Few people in recent memory have dedicated themselves as devotedly to the story of twentieth- century American music as Rob Kapilow, the composer, conductor, and host of the hit NPR music radio progra
In the tradition of The Elements of Style comes Trish Hall’s essential new work on writing well—a sparkling instructional guide to persuading (almost) anyone, on (nearly) anything. As the person in ch
Every age and social strata has its bad eggs, rule-breakers, and nose-thumbers. As acclaimed popular historian and author of How to Be a Victorian Ruth Goodman shows in her madcap chronicle, Elizabeth
Since 2010, The Stone—the immensely popular, award-winning philosophy column in the New York Times—has revived and reinterpreted age-old inquiries to speak to our contemporary condition. Now, doing fo
Renowned constitutional scholar Geoffrey R. Stonetraces the evolution of legal and moral codes that haveattempted to legislate sexual behavior from the ancientworld to America’s earliest days to today
An extraordinary story of faith and violence in nineteenth-century America, based on previously confidential documents from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.Compared to the Puritans, Mo
How the automobile fundamentally changed African American life—the basis of a major PBS documentary by Ric Burns.It’s hardly a secret that mobility has always been limited, if not impossible, for Afri
From colorful 30,000-year-old threads found on the floor of a Georgian cave to the Indian calicoes that sparked the Industrial Revolution, this book weaves an illuminating story of human ingenuity. De
Conceived as a gorgeously illustrated accompaniment to “How Do We Look” and “The Eye of Faith,” the famed Civilisations shows on PBS, renowned classicist Mary Beard has created this elegant volume on
No family in the history of American sports has ascended to the storybook level of greatness and royal succession quite like the Mannings. Although the façade has occasionally cracked—murmurs of locke
Eighty-nine-year-old Jules Feiffer delivers the tour deforce of his illustrious career in this epic finale thatdares “to try things that film noir could only dreamof” (Chris Ware). In The Ghost Script
The bitter feud between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Chief Justice Earl Warren framed the tumultuous future of the modern civil rights movement. Eisenhower was a gradualist who wanted to coax wh
In this epic biography of Edward Lansdale (1908– 1987), the man said to be the fictional model for Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, best-selling historian Max Boot demonstrates how Lansdale pioneer
Boasting 4 to 6 million members, the reassembled KuKlux Klan of the 1920s dramatically challenged ourpreconceptions of hooded Klansmen, who through violenceand lynching had established a Jim Crow raci
In an absorbing work peopled with world leaders, generals, and ordinary citizens who fought on both sides of World War II, Alone brings to resounding life perhaps the most critical year of twentieth-c
The American sports stadium, in all its raucous glory, is a shockingly overlooked centerpiece of our national culture. In this game-changing romp, intrepid sportswriter Rafi Kohan finagles access to o
Caliph Washington’s life was never supposed to matter. As a black teenager from the vice-ridden city of Bessemer, Alabama, Washington was wrongfully convicted of killing an Alabama policeman in 1957.
With majestic prose, Christopher de Bellaigue presents an absorbing account of the political and social reformations that transformed the lands of Islam in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Stru
