Caliph Washington didn’t pull the trigger but, as Officer James "Cowboy" Clark lay dying, he had no choice but to turn on his heel and run. The year was 1957; Cowboy Clark was white, Caliph Washington
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
Formally fractured and yet gleefully alive and whole, E. E. Cummings’s groundbreaking modernist poetry expanded the boundaries of language. In A Miscellany, originally released in a limited run in 195
The most renowned of Aeschylus’ tragedies and one of the foundational texts of Western literature, the Oresteia trilogy is about cycles of deception and brutality within the ruling family of Argos. In
Lauded for “bringing a bracing and much-needed dose of reality about the Founders’ views of sexuality” (New York Review of Books), Geoffrey R. Stone’s Sex and the Constitution traces the evolution of
On a scorching July afternoon in 1878, at the dawn of the Gilded Age, the moon’s shadow descended on the American West, darkening skies from Montana Territory to Texas. This rare celestial event—a tot
Widely acclaimed as a progenitor of twentieth-centuryLatin American fiction, Joaquim MariaMachado de Assis (1839–1908), the son of a mulattofather and a washerwoman, was hailed in his lifetime as Braz
Buried for decades, the Up Stairs Lounge tragedy has only recently emerged as a catalyzing event of the gay liberation movement. In revelatory detail, Robert W. Fieseler chronicles the tragic event th
Published in 1991, this semi-autobiographical novel is a daring masterpiece from “one of the most important and intelligent voices in contemporary fiction” (Susan Sontag). “Rueful the way Primo Levi’s
When Dr. David Hosack tilled the country’s firstbotanical garden in the Manhattan soil more thantwo hundred years ago, he didn’t just dramaticallyalter the New York landscape; he left a monumental leg
Hailed as one of “the best novels ever set in America’s fourth largest city” (Douglas Brinkley, New York Times Book Review), All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is a powerful demonstration of Lar
The drought has discontented the bees. Soil dries into sand; honeycomb stiffens into wax. But Cynthia knows how to breathe life back into her farm: offer it as an artists’ colony with free room, board
Before embarking on what would become one of the most prominent writing careers in American literature, spanning decades and indelibly shaping the nation’s perception of the West, Larry McMurtry knew
"WESTWARD HO! FOR OREGON AND CALIFORNIA!"In the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prepared for what they hoped would
The arsons started on a cold November midnight and didn’t stop for months. Night after night, the people of Accomack County waited to see which building would burn down next, regarding each other at f
Poet, memoirist, labor organizer, and Episcopal priest, Pauli Murray helped transform the law of the land. Arrested in 1940 for sitting in the whites-only section of a Virginia bus, Murray propelled t
Widely heralded as a “masterful” (Washington Post) and “essential” (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever publi
In the wake of one of the most tumultuous conventions in Republican history, the party of Lincoln nominated in 1940 a prominent businessman and Wall Street attorney for president. Though Wendell Willk
Hailed as a “nonfiction epic . . . in the tradition of Jared Diamond’s best-seller Collapse, and Simon Winchester’s Atlantic” (Dallas Morning News), Jack E. Davis’s The Gulf is “by turns informative,
As the icecaps melt and the sea levels rise around the globe—threatening human existence as we know it—climate change has become one of the most urgent and controversial issues of our time. For most p
Nearly a decade after his triumphant Charlie Chan biography,Yunte Huang returns with this long-awaitedportrait of Chang and Eng Bunker (1811–1874), twinsconjoined at the sternum by a band of cartilage
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
FORMER TEACHER HAD MOTIVE. Recently suspended for a so-called outburst, high school English teacher Anna Crawford is stewing over the injustice at home when she is shocked to see herself named on tele
So shattering were the aftereffects of Kishinev, the rampagethat broke out in late-Tsarist Russia in April 1903,that one historian remarked that it was “nothing lessthan a prototype for the Holocaust
While recognizing that quantum mechanics“demands serious attention,” Albert Einstein in1926 admonished fellow physicist Max Born thatthe theory “does not bring us closer to the secrets of the OldOne.”
Resonating as profoundly today as when it was first published to widespread critical acclaim a decade ago, God’s Crucible is a bold portrait of Islamic Spain and the birth of modern Europe from one of
Since 2010, The Stone— an enormously popular column in the New York Times— has interpreted and reinterpreted age-old inquires that speak to our contemporary condition. Having done for modern ethics wh
In a groundbreaking history as game-changing as Charles Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, We the Corporations reveals how American business won equal rights
“A work of courage and ferocious honesty” (Diana Abu-Jaber), Double Bind could not come at a more urgent time. Even as major figures from Gloria Steinem to Beyoncé embrace the word “feminism,” the wor
Commemorating the bicentennial of Frederick Douglass’s birthday and featuring images discovered since its original publication in 2015, this “tour de force” (Library Journal, starred review) reintrodu
In Too Afraid to Cry, Ali Cobby Eckermann—who was recently awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world—describes with searing detail the devastating ef
Elegantly written and profoundly moving, this spellbinding debut affirms Boast’s reputation as a “new young American voice for the ages” (Tom Franklin). Born with a rare (and real) condition in which
A stunning literary debut, Horseman, Pass By (1961) exhibits the “full-blooded Western genius” (Publishers Weekly) that would come to define McMurtry’s incomparable sensibility. In the dusty north Tex
In Leaving Cheyenne (1963), which anticipates Lonesome Dove more than any other early novel, the stark realities of the American West play out in a mesmerizing love triangle. Stubborn rancher Gideon F
The Last Picture Show (1966) is both a rambunctious coming-of-age story and an elegy to a forlorn Texas town trying to keep its one movie house alive. Adapted into the Oscar-winning film, this masterp
No modern, well-versed literature lover can call her education complete without having read Augustine’s Confessions. One of the most original works of world literature, it is the first autobiography e
When the towers fell on September 11, 2001, nowhere were the reverberations more powerfully felt than at Langley. Almost overnight, an intelligence organization converted itself into a weaponized warf
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
Elvis Presley is a giant figure in American popular culture, a man whose talent and fame were matched only by his later excesses and tragic end. A godlike entity in the history of rock and roll, this
In the 1980s, somewhere in Austin, Helton was young, married, and jobless. After a few strung-out years trying to make it as a writer, he was caught in a cycle of drunken, coked-up nights, crashing on
