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New 700 - 900s/Travel Non-Fiction Books 700 Art, Design, Sports, and Recreation 800 Literature and Poetry 900 Geography, Travel, and History |
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Newest items are displayed first. Click on a title for more information or to place a hold. |
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The Magical Game: The Spirit and History of Baseball's Superstitions, Rituals, and Curses
by Addy Baird
For more than 150 years, a magical culture has been central to the
game of baseball: At the turn of the 20th century, a battle between two lucky mascots defined early World Series matchups. Soon after, two generational curses spawned decades of heartbreaking losses for the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox. Today, players like Bryce Harper perform at-bat rituals, fans refuse to wash the jerseys of their favorite players, and baseball people everywhere refuse to utter the words no-hitter before there's been a hit. In The Magical Game, journalist and converted baseball fan Addy Baird turns her reporter's eye to her
favorite sport, investigating the roots of these magical practices and telling the story of baseball's long history of superstition, rituals, curses, jinxes, hoodoos, and hexes. Spanning three centuries of baseball
history and three dozen more of magical history, Baird takes readers through fascinating, forgotten tidbits in the sport, untangles the game's legends, and considers baseball's uncertain future. In the face of recent MLB rule changes and the rise of advanced statistics, Baird looks at the many decades of concern about baseball's declining popularity and the evolution of the sport, as well as why and how a culture of magic has remained strong at the core of the game for so many years.
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The Killer and Frank Lloyd Wright: The True Story of Mass Murder in Paradise
by Casey Sherman
The scandal. The genius. The murder that shocked America. Frank
Lloyd Wright was more than the mind behind America's most iconic buildings--he was a man whose turbulent private life captivated a
nation. The famous architect's stormy marriage to Kitty Wright and his infamous affair with another woman, Mamah Borthwick, ignited one of the country's first celebrity scandals, splashed across headlines from coast to coast. Then, in August 1914, scandal turned to horror. A
tragedy at Taliesin, the Wisconsin home Wright built as a monument to love, shook the very foundation of Wright's life--and catapulted him
back to the front pages of newspapers across the country as readers clamored for glimpses of his very darkest moments. In The Killer and Frank Lloyd Wright, New York Times bestselling author Casey Sherman delves beyond the myth of Wright's genius to reveal a man of relentless ambition, consuming passion, and devastating loss. With haunting intimacy and propulsive storytelling, Sherman delivers a portrait of an artist who could not escape the shadows of his own making--and who rose, again and again, from the ashes.
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The Dog's Gaze: A Visual History
by Thomas W. Laqueur
Long before the phrase man's best friend became common parlance, dogs were already standing beside us in art as in life. In The Dog's
Gaze, the historian Thomas W. Laqueur invites us to explore why they feature more than any other animal in the ways in which we picture ourselves and our stories. Dogs have been ubiquitous in the
worldmaking of visual artists as far back as the Paleolithic age. Looking across the Western tradition, from Giotto to Goya and Rubens to Rego, Laqueur shows what their presence--as hunting partners, beloved friends, and even conduits to the afterlife--reveals about our own ways of seeing and how we want to be remembered. Far from being mere motifs, dogs are an integral and intentional element of the images in which they appear: They provide narrative coherence; they look out and bear witness, often on the artist's behalf; they illuminate our understanding of morality and melancholy and some, like us, become celebrities. Indeed, as Laqueur reveals, dogs in art are our social doppelgangers, our companions in looking and being. Richly illustrated and lovingly written, The Dog's Gaze is a unique visual history that examines the remarkable social bond between two species, shedding new light on the human condition through the eyes of our canine companions.
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Checkmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess
by Ben Mezrich
In September 2022, the unthinkable happened: nineteen-year-old American chess prodigy Hans Niemann defeated world champion
Magnus Carlsen in a stunning face-to-face match. Within days, Carlsen accused Niemann of cheating--a bombshell allegation that rocked the chess world. As the scandal spiraled, Chess.com--the dominant force in online chess--launched a high-stakes investigation igniting a global media firestorm. But Checkmate is about more than a cheating scandal. It's the story of a teenager willing to risk everything to rise to the top;
a reclusive genius suddenly fighting to protect his legacy; and a centuries-old game transforming into a billion-dollar industry fueled by streaming, sponsorships, and Silicon Valley power players. With
exclusive access to the central figures, Ben Mezrich takes readers deep inside the weird, wild, and cutthroat world of competitive chess--where genius meets ambition, and every move could be your last.
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Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music, 1969-2000
by Barry Walters
From the underground dancefloors of the Seventies to the global charts of the Nineties, LGBTQ artists and audiences shaped music's sound, style, and spirit. In Mighty Real, veteran journalist Barry Walters chronicles its LGBTQ history from the Velvet Underground to the 21st century's dawn as he honors the artists who redefined gender, defied tradition, and dared to challenge sexual norms with the help of a
record business that wasn't as straight as commonly believed. Drawing on his decades as a New York- and San Francisco-based music critic, Walters examines how LGBTQ musicians, music industry executives,
and fans reshaped the mainstream. He connects the dots between
David Bowie's dazzling reinventions, Grace Jones's androgynous glamor, Prince's boundary-shattering sexuality, and the radical candor of the Indigo Girls to prove they're all doing the same thing: fighting oppression.
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Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World
by Victoria Johnson
New York, spring 1859. Outside Frederic Church's Tenth Street studio, men and women amassed by the thousands hoping for a glimpse of his magnificent Heart of the Andes: a painting whose sublime, 'near supernatural' rendering of the vast Andean landscape encountered on the artist's recent travels introduced thousands of Americans to the fierce, majestic beauty of the far-flung wildernesses of the globe. Frederic Church brought the world to America, and America into the world. Cementing the United States as a cultural and artistic force a full century before America's Abstract Impressionists rose to prominence, Church's bold paintings composed odes in color, shadow, and light to natural places near and far: the lush jungles of South America and immense icebergs of Newfoundland where he journeyed as a young man; the Syrian deserts and ancient, ruined cities where he and his
wife traveled following the devastating loss of their two young children; the verdant, luminous valley around the Hudson where Church first studied painting and where he returned and established his estate, Olana, whose landscape itself became a work of art. Church was a master artist and innovator, turning landscape painting into a portrait of a nation, and in the process, putting American art on the map of the world. Glorious Country is a book, Johnson writes, about how we see and what we save.
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The Long Game: U.S. Men's Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts
by Leander Schaerlaeckens
For almost half a century, the U.S. men's national team existed on the fringes of world soccer--out of sight, out of mind, and, more often than not, out of the World Cup. Between 1950 and 1990, the program toiled in irrelevance, a collection of part-timers playing before empty
bleachers. Then, things began to shift, and today's U.S. men's team is loaded with young and pedigreed talent, expected to make its mark at the 2026 World Cup. The story of this team's rise to prominence is a dramatic journey, with setbacks, buffoonery, misunderstandings, glory, and a wide, eccentric, talented cast of characters. With insight, wit, and razor-sharp storytelling, The Long Game is an unforgettable look at the past, present, and uncertain future of American soccer-- and the team that could redefine it all.
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This Is Not about Running: A Memoir
by Mary Cain
Few women have ever run 800 meters in under two minutes. Even
fewer people have taken on running's abusive training culture and won. Mary Cain has done both. She emerged as a running phenom at age
12, a straight-A student obsessed with Greco-Roman mythology and the freedom she felt when she ran fast. Like any middle-schooler, she just wanted to fit in, so she learned to run through the discomfort of hard training sessions, and the confusion of her coaches' and teammates' bullying. And she was overjoyed when, at 16, Alberto Salazar called to invite her to train with the famed Nike Oregon Project. Cain was poised to transform the sport, Salazar told her. She resolved to hold on to his favor, even as he insisted she lose weight and push through the pain of emerging injury. For years, she excelled, setting records against elite runners twice her age. The Olympics were in her sights. But off the track, Cain was crumbling. She snuck granola bars in the middle of the night and sank into a deep depression as injury after injury set in. Finally, she left the Oregon Project, telling herself she just needed a break. A chorus rang out across the running community: What
happened to Mary Cain? Now, with her suit against Nike behind her,
Cain is ready to share her side of the story--and to flip the script on abuse in youth sports.
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Fire and Clay: How Bricks Reveal the Hidden History of Chicago
by Will Quam
Will Quam shows that while the bricks that make up so many buildings in Chicago are inherently interesting, they also allow us to see the history of the city afresh. Simply looking-but really looking-at bricks reveals countless stories of the city's growth that have gone untold. Quam's infectious passion for the lowly brick and its history lets him range widely, casting his gaze across buildings of all types, from the famous and prominent to the vernacular and weird. He creates connections that might otherwise be hard to see, and he draws distinctions among buildings that seem practically identical-until you start looking through his eyes.
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We Are the World (Cup): A Personal History of the World's Greatest Sporting Event
by Roger Bennett
Every four years, millions of viewers all over the globe are united in the drama of the world's biggest sporting event. Geopolitical turmoil,
popular culture, clashes of custom and style all weave together on the pitch, making the World Cup about so much more than soccer. For fans, it is a series of triumphs, heartbreaks, and shocking twists of fate. For the players, single matches, single plays, single glorious moments can
be life changing. In We are the World (Cup), Roger Bennett imbues his unmitigated love for and dedication to the game into a deeply researched and deeply personal distillation of every tournament he has experienced from the 1978 to 2022. Beloved for his wit, humility, and unadulterated love of the game that the rest of the world calls football
is a celebration of our global culture and the power of sport to unite us all.
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Parks and Rec: The Underdog TV Show That Lit'rally Inspired a Vision for a Better America
by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
More than fifteen years after Parks and Recreation premiered, it has become a streaming staple. It's beloved for its jokes, characters, and expressions--the show even created a now widely observed holiday, Galentine's Day. How did it all happen and how did the show transform from a ratings disappointment into a cult classic? Pop culture historian Jennifer Keishin Armstrong reveals all this and more in the
authoritative history of the show, which is as full of humor, optimism, and heart as Parks and Recreation itself. Through new and exclusive interviews, as well as deep insight and smart and entertaining pop culture analysis, Armstrong tells the story of how Parks and Recreation came to BE. Lovingly told and deeply researched, Parks and Rec is the ultimate history of the show that taught us what's important in life: friends, waffles, and work.
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Partially Devoured: How Night of the Living Dead Saved My Life and Changed the World
by Daniel Kraus
Daniel Kraus first saw George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead
when he was five years old. Through watching it approximately three hundred times since, Kraus discovered the many ways the film is tied
to his childhood trauma and how its influence has carried into his adulthood. He couldn't help but wonder: Are there other admirers of
the film out there who feel the same? Partially Devoured uses a frame-by-frame deep dive into Night of the Living Dead to produce a kaleidoscopic cultural investigation of the film's importance and to examine the author's early life of rural isolation and local violence. Careening from film analysis to rabbit-hole tangents, Partially
Devoured will take readers from screaming laughter to the depths of grief, all while illustrating how a beloved genre film has woven itself
into so many facets of our lives.
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On Witness and Respair: Essays
by Jesmyn Ward
Beginning with her upbringing in a multigenerational household in rural Mississippi, the cradle of both her youth and her gift for storytelling, Ward brings her keen wisdom and hauntingly lyrical prose to a range of topics, following in her grandmother Dorothy's footsteps when she promises always to Tell it straight. Tell it all. True to her word, in these pages Ward contemplates the writers and novels of her youth and adulthood--the transformative power of discovering Octavia Butler as a twenty-something, the mirror that Richard Wright's novels held up to
her own childhood, and of course, her lifelong love for Toni Morrison. Ward ruminates on her approach to both fiction and life, reflecting on the power of the novel, how to raise a Black son in an era of rising divisiveness and cruelty, as well as her own personal tragedies--
including the titular essay of the collection, which tells the story of her partner's sudden death on the eve of the COVID-19 epidemic.
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The Land and Its People: Essays
by David Sedaris
In The Land and Its People, Sedaris investigates what it means to be a traveler, a brother, a lifelong friend. Trying on the role of caretaker after his boyfriend Hugh's hip-replacement surgery, he both succeeds and fails. He covers ground with his friend Dawn and challenges her to eat
a truck tire. A ambivalent Duolingo bot becomes his unlikely confidante as he attempts to describe his family in a foreign language. Ever adding to his list of Countries I Have Been To, he rides a horse named Tequila
in Guatemala, buys a bespoke priest's cassock in Vatican City, and goes on safari in Kenya without taking a single photo. Time takes its toll: scrolling through his address book, he counts those he couldn't bear to outlive, and realizes how many are already gone. Throughout these essays--at once acerbic and tender, playful and profound--Sedaris
shows how much there is to marvel at when you keep your head up
and your eyes open, observing with warmth and curiosity our
fascinating human species and the lands we inhabit.
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Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry
by Ada Limón
Ada Limon--celebrated poet laureate and 2023 MacArthur fellow--takes us on an inspiring journey into a world where poetry is both a soothing balm for the soul and a spark for transformation. With her blend of accessible yet profound prose, Limon delivers a powerful message: poetry has the ability to heal, connect, and remind us of our shared humanity. Limon's mission to make poetry approachable shines brightly in this slim but impactful book. Recognized as a 2024 Time magazine Woman of the Year for her commitment to bringing poetry into
everyday lives, Limon passionately argues that poetry is essential to understanding ourselves--our tenderness, courage, imperfections, and our deep, unshakable worthiness of love. Drawing from her own experiences as the 24th US poet laureate, Limon shares how poetry connects us not only to each other but to the natural world. This theme is at the heart of her project You Are Here, which celebrates the beauty of our environment and our place in it.
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Poetry Says It Better: Poems to Help You Wake Up
by Ellen Burstyn
In this beautiful volume, Ellen Burstyn celebrates poetic magic and shares her favorite works. Now into her nineties, Ellen reveals she had an evangelical response to learning poetry even as a child and would memorize and recite the works of Edna St Vincent Millay to envelope herself in the poet's deeper emotional landscape. As Burstyn continued her epic rise through film and theater--eventually winning an Oscar, a Tony, a BAFTA, and an Emmy--poetry gave voice to her experience as
no other literary art form could. She never went anywhere without her curated poetry pack. Featuring work by W.B. Yeats, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mary Oliver, William Wordsworth, Edgar Allan Poe, Rumi, William Ernest Henley, and others, Poetry Says It Better is a perfect daily companion for everyone looking to deepen and add meaning to their life experience. Throughout, Burstyn's charming voice and luminous insights help readers meet her in this poetic celebration--soul to soul.
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How to Disappear and Why: Essays
by Kyle Minor
From acclaimed fiction writer Kyle Minor emerges a collection of essays all about disappearing. Considering a wide scope of cultural, historical, spiritual, and philosophical figures and ideas, Minor assembles a collection of essays centered on the concept of disappearance. Considering subjects like ghosts (think Shakespeare and The Sixth Sense), lost temples, professional erasure and strategic exile, these essays dig deep into the cultural and historical archives of our
civilization. Minor's keen wit and perception ensure one thing: readers will never forget this book.
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The Hero Next Door: Stories of Patriotism and Purpose
by Martha Raddatz
For twenty-five years, Martha Raddatz has witnessed the grit and resilience of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who have been fighting America's wars since 9/11. What motivates them to do such impossible things? How do they find the courage to put their lives on
the line, or the strength to start over when things don't go as planned? The Hero Next Door offers a dozen portraits of servicemen and women who are every bit as inspiring as those of the Greatest Generation.
Every one of them has shown awe-inspiring strength of character, creativity, and drive, faced daunting odds, and come out stronger. Life can turn on a moment, and who's to say what we'll do? That, we learn, is when you spot the real heroes: when no one is watching. Individually, their stories are deeply inspiring, Raddatz writes. Together, they offer something beyond inspiration: insight into what it means to live with a life-defining courage and sense of purpose.
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Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat-And the American Revolution-Transformed Britain
by Danielle Allen
Allen demonstrates in Radical Duke that the rights of man, the theory
of revolution, and calls for popular sovereignty all emerged from the radical energies of London before they spread across the Atlantic and
the Channel. At the center of this new age was Charles Lennox, the progressive Third Duke of Richmond, a rarely cited historical figure who becomes the biographical focus of Allen’s groundbreaking work. Even with royal blood coursing through his veins, the handsome, gallivanting Duke (1735–1806) preferred to rub shoulders with ordinary folk―supporting the rights of jurors, freedom of the press, and
religious toleration. As Allen shows, from 1767 to 1782, he was
England’s leading voice of opposition to the Crown, and, as the leader
of the Sussex militia, even a threat to the King’s power. But the Duke
did not challenge the Crown alone. The archives have long hidden the covert alliance between the young Duke and his age-mate Thomas Paine, the future author of Common Sense. While working as an
obscure tax collector, Paine was engaged by the Duke to contribute to the most influential but anonymous newspaper essays of the age, The Letters of Junius, which spawned sedition trials, defined the rights of man, and brought England to the brink of revolution. Along with a
small cadre of radicals, Paine and the Duke fired hearts across two continents and secretly stoked a burgeoning political movement.
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Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old
by Mary Beard
The incomparable Mary Beard is back, and she's talking all things classics. Why the ongoing fascination with the ancient world? This witty, approachable book asks why--for better or (sometimes) worse--
antiquity continues to exert such a powerful hold on the contemporary imagination. Recalling a formative childhood encounter with a four-thousand-year-old piece of bread in a museum, Beard introduces the idea of thauma, or wonder, that kick-started a lifetime engaging with classics. It was not the canonical greats of ancient literature and art
that initially drew her in, she confesses, but rather the more intimate, messy, and humdrum evidence of daily life in the remote past. Confronting the uses and abuses of symbols of the ancient world,
Beard reminds us that the traditions and masterpieces of Greece and Rome have certainly been politicized, but they belong to neither the
left nor the right. Happily, no one owns the past. She warns us not to
let a sense of reverence or overfamiliarity dampen the shock of the old, arguing that one of the most important things that classics teach us is how to grapple with complicated and controversial things.
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Tyrants and Rogues: Understanding the Declaration of Independence
by Robert G. Parkinson
Parkinson’s great innovation is to allow us, 250 years on, to see the Declaration as its authors did. For them, the opening paragraphs were not the main event. It was the body of the Declaration―the twenty-seven grievances against King George―that formed the essential part. Even Thomas Jefferson would have been puzzled by history’s fixation
on his opening sentences. Parkinson takes us into the grievances,
giving us stories of the Revolutionary era that are little known today,
but loomed large for the patriots. In his brilliantly original reading of
the Declaration, Parkinson asks fundamental questions that have too often been overlooked: Why did the colonies declare independence
when they did? What were their nonnegotiable demands? Who were
the individuals whose actions made reconciliation impossible? By recovering the people and conflicts behind the Declaration’s grievances, Parkinson offers a strikingly new account of the American Revolution―and shows that the issues that most alarmed colonists in 1776 are urgent once again today.
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Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter
by Ada Ferrer
In 1963, four years after Fidel Castro came to power, Ada Ferrer's mother made the agonizing decision to flee Cuba with her infant daughter, Ada, and to leave behind her nine-year-old son, Poly. That moment was but a ripple in a much larger story of a world historical revolution. Yet, in another more intimate family history, that choice
was a crossroads, ultimately inseparable from who and what they all became. In this beautiful memoir, Ferrer masterfully shifts between her roles as historian and family member, weaving a multigenerational tale that reaches into the past to understand the circumstances and choices that led to the present. Using a treasure trove of letters written across the gulf of family separation and found after the death of Ada's
parents, as well as government documents acquired through Freedom
of Information Act requests, Ferrer offers us a profound reflection on belonging, memory, and the lasting imprint of history.
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Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower's Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded Usaid
by Nicholas Enrich
A civil servant discovers his breaking point when the Trump administration's cruelty and indifference threaten to violate the oath he swore to uphold. Nicholas Enrich had finally achieved his lifelong dream: becoming USAID's lead official for global health. But that dream turned out to be a nightmare in the tumultuous time after President Trump's second inauguration. In the months that followed, USAID became the first target of Elon Musk's newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The mission to which Enrich had dedicated his
career was being dismantled before his eyes--even the name of the agency was removed from the building's facade. Enrich witnessed firsthand the Trump administration's lies, how it systematically
prevented USAID from providing lifesaving foreign aid, and the death and suffering around the world that resulted from careless decisions. Finally determining he could no longer keep quiet, and risking the
career that he loved deeply, Enrich released a set of whistleblowing memos exposing the administration's illegal and destructive actions. Enrich was put on administrative leave, yet his memos went viral and had a sustained impact. In the days following their release, hundreds of canceled aid projects were revived, and the documents were cited in a Supreme Court case on the legality of USAID's dissolution. While his memos were too late to save USAID, Enrich was one of the first government officials to publicly blow the whistle on DOGE's reckless destruction, sounding an early alarm bell for other federal agencies that would soon find themselves in the crosshairs.
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American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed
by Isaac Fitzgerald
As a child, Isaac Fitzgerald was captivated by Johnny Appleseed, drawn to the legend by family ties, his father's larger-than-life stories, and a shared restlessness to leave home and discover what lay beyond. In American Rambler, he sets out on a year-long journey to follow Appleseed's path, walking (okay, sometimes driving, and at one point, even floating downstream) from Massachusetts to Indiana. On this journey, Fitzgerald turns a childhood fascination into a profound reckoning of loss and grief, ritual and faith, grimy gas station
bathrooms and scenic apple picking. He is followed by a mysterious creature, camps in hostile environments, trespasses more than once,
and is warmed by the generosity of strangers at every turn. A moving blend of memoir, history, and travelogue, American Rambler is at once
an ode to the American heartland, a meditation on escaping the breakneck pace of modern life, and a clear-eyed look at the myths--
often violent, sometimes hopeful, frequently romanticized--at the very core of American identity and history.
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Torched: How a City Was Left to Burn, and the Olympic Rush to Rebuild L.A.
by Jonathan Vigliotti
In Torched, Vigliotti brings readers inside the inferno that devastated
Los Angeles, weaving on-the-ground reporting with the deeper story of how a century of unchecked development and political mismanagement set the stage for disaster. With clarity and verve, he recounts the chaos of the fire, the flawed emergency response, and the human stories of survival and loss in the city he loves. But this is more than a chronicle
of destruction. Vigliotti unravels this catastrophe by placing it within the larger history of Los Angeles, a city that has in many ways been defined by its attraction to reinvention and deference to those who move fast and break things--an impulse that now puts it at risk of a short-sighted post-fire rebuild in the run-up to the 2028 Olympic Games. A future
that might maximize profits but could potentially do too little to prevent similar disasters in the future or address the rampant inequities this blaze brought to global attention.
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All We Say: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches
by Ben Rhodes
For 250 years, we have debated what it means to be American. This question shaped the compromises in our Constitution and the
arguments we've been having ever since--spawning abolitionism, secession, and civil war; populism, mass migration, and global leadership; movements for reform and the backlashes to them. In All
We Say, Ben Rhodes tells the story of fifteen speeches--some iconic, others long forgotten--which have both shaped and reflected the argument Americans have been having from our founding to the
intense divisions of our time. Through riveting and beautifully rendered accounts of the people, movements, and moments that produced these speeches, Rhodes traces the history of our battle over identity. The
result is a singular and revealing portrait of America itself: a nation divided between two stories--one of inheritance, power, and exclusion, the other of equality, striving, and belonging. Drawing on a decade writing for Barack Obama, Rhodes also shows us how words can
redirect a nation, what makes a speech enduring, and why oratory is a unique form of persuasion in American democracy.
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Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea's Personality Cult
by Jonathan Cheng
For nearly eight decades, North Korea has marched defiantly to its own beat, shaking off its Soviet and Chinese sponsors to emerge as the world's most enigmatic nation--a nuclear-armed state ruled by a dictatorial dynasty. Underpinning the state is a personality cult more soaked in religiosity than those constructed by Stalin or Mao--one that traces its roots back to the Christian fervor of post-Civil War America. Jonathan Cheng, the Wall Street Journal's China bureau chief and
former Korea bureau chief, takes us deep inside Pyongyang, a city once so dominated by Christianity that it was known as the Jerusalem of the East. Cheng introduces us to Samuel Moffett, a Presbyterian missionary from Madison, Indiana, who would venture into Pyongyang at the end
of the nineteenth century and build a remarkable following--one that would include the Kim family that today presides over one of the
world's harshest persecutors of the Christian faith. At the center of this story is North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung, son of two fervent
Christians and progenitor of an ideology known as Kimilsungism, an exercise in idolatry that has elevated him, and his successor son and grandson, to Christlike status, from the humble manger where he was born to the subway seat on which the venerated leader once placed his posterior, cordoned off as if it were a religious relic. Drawing on letters, diaries, and never-before-unearthed archival material that temper and often contradict the glorious historical record promoted by Kim Il Sung's legions of hagiographers, Korean Messiah tells the true story of a
country shrouded in fictions.
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This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark
by Craig Fehrman
In 1806, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark return from their journey--having led the Corps of Discovery across eight thousand miles of rapids, mountains, forests, and ravines--they bring an incredible tale starring themselves as courageous explorers, skilled survivalists, underrated scientists, and peaceful ambassadors. While there is truth in those descriptions, there is also distortion. From one of the most
exciting new historians to emerge in the past decade, This Vast Enterprise offers a novel take on the expedition: a gripping narrative
that draws on lost documents, stunning analysis, and Native perspectives. Craig Fehrman spent five years visiting more than thirty archives, interviewing more than a hundred sources, and collecting oral history passed down over centuries. He came to see that the success of Lewis and Clark depended on much more than just Lewis and Clark. We all know Sacajawea, and some of us know York, the Black man Clark enslaved. But here we meet John Ordway, a working-class soldier who fought grizzlies and towed the captains' hulking barge. We hear from Wolf Calf, a Blackfoot teenager who watched his friend die in a battle with Lewis and his men. Each chapter moves to a different person's
point of view, describing their desires and contradictions. We see Thomas Jefferson operating in an age of bitter partisan unrest--his
secret political maneuvers to fund the expedition, revealed here for the first time, are a case study in presidential power. Fehrman balances the story's adventure with the humanity of its protagonists. The result is a thrilling reminder that even the most familiar moments in history can
still surprise us.
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A Terrible Intimacy: Interracial Life in the Slaveholding South
by Melvin Patrick Ely
A Terrible Intimacy recounts six criminal cases in one Virginia county in the years preceding the Civil War. Witnesses of both races describe a startling variety of encounters between white and Black that
reconfigures the binary terrain of master-slave relations. Contrary to
our common assumption, fully half the enslaved people in the South lived not on sprawling plantations but on small properties. Cruelty was baked into the system, yet in households of five, ten, fifteen, or twenty people, exploiters and exploited, knew each other well, sharing
religious worship, folkways, and complex domestic dynamics. Slaves, slave owners, overseers, and poor whites drank, played, slept, and
even committed crimes together. Yet whippings happened often, enslaved families were split up, and in 1861, most white men in Prince Edward County were ready to fight to defend their right to own other human beings. These webs of interaction make clear that white Americans recognized the humanity of their Black neighbors, even as they remained committed to a system that abused and sometimes terrorized them. Offering striking new insights into the true complexity
of life in the old South, A Terrible Intimacy expands our understanding
of this darkest of histories.
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This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History
by Beverly Gage
Ride along with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Beverly Gage as she travels the country to see the museums, historic sites, roadside attractions, reenactments, and souvenir shops where Americans learn--and fight--about our history. From the birth of the nation in
Philadelphia to Disneyland and the California dream, This Land Is Your Land offers a guided tour of thirteen places and thirteen key moments that define America's greatest successes and challenges. The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a document that proclaimed the liberty and equality of all human beings, but produced a country that often failed to agree upon--or live up to--those ideals. Gage shows that Americans can face their past and still
love their country. Toss the book in the back seat--or listen on audio
with the windows down--and join the journey.
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The Last Titans: How Churchill and de Gaulle Saved Their Nations and Transformed the World
by Richard Vinen
De Gaulle--tall, gauche, and incorruptible--exhibited qualities often associated with the English. Churchill--short, charming, witty, and a
bon vivant--resembled the quintessential politician of the French Third Republic. Their working relationship was rarely smooth, but they appreciated each other's stature: de Gaulle said Churchill was the great artist of a great history, while Churchill recognized de Gaulle as
l'homme du destin. Richard Vinen explores what made these men exceptional and how profoundly they were influenced by their national cultures. Beyond personal intrigue, Vinen makes a wider point that Britain and France are both haunted by perceptions of past greatness. He retraces the paths of two leaders who once helmed superpowers
but lived to see their nations weakened by two world wars and the loss of empires. Written with extraordinary narrative verve, The Last Titans offers a fresh exploration into the lives of de Gaulle and Churchill. By bringing their two stories into one, each man is seen anew and we
gain fresh insights into their achievements and their legacy today.
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A Compendium of the Early History of Chicago: To the Year 1835 When the Indians Left
by Ulrich Danckers
Welcome to early Chicagou! Accounts of an earlier time and its characters are recorded in these pages. This compendium denotes the locale and presents a wide variety of information concerning Chicago's earliest period, long before the settlement developed into a midwest metropolis. Many people came, mattered, and moved along; some settled. In these pages meet the native Americans, the French, some Canadians, traders, soldiers, settlers, women and children who are a
part of Chicago's story.
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The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan
by Lyse Doucet
When the Inter-Continental Kabul opened in 1969, Afghanistan's first luxury hotel symbolised a dream of a modernising country connected
to the world. More than fifty years on, the Inter-Continental is still standing. It has endured Soviet occupation, multiple coups, a grievous civil war, a US invasion and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban. History lives within its scarred windows and walls. Lyse Doucet, the BBC's
Chief International Correspondent, has been checking into the Inter-Continental since 1988. And here, she uses its story to craft a richly immersive history of modern Afghanistan. The result is a remarkably vivid history of how Afghans have survived a half century of
destruction and disruption. It is the story of a hotel, but also the story
of a people.
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