History American

This provocative perspective on America’s history claims that the country’s personality was defined not by the ideals of the elites and intellectuals, but by those who throughout have lived on the fringes of society history—slaves, immigrants, gangsters, and others who challenged the conventions of their day.

“Raucous, profane, and thrillingly original, Thaddeus Russell’s A Renegade History of the United States turns the myths of the ‘American character’ on their heads with a rare mix of wit, scholarship, and storytelling flair”—Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good for You and The Invention of Air

An all-new, stunning, and controversial story of the United States: It was not “good” citizens who established American liberty, declares Thaddeus Russell, but “immoral” and “degraded” people on the fringes of society whose subversive lifestyles legitimized the taboo and made America the land of the free.

In vivid portraits of renegades and their “respectable” adversaries, Russell shows that the nation’s history has been driven by clashes between those interested in preserving social order and those more interested in pursuing their own desires. The more these accidental revolutionaries—drunkards, prostitutes, gangsters, unassimilated immigrants, “bad” blacks—persevered, the more American society changed for the better.

This is not the history taught in textbooks or classrooms—this renegade book will upend everything you believe about the American past.  

"The most thoughtful and judicious one-volume history of the war and the American political leaders who presided over the difficult and painful decisions that shaped this history. The book will stand for the foreseeable future as the best study of the tragic mistakes that led to so much suffering."—Robert Dallek

Many books have been written on the tragic decisions regarding Vietnam made by the young stars of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Yet despite millions of words of analysis and reflection, no historian has been able to explain why such decent, brilliant, and previously successful men stumbled so badly.

That changes with Road to Disaster. Historian Brian VanDeMark draws upon decades of archival research, his own interviews with many of those involved, and a wealth of previously unheard recordings by Robert McNamara and Clark Clifford, who served as Defense Secretaries for Kennedy and Johnson. Yet beyond that, Road to Disaster is also the first history of the war to look at the cataclysmic decisions of those in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations through the prism of recent research in cognitive science, psychology, and organizational theory to explain why the "Best and the Brightest" became trapped in situations that suffocated creative thinking and willingness to dissent, why they found change so hard, and why they were so blind to their own errors.

An epic history of America’s march to quagmire, Road to Disaster is a landmark in scholarship and a book of immense importance.

The earliest known prison memoir by an African American writer—recently discovered and authenticated by a team of Yale scholars—sheds light on the longstanding connection between race and incarceration in America.

“[A] harrowing [portrait] of life behind bars . . . part confession, part jeremiad, part lamentation, part picaresque novel (reminiscent, at times, of Dickens and Defoe).”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

In 2009, scholars at Yale University came across a startling manuscript: the memoir of Austin Reed, a free black man born in the 1820s who spent most of his early life ricocheting between forced labor in prison and forced labor as an indentured servant. Lost for more than one hundred and fifty years, the handwritten document is the first known prison memoir written by an African American. Corroborated by prison records and other documentary sources, Reed’s text gives a gripping first-person account of an antebellum Northern life lived outside slavery that nonetheless bore, in its day-to-day details, unsettling resemblances to that very institution.

Now, for the first time, we can hear Austin Reed’s story as he meant to tell it. He was born to a middle-class black family in the boomtown of Rochester, New York, but when his father died, his mother struggled to make ends meet. Still a child, Reed was placed as an indentured servant to a nearby family of white farmers near Rochester. He was caught attempting to set fire to a building and sentenced to ten years at Manhattan’s brutal House of Refuge, an early juvenile reformatory that would soon become known for beatings and forced labor.

Seven years later, Reed found himself at New York’s infamous Auburn State Prison. It was there that he finished writing this memoir, which explores America’s first reformatory and first industrial prison from an inmate’s point of view, recalling the great cruelties and kindnesses he experienced in those places and excavating patterns of racial segregation, exploitation, and bondage that extended beyond the boundaries of the slaveholding South, into free New York.

Accompanied by fascinating historical documents (including a series of poignant letters written by Reed near the end of his life), The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict is a work of uncommon beauty that tells a story of nineteenth-century racism, violence, labor, and captivity in a proud, defiant voice. Reed’s memoir illuminates his own life and times—as well as ours today.

Praise for The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict

“One of the most fascinating and important memoirs ever produced in the United States.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, The Washington Post

“Remarkable . . . triumphantly defiant . . . The book’s greatest value lies in the gap it fills.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

“Reed displays virtuosic gifts for narrative that, a century and a half later, earn and hold the reader’s ear.”—Thomas Chatterton Williams, San Francisco Chronicle

“[The book’s] urgency and relevance remain undiminished. . . . This exemplary edition recovers history without permanently trapping it in one interpretation.”—The Guardian

“A sensational, novelistic telling of an eventful life.”—The Paris Review

“Vivid and painful.”—NPR

“Lyrical and graceful in one sentence, burning with fury and hellfire in the next.”—Columbus Free Press

“America’s story from 1898 to 1945 is nothing less than the triumph of American exceptionalism over liberal progressivism, despite a few temporary victories by the latter.”

Conservative historian Larry Schweikart has won wide acclaim for his number one New York Times bestseller, A Patriot’s History of the United States. It proved that, contrary to the liberal biases in countless other his­tory books, America had not really been founded on racism, sexism, greed, and oppression. Schweikart and coauthor Michael Allen restored the truly great achievements of America’s patriots, founders, and heroes to their rightful place of honor.

Now Schweikart and coauthor Dave Dougherty are back with a new perspective on America’s half-century rise to the center of the world stage. This all-new volume corrects many of the biases that cloud the way people view the Treaty of Versailles, the Roaring Twenties, the Crash of 1929, the deployment of the atomic bomb, and other critical events in global history.

Beginning with the Spanish-American War— which introduced the United States as a global military power that could no longer be ignored—and con­tinuing through the end of World War II, this book shows how a free, capitalist nation could thrive when put face-to-face with tyrannical and socialist powers. Schweikart and Dougherty narrate the many times America proved its dominance by upholding the prin­ciples on which it was founded—and struggled on the rare occasions when it strayed from those principles.

The authors make a convincing case that America has constantly been a force for good in the world, improving standards of living, introducing innova­tions, guaranteeing liberty, and offering opportunities to those who had none elsewhere. They also illustrate how the country ascended to superpower status at the same time it was figuring out its own identity. While American ideals were defeating tyrants abroad, a con­stant struggle against progressivism was being waged at home, leading to the stumbles of the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Despite this rocky entrance on the world stage, it was during this half century that the world came to embrace all things American, from its innovations and businesses to its political system and popular culture. The United States began to define what the rest of the world could emulate as the new global ideal.

"Schweikart and Dougherty examine nearly 50 years of growing American political and military mastery from the Spanish-American War to WWII. Choosing a theme of Yankee exceptionalism (with four pillars: common law, Protestantism, free market capitalism, and private property), the authors (Schweikart is a professor of history at the University of Dayton and coauthored The Patriot's History Reader with Dougherty) make a convincing case for the series of trial-and-error achievements from Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations through Prohibition to the ultimate victory over Japan with the atomic bomb: "America's ascent to world power demonstrated that so long as the essence of American exceptionalism remained at the core of all efforts foreign and domestic, the likelihood of success was nearly guaranteed." There is a conservative slant on some issues, such as the criticism of FDR's New Deal, but the sections on Margaret Sanger's embrace of eugenics (less well known than her birth control advocacy) and the rise of the fascists in Europe are noteworthy in their detail. Sweeping in scope and, as the title indicates, unapologetically patriotic, this book honors the American way at home and abroad with its firm emphasis on "human dignity and prosperity."-- Publishers Weekly

A Patriot’s History of the Modern World provides a new perspective on our extraordinary past—and offers lessons we can apply to preserve American exceptional­ism today and tomorrow.

A moving memoir of the beloved fortieth president of the United States, by his son.

‟I read a lot of political biographies and was delighted and surprised by the uniqueness of this one. I had no idea that Ron Reagan could write like this. He is truly gifted. While he doesn't really get into the politics or the historical significance of his father's presidency, he portrays his father as an intriguing human being. He tries to give us a sense of how Reagan became the man we all saw. Unlike other famous and powerful men, Reagan seemed to be what he appeared to be. Or, from his son's description, Reagan thoroughly created himself to be the man he appeared to be. Whether or not you are a fan of Reagan, a liberal or a conservative, this book is fascinating.”—reviewer at Amazon

February 6, 2011, is the one hundredth anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth. To mark the occasion, Ron Reagan has written My Father at 100, an intimate look at the life of his father-one of the most popular presidents in American history-told from the perspective of someone who knew Ronald Reagan better than any adviser, friend, or colleague. As he grew up under his father's watchful gaze, he observed the very qualities that made the future president a powerful leader. Yet for all of their shared experiences of horseback rides and touch football games, there was much that Ron never knew about his father's past, and in My Father at 100, he sets out to understand this beloved, if often enigmatic, figure who turned his early tribulations into a stunning political career.

Since his death in 2004, President Reagan has been a galvanizing force that personifies the values of an older America and represents an important era in national history. Ron Reagan traces the sources of these values in his father's early years and offers a heartfelt portrait of a man and his country-and his personal memories of the president he knew as "Dad."

From New Yorker staff writer and Harvard historian Jill Lepore, the dark, spellbinding tale of her restless search for the long-lost, longest book ever written, a century-old manuscript called “The Oral History of Our Time.”

“A breezy, compulsively readable inquiry that touches on several big subjects, including what constitutes due diligence in journalism versus in history…No one could accuse Lepore of shoddy research: Undaunted by archives, she pores over reams of Gould’s letters and diaries, pans for gold in Mitchell’s boxes of notes at the New York Public Library, and corroborates her findings with extensive footnotes.….Joe Gould’s Teeth is more than just a fascinating footnote to a beloved literary landmark. Using the tools of her trade, Lepore ended up broadening her search for his lost notebooks to encompass trenchant questions about journalism, race, and mental illness. The result has bite.” —Heller McAlpin, NPR

Joe Gould, a madman, believed he was the most brilliant historian of the twentieth century. So did some of his friends, a group of modernist writers and artists that included E. E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, John Dos Passos, and Ezra Pound. Gould began his life’s work before the First World War, announcing that he intended to write down nearly everything anyone ever said to him. “I am trying to preserve as much detail as I can about the normal life of every day people,” he explained, because “as a rule, history does not deal with such small fry.” By 1942, when The New Yorker published a profile of Gould written by the reporter Joseph Mitchell, Gould’s manuscript had grown to more than nine million words. But when Gould died in 1957, in a mental hospital, the manuscript was nowhere to be found. Then, in 1964, in “Joe Gould’s Secret,” a second profile, Mitchell claimed that “The Oral History of Our Time” had been, all along, merely a figment of Gould’s imagination. Lepore, unpersuaded, decided to find out.  

Joe Gould’s Teeth is a Poe-like tale of detection, madness, and invention. Digging through archives all over the country, Lepore unearthed evidence that “The Oral History of Our Time” did in fact once exist. Relying on letters, scraps, and Gould’s own diaries and notebooks—including volumes of his lost manuscript—Lepore argues that Joe Gould’s real secret had to do with sex and the color line, with modernists’ relationship to the Harlem Renaissance, and, above all, with Gould’s terrifying obsession with the African American sculptor Augusta Savage. In ways that even Gould himself could not have imagined, what Gould wrote down really is a history of our time: unsettling and ferocious.

“A well-aimed hand grenade of a book, fiercely concentrated in its precision and unflinching in its revelations. Best-selling Lepore’s exciting approach to hidden and scandalous historical stories is drawing an enthusiastic, ever-growing readership that will be well primed for this thoughtful exposé.” —Booklist, *starred review*

“Engrossing…. Lepore’s book is as much about all the people, including herself, who project meaning and significance onto the work and personality of Joe Gould as it is about the man himself. Throughout history there have been peculiar characters who have captured the imagination of everyone they come into contact with, blinding them to obvious flaws and permitting all of us to imagine wonders just beyond what most of us can fathom. We owe Lepore a debt of gratitude for re-introducing us to one of the strangest strangers to have ever walked among us.” —Chicago Tribune

“Revelatory….Lepore’s inquiry, which first appeared as a long New Yorker article, discovers richer depths to Gould’s character than Mitchell ever explored, even if Gould’s likability is a casualty…. an impressive study of paradoxes….Lepore, a young prolific academic at the other end of the productivity spectrum from Mitchell, has upended the subject and author of the New Yorker’s most-read article….she ends up with more to get your teeth into.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Marvelous….Lepore has established herself as perhaps the most prolific, nimble and interesting writer of American history today, vigorously kicking at the past until she dislodges it from the ossifying grip of received wisdom…. As she brings to bear the methods of an ace historian at the top of her game, Lepore turns “Joe Gould’s Teeth” into a ripping detective story….Of all the stories swirling around Gould’s, none interests Lepore so much as that of Augusta Savage, an African American sculptor and civil rights activist from Harlem who became the unreciprocated love of Gould’s life, an unwilling muse and, after she refused his offer of marriage, an object of outright harassment. No other writer has made this connection between Savage and Gould, and one of the central satisfactions of “Joe Gould’s Teeth” is the way it unexpectedly veers away from Gould to take Savage’s story on its own terms, delivering by Trojan horse, as it were, a gift-wrapped second biography, a personal history set against Gould’s in striking, illuminating relief.” —The Washington Post

“Lepore has taken up the mantle of literary resurrectionist, and in ‘Joe Gould’s Teeth’ she succeeds despite the unsavory nature of her subject’s life and spurious literary legacy. Lepore shrewdly recounts her quest to find a near-mythical ‘lost’ manuscript by her subject, the New York eccentric who claimed to have written down nearly everything anyone ever said to him, starting before the outbreak of World War I….A madman’s grossly engrossing tale.” —The New York Times

For anyone's taking, a king's ransom. But no one has been able to take it from Oak Island -- WHY? The Money Pit on Oak Island might very well have been the source of inspiration for Edgar Allen Poe's famous mystery, The Gold Bug. Yet treasure hunters the world over have known about the gold buried on Oak Island for almost 200 years and have been frustrated in their attempts to recover it because it is protected by the tidal movement of the ocean around the island. Since 1795, countless adventurers and many well-financed syndicates have tried to wrest the gold from its hiding place. Some treasure hunters claim it is Captain Kidd's cache of Spanish gold and silver, other maintain just as stoutly that British gold is buried in the pit -- gold intended for use by Sir Henry Clinton to wage war against the colonies. . . . To the seekers of gold, it makes no difference who put it there -- if it is there -- and all of them are sure it is -- it is estimated to be worth $10,000,000 -- a king's ransom by any standard.

This is a look at American history dating back to the time of the Revolution.

About the Publisher

International News Books & Gifts publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books.

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. International News Books & Gifts uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

Julia Ward Howe (/haʊ/; May 27, 1819 – October 17, 1910) was an American poet and author, best known for writing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." She was also an advocate for abolitionism and was a social activist, particularly for women's suffrage.

About the Publisher

International News Books & Gifts publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books.

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. International News Books & Gifts uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

“Unfailingly vivid—and fair-minded” —The Atlantic
“Riveting” —The New York Times Book Review
“A biography with the verve and pace of a delicious novel...a polemic and a pleasure.” —The Boston Globe

The first biography to reveal Julia Ward Howe—the author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic—as a feminist pioneer who fought her own battle for creative freedom and independence.

Julia Ward (1819–1910) was a heiress and aspiring poet when she married Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, an internationally-acclaimed pioneer in the education of the blind. Together the Howes knew many of the key figures of their era, from Charles Dickens to John Brown. But he also wasted her inheritance, isolated and discouraged her, and opposed her literary ambitions. Julia persisted, and continued to publish poems and plays while raising six children.

Authorship of the Battle Hymn of the Republic made her celebrated and revered. But Julia was also continuing to fight a civil war at home; she became a pacifist, suffragist, and world traveler. She came into her own as a tireless campaigner for women’s rights and social reform. Esteemed author Elaine Showalter tells the story of Howe’s determined self-creation and brings to life the society she inhabited and the obstacles she overcame.

“Prisoners with Midnight in Their Hearts” by Harold Littledale; New York Evening Post, Jan. 12, 1917

Littledale uses repetition in the body of this article to express several issues with prison facilities at the time of the article’s publication. By saying “It is a fact,” over and over again, he builds an authority and outlines the need for reform. After listing a plethora of facts, he offered solutions to the problem. He suggested ending the vicious system of contract labor, permitting fruit for inmates and bringing out the good in those incarcerated.

This article goes beyond a restatement of facts. It offers ideas for improving a broken system while refraining from becoming an opinion piece.

About the Publisher

International News Books & Gifts publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books.

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. International News Books & Gifts uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1917, James Ford Rhodes's History of the Civil War, 1861–1865 stands among the essential works in American history. Remarkable for its scholarly research, objectivity and engrossing narrative style, this volume is widely regarded as one of the most outstanding studies — and the first unbiased history — of the Civil War.

The book presents a neutral approach to the bloody struggle, neither distorting nor coloring the facts. Rhodes worked methodically, collecting the evidence, considering the opinions of others, and then precisely and lucidly presenting his own conclusions. Distilling material from official military records, diaries, reminiscences, letters, memoirs, newspapers, manuscripts, books, and interviews, the author produced an essential, carefully weighed, and complete account. The critics agreed: "a clear outline of the Civil War . . . it is well worthy of the welcome it has already received." — American Historical Review. " . . . the author's notable faculty of summarizing without leaving out the spirit, the life, and the color of events . . . infuses his narrative with unusual power to re-create the time of which he writes." — The New York Times.

While the narrative is neutral, choosing neither villains nor heroes, the ideological direction of Rhodes's work is surprisingly current. In accord with such present-day interpreters of the Civil War period as James McPherson and Ken Burns, Rhodes saw the Civil War as essentially a fight for freedom, and focused upon Abraham Lincoln as the deciding factor in the granting of freedom and the winning of the war.

This Dover edition contains a cogent new introduction by John Herbert Roper, Richardson Professor of American History, Emory and Henry College, Emory, Virginia.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

About the Publisher

International News Books & Gifts publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books.

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. International News Books & Gifts uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Thirty years ago in the attic of an old estate in Massachusetts, John Hanson Mitchell discovered over two thousand antique glass plate negatives. He was told that the photographs had been taken by nineteenth-century ornithologist and conservationist William Brewster, but as a result of a tip from a Harvard research assistant, he began to suspect that the images were actually the work of Brewster's African American assistant, Robert A. Gilbert.

So begins the author's journey. From the maze-like archives at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology to the Virginia countryside and haunts of American expats in 1920s Paris, as well as the rich cultural world of blacks in nineteenth-century Boston, Mitchell brings sharp focus to the figure of Mr. Gilbert, a quiet, unassuming Renaissance man who succeeded as best as he could beneath the iron ceiling of American racism. Told with Mitchell's trademark grace and style, the fascinating story of this "invisible man" deepens our understanding of the African American past as well as the history of American photography.

Did you know that Uncle Sam was at the Battle of Lexington and Concord? He was only 12 years old at the time. How about the most cursed ship of the American Navy that, upon her defeat, indirectly won the War Of 1812? Did you ever hear of the river that changed the course of American history; or how about Otis Merrithew, the real hero of World War I, who disappeared for 12 years after the war? These and many other unique war stories are revealed in this book.

"George Twelvetrees Hewes wasn't a midget, but he was close. After his funny exploits during the American Revolution, he wrote a journal, and the author uses this journal to weave his tantalizing true story of those great and little known characters who won our independence from England. People like Revere, John Adams and Hancock were not considered heroes by their co-patriots, whereas the eccentric Otis and the crafty Warren were the real leaders, their names are almost forgotten now. A real insight into the courage, humor and day-to-day lives of our revolutionaries."

"Most of the servants who came to the New World with the Pilgrims and Puritans were Irish and Scots-Irish, yet their names were not recorded for posterity. The Irish snuck into Boston by the hundreds in the 1600s and by the thousands in the early 1700s. The famed Boston Massacre was really an Irish Massacre, since most who participated on both sides were Irish. The greatest American privateersman was Irish, and many of Washington's generals were Irish, as were a high percentage of his troops. If you're of Irish blood, this is the book for you!"

A revealing collection that restores Dr. King as being every bit as radical as Malcolm X

“The radical King was a democratic socialist who sided with poor and working people in the class struggle taking place in capitalist societies. . . . The response of the radical King to our catastrophic moment can be put in one word: revolution—a revolution in our priorities, a reevaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life, and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens. . . . Could it be that we know so little of the radical King because such courage defies our market-driven world?” —Cornel West, from the Introduction

Every year, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is celebrated as one of the greatest orators in US history, an ambassador for nonviolence who became perhaps the most recognizable leader of the civil rights movement. But after more than forty years, few people appreciate how truly radical he was.

Arranged thematically in four parts, The Radical King includes twenty-three selections, curated and introduced by Dr. Cornel West, that illustrate King’s revolutionary vision, underscoring his identification with the poor, his unapologetic opposition to the Vietnam War, and his crusade against global imperialism. As West writes, “Although much of America did not know the radical King—and too few know today—the FBI and US government did. They called him ‘the most dangerous man in America.’ . . . This book unearths a radical King that we can no longer sanitize.”

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

In chronicling the adventurous life of legendary CIA operative Edward Lansdale, The Road Not Taken definitively reframes our understanding of the Vietnam War.

In this epic biography of Edward Lansdale (1908– 1987), the man said to be the fictional model for Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, best-selling historian Max Boot demonstrates how Lansdale pioneered a “hearts and mind” diplomacy, first in the Philippines, then in Vietnam. It was a visionary policy that, as Boot reveals, was ultimately crushed by America’s giant military bureaucracy, steered by elitist generals and blueblood diplomats who favored troop build-ups and napalm bombs over winning the trust of the people. Through dozens of interviews and access to neverbefore-seen documents―including long-hidden love letters―Boot recasts this cautionary American story, tracing the bold rise and the crashing fall of the roguish “T. E. Lawrence of Asia” from the battle of Dien Bien Phu to the humiliating American evacuation in 1975. Bringing a tragic complexity to this so-called “ugly American,” this “engrossing biography” (Karl Marlantes) rescues Lansdale from historical ignominy and suggests that Vietnam could have been different had we only listened. With reverberations that continue to play out in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Road Not Taken is a biography of profound historical consequence. 54 photographs; 3 maps

“Judicious and absorbing…Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, brings solid credentials to this enterprise…Here he draws on a range of material, official and personal…What emerges is a picture of a man who from an early point possessed an unusual ability to relate to other people, a stereotypically American can-do optimism, an impatience with bureaucracy and a fascination with psychological warfare.”
- Fredrik Logevall, The New York Times Book Review

“The Road Not Taken is an impressive work, an epic and elegant biography based on voluminous archival sources. It belongs to a genre of books that takes a seemingly obscure hero and uses his story as a vehicle to capture a whole era.... Mr. Boot’s full-bodied biography does not ignore Lansdale’s failures and shortcomings―not least his difficult relations with his family―but it properly concentrates on his ideas and his attempts to apply them in Southeast Asia. ... The Road Not Taken gives a vivid portrait of a remarkable man and intelligently challenges the lazy assumption that failed wars are destined to fail or that failure, if it comes, cannot be saved from the worst possible outcome.”
- Robert D. Kaplan, The Wall Street Journal

“Max Boot capably and readably tracks the fascinating but ultimately depressing trajectory of this shadowy figure, who, as a murky undercover operative and a literary and cinematic avatar, looms over or lurks behind some of the crucial moments in U.S. foreign policy in the decades following World War II, culminating in its greatest disaster.”
- James G. Hershberg, Washington Post

“In this fine portrait of Edward Lansdale, Max Boot adds to his well-deserved reputation as being among the most insightful and productive of contemporary historians. This is a superb book. Diligently researched and gracefully written, it builds on a comprehensive analysis of Lansdale’s triumphs in the post–World War II Philippines to provide much new material, and expose old myths, about one of the most fascinating, and in many ways ultimately saddest, members of the supporting cast in the later war in Vietnam.”
- Lewis Sorley, National Review

“Edward Lansdale is probably the greatest cold warrior that most Americans have never heard of. Max Boot has written a fascinating account of how this California college humorist, frat boy and advertising executive evolved into a counterinsurgency expert before the term was even coined…. Max Boot has become one of the master chroniclers of American counterinsurgency efforts, and his biography of Mr. Lansdale is a tribute to a guy who recognized the threat of insurgency in a post-World War II environment where most American leaders saw only brute force as a solution to any political-military problem…. This book should be read in Baghdad and Kabul, not only by Americans, but by local leaders.”
- Gary Anderson, Washington Times

“Boot marshals sharp, devastating anecdotes to show how Lansdale’s ideas were dismissed or misunderstood by his contemporaries. . . . The stories this volume tells about voluntary isolation and lack of knowledge, vision, or respect for anything outside U.S. security culture, in all its violent, self-reinforcing whiteness and maleness, have a terrible timelessness to them . . . . We are in his debt for writing a book about another time that challenges us to raise those questions in ours.”
- Heather Hurlburt, Washington Monthly

“A brilliant biography of the life―and a riveting description of the times―of Edward Lansdale, one of the most significant figures in post-WWII Philippines and then Vietnam. Just as David Halberstam did in The Best and the Brightest, Max Boot uses superb storytelling skills to cast new light on America's agonizing involvement in Vietnam. The Road Not Taken not only tells Edward Lansdale's story with novelistic verve but also situates it wonderfully in the context of his tumultuous experiences―and offers important lessons for the present day.”
- General David Petraeus (U.S. Army, Ret.)

“Max Boot, one of the premier military historians writing today, has created a fascinating portrait of Edward Lansdale, a maverick in the mold of T.E. Lawrence. But The Road Not Taken is much more than a biography, begging comparison with monumental narratives like Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie. Boot gives us a compelling look back on the Vietnam tragedy, showing that it was by no means the inevitable result of forces beyond the control of our political and military leaders. ”
- Philip Caputo, author of Rumor of War

“I couldn’t stop reading this engrossing biography of Edward Lansdale, a man who loved his country’s ideals and who secretly fought for them in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Washington, DC. Lansdale’s story is relevant today, because he was a key figure in the debate over how and how not to use military force to achieve American foreign policy aims. Through Lansdale’s efforts we got it right in the Philippines, but no one listened to him in Vietnam. He was forgotten by the time we moved into Afghanistan and Iraq. I fervently hope our policy makers read this book.”
- Karl Marlantes, author of Matterhorn

“As one of the last few links to Lansdale, who was also one of his closest on-the-ground collaborators, I can attest that this biography of him is the best, most accurate, revealing and complete portrait yet produced. Even with all I knew, I learned a great deal more that was new which broadened my understanding of this extraordinary man. The very human way he helped the Filipino and Vietnamese people defend their inalienable rights is a shining model to be followed by current and future generations of Americans assigned abroad to assist fragile nations.”
- Rufus Phillips, author of Why Vietnam Matters

A collection of powerful essays in spoken word form remembering September 11, 2001, by high school students who witnessed the tragedy unfold.

A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age

“Profound.” —Booklist

“Moving.” —Publishers Weekly

“Rings with authenticity and resonates with power.” —School Library Journal

Tuesday, September 11, started off like any other day at Stuyvesant High School, located only a few blocks away from the World Trade Center.

The semester was just beginning, and the students, faculty, and staff were ready to start a new year. But within a few hours on that Tuesday morning, they would share an experience that would transform their lives—and the lives of all Americans.

These powerful essays by the students of Stuyvesant High School remember those who were lost and those who were forced to witness this tragedy. Here, in their own words, are the firsthand stories of a day we will never forget.

A collection of powerful essays in spoken word form remembering September 11, 2001, by high school students who witnessed the tragedy unfold.

A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age

“Profound.” —Booklist

“Moving.” —Publishers Weekly

“Rings with authenticity and resonates with power.” —School Library Journal

Tuesday, September 11, started off like any other day at Stuyvesant High School, located only a few blocks away from the World Trade Center.

The semester was just beginning, and the students, faculty, and staff were ready to start a new year. But within a few hours on that Tuesday morning, they would share an experience that would transform their lives—and the lives of all Americans.

These powerful essays by the students of Stuyvesant High School remember those who were lost and those who were forced to witness this tragedy. Here, in their own words, are the firsthand stories of a day we will never forget.

The original step-by-step guide to walking the Freedom Trail --

• Historical facts, trivia, and anecdotes
• Art and architecture
• Fully illustrated with antique engravings
• Four pages of detailed maps
• Wheelchair access guide
• Hours and admission fees
• List of related websites

Includes over thirty historic houses, churches, ships, monuments, museums, burial grounds, and other sites!

The 9/11 Report for Every American...should probably be classified as historical fiction or placed in the department of whitewash.

On December 5, 2005, the 9/11 Commission issued its final report card on the government's fulfillment of the recommendations issued in July 2004: one A, twelve Bs, nine Cs, twelve Ds, three Fs, and four incompletes. Here is stunning evidence that Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, with more than sixty years of experience in the comic-book industry between them, were right: far, far too few Americans have read, grasped, and demanded action on the Commission's investigation into the events of that tragic day and the lessons America must learn.

Using every skill and storytelling method Jacobson and Colón have learned over the decades, they have produced the most accessible version of the 9/11 Report. Jacobson's text frequently follows word for word the original report, faithfully captures its investigative thoroughness, and covers its entire scope, even including the Commission's final report card. Colón's stunning artwork powerfully conveys the facts, insights, and urgency of the original. Published on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States, an event that has left no aspect of American foreign or domestic policy untouched, The 9/11 Report puts at every American's fingertips the most defining event of the century.

A sweeping, authoritative history of the expansion of slavery in America, showing how forced migrations radically altered the nation's economic, political, and cultural landscape.

"The overwhelming power of the stories that Baptist recounts, and the plantation-level statistics he's compiled, give his book the power of truth and revelation."―Los Angeles Times

Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution--the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy.

Told through intimate slave narratives, plantation records, newspapers, and the words of politicians, entrepreneurs, and escaped slaves, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American history.

"Thoughtful, unsettling.... Baptist turns the long-accepted argument that slavery was economically inefficient on its head, and argues that it was an integral part of America's economic rise."―Daily Beast

Winner of the 2015 Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians

Winner of the 2015 Sidney Hillman Prize

Bloomberg View Top Ten Nonfiction Books of 2014

Daily Beast Best Nonfiction Books of 2014

"Wonderful.... Baptist provides meticulous, extensive, and comprehensive evidence that capitalism and the wealth it created was absolutely dependent on the forced labor of Africans and African-Americans, downplaying culturalist arguments for Western prosperity."―Nation

"By far the finest account of the deep interplay of the slave trade...and the development of the U.S. economy."―Stephen L. Carter

"Baptist has a knack for explaining complex financial matters in lucid prose.... The Half Has Never Been Told's underlying argument is persuasive."―New York Times Book Review

Soul by Soul tells the story of slavery in antebellum America by moving away from the cotton plantations and into the slave market itself, the heart of the domestic slave trade. Taking us inside the New Orleans slave market, the largest in the nation, where 100,000 men, women, and children were packaged, priced, and sold, Walter Johnson transforms the statistics of this chilling trade into the human drama of traders, buyers, and slaves, negotiating sales that would alter the life of each. What emerges is not only the brutal economics of trading but the vast and surprising interdependencies among the actors involved. 

Using recently discovered court records, slaveholders’ letters, nineteenth-century narratives of former slaves, and the financial documentation of the trade itself, Johnson reveals the tenuous shifts of power that occurred in the market’s slave coffles and showrooms. Traders packaged their slaves by “feeding them up,” dressing them well, and oiling their bodies, but they ultimately relied on the slaves to play their part as valuable commodities. Slave buyers stripped the slaves and questioned their pasts, seeking more honest answers than they could get from the traders. In turn, these examinations provided information that the slaves could utilize, sometimes even shaping a sale to their own advantage. 

Johnson depicts the subtle interrelation of capitalism, paternalism, class consciousness, racism, and resistance in the slave market, to help us understand the centrality of the “peculiar institution“ in the lives of slaves and slaveholders alike. His pioneering history is in no small measure the story of antebellum slavery.

From Publishers Weekly

Instead of focusing on cotton plantations or broad historical patterns, this extraordinary study is a flesh-and-blood daily history of the slave market. NYU history professor Johnson takes readers inside the Dixie slave pens and traders' coffles (long rows of slaves manacled and chained to one another). His focus is New Orleans, North America's largest slave market, hub of a trade that decimated African-American slave communities by tearing families asunder--destroying marriages and separating children from parents. Using former slave survivors' narratives, letters written by slaveholders, docket records of cases of disputed slave sales and Southern medical and agricultural journals, Johnson interweaves the voices of traders, buyers, auctioneers and the slaves themselves. He shows that, for white Southern slaveholders, buying slaves buoyed a fantasy of manly bourgeois self-control, speculative savvy and economic independence. Slaves, meanwhile, assessed the character of particular buyers and sometimes, at enormous risk, manipulated a sale to their own advantage. The evil business of slavery has seldom been exposed with so much humanity and insight as in this eloquent study, scholarly yet wholly accessible, a compelling cross-sectional microcosm of millions of human tragedies.  
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. 

A Publisher's Weekly Top 10 Best Books of 2017
Long-listed for the National Book Award

"Rothstein has presented what I consider to be the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation." ―William Julius Wilson

In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation―that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation―the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments―that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.

Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as "brilliant" (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north.

As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post–World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. “The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this important book” (Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), as Rothstein’s invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past.

13 illustrations

In these “urgently relevant essays,”* the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me “reflects on race, Barack Obama’s presidency and its jarring aftermath”*—including the election of Donald Trump.

New York Times Bestseller • One of Time’s Top 10 Non-Fiction Books of the Year • One of USA Today’s top 10 books of the year • A New York Times Notable Book

“We were eight years in power” was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s “first white president.”

“Essential . . . Coates’s probing essays about race, politics, and history became necessary ballast for this nation’s gravity-defying moment.” —The Boston Globe

But the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period—and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation’s old and unreconciled history. Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective—the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president.

“Ta-Nehisi Coates has published a collection of the major magazine essays he wrote throughout the Obama years. . . . But Coates adds an unexpected element that renders We Were Eight Years in Power both new and revealing. Interspersed among the essays are introductory personal reflections. . . . Together, these introspections are the inside story of a writer at work, with all the fears, insecurities, influences, insights and blind spots that the craft demands. . . . I would have continued reading Coates during a Hillary Clinton administration, hoping in particular that he’d finally write the great Civil War history already scattered throughout his work. Yet reading him now feels more urgent, with the bar set higher.”—Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post

We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates’s iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including “Fear of a Black President,” “The Case for Reparations,” and “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” along with eight fresh essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates’s own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the Obama era. We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America, from one of the definitive voices of this historic moment.

“Essential . . . Coates’s probing essays about race, politics, and history became necessary ballast for this nation’s gravity-defying moment.”—The Boston Globe 

“Biting cultural and political analysis from the award-winning journalist . . . [Ta-Nehisi Coates] reflects on race, Barack Obama’s presidency and its jarring aftermath, and his own evolution as a writer in eight stunningly incisive essays. . . . He contextualizes each piece with candid personal revelations, making the volume a melding of memoir and critique. . . . Emotionally charged, deftly crafted, and urgently relevant.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

About the Author

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. His book Between the World and Me won the National Book Award in 2015. Coates is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.

The New York Times Bestseller, with a new preface from the author

“This estimable book rides into the summer doldrums like rural electrification. . . . It deals in the truths that matter.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“This eye-opening investigation into our country’s entrenched social hierarchy is acutely relevant.”—O, The Oprah Magazine

“White Trash will change the way we think about our past and present.”
—T. J. Stiles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Custer’s Trials

In her groundbreaking  bestselling history of the class system in America, Nancy Isenberg, #4 on the 2016 Politico 50 list, takes on our comforting myths about equality, uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassing—if occasionally entertaining—poor white trash.

“When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there’s always a chance that the dancing bear will win,” says Isenberg of the political climate surrounding Sarah Palin. And we recognize how right she is today. Yet the voters that put Trump in the White House have been a permanent part of our American fabric, argues Isenberg.

The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement to today's hillbillies. They were alternately known as “waste people,” “offals,” “rubbish,” “lazy lubbers,” and “crackers.” By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called “clay eaters” and “sandhillers,” known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds.

Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society––where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics–-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity.

We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation’s history. With Isenberg’s landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well.

WINNER OF THE 2016 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER
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NAMED A FINALIST for the 2016 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR NONFICTION
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NOMINATED for the 2016 NAACP IMAGE AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING LITERARY WORK OF NONFICTION, and the 2017 HURSTON/WRIGHT LEGACY AWARD IN NONFICTION
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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by Boston Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Review of Books, The Root, Buzzfeed, Bustle, and Entropy
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THE MOST AMBITIOUS BOOK OF 2016 -- The Washington Post
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A KIRKUS BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2016, BEST BOOK OF 2016 TO EXPLAIN CURRENT POLITICS & BEST HEARTRENDING NONFICTION BOOK of 2016
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Some Americans cling desperately to the myth that we are living in a post-racial society, that the election of the first Black president spelled the doom of racism. In fact, racist thought is alive and well in America--more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues in Stamped from the Beginning, if we have any hope of grappling with this stark reality, we must first understand how racist ideas were developed, disseminated, and enshrined in American society.

In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. Stamped from the Beginning uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to offer a window into the contentious debates between assimilationists and segregationists and between racists and antiracists. From Puritan minister Cotton Mather to Thomas Jefferson, from fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison to brilliant scholar W.E.B. Du Bois to legendary anti-prison activist Angela Davis, Kendi shows how and why some of our leading proslavery and pro-civil rights thinkers have challenged or helped cement racist ideas in America.

Contrary to popular conceptions, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. Instead, they were devised and honed by some of the most brilliant minds of each era. These intellectuals used their brilliance to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial disparities in everything from wealth to health. And while racist ideas are easily produced and easily consumed, they can also be discredited. In shedding much-needed light on the murky history of racist ideas, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose them--and in the process, gives us reason to hope.

"ENGROSSING AND RELENTLESS" --The Washington Post

"THIS DEFINITIVE HISTORY OF RACIST IDEAS SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING" --The Root

"NOVELISTIC FLAIR" --The Stranger

"AMBITIOUS, MAGISTERIAL" --Starred Kirkus Review

"MUST FOR SERIOUS READERS" --Library Journal

"HEAVILY RESEARCHED YET READABLE" --Booklist

"WORTH THE TIME OF ANYONE WHO WANTS TO UNDERSTAND RACISM" --The Seattle Times

"EVER-RELEVANT CONTEXT FOR THE WHITE SUPREMACIST MOMENT" --The Dallas Morning News

"A COMPELLING, THOROUGHLY ENLIGTENING, UNSETTLING, AND NECESSARY READ" --Vox

"GRACEFUL, ENGAGING PROSE" --Tampa Bay Times

The Gangs of New York has long been hand-passed among its cult readership. It is a tour through a now unrecognizable city of abysmal poverty and habitual violence cobbled, as Luc Sante has written, “from legend, memory, police records, the self-aggrandizements of aging crooks, popular journalism, and solid historical research.” Asbury presents the definitive work on this subject, an illumination of the gangs of old New York that ultimately gave rise to the modern Mafia and its depiction in films like The Godfather. 

“A universal history of infamy [that] contains all the confusion and cruelty of the barbarian cosmologies....”—Jorge Luis Borges 

“The tale is one of blood, excitement and debauchery.”—The New York Times Book Review 

“The Gangs of New York is one of the essential works of the city....”—Luc Sante, The New York Review of Books

Doctor Eric Williams, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago from 1956 until his death in 1981, first made his mark as a historian with his famous book Capitalism and Slavery, to which the present volume was a worthy and logical successor.  It is a narrative history written with great verve and vigour, and derived from a wealth of material, which collates all existing knowledge of the Caribbean in relation to the rest of the world.

The first complete history of the region as a whole to have been written, it contributes to our understanding of the modern world by illuminating one important but neglected and misrepresented area of it.  Caught up in the political and economic net of the metropolitan counties for over four and a half centuries, and for part of that time the 'cockpit of the world', it is only in the last fifty years that the Caribbean has achieved independence.  Today the task of interpreting accurately the  colonial past as a guide to the consolidation of that Independence is more necessary than ever.

History is to society what memory is to the individual. Without it, we don't know who we are and we can't make wise decisions about our future. But while the nature of memory is constant, the nature of history has changed radically over the past forty years.

In The Purpose of the Past, historian Gordon S. Wood examines this sea change in his field through consideration of some of its most important historians and their works. Along the way, he offers wonderful insight into what great historians do, how they can stumble, and what strains of thought have dominated the marketplace of ideas in historical scholarship. The result is a history of American history--and an argument for its ongoing necessity.

A commanding assessment of the field by one of its masters, The Purpose of the Past will enlarge every reader's capacity to appreciate history.