In 1830 the U.S. government shifted its policy from one of trying to assimilate American Indians to one of relocating them and proceeded to drive seventeen thousand Cherokee people west of the Mississippi. Authors THEDA PERDUE is a professor of history at the University of Kentucky. She is the author or editor of eight books,…
How a group of greatly gifted but deeply flawed individuals—Hamilton, Burr, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams, and Madison—confronted the overwhelming challenges before them to set the course for our nation. Author Joseph J. Ellis is Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke and author of the National Book Award-winning American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas…
A warm, vivid portrait of the harsh West Virginia mining town of his youth, evoking a time of innocence and promise, when anything was possible, even in a company town that swallowed its men alive. Author Homer Hickam is the best-selling author of the “Coalwood” series of memoirs, the “Josh Thurlow” series of World War…
A memoir of one young man’s coming of age on a journey across America–told through the stories of the people of all ages, races, and inclinations he meets along the way. Author Andrew Forsthoefel is a speaker and peace activist. After graduating from Middlebury College, he spent a year walking across the highways of America,…
More than 600,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today’s population would be six million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. Author Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust…
Haunting, harrowing, moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. Author Rick Bragg (1959) is an American journalist and…
In Walter Isaacson’s vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin seems to turn to us from history’s stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. By bringing Franklin to life, Isaacson shows how he helped to define both his own time and ours. Author Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen…
The exhilarating, untold story of an extraordinary World War II rescue mission, where a plane crash in the South Pacific plunged a trio of U.S.military personnel into a land that time forgot. Author Mitchell Zuckoff is a professor of journalism at Boston University. He is the author of Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of…
Desert Solitaire (1968) is one of Edward Abbey’s most critically acclaimed works and marks his first foray into the world of nonfiction writing. Written while Abbey was working as a ranger at Arches National Park outside of Moab, Utah, Desert Solitaire is a rare view of one man’s quest to experience nature in its purest…
Genius of Place tells the story of one of the most important figures in the history of America, Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted was a fervent abolitionist, noted journalist, Civil War hero, early environmentalist, and the landscape architect behind New York’s Central Park, Boston’s Emerald Necklace, Stanford University, the Biltmore Estate and dozens of other green…
