Their conquest was measured not in miles but in degrees of longitude. They smashed the gates of empires, overthrew kingdoms, diverted rivers, and depopulated entire countries. They were the Mongols of
Beset by enemies on every side and torn by internal divisions, the crusader kingdoms were a hotbed of intrigue, where your greatest ally might be your natural enemy. Because lives and kingdoms often
One of the most important Native films of all time, Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner tells a powerful and moving story about honor, betrayal, vengeance, and redemption. Set in the vast, visually stunning
On the cold, dark night of March 9, 1916, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa—el jaguar—and his band of marauders crossed the border and raided the tiny town of Columbus, New Mexico. It wa
In his study of the civilian population that fell victim to the brutality of the 1860s Kansas Indian wars, Jeff Broome recounts the captivity of Susanna Alderdice, who was killed along with three of h
When Hillevi, a young, inexperienced midwife, moves from the university town of Uppsala to the wilderness of Svartvattnet (Blackwater) to be with her unofficial fiance, she is ill prepared for what aw
The two silent Ss of Des Moines beckon twenty-three-year-old Vivette with a sexy finger, a promise. So, in the mid-1990s, she convinces Grandpa Joe-Joe to sell his Buick for twenty dollars, leaves be
In Kara Candito’s prize-winning debut collection a “garish/human theatre” comes to life against richly textured geographic and psychic landscapes. These poems are high-speed meditat
Before Lewis and Clark relates the extraordinary saga of the Chouteaus, the dynastic family that guarded the gates to the West for three generations. From their St. Louis base, the Chouteaus, patricia
This diary of Leonard Wood, a medical officer, tells the dramatic story of the last campaign against the Apache chief Geronimo. It is the only journal kept by anyone on that expedition. Under the comm
Gen. Leonard Wood’s meteoric career was no fluke. The ambitious Wood (1860–1927), serving as an army physician, strategically took on tasks and assignments that led him from the pursuit o
This book may change your life. It may save it. It is one of the most important—and most shocking—books ever written.Tomorrow! is a story of average, nice Americans living in the ne
An American Western made by a Taiwanese director and filmed in Canada, Brokeback Mountain was a global cultural phenomenon even before it became the highest grossing gay-themed drama in film history.
Between 1803 and 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark cocaptained the most famous expedition in American history. But while Lewis ended his life just three years after the expedition, Clark, as t
In 1968 Nguyen Qui Duc was nine years old, his father was a high-ranking civil servant in the South Vietnamese government, and his mother was a school principal. Then the Viet Cong launched their Tet
In this stunningly original collection of seventeen short stories, Terese Svoboda navigates a terrain of alienation and loss with searing, poetic prose.“I talk like a lady who knows what
Memoirs are as varied as human emotion and experience, and those published in the distinguished American Lives series run the gamut. Excerpted from this series (called “splendid” by Newsw
The Forbidden Fuel is the definitive history of alcohol fuel, describing in colorful detail the emergence of alcohol fuel in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the political and economic force
What is Africa’s own “heart of darkness”? It is what confronts Ayané when, after three years abroad, she returns to the Central African village of her birth. Now an “outs
Shell shock, battle fatigue, posttraumatic stress disorder, lack of moral courage: different terms for the same mental condition, formal names that change with observed circumstances and whenever exp
