Nonfiction Memoir

Before the consecutive two-term administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, there had only been one other trio of its type: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. Kevin R. C. Gutzman's The Jeffersonians is a complete chronicle of the men who served as president from 1801 to 1825 and implemented the foreign policy, domestic, and constitutional agenda of the radical wing of the American Revolution, setting guideposts for later American liberals to follow.

Kendra Allen’s first collection of essays—at its core—is a bunch of mad stories about things she never learned to let go of. Unifying personal narrative and cultural commentary, this collection grapples with the lessons that have been stored between parent and daughter. These parental relationships expose the conditioning that subconsciously informed her ideas on social issues such as colorism, feminism, war-induced PTSD, homophobia, marriage, and “the n-word,” among other things.

Penny the basset shows up at the Borlands' Connecticut farmhouse on a cold, snowy day-head held high, tail wagging, as if she were a long-awaited guest. Hal and Barbara Borland were no strangers to strays. Pat, the rabbit hound thousands of people came to know in The Dog Who Came to Stay, had also appeared one winter, staying to become the family's dear companion. Now, Pat is gone, and Hal and Barbara are bereft without canine company. They fall in love with Penny—and she seems to fit right in.

March 31, 1985. Two white patrol officers in search of a gang member followed a pickup truck carrying seven young Black men up a dirt driveway in the Encanto neighborhood of San Diego. Minutes later, gunshots rang out, and the truck's driver, Sagon Penn, fled the scene in an officer's patrol car. Penn was an idealist who believed in the power of Buddhist chants to bring about the oneness of humanity. The two police officers were rising stars in one of the most progressive police departments in the country, yet one that had suffered more officers killed in the line of duty than any other.

In the wake of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, and Pope Pius VII shared a common goal: to reconcile the church with the state. But while they were able to work together initially, formalizing an agreement in 1801, relations between them rapidly deteriorated. In 1809, Napoleon ordered the Pope's arrest. Ambrogio Caiani provides a pioneering account of the tempestuous relationship between the emperor and his most unyielding opponent.

The plan was as idealistic as it was audacious - and utterly unprecedented. Take thousands of broke writers and put them to work charting a country on the brink of social and economic collapse, with the aim of producing a rich and beguiling series of guidebooks to the 48 states. All this fell within the singular purview of the Federal Writers' Project - a division of the Works Progress Administration founded to employ jobless writers, from best-selling novelists and acclaimed poets to the more dubiously qualified.

Never Forget Our People Were Always Free illuminates for each of us how the path to healing America’s broken heart starts with each of us having the courage to heal our own.

While on patrol as part of a peacekeeping mission, eleven British soldiers are kidnapped. The captors are a dangerous rebel group known as the West Side Boys. Fuelled by alcohol and drugs, the behaviour of the rebels is notoriously unpredictable. How long the soldiers have, no one knows. Rescuing them becomes the British military's highest priority, and so they bring in the SAS for Operation Barras, a mission that will go down in special forces history.

While we can all recall Martin Luther King Jr. giving his "I Have a Dream" speech in front of a massive crowd at Lincoln Memorial, few of us remember the man who organized this watershed nonviolent protest in eight short weeks: Bayard Rustin. This was far from Rustin's first foray into the fight for civil rights. As a world-traveling pacifist, he brought Gandhi's protest techniques to the forefront of US civil rights demonstrations, helped build the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led the fight for economic justice, and played a deeply influential role in the life of Dr. King.

Frieda "Fritizie" Mann had several identities during her brief life, and the mysterious circumstances of her death raise as many questions as they do answers. She was born in 1903 near the present border between Poland and Ukraine. And in the last year of her life, Mann became locally famous. She had reinvented herself as a flapper and "Oriental" dancer. She claimed to have friends in Hollywood and a movie contract. On the night of her murder, she said she was going to a party to meet her Hollywood friends; instead she traveled to an isolated roadside hotel where she met her death.

Early in the Prohibition era, Moe Sedway became part of the New York organized crime gang led by Meyer Lansky and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. A loyal and highly effective operative for Siegel, Sedway eventually gained monopoly control of the race wire service in Las Vegas and also became an effective casino manager of the Las Vegas Club, El Cortez, and the Rex Club. Moe Sedway is now at last brought out into the light in this riveting tale of the sensational life and times of one of Vegas's most mysterious and little-known figures.

From the first shot fired by his grandfather on a jungle trail in 1903 to the day his father captured plans for the Chinese invasion of South Korea, William Crawford Woods's family has fought in nearly every American war of the twentieth century.

Theodore Roosevelt largely is known today by stereotypes and his many accomplishments—but the full and fascinating essence of the man is fading. In this book, TR charges back! Historian Rick Marschall has collected almost five hundred quotations, descriptions, impressions, and memories of the "Most Interesting American" derived from vintage newspapers, magazines, scrapbooks, diaries, letters, and so much more. In chapters devoted to his personality as a family man, a conservationist, an intellectual, patriot, activist, and as an American TR comes alive as never before seen.

Amazing women with a story to tell. Join Mae West as she shakes up the entertainment industry with her wit and wisdom or create colorful art pieces with Yayoi Kusama that are larger than life itself. These women in history defied the expectations of conventional society to live the lives they chose, regardless of what others thought.

Endpapers excavates the extraordinary histories of the author's grandfather and father: the renowned publisher Kurt Wolff, dubbed "perhaps the 20th century's most discriminating publisher" by the New York Times Book Review, and his son Niko, who fought in the Wehrmacht during World War II before coming to America.

Jason Sommer's father, Jay, is ninety-eight years old and losing his memory. More than seventy years after arriving in New York from WWII-torn Europe, he is forgetting the stories that defined his life, the life of his family, and the lives of millions of Jews who were affected by Nazi terror. Observing this loss, Jason vividly recalls the trip to Eastern Europe the two took together in 2001.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was arguably the greatest figure of the 20th century. While FDR's official circle was predominantly male, it was his relationships with women - particularly with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd - that most vividly bring to light the human being beneath this towering statesman.

From the New York Times bestselling author of First Man comes a sweeping saga involving two extraordinary—and extraordinarily different—adventurers who have only one thing in common: the ambition to cross the Atlantic in a rowboat . . . alone. With gripping and insightful prose, James R. Hansen brings to life John Fairfax and Tom McClean's expeditions, from their battle with the elements to their own inner demons. Completely Mad is a nail-biting, epic tale of endurance, and listeners will be gripped until the end to find out who won.

Americans are more familiar with his signature than with the man himself. In this spirited account of John Hancock's life, Brooke Barbier depicts a patriot of fascinating contradictions—a child of enormous privilege who would nevertheless become a voice of the common folk; a pillar of society uncomfortable with radicalism who yet was crucial to independence. Orphaned young, Hancock was raised by his merchant uncle, whose business and vast wealth he inherited—including household slaves, whom Hancock later freed. By his early thirties, he was one of New England's most prominent politicians.

The youngest daughter of an eccentric engineer and a musical theater fanatic, Helen Brown grew up in the New Zealand coastal town of New Plymouth in a crumbling castle overrun by nature, and overshadowed by nearby, beautiful Mount Taranaki. It's 1966, the Pacific islands are being used for atomic bomb testing, and her parents and siblings are swept up in their own lives. Twelve years old, struggling in school, and facing eye surgery-for the second time-Helen feels lonely and lost . . .