book ... is an account of how the IMF first came to be, back in the sleepy New Hampshire summer of 1944... The Battle of Bretton Woods is an essential volume in any understanding of John Maynard Keynes, who though now seven decades gone is as influential a mind as we may yet see in the twenty-first century."--Brian Domitrovic, Library of Law and Liberty blog "Steil's book ... shows how normally abstruse economic and diplomatic history can be made palatable and even alluring to the general reader."--Christopher Silvester, Spear's "[A] fascinating account of the developments leading up to the Bretton Woods conference and its immediate aftermath, from the point of view of the two main characters involved: John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White. The book is based on extensive archive work, so often the participants speak for themselves, which makes for interesting reading."--Isaac Alfon, Central Banking Journal "The Battle of Bretton Woods sets forth in smooth prose and concise detail an authoritative narrative of the who-what-when-why of the great monetary conference of some 70 years ago. It is jam-packed with heady discussions... If we're fortunate, Benn Steil will deliver a follow-up."--Kevin R. Kosar, Weekly Standard "Individual persons are at the center of the story, which also comes loaded with tales of international intrigue, spycraft, and famous personalities. It's not just for history buffs and economics geeks."--Douglas French, Freeman, publication of the Foundation for Economic Education "Seduced by Keynes's rhetorical repudiation both of the 'austerity' implied by [promptly paying off Britain's war debts] and the 'temptation' of accepting a loan, the British shipped Keynes to Washington ... to seek 'justice', to wit, the third option. In his recent history of the period, Benn Steil deftly paints what ensued."--Patrick Honohan, Irish Times "[T]his thought-provoking book is about much more than the 1944 conference that established the architecture of the postwar international monetary system, leading to the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank."--Foreign Affairs "Benn Steil has crafted a fine history... Characterized by fine and entertaining writing, The Battle of Bretton Woods is economic and political history in engrossing detail."--Satyajit Das, Naked Capitalism "Benn Steil provides a well-researched and interesting account of the historic monetary conference... His efforts make for an enjoyable read... Steil is perhaps at his best when articulating how the Bretton Woods system differed from the classical gold standard--a difference that would ultimately lead to the failure of Bretton Woods... Steil's excellent book should serve as a gentle reminder of which monetary systems have worked well in the past--and which should not be repeated."--William J. Luther, SSRN's Economic History eJournal "An informed citizenry includes an understanding of our economy and how it is integrated into the global financial system. For this, it is important to start from the ... discussions that occurred among 44 nations in the idyllic and calm resort at Bretton Woods, N.H., in 1944. [Benn Steil's] new book details not only the meeting but the deep arguments between the British economist John Maynard Keynes and [American Treasury official] Harry Dexter White... This is a serious book of political economic history."--Cmdr. Youssef Aboul-Enein, DCMilitary "Benn Steil's book provides a fascinating account of the developments leading up to the Bretton Woods conference and its immediate aftermath, from the point of view of the two main characters involved: John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White. The book is based on extensive archive work, so often the participants speak for themselves, which makes for interesting reading."--Isaac Alfon, Central Banking Journal "This masterful account dismantles the idyllic picture of the 1944 Bretton Woods international economic conference, situating it firmly in the tense atmosphere of the final months of World War II."--Laurie Muchnick, Bloomberg Top Business Books of 2013 "Steil's book is an object lesson in how to make economic history entertaining and instructive."--Tony Barber, Financial Times "Benn Steil not only produces the finest account of the conference that established the Pax Americana economic system after World War II, he does it with the skill of a novelist."--Jon Talton, SeattleTimes.com "[A] well-documented, engaging account of the Bretton Woods Conference... The material on Harry Dexter White is fascinating ... an essential reference [with] much to teach economic historians."--Joshua Hausman, Journal of Economic History "The Battle of Bretton Woods is a thorough and fascinating account of a historic event, skillfully placed in its economic and geopolitical context. [H]e offers excellent insight into the tribulations of the key players. He also tells the interesting tale of how, if not for the well-founded suspicions regarding Harry Dexter White's cooperation with Communist spies, the tradition of an American heading the World Bank and a European heading the IMF would have been reversed."--Martin S. Fridson, Financial Analysts Journal "Steil's book is essential reading for students of multilateralism, diplomacy, and international economic relations... It is also an excellent overview of the behind-the-scenes machinations that caused Britain to agree to the final document that placed America, and the dollar, at the top of the global financial pyramid... [O]f primary interest to most readers ... it is a fascinating and nuanced glimpse into the psychology of Second World War era economic espionage."--Marc D. Froese, International Journal "This story is well told. It is also well known... Steil is targeting a broader audience than scholars, however, and in that sense, this book is a success at recasting a surprisingly exciting story."--Thomas W. Zeiler, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society "Steil breathes new life and controversy into a familiar story by emphasizing the intellectual and political clash between John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White."--James McAllister, H-Diplo/ISSF Roundtable "Steil rarely puts a foot wrong. His analysis of policies and personalities, however he has acquired his knowledge, reflects a sophisticated understanding of the inner workings of financial diplomacy."--Stephen Schuker, H-Diplo/ISSF Roundtable "[A]n ably crafted narrative."--Darel Paul, H-Diplo/ISSF Roundtable "[The book] is a welcome departure from less political, or more American-centric, accounts of Bretton Woods."--William Glenn Gray, H-Diplo/ISSF Roundtable "[T]his is a beautiful narrative of the making of Bretton Woods, based on serious archival research and with some nice old photos as illustrations."--Ivo Maes, History of Economic Ideas "The Battle of Bretton Woods is a remarkable work that embraces many disciplines: economic history, political economy and international relations. Benn Steil is able to merge the different perspectives from all these disciplines, taking the reader into both the political battle and the economic thinking."--Anna Missiaia, Financial History Review "A gripping account... John Le Carre meets international monetary history: this is clearly a different kind of page-turner."--Jayati Ghosh, Economic & Political Weekly "The Battle of Bretton Woods is a remarkable work that embraces many disciplines: history, economic history, political economy and international relations. Benn Steil is able to merge the different perspectives from all these disciplines, taking the reader into both the political battle and the economic thinking that took place at Bretton Woods."--Anna Missiaia, Financial History Review "Epic."--Ashok Rao, Vox "[E]ngaging and instructive ... Benn Steil has written a book full of historical insight and human color."--Robert L. Hetzel, Econ Focus "[A] good piece of historical investigation that will put an end to doubts as to whether White was in fact a Soviet agent."--Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, Economica "[A] thoughtful and well-researched addition to economic history."--Mark L. Wilson, Journal of Economic Issues "With extensive, original research, Benn Steil has rewritten the history of the conference. Steil reveals the illusions of its two central figures: John Maynard Keynes, the most famous economist of the twentieth century and a senior member of the British delegation, and Harry Dexter White, the little-known assistant secretary of the US Treasury, who almost singlehandedly ran the conference... A major contribution to economic, intellectual, and political history, which is accessible to a wide audience and presents an endlessly fascinating portrait of two complicated men."--Carl, Strikwerda, The Historian "Benn Steil's The Battle of Bretton Woods is a superb, carefully researched history that enables readers to view today and tomorrow from the vantage point of the past."--Robert B. Zoellick, International Economy "The Battle of Bretton Woods offers a tantalizing peek into another time of financial stress compounded by a world war... The chess match between White and Keynes is well worth the price of admission--the price of the book and the time it takes to read it."--Don R. Leet, American Economist "The Battle of Bretton Woods is a well-researched and excellently written book that is recommended for everyone interested in economic and diplomatic history."--Tobias Leeg, Political Studies ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: The World Comes to the White Mountains 9 Chapter 3: The Improbable Rise of Harry White 17 Chapter 4: Maynard Keynes and the Monetary Menace 61 Chapter 5: "The Most Unsordid Act" 99 Chapter 6: The Best-Laid Plans of White and Keynes 125 Chapter 7: Whitewash 155 Chapter 8: History Is Made 201 Chapter 9: Begging Like Fala 251 Chapter 10: Out with the Old Order, In with the New 293 Chapter 11: Epilogue 330 Appendix 1: Harry Dexter White Manuscript Photos 349 Appendix 2: Statement of Harry S. Truman on Harry Dexter White, 1953 351 Cast of Characters 355 Notes 371 References 407 Index 427

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