The first transcontinental railroads brought fashionable easterners to the American West. In the 1880s and 1890s they traveled in sumptuous “palace cars” and stayed at luxury hotels. Westerners with a
Robert V. Camuto’s interest in wine turned into a passion when he moved to France and began digging into local soils and cellars. Corkscrewed recounts Camuto’s journey through France̵
In the Shadow of the Moon tells the story of the most exciting and challenging years in spaceflight, with two superpowers engaged in a titanic struggle to land one of their own people on the moon. Dra
After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, persons of Japanese ancestry were the victims of frequent racist acts and culturally biased governmental loyalty investigations and, finally, of exclusion and imp
With Final Innings Dean Sullivan concludes his four-volume documentary history of baseball, whose three earlier volumes have been called “a broad array of illuminating and often unexpected mate
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
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
The Cattlemen is the story of the cattle industry in America and of the men whose ranches reached from the Rio Grande into Montana, from the early Spanish days to Mari Sandoz’s contemporary times. It
Inspired by a year of hiking 120 desert canyons, Where the Rain Children Sleep is nature writing in the best tradition of Edward Abbey, Ellen Meloy, and Craig Childs. Much more than one man’s m
Perhaps best known for editing the popular post–World War II magazines Galaxy Science Fiction and Beyond Fantasy Fiction, Horace L. Gold also wrote comic-book scripts for DC Comics and penned n
Supernatural and superhuman elements have been prominent in American culture from the time of the New England Puritans’ intense emphasis on religion. Superpower surveys the appearance of supernatural
Vikings, pirates, heroes, rogues, and explorers . . . all have heard the siren call of the sea, and master storyteller Harold Lamb chronicled some of their most daring exploits. This single volume con
In A Summer to Be, Isabel Garland Lord writes an honest and revealing memoir of growing up in the shadow of her famous father, the pioneering realist and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Hamlin Garland.
From the introduction of the reserve clause in 1879 to the lockout and new basic agreement of 1990, baseball players have been engaged in one of the longest and most colorful labor struggles in our na
Not many people in Midbury especially liked F. Y. Grimsley, a rancher with twenty thousand acres and five hundred head of cattle. Still, when Grimsley is found dead on his back doorstep with a mysteri
Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus chronicles the story of an American family against the backdrop of one of the civil rights movement’s lesser-known stories. In January 1957, Joseph Spagna and fiv
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
Before the feuding owners turned to Ed Barrow to be general manager in 1920, the Yankees had never won a pennant. They won their first in 1921 and during Barrow’s tenure went on to win thirteen
Between Panic and Desire, named after two towns in Pennsylvania, finds Moore at the top of his astutely funny form. A book that could be named after one of its chapters, “A Post-Nixon, Post-pan
“Annie Ernaux’s work,” wrote Richard Bernstein in the New York Times, “represents a severely pared-down Proustianism, a testament to the persistent, haunting and melancholy qu
Pete Newell is considered one of the finest basketball minds in the sport’s history. His death in 2008 spawned tributes from around the country, including legendary UCLA coach John Wooden and B
Despite enormous differences in pay among professional athletes, most aspects of their daily lives remain surprisingly constant across sports and income levels. Living Out of Bounds provides answers t
“Robert Vivian’s prose is lyrical and harrowing—harrowing in the Biblical sense,” Sven Birkerts said of The Mover of Bones, the first book in Vivian’s Tall Grass Trilogy
Covering more than two centuries, The Beaver Men recounts the beginning of the beaver trade along the St. Lawrence to the last great rendezvous of traders and trappers on Ham’s Fork, in what is
Written in the aftermath of World War II, Love Goes to Press opened in London in 1946 and on Broadway in 1947. At the time a relief for the survivors of Blitzkrieg and ration cards, today it is a devi
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
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
For four years during the Civil War, Generals Grant and Lee clashed as bitter enemies in a war that bloodied and scorched the American landscape. Yet in an earlier time, they had worn the same unifor
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
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (1794–1876) is one of the most famous, and infamous, figures in Mexican history. Six times the country’s president, he is consistently depicted as a traitor, a turncoat, an
First published in 1934, this collection of tales was recorded and edited by Thelma Adamson (1901–83), a student of Franz Boas and one of the first women to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in the Pacif
Though George Norris was born and grew up in Ohio, he headed west after earning his law degree and set up practice in Nebraska, eventually settling in McCook. Elected to the House of Representatives i
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
They were called aliens and enemies. But the World War II internees John Christgau writes about were in fact ordinary people victimized by the politics of a global war. The Alien Enemy Control Program
Civil unrest at home, war abroad, and political uncertainty gripped the nation as the 1970s approached. In the summer of 1969, as a tumultuous decade of American history neared its end, Major League B
Many Jewish foods are beloved in American culture. Everyone eats bagels, and the delicatessen is a ubiquitous institution from Manhattan to Los Angeles. Jewish American Food Culture offers readers an
This meditative novel, grounded in the thinking of Spain's great modern philosopher Ortega y Gasset, unfolds as the journal of a bourgeois chemist who makes his way in Buenos Aires just before and du
Across between kiss-and-tell and curse-and-tell, Malika Mokeddem’s memoir of the men in her life presents a mosaic of relationships defining what it is to be a woman, an immigrant, a doct
