Americas

From America’s favorite government teacher, a “fascinating and fun” (Adam Grant) portrait of twelve ordinary Americans whose courage formed the character of our country.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Jack Carr and Pulitzer Prize finalist James M. Scott examine the 1983 barracks terrorist attack that changed the course of history.

Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people. Twenty years ago, when journalist Tom O'Neill was reporting a magazine piece about the murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Then he unearthed shocking evidence of a cover-up....

An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of America’s most beloved historians, artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history. She takes you along on the emotional journey she and her husband embarked upon in the last years of his life.

For much of his life, historian Howard Zinn chronicled American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official version taught in schools - with its emphasis on great men in high places - to focus on the street, the home, and the workplace....

Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II, set in 1911 and 1899, are the most-played American history video games since The Oregon Trail. How do they fare as re-creations of history? In this engaging book, award-winning American history professor Tore Olsson takes up that question and more.

The former head of the Pentagon program responsible for the investigation of UFOs—now known as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP)—reveals long-hidden truths with profound implications for not only national security but our understanding of the universe.

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....

From the New York Times bestselling author of Midnight in Chernobyl comes the definitive, dramatic, minute-by-minute story of the Challenger disaster, based on fascinating in-depth reporting and new archival research—a riveting history that flows like a thriller.

This exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads....

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe....

The Scots-Irish were 40 percent of the Revolutionary War army; they included the pioneers Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, Davy Crockett, and Sam Houston....

The true tale of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the cunning serial killer who used the magic and majesty of the fair to lure his victims to their death....

Democracy Awakening is more than a history book; it’s a vital and urgent call to action about the precarious state of American democracy, charting its historical challenges and current threats, from one of our era’s most important and insightful historians, with a new afterword by the author.

Robert Caro's monumental book makes public what few outsiders knew: that Robert Moses was the single most powerful man of his time in the City and in the State of New York....

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....

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....

In this “monumental and impressive” biography, Max Boot, the distinguished political columnist, illuminates the untold story of Ronald Reagan, revealing the man behind the mythology.

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

In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement....

A powerful, candid, and richly detailed memoir from an American icon, revealing what life looks like after presidency: triumphs, tribulations, and all.

From the author of The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron comes the definitive biography of Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson, baseball’s epic leadoff hitter and base-stealer who also stole America’s heart over nearly five electric decades in the game....

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen, the untold story of the CIA's secret paramilitary units....

Embark on a journey through the rich tapestry of Native American legends with this extensive collection of Native American Myths. This meticulously curated collection brings together seven revered texts, each offering a unique window into the vibrant storytelling traditions....

The incredible untold story of WWII's greatest secret fighting force, as told by our great modern master of wartime intrigue....

Toys and games have long been a part of childhood, but the 20th century saw the rise of an entire industry devoted to the business of play, one that would constantly evolve over the years. In the six lectures of The History of Toys, 1900 to the Present, consultant and toy industry expert Chris Byrne—also known as The Toy Guy®—will take you on a journey through the world of toys from the Edwardian era to our current moment. Beginning with the birth of the mass-market toy industry, you’ll trace the many transformations of toys and our shifting theories of play and childhood development.

La casa blanca es la metáfora del patio trasero del Estado que nos adentra en las consecuencias de la tortura sexual en la voz de tres sobrevivientes. Es ese espacio fuera de la ley de un sistema que fabrica culpables y que queda expuesto en la investigación de una periodista y la rebelión frente al Estado del perito que las entrevistó.

When Damon Tweedy begins medical school, he envisions a bright future where his segregated, working-class background will become largely irrelevant. Instead, he finds that he has joined a new world where race is front and center. The recipient of a scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy soon meets a professor who bluntly questions whether he belongs in medical school, a moment that crystallizes the challenges he will face throughout his career.

Here, for the first time, in a brilliant, panoramic portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is the definitive, often shocking story of the politics and the science behind the development of the hydrogen bomb and the birth of the Cold War. Based on secret files in the United States and the former Soviet Union, this monumental work of history discloses how and why the United States decided to create the bomb that would dominate world politics for more than forty years.

Despite what Scarface might lead one to believe, violence was not the dominant characteristic of the cocaine business. It was corruption: the dirty cops, agents, lawyers, judges, and politicians who made the drug world go round. And no one managed that carousel of dangerous players better than Willy Falcon.

This is the story of the prosecution of Daniel Penny, after the death of Jordan Neely in the F Train in Manhattan, and how it resulted in a Not Guilty verdict on Count 2 on December 9, 2024. It is a sequel to "Daniel Penny for Your Thoughts," about the evidence phase of the trial. It covers both sides arguments, the judges rulings, and some narrative in the voice of one Kurt Wheelock, featured in Inner City Press books by Matthew Russell Lee all the way back to "Predatory Bender." Kurt Wheelock leaves his camera and his laptop's external battery in his cubicle in the Press Room of the ...

The Legend of Lenny McGraw by Award-Winning Author and Literary Genius Dr. Monique Rodgers Lenny McGraw is a rugged drifter with a mysterious past, a sharpshooter, and a former lawman. Haunted by betrayal and the ghosts of a life long gone, Lenny’s arrival in the dusty town of Red Rock is anything but ordinary. Searching for peace, perhaps a quiet job on a ranch, Lenny is quickly pulled into a battle that will test his strength, heart, and loyalty. At the heart of the conflict lies Clara Mae, the tough and compassionate widow who owns the Circle M Ranch. Struggling to protect her land ...

In August of 1931, a dashing 25-year-old resident of the author's present Manhattan apartment building in 2024 – an artist named Norma Jeanne Bernstein – was driven back to Manhattan by her father from the summer camp she had been supervising in the Adirondacks to submit to a police interrogation. The subject? Dr. Milton Thomashefsky had just been shot in the spine by his nurse – Agnes Birdseye, daughter of a Republican DA clerk who was cousin to the inventor of frozen foods. That Birdseye. The nurse had then turned the gun on herself. Three shots had been fired in total. Two ...

Packed with jaw-dropping stories of public violence and personal vengeance, vivid insights into the Mafia's way of life, and shocking portraits of America's most wanted crime families, Red Hook is a must-listen for anyone fascinated by the history of organized crime in America.

Two courageous investigative journalists deliver an insider’s account of the “silent brotherhood”—the most dangerous radical-right hate group to surface since the Ku Klux Klan. They claim to be patriots, as American as apple pie, but they are this nation’s deadly brotherhood—hate groups that package their alienation against the federal government under such names as the Aryan Nation, the Order, and other white supremacist militias.

In the 1910s, as the birth control movement was born, two leaders emerged: Margaret Sanger and Mary Dennett. Sanger would go on to found Planned Parenthood, while Dennett’s name has largely faded from public awareness. Each held a radically different vision for what reproductive autonomy and birth control access should look like in America. Few are aware of the fierce personal and political rivalry that played out between Sanger and Dennett over decades—a battle that had a profound impact on the lives of American women.

Roy Bean was an American saloon-keeper and Justice of the Peace in Texas, who called himself "The Only Law West of the Pecos". He and his three brothers set out from Kentucky in the mid 1840s, heading into the American frontier to find their fortunes. Their lifetimes of triumphs, tragedies, laurels, and scandals will play out on the battlefields of Mexico, in shady dealings in California city halls, inside eccentric saloon courtrooms of Texas, and along the blood-soaked Santa Fe Trail from Missouri to New Mexico. They will kill men, and murder will likewise stalk them.

Frederic L Paxson’s History of the American Frontier offers a sweeping account of the American West and the country’s westward expansion from 1763-1893.

On July 3, 1972, twenty-four hippies from Clearwater, Florida, set up tents and settled in for the night at Briar Bottom, a public US Forest Service campground in western North Carolina. The impromptu campout was a pit stop for the group on their way to a Rolling Stones concert in Charlotte. Early that evening, they drank beer, smoked marijuana, and listened to rock music as they anticipated the good times that lay ahead. Near midnight, the county sheriff showed up with six deputies, allegedly responding to a noise complaint. They were armed with pistols and five sawed-off 12-gauge shotguns.

Latin America is so much more than the Amazon and Christopher Columbus. It’s a place full of stories about independence, tough fighters, and rich cultures. But how did this region become what it is today? And what has shaped its journey? This audiobook tells the story of modern Latin America in a simple, clear way. You’ll learn how years of struggle and strength helped shape the diverse societies we know today.

One of the most idiosyncratic horrors of Soviet Russia was the Gulag system, an extensive network of forced labor and concentration camps. Part of the rationale behind this system was that it could serve as slave labor in the drive for industrialization, while also serving as a form of punishment. The name Gulag is in fact an acronym, approximating to “Main Administration of Camps” (in Russian: Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei) and operated by the Soviet Union’s Ministry of the Interior.

After the United States embassy in Havana was closed in 1961, relations between the countries broke off. A thaw came in 1977 with the opening of a de facto embassy in Havana, the United States Interests Section—where Vicki Huddleston would serve under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. In her memoir of a diplomat at work, she tells gripping stories of face-to-face encounters with Fidel Castro and the initiatives she undertook, like the transistor radios she furnished to ordinary Cubans.

Tip of the Spear boldly and compellingly argues that prisons are a domain of hidden warfare within US borders. With this book, Orisanmi Burton explores what he terms the Long Attica Revolt, a criminalized tradition of Black radicalism that propelled rebellions in New York prisons during the 1970s. The reaction to this revolt illuminates what Burton calls prison pacification: the coordinated tactics of violence, isolation, sexual terror, propaganda, reform, and white supremacist science and technology that state actors use to eliminate Black resistance within and beyond prison walls.

This is the story of the people, places, and events associated with the dramatic growth and equally rapid decline of the Wild West. It’s also the story of how myth and legend have shaped our understanding of this time to create an idealized perception of the American frontier. This is the real story of the Wild West.

A true story of a fugitive slave named Jim Baker that has gone unpublished for over a hundred years. I was touched by the stories recounted by this unknown fugitive and sadly reminded of how our nation once oppressed a people based on the color of their skin. This story is about Jim’s upbringing, his escape to Indiana and his eventual attempted return to Tennessee, recounted by a pastor named Thomas Addington. Jim found both friend and foe on his journey but yearned to bring his family into the freedom he had experienced. Jim Baker’s story is a reminder that we must both love God and ...

The memory of the Battle of Antietam was so haunting that when, nine months later, Major Rufus Dawes learned another Antietam battle might be on the horizon, he wrote, "I hope not, I dread the thought of the place." In this definitive account, historian D. Scott Hartwig chronicles the single bloodiest day in American history, which resulted in 23,000 casualties.

After the extinction of the dodo and Carolina parakeet and the collapse of the American bison population, naturalists expected many more vulnerable species to die out with spread of industrialization. This triggered a race to collect rare species of animals expected soon to be lost forever. Established in 1893, Chicago's Field Museum aimed to become a global center of study. Zoologist Daniel Giraud Elliot persuaded museum patrons to fund an immediate expedition to British Somaliland (contemporary Somalia). There, his team hunted and killed hundreds of animals for the growing collection.

Kindred Creation is a call and response to dream and design better worlds rooted in African lifeways: a path to Black freedom, a love letter to Black futures, and a blueprint to intergenerational Black joy and dignity—all (and always) on Black terms. Author, organizer, and designer Aida Mariam Davis explores the historical and ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, making explicit the ways that extraction, oppression, and enslavement serve the goals of empire—not least by severing ancestral connections and disrupting profound and ancient relationships to self, nature, and community.

A richly detailed account of the hard-fought campaign that led to Antietam Creek and changed the course of the Civil War. In early September 1862, thousands of Union soldiers huddled within the defenses of Washington, disorganized and discouraged from their recent defeat at Second Manassas.

Backcountry Democracy and the Whiskey Insurrection treats the legal culture that informed the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 and its trials. Linda Myrsiades examines conflicts between state and federal courts and the judicial philosophy of Federalist judges, as well as grand jury charges, law reports, judges' bench notes, and defense notes for the trials, to develop a portrait of the hegemony of official interpretations of the law. At the same time, the book illuminates popular attitudes about the courts and the law and explores the nature of extralegal courts operated by the people.