United States Politics

The slave ship Amistad set sail from Havana on July 2, 1839, on a routine delivery of human cargo. A few days into its voyage, the 53 African captives aboard would seize control and steer a new course - one that took them to freedom and ultimately into history. Though the Amistad rebellion has been celebrated in films and books, its story has largely been told through the eyes of white abolitionists, with the Supreme Court victory by the Africans as the ultimate triumph. Now, Marcus Rediker’s captivating new history turns the lens on the Africans themselves.

Ida B. Wells is an American icon of truth telling. Born to slaves, she was a pioneer of investigative journalism, a crusader against lynching, and a tireless advocate for suffrage, both for women and for African Americans. She cofounded the NAACP, started the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago, and was a leader in the early civil rights movement. This engaging memoir relates Wells’ private life as a mother as well as her public activities as a teacher, lecturer, and journalist in her fight for equality and justice.

Historian Samuel Moyn asks a troubling but urgent question: What if efforts to make war more ethical - to ban torture and limit civilian casualties - have only shored up the military enterprise and made it sturdier? Moyn looks back at a century and a half of passionate arguments about the ethics of using force - from the 19th-century struggle to make war less lethal to the eventual shift from opposing the crime of war to opposing war crimes, with fateful consequences.

An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic - John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.

Taking his typically in-depth, historically informed view, Thom Hartmann asks: What if the Supreme Court didn't have the power to strike down laws? According to the Constitution, it doesn't. From the founding of the republic until 1803, the Supreme Court was the final court of appeals, as it was always meant to be. So where did the concept of judicial review start? As so much of modern American history, it began with the battle between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, and with Marbury v. Madison.

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.

Conducted under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, intended to stem the flow of firearms to Mexico, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) ran a series of “gun walking” sting operations, including Operations Wide Receiver and Operation Fast & Furious. The government allowed licensed gun dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers so that they could continue to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher-level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels.

The mother of Matthew Shepard shares her story about her son's death and the choice she made to become an international gay rights activist.

In the turbulent world of Chicago politics, Boss dives deep into the captivating life and legacy of Richard J. Daley, the influential politician and mastermind behind the city's Democratic Party machine. Mike Royko's scathing and meticulously researched account follows Richard J. Daley's rise to power, from his inauspicious youth on Chicago's South Side through his rapid climb to the seat of power as the city's mayor. This engrossing biography brings to life the most powerful political figure of his time.

Since 9/11, more than 300 Americans - born and raised in Minnesota, Alabama, New Jersey, and elsewhere - have been indicted or convicted of terrorism charges. Some have taken the fight abroad: An American was among those who planned the attacks in Mumbai, and more than 80 US citizens have been charged with ISIS-related crimes. Others have acted on American soil, as with the attacks at Fort Hood, at the Boston Marathon, and in San Bernardino. What motivates them, how are they trained, and what do we sacrifice in our efforts to track them?

In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the 21st century. Water Protectors knew this battle for native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anti-colonial struggle would continue. Our History Is the Future is at once a work of history, a manifesto, and an intergenerational story of resistance.

The decline and fall of America's global empire is the central feature of today's geopolitical landscape, and the nature of our response to it will determine much of our future trajectory, with implications that reach far beyond the limits of one nation's borders. Decline and Fall: The End of Empire and the Future of Democracy in 21st Century America challenges the conventional wisdom of empire, using a wealth of historical examples combined with groundbreaking original analysis.

A revealing, behind-the-scenes examination of how Congress twice fumbled its best chance to hold accountable a president many considered one of the most dangerous in American history. The definitive—and only—insider account of both Trump impeachments, as told by the two reporters on the front lines covering them for The Washington Post and Politico.

The complete texts of the documents that tell the story of the clashes and compromises that gave birth to the Unites States of America. Should the members of the government be elected by direct vote of the people? Should the government be headed by a single executive, and how powerful should that executive be? Should immigrants be allowed into the United States? How should judges be appointed? What human rights should be safe from government infringement? In 1787, these important questions and others were raised as the states debated the merits of the proposed Constitution.

When Bronwen Dickey brought her new dog home, she saw no traces of the infamous viciousness in her affectionate, timid pit bull. Which made her wonder: How had the breed - beloved by Teddy Roosevelt, Helen Keller, and TV's Little Rascals - come to be known as a brutal fighter? Her search for answers takes her from 19th-century New York City dogfighting pits - the cruelty of which drew the attention of the recently formed ASPCA - to early 20th-century movie sets where pit bulls cavorted with Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton.

The life story of Coretta Scott King - wife of Martin Luther King Jr., founder of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and singular 20th-century American civil rights activist - as told fully for the first time, toward the end of her life, to one of her closest friends. Born in 1927 to daringly enterprising Black parents in the Deep South, Coretta Scott had always felt called to a special purpose.

They immigrated to America from Germany in the nineteenth century with names like Loeb, Sachs, Seligman, Lehman, Guggenheim, and Goldman. From tenements on the Lower East Side to Park Avenue mansions, this handful of Jewish families turned small businesses into imposing enterprises and amassed spectacular fortunes. But despite possessing breathtaking wealth that rivaled the Astors and Rockefellers, they were barred by the gentile establishment from the lofty realm of "the 400," a register of New York's most elite, because of their religion and humble backgrounds.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson insisted that "the policeman is the frontline soldier in our war against crime", and police forces, arms makers, policy makers, and crime experts heeded this call to arms, bringing weapons and practices from the arena of war back home. The Punitive Turn in American Life offers a political and cultural history of the ways in which punishment and surveillance have moved to the center of American life and become imbued with militarized language and policies.

On a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel—the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer did what virtually no one in US history had done before: she charged a gentleman with rape. Her accusation sparked a raw courtroom drama and a relentless struggle for vindication that threatened both Lanah’s and her assailant’s lives.

A collection of non-fiction essays about the counter-culture of the 1960s that dives deep into the issues that marked the era: female empowerment, increasing freedom around sexuality, vibrant subcultures, and the rise of psychedelic drugs. In this sprawling work, Wolfe profiles Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and compares him to Jay Gatsby, interviews one of the first women to get breast implants, and hangs out with freewheeling surfers (aka The Pump House Gang).