How the South Could Have Won the Civil War
The Fatal Errors That Led to Confederate Defeat
Written by Bevin Alexander

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Crown Forum
On Sale: November 25, 2008
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-34600-1 (0-307-34600-5)

Destroying conventional historical wisdom, acclaimed military historian Bevin Alexander reveals how the South most definitely could have defeated the North-and how close a Confederate victory came to happening. Alexander shows:

•How the Confederacy had its greatest chance to win the war just three months into the fighting-but blew it
• How the... Read more >

Plain, Honest Men
The Making of the American Constitution
Written by Richard Beeman

Format: Trade Paperback, 544 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: February 9, 2010
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7684-7 (0-8129-7684-3)

Winner, George Washington Book Prize
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice

“While some have boasted it as a work from Heaven, others have given it a less righteous origin. I have many reasons to believe that it is the work of plain, honest men.”
–Robert Morris, delegate from Pennsylvania to the Constitutional... Read more >

American Lightning
Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century
Written by Howard Blum

Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Publisher: Crown
On Sale: September 16, 2008
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-34694-0 (0-307-34694-3)

It was an explosion that reverberated across the country—and into the very heart of early-twentieth-century America. On the morning of October 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times Building buckled as a thunderous detonation sent men, machinery, and mortar rocketing into the night air. When at last the wreckage... Read more >

Polk
The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America
Written by Walter R. Borneman

Format: Trade Paperback, 448 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: April 14, 2009
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7674-8 (0-8129-7674-6)

In Polk, Walter R. Borneman gives us the first complete and authoritative biography of a president often overshadowed in image but seldom outdone in accomplishment. James K. Polk occupied the White House for only four years, from 1845 to 1849, but he plotted and attained a formidable agenda: He fought for... Read more >

Flags of Our Fathers

James Bradley with Ron Powers

Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
Publisher: Bantam
On Sale: May 2, 2000
Price: $27.00
ISBN: 978-0-553-11133-0 (0-553-11133-7)

What does society expect from a “hero” after his heroic moment has passed? How does that “hero” continue on to live a “normal” life when that one instant has been forever immortalized? Deconstructing the fall-out from that now infamous image of the six American soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima... Read more >

Thomas Jefferson Travels
Selected Writings, 1784-1789
Edited by Anthony Brandt

Format: Trade Paperback, 416 pages
Publisher: National Geographic
On Sale: April 17, 2007
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-4262-0058-8 (1-4262-0058-7)

Thomas Jefferson has inspired countless books that explore his brilliant career, his political philosophy, and his extraordinary accomplishments as a gifted leader. Endlessly inquisitive, he was both a tireless writer and one of the most cosmopolitan men of his age. Yet this collection of Jefferson's reflections on his wide-ranging travels reveals... Read more >

Boom!
Talking About the Sixties: What Happened, How It Shaped Today, Lessons for Tomorrow
Written by Tom Brokaw

Format: Trade Paperback, 688 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: October 14, 2008
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7511-6 (0-8129-7511-1)

In Boom!, Tom Brokaw, one of America’s premier journalists and the acclaimed author of The Greatest Generation, gives us an epic portrait of another defining era in America: the tumultuous Sixties. The voices and stories of both famous people and ordinary citizens come together in this “virtual reunion” as Brokaw takes... Read more >

A Queer History of the United States

Written by Michael Bronski

Format: Trade Paperback, 312 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: May 15, 2012
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4465-0 (0-8070-4465-2)

*2011 ALA Stonewall Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award

The first book to cover the entirety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from pre-1492 to the present.

In the 1620s, Thomas Morton broke from Plymouth Colony and founded Merrymount, which celebrated same-sex desire, atheism, and interracial marriage. Transgender evangelist Jemima Wilkinson, in the early... Read more >

Madison and Jefferson

Written by Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg

Format: Trade Paperback, 848 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: January 29, 2013
Price: $20.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7900-8 (0-8129-7900-1)

The third and fourth presidents have long been considered proper gentlemen, with Thomas Jefferson’s genius overshadowing James Madison’s judgment and common sense. But in this revelatory book about their crucial partnership, both are seen as men of their times, hardboiled operatives in a gritty world of primal politics where they struggled... Read more >

Madison and Jefferson

Written by Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg

Format: Hardcover, 848 pages
Publisher: Random House
On Sale: September 28, 2010
Price: $35.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6728-2 (1-4000-6728-6)

In Madison and Jefferson, esteemed historians Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg join forces to reveal the crucial partnership of two extraordinary founders, creating a superb dual biography that is a thrilling and unprecedented account of early America.

The third and fourth presidents have long been considered proper and noble gentlemen, with Thomas... Read more >

Decision Points

Written by George W. Bush

Format: Hardcover, 512 pages
Publisher: Crown
On Sale: November 9, 2010
Price: $35.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-59061-9 (0-307-59061-5)

The presidency of George W. Bush continues to be debated by historians, political scientists, scholars, and students alike. Two scholars at Princeton University, Sean Wilentz and Julian E. Zelizer, recently conducted a course on Teaching ‘W’, and discovered that academics should reconsider updating their approach to teaching history by incorporating more... Read more >

Our Town
A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America
Written by Cynthia Carr

Format: Trade Paperback, 512 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: March 27, 2007
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-34188-4 (0-307-34188-7)

The brutal lynching of two young black men in Marion, Indiana, on August 7, 1930, cast a shadow over the town that still lingers; but is only one event in the long and complicated history of race relations in Marion, a history much ignored and considered by many to be best... Read more >

Here Is Where
Discovering America's Great Forgotten History
Written by Andrew Carroll

Format: Hardcover, 512 pages
Publisher: Crown Archetype
On Sale: May 14, 2013
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-46397-5 (0-307-46397-4)

Here Is Where chronicles Andrew Carroll’s fascinating journey across America to find and explore unmarked historic sites where extraordinary moments occurred and remarkable individuals once lived. Sparking the idea for this book was Carroll’s visit to the spot where Abraham Lincoln’s son was saved by the brother of Lincoln’s assassin. Carroll... Read more >

Uncle Tom or New Negro?
African Americans Reflect on Booker T. Washington and UP FROM SLAVERY 100 Years Later
Written by Rebecca Carroll

Format: Trade Paperback, 512 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: January 10, 2006
Price: $27.00
ISBN: 978-0-7679-1955-5 (0-7679-1955-6)

Includes Washington’s classic memoir Up from Slavery

On the ninetieth anniversary of Booker T. Washington’s death comes a passionate, provocative dialogue on his complicated legacy, including the complete text of his classic autobiography, Up from Slavery.

Booker T. Washington was born a slave in 1858, yet roughly forty years later he had established... Read more >

Pearl Harbor Ghosts
The Legacy of December 7, 1941
Written by Thurston Clarke

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: May 1, 2001
Price: $19.00
ISBN: 978-0-345-44607-7 (0-345-44607-0)

Updated to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the surprise attack that forever changed the course of history, Pearl Harbor Ghosts is the human story of the events surrounding that fateful day of December 7, 1941. Blending meticulous historic recreation with lively reporting, Clarke counterpoints the freeze-frame nightmare of the 1941 bombing... Read more >

A Chance Meeting
Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists
Written by Rachel Cohen

Format: Trade Paperback, 392 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: February 8, 2005
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7129-3 (0-8129-7129-9)

Each chapter of this inventive consideration of American culture evokes an actual meeting between American writers and artists, from Henry James and Mathew Brady, to Mark Twain and Ulysses S. Grant, to Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore, to Norman Mailer and Robert Lowell. The accumulation of these pairings draws the reader... Read more >

Orphans Preferred
The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express
Written by Christopher Corbett

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: September 14, 2004
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-7679-0693-7 (0-7679-0693-4)

“WANTED. YOUNG, SKINNY, WIRY FELLOWS. NOT OVER 18. MUST BE EXPERT RIDERS. WILLING TO RISK DEATH DAILY. ORPHANS PREFERRED.”
—California newspaper help-wanted ad, 1860

The Pony Express is one of the most celebrated and enduring chapters in the history of the United States, a story of the all-American traits of bravery... Read more >

The Korean War
A History
Written by Bruce Cumings

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: July 12, 2011
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7896-4 (0-8129-7896-X)

A bracing account of a war that lingers in our collective memory as both ambiguous and unjustly ignored.

For Americans, it was a discrete conflict lasting from 1950 to 1953. But for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long struggle that still haunts contemporary events. With access to new evidence... Read more >

Ten Tea Parties
Patriotic Protests That History Forgot
Written by Joseph Cummins

Format: Hardcover, 224 pages
Publisher: Quirk Books
On Sale: January 17, 2012
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-59474-560-7 (1-59474-560-9)

Every kid knows the story of 1773’s Boston Tea Party, in which colonists ambushed three British ships and dumped 92,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor. But do you know the story of the New Jersey Tea Party (December 1773)? How about the Annapolis Tea Party (October 1774) or the Charleston... Read more >

The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow

Written by Clarence Darrow
Edited by Edward J. Larson

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: June 12, 2007
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-8129-6677-0 (0-8129-6677-5)

The celebrated American lawyer Clarence Darrow was renowned for his spirited, ruthlessly logical defense of populist causes and controversial ideas. Even today, Darrow’s words continue to frame public discussion about our civil liberties and our religious and civic life. In this timely volume, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward J. Larson and ethicist... Read more >

Democracy in America: The Complete and Unabridged Volumes I and II

Written by Alexis De Tocqueville
Introduction by Joseph Epstein

Format: Paperback, 976 pages
Publisher: Bantam Classics
On Sale: April 4, 2000
Price: $7.99
ISBN: 978-0-553-21464-2 (0-553-21464-0)

From America’s call for a free press to its embrace of the capitalist system, Democracy in America–first published in 1835–enlightens, entertains, and endures as a brilliant study of our national government and character. For today’s readers, de Tocqueville’s concern about the effect of majority rule on the rights of individuals remains... Read more >

Democracy in America, Vol. 1

Written by Alexis De Tocqueville

Format: Trade Paperback, 480 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: August 11, 1990
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-72825-2 (0-679-72825-2)

In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville traveled through the United States to investigate the country’s prison system. Instead, he wrote this study of democracy in its infancy—a study that embraces America’s history, geography, politics, legal system, economy, and culture. Here are glimpses of a vanished America, from town meetings in New England... Read more >

Irish America
Coming Into Clover
Written by Maureen Dezell

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: March 5, 2002
Price: $13.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-49596-7 (0-385-49596-X)

A dazzling and bracingly honest look at a great people in a great land.

For many people in this country, Irish American culture conjures up thoughts of raucous pubs, St. Patrick's Day parades, memoirs peopled with an array of saints and sinners, and such quasi-Celtic extravaganzas as Riverdance. But there is much... Read more >

How Capitalism Saved America
The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present
Written by Thomas DiLorenzo

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
On Sale: August 23, 2005
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-8331-2 (1-4000-8331-1)

In How Capitalism Saved America. DiLorenzo, a professor of economics, demonstrates how capitalism has made America the most prosperous nation on earth—and how the sort of government regulation that politicians and pundits endorse has hindered economic growth, caused higher unemployment, raised prices, and created many other problems. He propels the reader... Read more >

Sticklers, Sideburns and Bikinis
The military origins of everyday words and phrases
Written by Graeme Donald

Format: Hardcover, 272 pages
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
On Sale: October 21, 2008
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-84603-300-1 (1-84603-300-4)

Did you know they started 'hearing through the grapevine' during the American Civil War? It was a reference to the telegraph lines used for communicating with the army. These looked like twisted grapevines. And why does the phrase now suggest unreliable information? Because the lines were used by enemy troops to... Read more >