American Century

The most popular college football team in the early 20th century belonged to an institution called the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Its story begins with Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt, a fierce abolitionist who believed that Native Americans deserved a place in American society. In 1879, Pratt made a treacherous journey to the Dakota Territory to recruit Carlisle's first students. Years later, three students approached Pratt with the notion of forming a football team.

An intimate account of the American Revolution as seen through the eyes of a Quaker pacifist couple living in Philadelphia. Spanning a half-century before, during, and after the war, this gripping narrative illuminates the Revolution’s darker side as patriots vilified, threatened, and in some cases killed pacifist Quakers as alleged enemies of the revolutionary cause. Amid chaos and danger, the Drinkers tried as best they could to keep their family and faith intact. A master storyteller takes his listeners on a moving journey they will never forget.

By providing historical context and a thorough yet easily accessible explanation of US financial markets, authors Norbert Michel and Jennifer Schulp provide a much-needed counterpoint to current debates and criticisms. "Financing Opportunity" not only busts many popular myths about financial markets but also proposes ways to improve how our financial markets function. With financial markets and American opportunity so closely tied, financial policy is vital to supporting growth, productivity, and prosperity.

Natalie Spencer was giving a dinner. She was not an easy hostess. Like most women of futile lives, she lacked a sense of proportion, and the small and unimportant details of the service absorbed her. Such conversation as she threw at random, to right and left, was trivial and distracted. Yet, the dinner was an unimportant one. It had been given with an eye more to the menu than to the guest list, which was characteristic of Natalie's mental processes.

This collection brings together the best British writing of the 20th century, narrated by a trio of beloved voices from the stage and screen. From the ghost stories of M.R. James to the intensity of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, as well as the intrigue of Joseph Conrad’s spy thriller, The Secret Agent, these enthralling modern classics will delight every listener. These classic stories are read by The Jewel in the Crown’s Tim Pigott-Smith; legendary Shakespearean actor Sir Michael Hordern; and Sir Ian McKellen.

Over a few weeks in 1741, 10 fires blazed across Manhattan. With each new fire, panicked whites saw more evidence of a slave uprising. Tried and convicted before the colony's Supreme Court, 13 black men were burned at the stake and 17 were hanged. Four whites, the alleged ringleaders of the plot, were also hanged, and seven more were pardoned on condition that they never set foot in New York again.

The story of how English became American—and how it became Southern, Bostonian, Californian, African American, Chicano, elite, working-class, urban, rural, and everything in between.

Bob Dylan is many things to many people. Each Bob Dylan joins a collective cast that has made up his persona for more than 50 years. No version of Dylan turns out uncomplicated, but the postmillennial manifestation seems peculiarly contrary - a tireless and enterprising antiquarian; a creator of singular texts and sounds through promiscuous poaching; an artist of innovation and uncanny renewal. The collection of essays does justice to this difficult Bob Dylan by examining his method and effects through a disparate set of viewpoints.

On a hot rainy summer night in Nassau, the Bahamas, in 1943, someone murdered Sir Harry Oakes, one of the richest men in the world, as he slept. When police found him the next morning, there were four wounds to his skull. His corpse had been abused, covered ritualistically with feathers and set on fire. The murder was perverse, horrific, and jaded by anyone’s standards. A few evenings later in New York City, the phone rang in the home of Alan Hynd, identified in that era by the NY Times as America’s highest paid true crime reporter.

At the age of twelve, under the Wind moon, Will is given a horse, a key, and a map, and sent alone into the Indian Nation to run a trading post as a bound boy. It is during this time that he grows into a man, learning, as he does, of the raw power it takes to create a life, to find a home. In a card game with a white Indian named Featherstone, Will wins–for a brief moment–a mysterious girl named Claire, and his passion and desire for her spans this novel.

Is religion disappearing from American life? Less than 50 percent of Americans now hold membership in any religious institution, and even fewer attend worship services. The decline in Christian churches is especially pronounced among the young, cutting across all denominations.

Canonized, overlooked, and forgotten African American poets star in Terrance Hayes's brilliant contemplations of personal, canonical, and allegorical literary development. Proceeding from Toni Morrison's aim to expand the landscape of literary imagination in Playing in the Dark ("I want to draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography"), Watch Your Language charts a lyrical geography of reading and influence in poetry.

Barbara Kreiger's intriguing narrative presents the account of Clorinda Minor, a charismatic American Christian woman whose belief in the second coming prompted her to leave a comfortable life in Philadelphia in 1851 and take up agriculture in Palestine.

We are a nation of immigrants, never more than now. In recent decades, the numbers have skyrocketed, thanks to people coming from many continents—especially Asia, Africa, and South America. Just like their predecessors, they face countless obstacles, including political hatred. And yet, just like their predecessors, they work hard. They persist. And they become us. Veteran journalist, broadcaster, and interviewer Ray Suarez has crisscrossed the country to speak to new Americans from all corners of the globe, and to record their stories.

A tireless champion of the downtrodden, Nelson Algren, one of the most celebrated writers of the 20th century, lived an outsider's life himself. He spent a month in prison as a young man for the theft of a typewriter; his involvement in Marxist groups earned him a lengthy FBI dossier; and he spent much of his life palling around with the sorts of drug addicts, prostitutes, and poor laborers who inspired and populated his novels and short stories. Most today know Algren as the radical writer of The Man with the Golden Arm, but award-winning reporter Mary Wisniewski offers a deeper portrait.

The Great Migration and the Democratic Party frames the Great Migration as an important economic and social event that also had serious political consequences. Keneshia Grant created one of the first listings of Black elected officials that classifies them based on their status as participants in the Great Migration. She also describes some of the policy/political concerns of the migrants. The Great Migration and the Democratic Party lays the groundwork for ways of thinking about the contemporary impact of Black migration on American politics.

Providence, Rhode Island, 2017. When doctoral student Cameron Coelho, 28, opens a package from Indiana, he finds more than private papers that will help him with his dissertation. He finds a photograph of a beautiful society editor murdered in 1925 and clues to a century-old mystery. Within days, he meets Geoffrey Bell, the "time-travel professor", and begins an unlikely journey through the Roaring Twenties.

Considered for many decades to be the most influential priest in America, Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh played what many consider pivotal roles in higher education, the Catholic Church, and national and international affairs. American Priest examines his life and his many and varied engagements - from the university he led for 35 years to his associations with the Vatican and the White House - and evaluates the extent and importance of his legacy.

In 1690, a dramatic account of piracy was published in Mexico City. The Misfortunes of Alonso Ramírez described the incredible adventures of a poor Spanish-American carpenter who was taken captive by British pirates near the Philippines and forced to work for them for two years. After circumnavigating the world, he was freed and managed to return to Mexico, where the Spanish viceroy commissioned the well-known Mexican scholar Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora to write down Ramírez's account as part of an imperial propaganda campaign against pirates.

Citizenship in the nineteenth-century United States was an ever-moving target. The Constitution did not specify its exact meaning, leaving lawmakers and other Americans to struggle over the fundamental questions of who could be a citizen, how a person attained the status, and the particular privileges citizenship afforded. Black people suffered under this ambiguity, but also seized on it in efforts to transform their nominal freedom.