Americas

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science....

Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, U.S. Army, was as good a rifle company as any in the world....

From #1 New York Times bestselling author and Fox News Channel’s Chief Political Anchor, a captivating biography of Theodore Roosevelt, the stalwart naturalist, writer, ranchman, soldier, president, and avatar of our modern era.

Discover the game-changing theory of the cycles of history and what past generations can teach us about living through times of upheaval—with deep insights into the roles that Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials have to play....

When 38 jetliners bound for the US were forced to land at Gander International Airport on September 11, the population of this small town swelled from 10,300 to nearly 17,000....

From acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot comes a searingly smart and bitingly hilarious retelling of American history that corrects the record and showcases the perspectives and experiences of Black Americans....

Twenty-five years ago, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss dazzled the world with a provocative new theory of American history. Looking back at the last 500 years, they’d uncovered a distinct pattern: modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting roughly 80 to 100 years....

It was Big Oil's nightmare moment, and the dominoes began falling years before the well was drilled....

Narrated by the visionary founding member, Hell's Angel provides a fascinating all-access pass to the secret world of the notorious Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club....

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis....

The definitive English-language biography of Simón Bolívar, the, "George Washington of South America," who remains strangely unknown in the United States....

The reality of UFO incursions at American nuclear weapons facilities has been convincingly established. Over the past four decades, renowned researcher Robert Hastings has interviewed more than 150 of those veterans regarding their involvement in these astounding cases.

From the author of the definitive New York Times best-selling history of the Beatles comes the authoritative account of the group many call the greatest rock band of all time, arguably the most successful, and certainly one of the most notorious....

An unprecedented inside look at how President Donald Trump has re-taken Washington by storm in his historic second term, written with the participation of the President and his inner circle.

A gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism. Founder of a dynasty, builder of the original Grand Central, creator of an impossibly vast fortune, Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt is an American icon....

A vivid, uniquely powerful history of the conflict that tore America apart....

Even among iconic frontiersmen like John C. Fremont, Kit Carson, and Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger stands out. A mountain man of the American West, straddling the fur trade era and the age of exploration, he lived the life legends are made of....

As soon as the financial crisis erupted, the finger-pointing began....

This is the ultimate authoritative account of the Pacific Northwest killing spree that held a nation spellbound - and continues to horrify and fascinate, spawning dramatizations and documentaries of a demented killer who seemed unstoppable for decades....

From the creators of the New York Times bestselling series Campfire Stories: Close Calls comes a new original audiobook that brings to life the bold, hair-raising, and often tragic adventures of a generation of eighteenth-century frontiersmen: the Long Hunters....

In the chaos following World War II, the US government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich's scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis' once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project....

Killing the Witches revisits one of the most frightening and inexplicable episodes in American history: the events of 1692 and 1693 in Salem Village, Massachusetts....

A gripping chronicle of the band of maverick aviators who signed on for the suicidal, dangerous top-secret "Wild Weasel" missions during the Vietnam War....

Indigenous worldviews, and the knowledge they confer, are critical for human survival and the wellbeing of future generations.

Here are thirteen unforgettable portraits of forgotten people: men and women who might have claimed their share of renown but who, whether from ill timing, skullduggery, monomania, the tinge of madness, or plain bad luck, leapt straight from life into thankless obscurity....

America’s relationship with alcohol is a fraught and inconsistent one. While many other nations and cultures have stable attitudes toward drinking, the American perspective on alcohol has been volatile, vacillating wildly from the gallon-a-day beer rations on the Mayflower to nationwide prohibition and back again. Why are Americans so ambivalent about alcohol? What can we learn about the past and the American character through these extreme fluctuations between alcoholism and sobriety across the centuries?

The Last American President rips open America's wounded democracy to expose a terrifying truth: Donald Trump isn't an anomaly—he's the inevitable product of a system engineered to fail. This searing investigation reveals how a man forged by childhood trauma, pathological narcissism, and calculated cruelty didn't hijack democracy—he was handed the keys by those who should have been its guardians. Hartmann uncovers the unholy alliance between Trump's damaged psyche and America's rotted institutions.

Part detective story, part biography, and part first-person adventure narrative, Vanished Beyond the Map combines expeditions with historical research to solve one of exploration history’s enduring cold cases—the mystery of Hubert Darrell.

The United States has no shortage of famous military units, from the Civil War’s Iron Brigade to the 101st Airborne, but one would be hard pressed to find one that had to go through as many hardships off the battlefield as the Montford Point Marines, a group of African American soldiers who overcame Jim Crow at home and official segregation in the military to serve their country in the final years of World War II.

In October 1962, American spy planes discovered the Soviets were building nuclear missile sites in Cuba, and intelligence officials informed President John F. Kennedy of this on October 16th. It went without saying that nuclear missile sites located just miles off the coast of the American mainland posed a grave threat to the country, especially because missiles launched from Cuba would reach their targets in mere minutes. That would throw off important military balances in nuclear arms and locations that had previously ensured the Cold War stayed cold.

New York Times bestselling author Bill Janovitz explores the musical, cultural, and commercial impact of The Cars, one of the biggest and most influential bands of the 1970s and 80s. With roots in Maryland, Ohio, New York, and New England, eventually convening in Boston, The Cars were journeymen musicians, all forming and performing in a series of bands before finding each other along with the right sound at the right time. It turned them into Rock and Roll Hall of Famers. Janovitz reveals the stories of each member of the band, and of the band as a unit, with great care and understanding.

Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was the most feared pirate of the Golden Age—a towering figure who struck terror into the hearts of sailors from the Caribbean to the Carolinas. Most biographies seem to start and stop with that statement, but there was much more to the life of Blackbeard than that, and much more to learn about the man behind history’s most fearsome pirate legend.

In Black History Is for Everyone, award-winning educator and scholar Brian Jones offers a meditation on the power of Black history, using his own experiences as a life-long learner and classroom teacher to question everything from the meaning of race and nation to the radicalism of the American Revolution.

In the new state of Oklahoma, young Sarah Rector was among the Black citizens of the Creek Nation granted land allotments. Her property seemed worthless—a distant plot fifty miles from her family’s two-room shack. Then oil was discovered, and eleven-year-old Sarah’s land was producing 2,500 barrels of oil per day. The sudden wealth transformed her family’s circumstances, moving them from poverty to prosperity. But such wealth in Black hands drew unwanted attention.

It takes a special type of person to serve in a nation’s navy, especially on long voyages that separate men and women from their loved ones, and no service is both loved and hated as that aboard submarines, for very few people ever serve on them on a whim. For one thing, the psychological impact of being trapped for long periods underwater in tight, cramped quarters is more than many people can stand.

More than fifty years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his murder continues to haunt the American psyche and stands as a turning point in our nation's history. The Warren Commission rushed out its report in 1964, but questions continue to linger: Was there a conspiracy? Was there a coup at the highest levels of government? On the Trail of the Assassins—the primary source material for Oliver Stone's hit film JFK—is Garrison's own account of his investigations into the background of Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of President Kennedy.

In this book Tiya Miles explores the popular yet troubling phenomenon of "ghost tours," frequently promoted and experienced at plantations, urban manor homes, and cemeteries throughout the South. As a staple of the tours, guides entertain paying customers by routinely relying on stories of enslaved black specters. But who are these ghosts? Examining popular sites and stories from these tours, Miles shows that haunted tales routinely appropriate and skew African American history to produce representations of slavery for commercial gain.

In Pueblos, Plains, and Province Joseph P. Sánchez offers an in-depth examination of sociopolitical conflict in seventeenth-century New Mexico, detailing the effects of Spanish colonial policies on settlers’, missionaries’, and Indigenous peoples’ struggle for economic and cultural control of the region.

The tragic story of the murders of three women committed over three decades by one cold-blooded man in Maine's North Woods. Jennie Cyr disappeared in 1977. Jerilyn Towers vanished in 1982. Lynn Willette never came home on a night in 1994. Each woman had a relationship with James Hicks, who in 2000 confessed to murdering them, dismembering their bodies, and burying the remains alongside rural roads in Aroostook County. This is their story.

In the fall of 1916, New York housemaid Augusta Steinbach fell in love with a man she met through a matrimonial advertisement in her local newspaper. She traveled to Detroit to marry her correspondent, but in March 1917, she mysteriously disappeared. What began as a routine search for a missing person turned into a baffling case of deception, bigamy and murder. Follow detectives as they unravel the tangled web spun by Michigan's original lonely hearts killer—a criminal mastermind the Detroit News dubbed "one of America's master outlaws."

In Walking With Your Spirit Totem Animals, Mi’kmaq medium and host of Spirit Talker Shawn Leonard invites listeners on a profound journey into the mystical world of animal totems. His insightful guide reveals how specific animal totems, that are personal to each and every one of us, support us. Leonard intertwines personal anecdotes with spiritual teachings, illustrating how these animal guides have appeared in his own life—his totems are Buffalo/Bison, Eagle, Polar Bear, and Owl—and provided wisdom at each stage.

In the mid-1950s, Barry Goldwater and Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as the leaders of two diametrically opposed freedom movements that changed the course of American history—and still divide American politics. King mobilized civil rights activists under the banner of "freedom now," insisting that true freedom would not be realized until all people—regardless of race—were empowered politically, economically, and socially. Goldwater rallied conservatives to the cause of "extremism in defense of liberty," advocating radical individualism.

Leadership is not about position, it is about influence. You can be a leader no matter what your rank or position. It is not about power, it is about selflessness. You cannot be a good leader unless you can also be a good follower. Good leaders don't shine, they reflect. Lessons like these are the core of this book. The stories in this book are about leaders who were challenged at all corners, adapted, improvised, and overcame.

This book tells American stories occurring on one day–the Fourth of July–beginning with the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and throughout our 250 year history. The Declaration of Independence announced that the new nation was grounded in an idea: “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Inside this book’s covers are the Founders who gave birth to that idea–Adams, Jefferson, Washington, with each having more than one consequential Fourth of July.

Franklin Pierce was president of the United States during one of the most pivotal periods in American history. He was the 14th president, and during his tenure leading the nation, he had to deal with multiple points of upheaval. He was the captain of the ship, but the boat had sprung multiple leaks. Even so, he managed to expand its scope. Building upon the vast territorial gains of his predecessor President James Polk, he executed the Gadsden Purchase, adding some 30,000 square miles to the Union.

Timmy Overton of Austin and Jerry Ray James of Odessa were football stars who traded athletics for lives of crime. The original rebels without causes, nihilists with Cadillacs and Elvis hair, the Overton gang and their associates formed a ragtag white trash mafia that bedazzled Austin law enforcement for most of the 1960s. Tied into a loose network of crooked lawyers, pimps, and used car dealers who became known as the "traveling criminals," they burglarized banks and ran smuggling and prostitution rings all over Texas.

Tulsa, Oklahoma might not be the first place mentioned when people talk about American music history. But this bustling city has a rich and diverse legacy that spans genres, generations and cultures. Tulsa Sounds: Contributions to American Music takes you into the stories behind the songs, the artists and the venues that made Tulsa not only a musical hot spot but influenced social, cultural and political change in the city as well as the nation. There is Leon Russell and his contributions to rock and roll. There are the toe-tapping pioneers of Western Swing, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.

Today, public discourse often focuses on the emotional weight of terms like “DEI,” while neglecting the historical context that gave rise to them. As a result, our reactions are based more on feelings and emotions, rather than on understanding. That lack of understanding prevents us from addressing the real roots of inequality and from working toward a more balanced and just society. This book will help us dig deeply into our own personal views as it relates to our feelings and views when it comes to racism.

Black Revolutionaries is an accessible yet rigorously argued history of the Black Panther Party (BPP), one of the emblematic organizations of the 1960s. Joe Street highlights the complexity of the BPP's history through three key themes: the BPP's intellectual history, its political and social activism, and the persecution its members endured. Together, these themes confirm the BPP's importance in understanding Black America's response to white oppression in the 1960s and 1970s.

In this pioneering study of the long and arduous struggle for civil rights in South Carolina, longtime journalist Claudia Smith Brinson details the lynchings, beatings, bombings, cross burnings, death threats, arson, and venomous hatred that black South Carolinians endured—as well as those who risked their lives for equality. Through extensive research and interviews with more than 150 civil rights activists, Brinson chronicles twenty pivotal years of petitioning, preaching, picketing, boycotting, marching, and holding sit-ins.