The Education of Henry Adams
An Autobiography
Written by Henry Adams
Introduction by Edmund Morris

Format: Trade Paperback, 560 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: May 11, 1999
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-64010-3 (0-679-64010-X)

"I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams,"said Gore Vidal. "He was remarkably prescient about the coming horrors."

His political ideals shaped by two presidential ancestors—great-grandfather John Adams and grandfather John Quincy Adams—Henry Adams was one of the most powerful and original minds to confront the American scene from... Read more >

Ragged Dick
or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks
Written by Horatio Alger
Introduction by David K. Shipler

Format: Trade Paperback, 192 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: September 13, 2005
Price: $11.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7358-7 (0-8129-7358-5)

“Alger was perhaps American Capitalism’s greatest and most effective propagandist.”—Richard Wright

Written to inspire schoolboys to strive for “honesty, industry, frugality, and a worthy ambition,” the novels of Horatio Alger (1832–99) are infused with great humanity, broad humor, and a surprisingly sophisticated view of Gilded Age propriety. Central to Alger’s philosophy is... Read more >

The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb

Written by Gar Alperovitz

Format: Trade Paperback, 864 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: August 6, 1996
Price: $24.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-76285-0 (0-679-76285-X)

Was the atomic bomb necessary to end the war with Japan?  This extensively documented work by the foremost historian of the atomic decision and its aftermath provides the indispensable evidence and arguments for any serious attempt to answer that terrible question.  As it minutely reconstructs the events leading up to Hiroshima, the book... Read more >

The Gangs of New York
An Informal History of the Underworld
Written by Herbert Asbury

Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: July 1, 2008
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-38898-8 (0-307-38898-0)

First published in 1928, Herbert Asbury's whirlwind tour through the low-life of nineteenth-century New York has become an indispensible classic of urban history.

Focusing on the saloon halls, gambling dens, and winding alleys of the Bowery and the notorious Five Points district, The Gangs of New York dramatically evokes the destitution... Read more >

Sleeping with the Devil
How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
Written by Robert Baer

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: May 25, 2004
Price: $13.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5268-4 (1-4000-5268-8)

“Saudi Arabia is more and more an irrational state—a place that spawns global terrorism even as it succumbs to an ancient and deeply seated isolationism, a kingdom led by a royal family that can’t get out of the way of its own greed. Is this the fulcrum we want the global... Read more >

The Inventor and the Tycoon
A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures
Written by Edward Ball

Format: Hardcover, 464 pages
Publisher: Doubleday
On Sale: January 22, 2013
Price: $29.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-52575-6 (0-385-52575-3)

From the National Book Award-winning author of Slaves in the Family, a riveting true life/true crime narrative of the partnership between the murderer who invented the movies and the robber baron who built the railroads.

One hundred and thirty years ago Eadweard Muybridge invented stop-motion photography, anticipating and making possible motion pictures... Read more >

Joseph P. Kennedy Presents
His Hollywood Years
Written by Cari Beauchamp

Format: Trade Paperback, 528 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: February 9, 2010
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-47522-0 (0-307-47522-0)

Joseph P. Kennedy’s reputation as a savvy businessman, diplomat, and sly political patriarch is well-documented. But his years as a Hollywood mogul have never been fully explored until now.

In Joseph P. Kennedy Presents, Cari Beauchamp brilliantly explores this unknown chapter in Kennedy’s biography. Between 1926 and 1930, Kennedy positioned himself... Read more >

Mr. Hornaday's War
How a Peculiar Victorian Zookeeper Waged a Lonely Crusade for Wildlife That Changed the World
Written by Stefan Bechtel

Format: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: May 14, 2013
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0638-2 (0-8070-0638-6)

He was complex, quirky, pugnacious, and difficult. He seemed to create enemies wherever he went, even among his friends. A fireplug of a man who stood only five feet eight inches in his stocking feet, he began as a taxidermist and an adventurer who tracked tigers in Borneo with friendly headhunters... Read more >

Mr. Hornaday's War
How a Peculiar Victorian Zookeeper Waged a Lonely Crusade for Wildlife That Changed the World
Written by Stefan Bechtel

Format: Hardcover, 272 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: May 15, 2012
Price: $26.95
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0635-1 (0-8070-0635-1)

He was complex, quirky, pugnacious, and difficult. He seemed to create enemies wherever he went, even among his friends. A fireplug of a man who stood only five feet eight inches in his stocking feet, he began as a taxidermist and an adventurer who tracked tigers in Borneo with friendly headhunters... Read more >

Life of an Anarchist
The Alexander Berkman Reader
Written by Alexander Berkman
Edited by Gene Fellner
Foreword by Howard Zinn

Format: Trade Paperback, 372 pages
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
On Sale: November 2, 2004
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-58322-662-9 (1-58322-662-1)

Alexander Berkman was a twentieth-century American revolutionary. Like the abolitionist John Brown before him, Berkman was hugely idealistic, ready to go to the furthest extreme of self-sacrifice and violence on behalf of justice and civil rights. He decided to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick after reading in the newspaper that Pinkertons... Read more >

My Face Is Black Is True
Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations
Written by Mary Frances Berry

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: October 10, 2006
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-27705-3 (0-307-27705-4)

“My face is black is true but its not my fault but I love my name and my honest in dealing with my fellow man.”
~Callie House (1899)

In her groundbreaking new book, My Face Is Black Is True, historian Mary Frances Berry resurrects the forgotten life of Callie House (1861–1928), ex-slave, widowed... Read more >

The Good Old Days--They Were Terrible!

Written by Otto Bettmann

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Random House
On Sale: October 12, 1974
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-394-70941-3 (0-394-70941-1)

A comprehensive study of urban American life in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century. The book is filled with black and white drawings, advertisements, and photographs from the time period which further vivify the early urban American experience. Read more >

American Prometheus
The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

Format: Trade Paperback, 784 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 11, 2006
Price: $20.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-72626-2 (0-375-72626-8)

American Prometheus is the first full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb,” the brilliant, charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the awesome fire of the sun for his country in time of war. Immediately after Hiroshima, he became the most famous scientist of his generation–one... Read more >

Slavery By Another Name
The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
Written by Douglas A. Blackmon

Format: Trade Paperback, 496 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: January 13, 2009
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-72270-4 (0-385-72270-2)

In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history—an “Age of Neoslavery” that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II.

Using a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Douglas A. Blackmon... 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 >

Slacks and Calluses
Our Summer in a Bomber Factory
Written by Constance Bowman
Illustrated by Clara Marie Allen

Format: Trade Paperback, 200 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: October 17, 2004
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-56098-368-2 (1-56098-368-X)

In 1943 two spirited young teachers decided to do their part for the war effort by spending their summer vacation working the swing shift on a B-24 production line at a San Diego bomber plant. Entering a male-dominated realm of welding torches and bomb bays, they learned to use tools that... Read more >

A Soldier's Story

Written by Omar N. Bradley
Introduction by A.J. Liebling

Format: Trade Paperback, 688 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: May 4, 1999
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-75421-0 (0-375-75421-0)

D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of Paris, the relentless drive through Germany toward Allied victory--Omar Bradley, the "GI General," was there for every major engagement in the European theater. A Soldier's Story is the behind-the-scenes eyewitness account of the war that shaped our century: the tremendous manpower at... Read more >

Traitor to His Class
The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Written by H.W. Brands

Format: Trade Paperback, 912 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: September 8, 2009
Price: $22.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-27794-7 (0-307-27794-1)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A Washington Post Notable Book

A brilliant evocation of the qualities that made FDR one of the most beloved and greatest of American presidents.

Drawing on archival material, public speeches, correspondence and accounts by those closest to Roosevelt early in his career and during his presidency, H. W. Brands shows how... Read more >

The Dark Valley
A Panorama of the 1930s
Written by Piers Brendon

Format: Trade Paperback, 848 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 8, 2002
Price: $21.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-70808-4 (0-375-70808-1)

In this sweeping history, distinguished historian Piers Brendon brings the tragic, dismal days of the 1930s to life.

Like the classic work of Barbara Tuchman, The Dark Valley captures the vast scope of history as well as the minutia of everyday life, rendering a huge topic comprehensible and creating a gripping... Read more >

Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage
The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World
Written by Hugh Brewster

Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Publisher: Crown
On Sale: March 27, 2012
Price: $26.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-98470-8 (0-307-98470-2)

“Brewster’s nuanced account introduces us to a plutocracy frolicking in the sunset of England’s Edwardian era and America’s Gilded Age. He pushes past stereotypes to vividly describe the elite realm on deck”
– New York Times Book Review

“You needn’t be an avid Titanic scholar or enthusiast to find this story spellbinding... Read more >

The End Of Reform
New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War
Written by Alan Brinkley

Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 30, 1996
Price: $17.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-75314-8 (0-679-75314-1)

The End of Reform is both a trenchant analysis of the New Deal and an indispensable guide to today's political landscape.  Brinkley, professor of American History and Columbia University, shows how the liberalism of the early New Deal--which set out to repair and, if necessary, restructure America's economy--gave way to its contemporary... Read more >

The Publisher
Henry Luce and His American Century
Written by Alan Brinkley

Format: Trade Paperback, 576 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 5, 2011
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-74154-1 (0-679-74154-2)

Pulitzer Prize Finalist

Acclaimed historian Alan Brinkley gives us a sharply realized portrait of Henry Luce, arguably the most important publisher of the twentieth century.

As the founder of Time, Fortune, and Life magazines, Luce changed the way we consume news and the way we understand our world. Born the son of missionaries... Read more >

Voices of Protest
Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression
Written by Alan Brinkley

Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: August 12, 1983
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-394-71628-2 (0-394-71628-0)

Winner of the 1983 American Book Award for History, this study of two demagogues--Huey Long and Father Coughlin-- whose vast popularity explains much about Depression-era America, is "impressively well-written history explicated by a master of the art."
--Chicago Tribune Read more >

Triumvirate: McKim, Mead & White
Art, Architecture, Scandal, and Class in America's Gilded Age
Written by Mosette Broderick

Format: Hardcover, 608 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: October 26, 2010
Price: $40.00
ISBN: 978-0-394-53662-0 (0-394-53662-2)

A rich, fascinating saga of the most influential, far-reaching architectural firm of their time and of the dazzling triumvirate—Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White—who came together, bound by the notion that architecture could help shape a nation in transition. They helped to refine America’s idea of beauty, elevated its architectural... 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 >