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
When Francis Schmidt, a bow tie–wearing law school graduate with a bombastic personality, got started as a volunteer high school coach, football still followed Victorian tenets of caution and s
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
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
Imagine a Hollywood encounter between Helen Keller and Frida Kahlo, “two female icons of disability.” Or the story of “Moby Dick, or, The Leg,” told from Ahab’s perspect
It was a time of bold new technology, historic moments, and international jousting on the final frontier. But it was also a time of human drama, of moments less public but no less dramatic in the live
Like the yellow, pink, and blue irises that had been transplanted from house to house over the years, the stories of poet Ted Kooser’s family had been handed down until, as his mother lay ill a
Pioneer Girl is the true story of Grace McCance Snyder. In 1885, when Grace was three, she and her family became homesteaders on the windswept prairie of central Nebraska. They settled into a small s
Although many books about the Civil War have been written by veterans, few provide an accurate and entertaining portrayal of the daily life of a soldier, as does Corporal Si Klegg and His “Pard.” The
Epic Wanderer, the first full-length biography of mapmaker David Thompson (1770–1857), is set in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries against the broad canvas of dramatic rivalries betwe
John Charles Frémont was the illegitimate child of a Virginia aristocrat and a working-class French immigrant; Jessie Benton was the daughter of the most powerful pre-Civil War U.S. senator, Tho
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
“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
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
Born, raised, and educated in Lincoln, Nebraska, Loren Eiseley (1907–77) was a highly respected writer and poet best known for explaining complex scientific concepts in poems easily read and understoo
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
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
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
