Although finding a way to feel at home in the world is ultimately the life's work of us all, rarely has the search ranged as far or found as precise and moving an expression as it does in An Inside P
In a career spanning more than fifty years, Wallace Stegner (1909–93) emerged as the greatest contemporary author of the American West—writing more than two dozen works of history, biogra
Winner of the Douglas Southall Freeman History Award, Gentleman and Soldier is the first biography in more than fifty years of Wade Hampton III (1818–1902), a Confederate general whose life pro
The Sound of Music endeared Georg von Trapp (1880–1947) and his singing family to the world, and it also showed how desperately the Nazis wanted Captain von Trapp for their navy. In To the Last Salute
From Our House is the luminous and uniquely American memoir of Lee Martin, born into a farming family the same year his father unexpectedly lost both hands. Lee’s father, once known for “doing a good
The first Japanese American jockey, Kokomo Joe burst like a comet on the American horse-racing scene in the summer of 1941. As war with Japan loomed, Yoshio “Kokomo Joe” Kobuki won race a
With a combination of scrupulous original research, new perspective, and a sensitive historical imagination, Patriotic Treason vividly recreates the world in which John Brown and his compatriots live
Jubal A. Early’s disastrous battles in the Shenandoah Valley ultimately resulted in his ignominious dismissal. But Early’s lesser-known summer campaign of 1864, between his raid on Washin
Cinderella’s sisters surgically modify their feet to win the prince’s love. A werewolf gathers up enough courage to visit a dentist. A medium trying to reach the afterworld gets a recorde
He was not much of a player and not much more of a manager, but by the time Branch Rickey (1881–1965) finished with baseball, he had revolutionized the sport—not just once but three times
When Blue Bird and her grandmother leave their family's camp to gather beans for the long, threatening winter, they inadvertently avoid the horrible fate that befalls the rest of the family. Luckily,
Philip K. Dick was one of the most incisive, subversive, and entertaining American authors of the last half of the twentieth century. The cinematic adaptations of Dick’s fiction have generated so much
Writers have long been attracted to boxing. Hemingway, Mailer, Algren, Plimpton, Oates, and many others have stepped into the ring—at least in spirit—to give voice to an otherwise wordles
In a literary reversal as deadly serious as it is wickedly satiric, this novel by the acclaimed French-speaking African writer Abdourahman A. Waberi turns the fortunes of the world upside down. On th
Houses of Study is an eloquent memoir of a Jewish woman’s life and her efforts to reconcile the traditions of her faith with her belief in women’s equality and the pull of modern American living. Ilan
Every spring, the first four days of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament attracts a horde of basketball bettors to Las Vegas. From the tip-off of the tournament’s first game on Thursday
On October 26, 1881, Wyatt Earp, his two brothers, and Doc Holliday shot it out with a gang of cattle rustlers near the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. It was over in half a minute, but those thirt
Lt. Charles B. Gatewood (1853–96), an educated Virginian, served in the Sixth U.S. Cavalry as the commander of Indian scouts. Gatewood was largely accepted by the Native peoples with whom he wo
Why does she play basketball? Since the enactment of Title IX in 1972, that question has come to be asked of more girls and women—and answered in more ways—than ever before. Christine A.
In September 1862 the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac conducted one of the truly great campaigns of the Civil War. At South Mountain, Harpers Ferry, and Antiet
For fourteen years during the golden age of sports, Paul Gallico was one of America’s ace sportswriters. He saw them all—the stars and the hams, the immortals and the phonies in boxing, wrestling, bas
With tales from the tribal peoples of Greenland, Canada, Siberia, Alaska, Japan, and the polar region, told and retold during months-long winter nights, Northern Tales gathers together a rich diversit
In 1867 conservative estimates put the number of buffaloes in the trans-Missouri region at fifteen million. By the end of the 1880s, that figure had dwindled to a few hundred. The destruction of the
You may already know that Belgium is the most boring country on planet Earth, but do you know why? Or what makes the Mark 44, Model O Lazy Dog Missile Cluster, the sexiest piece of military hardware o
“Over the years I have developed a distaste for the spectacle of joie de vivre, the knack of knowing how to live,” begins the title essay by Phillip Lopate. This rejoinder to the cult of hedonism and
The world’s most popular sport, soccer, is also one of the planet’s prevalent cultural expressions, celebrated and debated as an art form, observed with ritual and passion. Thus it has inspired litera
In the twenty-first century, a battered world is ruled by a crafty old tyrant, Genghis II Mao IV Khan. The Khan is ninety-three years old, his life systems sustained by the skill of Mordecai Shadrach,
Most of us will never know what it's like to parachute out of a Cessna, tend goal for the Boston Bruins, burn rubber on a Q DVF DU track, scale Everest, or quarterback the Detroit Lions. So it's our g
More than two hundred years later, the "voyage of discovery" - with its outsized characters, geographic marvels, and wondrous moments of adventure and mystery - continues to draw us along the Lewis a
Gathered here for the first time are Miles J. Breuer’s first publication, “The Man with the Strange Head”; his neglected dystopian novel Paradise and Iron (appearing here in book fo
At the age of seventeen, Samuel L. Broadnax, enamored with flying, enlisted and trained as a pilot at the Tuskegee Army Air Base. Although he left the Air Corps at the end of the Second World War, his
Every now and then violence erupts in the banlieues of France allowing the world a glimpse into the grimmest corners of these multiethnic suburban ghettos. From such a corner comes the story of Samir
The stories in this prize-winning collection evoke a complete world, one so richly imagined and finely realized that the stories themselves are not so much read as experienced. The world of these sto
On October 8, 1908, Mordecai Brown clutched a half-dozen notes inside his coat pocket. The message of each was clear: we’ll kill you if you pitch and beat the Giants. A black handprint marked e
Lt. Gen. George S. Patton remarked that the “45th Infantry Division is one of the best, if not the best division that the American army has ever produced.” Such praise, however, came at a
In prose as clean and beautiful as the stark prairie setting, The Plain Sense of Things tells the stories of three generations of a western Nebraska family. These tales of sorrow and hope are connect
“Longing itself is nothing but the heart’s open spaces,” writes Mari L’Esperance. And in the open spaces at the heart of these poems is a mother who has disappeared. In a worl
Descended from the greatest horses of the American West, the wild horses living on the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico werenational treasures andliving legends. But in 1994, after
Stretching from western Texas and eastern New Mexico up through Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, and into Canada, the vast western plains often appear sparse and d
