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....

Hailed by critics as an American masterpiece, David McCullough's sweeping biography of Harry S. Truman captured the heart of the nation....

John Bolton served as national security advisor to President Donald Trump for 519 days. What Bolton saw astonished him: a president for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation....

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

Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet....

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....

"Russian influence" may have entered our national pop-consciousness in Election 2016, but it is the shiny, deceptive, contested, and buried X-factor of a century of wars in Washington. In American Betrayal, Diana West digs deep to uncover a body of lies....

Paul Rosolie’s extraordinary adventure in the uncharted tributaries of the Western Amazon - a tale of discovery that vividly captures the awe, beauty, and isolation of this endangered land....

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.

New York Times bestselling author and journalist Anderson Cooper teams with New York Times bestselling historian and novelist Katherine Howe to chronicle the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty—his mother’s family, the Vanderbilts.

As the Allies raced to defeat Hitler, four men, all in the same unit, earned medal after medal for battlefield heroism. Maurice “Footsie” Britt, a former professional football player, became the very first American to receive every award for valor in a single war....

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us - an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings....

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....

Paris has long been a storied center of art and culture, and of romance, but in the 1920s its magnetism was especially irresistible....

The invented history of the Western world is crumbling fast, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec says, but we can still honor the bonds between us. Settlers dominated and divided, but Indigenous peoples won't just send them all "home"....

Dee Brown's account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the 19th century uses council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions....

A remarkable new talent in narrative nonfiction delivers the epic true story of a group of courageous grandmothers who fought to find their grandchildren who were stolen.

At the height of the Cold War, JFK risked committing the greatest crime in human history....

Thirty years after its publication, this book was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning"....

Compelling and profound, The Lakota Way gives a fresh outlook to those searching for a new perspective on spiritual and ethical living....

Of all the colorful cutthroats who scoured the seas in search of plunder during the Golden Age of Piracy in the early 18th century, none was more ferocious or notorious than Blackbeard....

In Teaching Critical Thinking, renowned cultural critic and progressive educator Bell Hooks addresses some of the most compelling issues facing teachers in and out of the classroom today.

Brilliantly researched, authoritatively crafted by a prize-winning biographer, this is the Nixon we've been waiting for....

Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller’s exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book indelibly alters our image of this most enigmatic capitalist....

A profound and provocative examination of America in crisis, where unemployment, deindustrialization, and a bitter hopelessness and malaise have resulted in an epidemic of diseases of despair - drug abuse, suicide, xenophobia, and a culture of sadism and hate....

Al día siguiente de la conquista, terminó el aislamiento en América, germinó una nueva civilización y comenzó la fusión entre dos mundos que hasta entonces lo desconocían todo el uno del otro. Juan Miguel Zunzunegui, hispanista superventas en México y brillante conferenciante, firma su primera obra en España para contar sin odios ni rabia lo que verdaderamente ocurrió en América.

The full story of an industry, a city, and two men—one who got everything he ever wanted, one who never got what he thought he deserved—and what happened the night it all came apart.

Joseph Smith Jr. (1805–1844) was one of the most successful and controversial religious leaders of nineteenth-century America, publishing the Book of Mormon and starting what would become the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He built temples, founded a city-state in Illinois, ran for president, and married more than thirty women. This self-made prophet thrilled his followers with his grand vision of peace and unity, but his increasingly grandiose plans tested and sometimes shattered their faith.

The Outward Path refers to the central insight that our true desire as human beings is not really for "happiness," a fleeting mood. What we really want is a rich and worthwhile life, which we can only achieve by pursuing an outward path of engagement with other people.

Drawing on their personal history as a former urban equestrian, Black queer person, and child of Jamaican and Filipino immigrants, essayist and art critic Bitter Kalli contends the horse should be regarded as a critical source of power and identity in Black life. In a series of astute essays, Kalli explores the work of Black artists and influencers from Beyoncé to filmmakers Tiona Nekkia-McClodden and Jeymes Samuel and explores their own life-long relationship to equines.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” This phrase was supposedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, and it became a defining expression of a turbulent time in American history. Throughout the 1970s, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color.

Un libro revelador y apasionante que desentraña las verdades ocultas de la historia detrás de la conquista. Un libro que invita a la reflexión sobre el vínculo entre México y España. Autor de una vasta y celebrada obra, J. M. Zunzunegui cuestiona aquí la versión oficial de la conquista española, explorando las dinámicas entre españoles, tlaxcaltecas y texcocanos, quienes, sin saberlo, comenzaron a construir un nuevo mundo: un mestizaje cultural marcado por encuentros, tensiones y transformaciones.

Arguably the most intellectual, creative, cosmopolitan, and curious of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin is the only top-tier Founder not to have served as president. Despite not becoming the Chief Executive, Franklin played an active role in American politics and served the aspiring and young United States in the key European capitals. His prodigious reading and appetite for learning are epic. As he did in works about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, Kevin J. Hayes interprets the life and mind of Franklin through what he read.

The Undiscovered Country strips away the layers of myth to reveal the true story of the American West. From the forests of Pennsylvania and Kentucky to the snow-crested California Sierras, and from the harsh deserts of the Southwest to the buffalo range of the Great Plains, Paul Andrew Hutton masterfully chronicles a story that defined America and its people. From Braddock’s 1755 defeat to the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, he unfolds a grand narrative steeped in romantic impulses and tragic consequences.

The Color Pynk is a passionate exploration of Black femme poetics of survival. Sidelined by liberal feminists and invisible to mainstream civil rights movements, Black femmes spent the Trump years doing what they so often do best: creating politically engaged art, entertainment, and ideas. In the first full-length study of Black queer, cis-, and trans-femininity, Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley argues that this creative work offers a distinctive challenge to power structures that limit how we color, gender, and explore freedom.

In the Twist of the Dial addresses how economics, changing regulatory policies, and even retail trends have conspired over the last few decades to effect what listeners, especially in non-metropolitan markets are now hearing on their local radio stations. It reminds listeners that in the final analysis, as with so much else in the U.S., in radio, it’s all about sales, profit, and the bottom line. It is a must-listen for anyone who enjoys listening to radio, who wonders about how it all works, and what its future may be.

Grace to Overcome invites you on a spiritual and historical journey, interweaving the rich tapestry of black history with the profound narratives of the Bible. Crafted by Pastor Bryan C. Loritts, an influential voice in multiethnic church movements, Grace to Overcome is a powerful collection of thirty-one devotions that bring to life the stories of both renowned and lesser-known figures who have help shaped society.

The Revolutionary War is often celebrated as marking the birth of American republicanism, liberty, and representative democracy. Yet for the tens of thousands of British and Hessian troops sent 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to wage war under alien skies, such a progressive picture, as Vaughn Scribner reveals, could not have been further from the truth. In Under Alien Skies, Scribner illustrates how foreign soldiers' negative perceptions of the American environment merged with harsh wartime realities to elicit considerable physical, mental, and emotional anguish.

The Framers created a form of government they labelled a “republic.” This author calls it a “republic monarchy” because the people who own the nation were given zero power to change anything in government. All they can do is vote for or against the elite monarchs who run it. This book reviews how we got there, the turmoil that has resulted, and what is recommended be done to achieve government excellence. Self-government by The People is advocated, with the strategy of achieving government decision-making excellence under their control.

In this comprehensive work, David Eltis offers a two-thousand-year perspective on the trafficking of people, and boldly intervenes in the expansive discussions about slavery in the last half-century. Using new and underexplored data made available by slavevoyages.org, Eltis offers compelling explanations of why the slave trades began and why they ended, and in the process debunks long-held assumptions, including how bilateral rather than triangular voyages were the norm, and how the Portuguese rather than the British were the leading slave traders.

James Thompson is a "forensic historian" who explains what once (really) happened in carefully documented causal sequences. In his American Revolutions Series, Thompson reconstructs how the amazing prophecy Alexis de Tocqueville made in 1840 came true. "The First Revolutions in the Minds of the People" is the first book in this four-book series.

The Kennedys considered their home in Hyannis Port, Cape Cod, 'The big white house', to be a haven from their busy lives. Yet in the summer of 1944, against the backdrop of WWII, the events that unfolded for them there changed the family forever. Following these events as they played out over the summer of 1944, it culminates with the event that would change them forever: the tragic death of Joe Jr.

Edison isn’t just a biography. It’s a blueprint. A story of how modern innovation was wired, sold, and mythologized—and why we’re still living in its current.

In this definitive biography, James P. Cousins offers fresh perspectives on a seminal yet controversial figure in American religious history and educational life. The son of a prosperous New England merchant family, Holley studied at Yale University before serving as a minister. He achieved national acclaim as an intellectual and self-appointed critic of higher education before accepting the position at Transylvania. His clashes with political and community leaders, however, ultimately led him to resign in 1827, and his untimely death later that year cut short a promising career.

In recent decades its history has been fabricated from modern myth, romantic fiction, and pure fantasy. Now, for the first time, historical researcher and author Michael Paul Mihaljevich has pieced together the real story of the Bird Cage.

In the annals of legendary Wild West desperadoes, Belle Starr is remembered to this day as the Bandit Queen. Shortly after her murder in 1889, a highly romanticized, sensational book titled Bella Starr . . . The Bandit Queen, or the Female Jesse James was published—the first in a series of high-profile portraits to brand Starr as a villain. Now, celebrated author Michael Wallis parses over a century of mythmaking to reveal the woman behind the renegade legend.

What do Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Chile, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine all have in common? They were all targeted by the same machine. 'Regime Machine' is a brutal, forensic, and unflinching field guide to how the CIA and its partners overthrew governments, assassinated leaders, and destabilized entire nations—often in the name of democracy. From Cold War coups to modern proxy wars, this book traces the blueprint of covert empire and pulls back the curtain on the United States' global playbook for control. If you think you know history, read this.

Winner of the 2019 American Association for the History of Nursing Lavinia L. Dock Award for Exemplary Historical Research and Writing in a Book.

“Catchin’ babies” was merely one aspect of the broad role of African American midwives in the twentieth-century South. Yet, little has been written about the type of care they provided or how midwifery and maternity care evolved under the increasing presence of local and federal health care structures.

With gripping detail and firsthand accounts that sound like a novel, renowned author Warren Carroll unveils the events that led up to the divine intervention in which Our Lady of Guadalupe was sent to an Aztec, known now as St. Juan Diego. Here is the untold story of the faith and valor of the Spanish as they encounter an early Aztec culture marked by an immorality and an idolatry of epic proportions, along with the hardships they endured in the face of unspeakable cruelty.

Is America's future as bright as its past? What's Right With America argues that not only is the answer "Yes," but the nation's most incredible days are yet to come. Despite the challenges and divisions we face, America's true strength lies in its core principles and the resilient spirit of its people.