State Politics

For the past three decades, the United States and Iran have been engaged in an unacknowledged secret war. This conflict has frustrated five American presidents, divided administrations, and repeatedly threatened to bring the two nations to the brink of open warfare. Drawing upon unparalleled access to senior officials and key documents of several US administrations, David Crist, a senior historian in the federal government, breaks new ground in virtually every section of The Twilight War.

In a world where oil-rich states are more likely to start war than their oil-dependent counterparts, it's surprising how little attention is still paid to these so-called petrostates. These states' wealth props up the global arms trade, provides diplomatic leverage, and allows them to support violent and nonviolent proxies. In Oil, the State, and War, Emma Ashford explores the many potential links between domestic oil production and foreign policy behavior and how oil production influences global politics.

In Tinder Box, Tony Hatch, former CBS reporter and Emmy Award winner, tells the Iroquois story as it has never been told before. In a rush to open the theater on time, corners were cut, and the Iroquois lacked the most basic fire-fighting equipment: sprinklers, fire alarm boxes, backstage telephone, exit signs, and functioning asbestos curtain. Some exits, for aesthetic reasons, were hidden behind heavy draperies, doors opened inward, and exterior fire escapes were unfinished.

The Presidency of George W. Bush is the first balanced academic study to analyze the entirety of his presidency - domestic, social, economic, and national security policies - as well as the administration's response to 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror. In so doing, John Robert Greene argues persuasively that the judgment of most scholars - that the Bush administration was a complete failure - has been made in haste and without the benefit of primary sources.

In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created in the bold, pulpy pages of comic books. The Ten-Cent Plague explores this cultural emergence and its fierce backlash while challenging common notions of the divide between "high" and "low" art.

Dennis Banks, an American Indian of the Ojibwa Tribe and a founder of the American Indian Movement, is one of the most influential Indian leaders of our time. In Ojibwa Warrior, written with acclaimed writer and photographer Richard Erdoes, Banks tells his own story for the first time and also traces the rise of the American Indian Movement (AIM).

Jeffries spares no one and nothing in this explosive new book. The atrocities of Union troops during the Civil War, and Allied troops during World War II, are documented in great detail. The Nuremberg Trials are presented as the antithesis of justice. In the follow-up to his previous, bestselling book Hidden History: An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics, Jeffries demonstrates that crimes, corruption, and conspiracies didn't start with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Sand and stone are Earth's fragmented memory. Each of us, too, is a landscape inscribed by memory and loss. One life-defining lesson Lauret Savoy learned as a young girl was this: the American land did not hate. As an educator and Earth historian, she has tracked the continent's past from the relics of time; but the paths of ancestors toward her - paths of free and enslaved Africans, colonists from Europe, and peoples indigenous to this land - lie largely eroded and lost. In this provocative and powerful mosaic of personal journeys and historical inquiry across a continent and time.

The first lady of the United States of America and the first African-American in that position. A huge advocate of women. One of the most iconic and fascinating people of our times. Michelle Obama talks about her life with honesty and humor, in the same way she has lived it - in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revealing, Becoming is an intimate account by a sensitive and strong woman who consistently rose above the expectations of others. Her story inspires to do the same.

Professor Timothy R. Pauketat illuminates the riveting discovery of the largest pre-Columbian city on U.S. soil. Once a flourishing metropolis of 20,000 people in 1050, Cahokia had rotted away by 1400. Its earthen mounds near modern-day St. Louis reveal “woodhenges” and evidence of large-scale human sacrifice.

From revolutionary to Cold War adversary, Fidel Castro was one of the world's most controversial leaders and perhaps its most enduring. As Cuba's president for nearly 50 years, Castro's influential leadership captivated allies and enemies alike. By virtue of passionate oration and committed sense of purpose - good or bad - Castro kept the Cuban people devoted and the world enthralled.

From the central bank of El Salvador to a tantalum mine in Rwanda, the Acropolis Museum in Athens to the biggest freeport on the planet in Dubai, enter a world ruled by ones and zeroes and inhabited by people who don't believe in trust. Nathan Pike is one of those people. To some he's a digital Robin Hood. To others he's nothing but an amoral hacker. A codebreaking and encryption expert, he sells his skills to whoever can pay him what he wants or give him something he needs.

In Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the follow-up to his award-winning book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead paints a terrifying portrait of a nation at war with itself and which is on the verge of undermining the basic freedoms guaranteed to the citizenry in the Constitution. Indeed, police have been transformed into extensions of the military, towns and cities have become battlefields.

Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a new American cultural phenomenon - one that is at odds with our heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern, secular knowledge and science. With mordant wit, Jacoby surveys an antirationalist landscape extending from pop culture to a pseudo-intellectual universe of "junk thought".

A sixth-generation North Carolinian, highly-acclaimed author John Ehle grew up on former Cherokee hunting grounds. His experience as an accomplished novelist, combined with his extensive, meticulous research, culminates in this moving tragedy rich with historical detail.

The first new edition in 10 years of this important study of Latinos in US history, Harvest of Empire spans five centuries - from the first New World colonies to the first decade of the new millennium. Latinos are now the largest minority group in the United States, and their impact on American popular culture - from food to entertainment to literature - is greater than ever.

Somehow, this long-discredited economic philosophy is making a comeback, not only on college campuses and political talk shows, but among sincere Catholics. Some think that it could be the answer to greed and globalism. Others even argue that it’s the best way to obey Christ’s command to help the poor. Let’s give socialism a fresh chance, they say. A democratic socialism, this time, friendly to religion and ordered to the common good like the church says the economy should be.

Baffled by the stereotypes presented by Hollywood and much historical fiction, many other Americans find the contemporary American Indian an enigma. Compounding their confusion is the highly publicized struggle of the contemporary Indian for self-determination, lost land, cultural preservation, and fundamental human rights - a struggle dramatized both by public acts of protest and by precedent-setting legal actions. American Indians, American Justice explores the complexities of the present Indian situation, particularly with regard to legal and political rights.

Joshua Rubenstein's riveting account takes us back to the second half of 1952, when no one could foresee an end to Joseph Stalin's murderous regime. He was poised to challenge the newly elected US president Dwight Eisenhower with armed force and was also broadening a vicious campaign against Soviet Jews. Stalin's sudden collapse and death in March 1953 was as dramatic and mysterious as his life. It is no overstatement to say that his passing marked a major turning point in the 20th century.

Over 50 years, Charles M. Schulz created a comic strip that is one of the indisputable glories of American popular culture. Some 20 years after the last strip appeared, the characters Schulz brought to life in Peanuts continue to resonate with millions of fans, their beguiling four-panel adventures and television escapades offering lessons about happiness, friendship, disappointment, childhood, and life itself. Here, 33 writers and artists reflect on the deeper truths of Schulz’s deceptively simple comic, its impact on their lives and art and on the broader culture.