Wings of Courage
Tales from America's Elite Fighter Groups of World War II
Written by Tony Holmes

Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
On Sale: July 20, 2010
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-84908-219-8 (1-84908-219-7)

From the war-torn skies over Europe to the empty expanses of the Pacific, pilots were the vanguard of the U.S. military machine during the dark days of World War II. Discover their experiences as numerous eyewitness accounts explore the terror, adrenalin and courage which defined aerial combat. Focusing on four elite... Read more >

Bold Spirit
Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America
Written by Linda Lawrence Hunt

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: January 11, 2005
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7993-3 (1-4000-7993-4)

In 1896, a Norwegian immigrant and mother of eight children named Helga Estby was behind on taxes and the mortgage when she learned that a mysterious sponsor would pay $10,000 to a woman who walked across America.

Hoping to win the wager and save her family’s farm, Helga and her teenaged... Read more >

On the Courthouse Lawn
Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-first Century
Written by Sherrilyn Ifill

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: December 1, 2007
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0988-8 (0-8070-0988-1)

Nearly 5,000 black Americans were lynched between 1890 and 1960. Over forty years later, Sherrilyn Ifill’s On the Courthouse Lawn examines the numerous ways that this racial trauma still resounds across the United States. While the lynchings and their immediate aftermath were devastating, the little-known contemporary consequences, such as the marginalization... Read more >

The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright

Edited by Peter Jakab and Rick Young

Format: Trade Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: June 17, 2004
Price: $22.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-142-6 (1-58834-142-9)

For the first time, nearly seventy of Wilbur and Orville Wright’s published writings are brought together in a single, annotated reference. Spanning the decades from the brothers’ turn-of-the-century experiments with gliders until Orville’s death in 1948, the articles describe the design of their aircraft, early test flights, and camp life at... Read more >

Visions of a Flying Machine
The Wright Brothers and the Process of Invention
Written by Peter Jakab

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: April 17, 1997
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-56098-748-2 (1-56098-748-0)

This acclaimed book on the Wright Brothers takes the reader straight to the heart of their remarkable achievement, focusing on the technology and offering a clear, concise chronicle of precisely what they accomplished and how they did it. This book deals with the process of the invention of the airplane and... Read more >

Bloody Falls of the Coppermine
Madness and Murder in the Arctic Barren Lands
Written by Mckay Jenkins

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: January 10, 2006
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7537-6 (0-8129-7537-5)

In the winter of 1913, high in the Canadian Arctic, two Catholic priests set out on a dangerous mission to reach a group of Eskimos and convert them. Upon reaching their destination, the priests were murdered. Over the next three years, one of the Arctic’s most tragic stories became one of... Read more >

Empires of Light
Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World
Written by Jill Jonnes

Format: Trade Paperback, 464 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: October 12, 2004
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-75884-3 (0-375-75884-4)

In the final decades of the nineteenth century, three brilliant and visionary titans of America’s Gilded Age—Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse—battled bitterly as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empire. In Empires of Light, historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting and ruthless... Read more >

Visual Shock
A History of Art Controversies in American Culture
Written by Michael Kammen

Format: Trade Paperback, 480 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: November 6, 2007
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-3464-2 (1-4000-3464-7)

In this lively narrative, award-winning author Michael Kammen presents a fascinating analysis of cutting-edge art and artists and their unique ability to both delight and provoke us. He illuminates America’s obsession with public memorials and the changing role of art and museums in our society. From Thomas Eakins’s 1875 masterpiece The... Read more >

Hide/Seek
Difference and Desire in American Portraiture
Written by Jonathan D. Katz and David C. Ward

Format: Hardcover, 296 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: November 2, 2010
Price: $45.00
ISBN: 978-1-58834-299-7 (1-58834-299-9)

*2011 ALA Stonewall Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award
*An Outstanding Academic Title of 2011 — Choice Magazine

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture is the companion book to the first major museum exhibition in American history to focus on lesbian and gay art and culture from the late nineteenth century to the present... Read more >

A Godly Hero
The Life of William Jennings Bryan
Written by Michael Kazin

Format: Trade Paperback, 432 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: March 13, 2007
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-72056-4 (0-385-72056-4)

Politician, evangelist, and reformer William Jennings Bryan was the most popular public speaker of his time. In this acclaimed biography–the first major reconsideration of Bryan’s life in forty years–award-winning historian Michael Kazin illuminates his astonishing career and the richly diverse and volatile landscape of religion and politics in which he rose... Read more >

The Flowers of Edo

Written by Michael Dana Kennedy

Format: Hardcover, 544 pages
Publisher: Vertical
On Sale: June 15, 2010
Price: $26.95
ISBN: 978-1-934287-80-4 (1-934287-80-6)

What if the U.S., like in Normandy, landed on the shores of Japan to engage in a massive tide-turning ground campaign?

In The Flowers of Edo, writer and renown WWII researcher Michael Dana Kennedy explores this alternate history in a revealing work of literary fiction. The story begins with Japanese-American Kenji Kobayashi... Read more >

City of Scoundrels
The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago
Written by Gary Krist

Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: Broadway Books
On Sale: April 16, 2013
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-45430-0 (0-307-45430-4)

The masterfully told story of twelve volatile days in the life of Chicago, when an aviation disaster, a race riot, a crippling transit strike, and a sensational child murder transfixed and roiled a city already on the brink of collapse.

When 1919 began, the city of Chicago seemed on the verge of... Read more >

City of Scoundrels
The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago
Written by Gary Krist

Format: Hardcover, 368 pages
Publisher: Crown
On Sale: April 17, 2012
Price: $26.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-45429-4 (0-307-45429-0)

The masterfully told story of twelve volatile days in the life of Chicago, when an aviation disaster, a race riot, a crippling transit strike, and a sensational child murder transfixed and roiled a city already on the brink of collapse.

When 1919 began, the city of Chicago seemed on the verge of... Read more >

Looking for Lincoln
The Making of an American Icon
Written by Philip B. Kunhardt, III, Peter W. Kunhardt and Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr.

Format: Trade Paperback, 512 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: November 1, 2011
Price: $29.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-71214-2 (0-375-71214-3)

An extensively researched, lavishly illustrated consideration of the myths, memories, and questions that gathered around our most beloved—and most enigmatic—president in the years between his assassination and the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922.

Availing themselves of a vast collection of both published and never-before-seen materials, the authors—the fourth and... Read more >

Birdseye
The Adventures of a Curious Man
Written by Mark Kurlansky

Format: Hardcover, 272 pages
Publisher: Doubleday
On Sale: May 8, 2012
Price: $25.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-52705-7 (0-385-52705-5)

Break out the TV dinners! From the author who gave us Cod, Salt, and other informative bestsellers, the first biography of Clarence Birdseye, the eccentric genius inventor whose fast-freezing process revolutionized the food industry and American agriculture.

"The first book-length biography of Clarence Birdseye. . . . [An] intriguing book that ... Read more >

The Devil in the White City
Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
Written by Erik Larson

Format: Trade Paperback, 464 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: February 10, 2004
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-72560-9 (0-375-72560-1)

Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the... Read more >

The Devil in the White City
Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
Written by Erik Larson

Format: Hardcover, 464 pages
Publisher: Crown
On Sale: February 11, 2003
Price: $28.00
ISBN: 978-0-609-60844-9 (0-609-60844-4)

Winner, 2004 Edgar Award

Winner, 2003 International Horror Guild Award for Non-fiction

2003 National Book Award Finalist, Non-Fiction

Vintage Paperback is Available

Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the... Read more >

Isaac's Storm
A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
Written by Erik Larson

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: July 11, 2000
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-70827-5 (0-375-70827-8)

At the dawn of the twentieth century, a great confidence suffused America. Isaac Cline was one of the era's new men, a scientist who believed he knew all there was to know about the motion of clouds and the behavior of storms. The idea that a hurricane could damage the city... Read more >

Land of Desire
Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture
Written by William R. Leach

Format: Trade Paperback, 560 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 6, 1994
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-75411-4 (0-679-75411-3)

Nominated for the National Book Award

Land of Desire tells the story of a fundamental transformation in the culture and economy of America--the rise of mass-market consumerism and the attendant shift to a society preoccupied with consumption, well-being, luxury, and acquisition.  Tracing the ascendancy of mass-market culture from its beginnings in the 1890s... Read more >

Typhoid Mary
Captive to the Public's Health
Written by Judith Walzer Leavitt

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: July 31, 1997
Price: $24.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-2103-3 (0-8070-2103-2)

She was an Irish immigrant cook. Between 1900 and 1907, she infected twenty-two New Yorkers with typhoid fever through her puddings and cakes; one of them died. Tracked down through epidemiological detective work, she was finally apprehended as she hid behind a barricade of trashcans. To protect the public’s health, authorities... Read more >

Helmet for My Pillow
From Parris Island to the Pacific
Written by Robert Leckie

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Bantam
On Sale: February 2, 2010
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-553-59331-0 (0-553-59331-5)

Here is one of the most riveting first-person accounts ever to come out of World War II. Robert Leckie enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in January 1942, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In Helmet for My Pillow we follow his odyssey, from basic training on Parris... Read more >

Silent Wings at War
Combat Gliders in World War II
Written by John L. Lowden

Format: Trade Paperback, 216 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: September 17, 2002
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-034-4 (1-58834-034-1)

The pilots were known as “suicide jockeys” and the aircraft they flew were called “flak bait.” Towed behind modified bombers or transport aircraft, Allied combat gliders were used in some of the riskiest missions of World War II, landing miles behind enemy lines with specially trained assault forces. In Silent Wings... Read more >

Harriet Tubman
Imagining a Life
Written by Beverly Lowry

Format: Hardcover, 432 pages
Publisher: Doubleday
On Sale: June 12, 2007
Price: $26.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-50291-7 (0-385-50291-5)

“I am at peace with God and all mankind.”
—Harriet Tubman to Mary Talbert, on the occasion of their last visit, 1913
Now, from the award-winning novelist and biographer, an astonishing reimagining of the remarkable life of Harriet Tubman—the “Moses of Her People.”

During her lifetime Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave, lumberjack, laundress... Read more >

Paris 1919
Six Months That Changed the World
Written by Margaret MacMillan
Foreword by Richard Holbrooke

Format: Trade Paperback, 624 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: September 9, 2003
Price: $20.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-76052-5 (0-375-76052-0)

• Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize
• Winner of the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize
• Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize

Between January and July 1919, after “the war to end all wars,” men and women from around the world converged on Paris to shape the peace. Center stage, for the first time... Read more >

Beyond Glory
Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink
Written by David Margolick

Format: Trade Paperback, 464 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: October 10, 2006
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-72619-4 (0-375-72619-5)

Nothing in the annals of sports has aroused more passion than the heavyweight fights in New York in 1936 and 1938 between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling—bouts that symbolized and galvanized the hopes, hatreds, and fears of a world moving toward total war.

David Margolick takes us into the careers of both... Read more >