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 >

Lethal Passage
The Story of a Gun
Written by Erik Larson

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 15, 1995
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-75927-0 (0-679-75927-1)

This devastating book begins with an account of a crime that is by now almost commonplace: on December 16, 1988, sixteen-year-old Nicholas Elliot walked into his Virginia high school with a Cobray M-11/9 and several hundred rounds of ammunition tucked in his backpack. By day’s end, he had killed one teacher... Read more >

Country of Exiles

Written by William R. Leach

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: May 30, 2000
Price: $14.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-75865-5 (0-679-75865-8)

In Country of Exiles, William Leach, whose Land of Desire was a finalist for the National Book Award, explores the troubling effects of our national love affair with mobility. He shows us how the impulse to pull up stakes and find a new frontier has always battled with the need to... Read more >

Jumped In
What Gangs Taught Me about Violence, Drugs, Love, and Redemption
Written by Jorja Leap

Format: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: January 8, 2013
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4481-0 (0-8070-4481-4)

When Jorja Leap began studying Los Angeles gang violence in 2002, she encountered a myriad of proposed solutions to the seemingly intractable “gang problem” and set out to discover what was really going on. The stakes–then and now–could not be higher: a child or teenager is killed by gunfire every three... Read more >

Jumped In
What Gangs Taught Me about Violence, Drugs, Love, and Redemption
Written by Jorja Leap

Format: Hardcover, 240 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: March 6, 2012
Price: $26.95
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4456-8 (0-8070-4456-3)

Jumped In tells the story of the gangs of Los Angeles in the words of the gang members themselves as well as the people who interact with them on a daily basis--trying to arrest them, control them, and help them. There are priests and police officers, murderers and drug dealers, victims... Read more >

Waterfront
A Walk Around Manhattan
Written by Phillip Lopate

Format: Trade Paperback, 448 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: May 10, 2005
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-49714-5 (0-385-49714-8)

East Side, West Side, from the Little Red Lighthouse to Battery Park City, the wonders of Manhattan’s waterfront are both celebrated and secret—hidden in plain sight. In his brilliant exploration of this defining yet neglected shoreline, personal essayist Philip Lopate also recovers a part of the city’s soul.

A native New... Read more >

Dear Marcus
A Letter to the Man Who Shot Me
Written by Jerry McGill

Format: Hardcover, 192 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
On Sale: May 1, 2012
Price: $22.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9307-3 (0-8129-9307-1)

When Jerry McGill was growing up in the housing projects on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1980s, his future seemed bright: Though times were tough for a family led by a single mother, McGill was a charming, precocious teenager, already excelling as an athlete and a dancer. But... Read more >

Muck City
Winning and Losing in Football's Forgotten Town
Written by Bryan Mealer

Format: Hardcover, 336 pages
Publisher: Crown Archetype
On Sale: October 23, 2012
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-88862-4 (0-307-88862-2)

The loamy black “muck” that surrounds Belle Glade, Florida once built an empire for Big Sugar and provided much of the nation's vegetables, often on the backs of roving, destitute migrants. Many of these were children who honed their skills along the field rows and started one of the most legendary... Read more >

Maximum City
Bombay Lost and Found
Written by Suketu Mehta

Format: Trade Paperback, 560 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 27, 2005
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-70340-9 (0-375-70340-3)

NOW IN PAPERBACK

An illuminating portrait of Bombay and its people—a book as vast, diverse, and rich in experience, incident, and sensation as the city itself—from an award-winning Indian-American fiction writer and journalist.

A native of Bombay, Suketu Mehta gives us a true insider’s view of this stunning city, bringing to his account... Read more >

Poison Penmanship
The Gentle Art of Muckraking
Written by Jessica Mitford
Preface by Jane Smiley

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: NYRB Classics
On Sale: September 7, 2010
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-59017-355-8 (1-59017-355-4)

Jessica Mitford was a member of one of England’s most legendary families (among her sisters were the novelist Nancy Mitford and the current Duchess of Devonshire) and one of the great muckraking journalists of modern times. Leaving England for America, she pursued a career as an investigative reporter and unrepentant gadfly... Read more >

The Other Wes Moore
One Name, Two Fates
Written by Wes Moore

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
On Sale: January 11, 2011
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-52820-7 (0-385-52820-5)

Winner, 2011 BCALA (Black Caucus of ALA) Literary Award, Nonfiction
A 2011 Booklist Top 10 Black History Nonfiction Book

Selected for Common Reading at:
Colleges & Universities
Bay Path College (Springfield, MA)
Berry College (Mount Berry, GA)
Brookhaven College (Farmers Branch, TX)
Bunker Hill Community College (Boston, MA)
Cabrini College (Radnor, PA)
California State University at Bakersfield (Bakersfield, CA)... Read more >

The Other Wes Moore
One Name, Two Fates
Written by Wes Moore

Format: Hardcover, 256 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
On Sale: April 27, 2010
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-52819-1 (0-385-52819-1)

Selected for Common Reading at:
Colleges & Universities
Bay Path College (Springfield, MA)
Cabrini College (Radnor, PA)
California State University at Bakersfield (Bakersfield, CA)
One City/One Book
Everybody Reads (Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR)
One Book, One Bakersfield (Bakersfield, CA)


Two boys with the same name lived in the same decaying city. One went on to... Read more >

Children of the City
At Work and at Play
Written by David Nasaw

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: September 18, 2012
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-345-80297-2 (0-345-80297-7)

This classic title, which was the inspiration for the story behind the new musical Newsies, paints a surprising and indelible portrait of the bitter hardships, amazing resourcefulness, and unadulterated joys experienced by immigrant children in American metropolises at the turn of the century.

The turn of the century was a time of... Read more >

Clubland
The Fabulous Rise and Murderous Fall of Club Culture
Written by Frank Owen

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
On Sale: June 8, 2004
Price: $19.00
ISBN: 978-0-7679-1735-3 (0-7679-1735-9)

Welcome to the decadent nineties club scene.

In 1995, journalist Frank Owen began researching a story on Special K, a designer drug that fueled the after-midnight club scene. He went to buy and sample the drug at the internationally notorious Limelight, a crumbling church converted into a Manhattan disco, where mesmerizing... Read more >

Turning Stones
My Days and Nights with Children at Risk A Caseworker's Story
Written by Marc Parent

Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: January 27, 1998
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-449-91235-5 (0-449-91235-3)

These are the riveting and disturbing true stories of a child welfare caseworker's years on the job. For four years, Marc Parent was a respected case worker in New York City's Emergency Children's Services, a city agency created to investigate cases of abused children. Parent was devoted, and witnessed bravery as... Read more >

Resistance
A Radical Social and Political History of the Lower East Side
Edited by Clayton Patterson
Foreword by Jeff Ferrell

Format: Trade Paperback, 672 pages
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
On Sale: November 7, 2006
Price: $30.00
ISBN: 978-1-58322-745-9 (1-58322-745-8)

This collection of writings and images documents the political history of NYC’s Lower East Side, describing the lives and struggles of the radicals, artists, and immigrants that populated and politicized one of America’s strangest and most beloved neighborhoods.

Current and former residents of the neighborhood explore the social, political, and human... Read more >

Quality Education as a Constitutional Right
Creating a Grassroots Movement to Transform Public Schools
Written by Theresa Perry, Robert P. Moses, Ernesto Cortes, Jr., Lisa Delpit and Joan T. Wynne

Format: Trade Paperback, 232 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: June 29, 2010
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-3282-4 (0-8070-3282-4)

Legendary civil rights leader and education activist Robert Moses invited one hundred prominent African American and Latino intellectuals and activists to meet to discuss a proposal for a campaign to guarantee a quality education for all children as a constitutional right–a movement that would “transform current approaches to educational inequity, all... Read more >

Snob Zones
Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate
Written by Lisa Prevost

Format: Hardcover, 208 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: May 7, 2013
Price: $25.95
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0157-8 (0-8070-0157-0)

Towns with strict zoning are the best towns, aren't they? They're all about preserving local "character," protecting the natural environment, and maintaining attractive neighborhoods. Right?

In this bold challenge to conventional wisdom, Lisa Prevost strips away the quaint façades of these desirable towns to reveal the uglier impulses behind their proud... Read more >

Nashville's Lower Broad
The Street That Music Made
Written by Bill Rouda

Format: Hardcover, 144 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: April 17, 2004
Price: $29.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-094-8 (1-58834-094-5)

Like Beale Street in Memphis and Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Lower Broadway was the heart of the country music scene in Nashville, the place where locals could rub elbows with stars and impromptu jam sessions could last late into the night. But after the Grand Ole Opry moved out of... Read more >

The Seduction of Place
The History and Future of Cities
Written by Joseph Rykwert

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: March 12, 2002
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-70044-6 (0-375-70044-7)

The acclaimed and provocative architectural historian Joseph Rykwert explores the history of the city and calls for the return of a human agenda to city planning.

Focusing on a range of urban environments around the world–from 19th-century London and Paris, to contemporary New Delhi, New York, and Celebration, Florida–Rykwert discusses the... Read more >

Song for my Fathers

Written by Tom Sancton

Format: Trade Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Other Press
On Sale: April 20, 2010
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-59051-376-7 (1-59051-376-2)

Song for My Fathers is the story of a young white boy driven by a consuming passion to learn the music and ways of a group of aging black jazzmen in the twilight years of the segregation era. Contemporaries of Louis Armstrong, most of them had played in local obscurity until... Read more >

Arrival City
How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World
Written by Doug Saunders

Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 3, 2012
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-38856-8 (0-307-38856-5)

A powerfully argued work that combines reporting, sociology, economics, and urban studies to show how the migration of workers from villages to urban centers has become one of the most significant forces in the world today.

For the first time in history, there are now more people in the world living... Read more >

The Myth of the Muslim Tide
Do Immigrants Threaten the West?
Written by Doug Saunders

Format: Trade Paperback, 208 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: August 21, 2012
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-95117-5 (0-307-95117-0)

From the author of prize-winning Arrival City, a controversial and long-overdue rejoinder to the excessive fears of an Islamic threat that have spread throughout America and Europe and threaten our basic values.

Since September 11, 2001, a growing chorus has warned that Western society and values are at risk of being... Read more >

The Social Construction of Ancient Cities

Edited by Monica L. Smith

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: July 6, 2010
Price: $29.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-291-1 (1-58834-291-3)

What made ancient cities successful? What are the similarities between modern cities and ancient ones? The Social Construction of Ancient Cities offers a fresh perspective on ancient cities and the social networks and relations that built and sustained them, marking a dramatic change in the way archaeologists approach them. Examining ancient... Read more >

Laundromat

Afterword by D. Foy
Photographed by Snorri Bros.

Format: Hardcover, 160 pages
Publisher: powerHouse Books
On Sale: March 12, 2013
Price: $40.00
ISBN: 978-1-57687-623-7 (1-57687-623-3)

Laundromats are a quintessential part of the New York City landscape: an indispensible element to many city dwellers’ lives, they’re an ersatz utility room shared with dozens of strangers at any given time, a moist environment of humming machines and strange clothes. No other public facility gathers so many people under... Read more >