A New York Times Bestseller By the author of Showtime--the source for HBO's Winning Time--the definitive biography of mythic multi-sport star Bo Jackson. "A legendary tome on a legendary athlete." --Chris Herring, author of Blood in the Garden From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, the greatest athlete of all time streaked across American sports and popular culture. Stadiums struggled to contain him. Clocks failed to capture his speed. His strength was legendary. His power unmatched. Video game makers turned him into an invincible character--and they were dead-on. He climbed (and walked across) walls, splintered baseball bats over his knee, turned oncoming tacklers into ground meat. He became the first person to simultaneously star in two major professional sports, and overtook Michael Jordan as America's most recognizable pitchman. He was on our televisions, in our magazines, plastered across billboards. He was half man, half myth. Then, almost overnight, he was gone. He was Bo Jackson. Drawing on an astonishing 720 original interviews, New York Times bestselling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman captures as never before the elusive truth about Jackson, Auburn University's transcendent Heisman Trophy winner, superstar of both the NFL and Major League Baseball and ubiquitous "Bo Knows" Nike pitchman. Did Bo really jump over a parked Volkswagen? (Yes.) Did he actually run a 4.13 40? (Yes.) During the 1991 flight that nearly killed every member of the Chicago White Sox, was he in the cockpit trying to help? (Oddly, yes. Or no. Or ... maybe.) Bo Jackson isn't Jim Thorpe. He's not Deion Sanders, either. No, Bo Jackson is Paul Bunyan. The Last Folk Hero is the true tale of Bo Jackson that only "master storyteller" (NPR.org) Jeff Pearlman could tell.

In his acclaimed bestselling book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community , Robert Putnam described a thirty-year decline in America's social institutions. The book ended with the hope that new forms of social connection might be invented in order to revive our communities. In Better Together , Putnam and longtime civic activist Lewis Feldstein describe some of the diverse locations and most compelling ways in which civic renewal is taking place today. In response to civic crises and local problems, they say, hardworking, committed people are reweaving the social fabric all across America, often in innovative ways that may turn out to be appropriate for the twenty-first century. Better Together is a book of stories about people who are building communities to solve specific problems. The examples Putnam and Feldstein describe span the country from big cities such as Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Chicago to the Los Angeles suburbs, small Mississippi and Wisconsin towns, and quiet rural areas. The projects range from the strictly local to that of the men and women of UPS, who cover the nation. Bowling Alone looked at America from a broad and general perspective. Better Together takes us into Catherine Flannery's Roxbury, Massachusetts, living room, a UPS loading dock in Greensboro, North Carolina, a Philadelphia classroom, the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, naval shipyard, and a Bay Area Web site. We meet activists driven by their visions, each of whom has chosen to succeed by building community: Mexican Americans in the Rio Grande Valley who want paved roads, running water, and decent schools; Harvard University clerical workers searching for respect and improved working conditions; Waupun, Wisconsin, schoolchildren organizing to improve safety at a local railroad crossing; and merchants in Tupelo, Mississippi, joining with farmers to improve their economic status. As the stories in Better Together demonstrate, bringing people together by building on personal relationships remains one of the most effective strategies to enhance America's social health.

Acclaimed historian Rick Perlstein chronicles the rise of the conservative movement in the liberal 1960s. At the heart of the story is Barry Goldwater, the renegade Repulican from Arizona who loathed federal government, despised liberals and mocked peaceful coexistence with the USSR. Perlstein's narrative shines a light on a whole world of conservatives and their antagonists, including William F. Buckley, Nelson Rockefeller and Bill Moyers. Vividly written, Before the Storm is an essential book about the 1960s. When Before the Storm was originally published, it caused a critical outburst and went on to win the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History. Telling the tale of the Goldwater campaign and the rise of the conservative movement in the liberal 1060s, it was a tale that - until this book - had never been told. Before the Storm is smart and lively, and the description is delightfully thick, writes Louis Menand of the New Yorker. The point of Rick Perlstein's animated re-creation of the Goldwater campaign is that Barry Goldwater is as much a man of the 1960s as Abbie Hoffman or Malcolm X, and, what's more, his shadow looms a good deal larger than theirs.

A retrospective article on Leslie Fiedler in the New York Times Book Review in 1965 referred to Love and Death in the American Novel as "one of the great, essential books on the American imagination . . . an accepted major work." This groundbreaking work views in depth both American literature and character from the time of the American Revolution to the present. From it, there emerges Fiedler's once scandalous--now increasingly accepted--judgment that our literature is incapable of dealing with adult sexuality and is pathologically obsessed with death.

"Mitch Albom has done it again with this moving memoir of love and loss. You can't help but fall for Chika. A page-turner that will no doubt become a classic." --Mary Karr, author of The Liars' Club and The Art of Memoir From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Tuesdays With Morrie comes Mitch Albom's most personal story to date: an intimate and heartwarming memoir about what it means to be a family and the young Haitian orphan whose short life would forever change his heart. Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Albom operates in Port Au Prince. With no children of their own, the forty-plus children who live, play, and go to school at the orphanage have become family to Mitch and his wife, Janine. Chika's arrival makes a quick impression. Brave and self-assured, even as a three-year-old, she delights the other kids and teachers. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a doctor there says, "No one in Haiti can help you with." Mitch and Janine bring Chika to Detroit, hopeful that American medical care can soon return her to her homeland. Instead, Chika becomes a permanent part of their household, and their lives, as they embark on a two-year, around-the-world journey to find a cure. As Chika's boundless optimism and humor teach Mitch the joys of caring for a child, he learns that a relationship built on love, no matter what blows it takes, can never be lost. Told in hindsight, and through illuminating conversations with Chika herself, this is Albom at his most poignant and vulnerable. Finding Chika is a celebration of a girl, her adoptive guardians, and the incredible bond they formed--a devastatingly beautiful portrait of what it means to be a family, regardless of how it is made.

The untold story of the historic voyage to the moon that closed out one of our darkest years with a nearly unimaginable triumph In August 1968, NASA made a bold decision: in just sixteen weeks, the United States would launch humankind's first flight to the moon. Only the year before, three astronauts had burned to death in their spacecraft, and since then the Apollo program had suffered one setback after another. Meanwhile, the Russians were winning the space race, the Cold War was getting hotter by the month, and President Kennedy's promise to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade seemed sure to be broken. But when Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders were summoned to a secret meeting and told of the dangerous mission, they instantly signed on. Written with all the color and verve of the best narrative non-fiction, Apollo 8 takes us from Mission Control to the astronaut's homes, from the test labs to the launch pad. The race to prepare an untested rocket for an unprecedented journey paves the way for the hair-raising trip to the moon. Then, on Christmas Eve, a nation that has suffered a horrendous year of assassinations and war is heartened by an inspiring message from the trio of astronauts in lunar orbit. And when the mission is over--after the first view of the far side of the moon, the first earth-rise, and the first re-entry through the earth's atmosphere following a flight to deep space--the impossible dream of walking on the moon suddenly seems within reach. The full story of Apollo 8 has never been told, and only Jeffrey Kluger--Jim Lovell's co-author on their bestselling book about Apollo 13--can do it justice. Here is the tale of a mission that was both a calculated risk and a wild crapshoot, a stirring account of how three American heroes forever changed our view of the home planet.

This is the century of whiteshift. As Western societies are becoming increasingly mixed-race, demographic change is transforming politics. Over half of American babies are non-white, and by the end of the century, minorities and those of mixed race are projected to form the majority in the UK and other countries. The early stages of this transformation have led to a populist disruption, tearing a path through the usual politics of left and right. One of the most crucial challenges of our time is to enable conservatives as well as cosmopolitans to view whiteshift as a positive development. In this groundbreaking book, political scientist Eric Kaufmann examines the evidence to explore ethnic change in Western Europe and North America.

Author of instant bestseller "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Harriet Beecher Stowe dared to expose the horrors of slavery at a time when the American public was finally ready to acknowledge this terrible injustice.

A collection of twenty classic short stories by Isaac Asimov, author of the Foundation series, featuring the definitive version of "Nightfall". From one of history's most influential writers of science fiction comes this collection of twenty short works of fiction, arranged in order of publication from 1941 to 1967. Compiled by Asimov himself, who prefaced each story with an introduction.

In her 38th bestselling novel, Danielle Steel creates a powerful, moving portrayal of families divided, lives shattered and a nation torn apart by prejudice during a shameful episode in recent American history. A man ahead of his time, Japanese college professor Masao Takashimaya of Kyoto had a passion for modern ideas that was as strong as his wife's belief in ancient traditions. It was the early 1920s and Masao had dreams for the future--and a fascination with the politics and opportunities of a world that was changing every day. Twenty years later, his eighteen-year-old daughter Hiroko, torn between her mother's traditions and her father's wishes, boarded the "SS Nagoya Maru" to come to California for an education and to make her father proud. It was August 1941. From the ship, she went directly to the Palo Alto home of her uncle, Takeo, and his family. To Hiroko, California was a different world--a world of barbeques, station wagons and college. Her cousins in California had become more American than Japanese. And much to Hiroko's surprise, Peter Jenkins, her uncle's assistant at Stanford, became an unexpected link between her old world and her new. But in spite of him, and all her promises to her father, Hiroko longs to go home. At college in Berkeley, her world is rapidly and unexpectedly filled with prejudice and fear. On December 7, Pearl Harbor is bombed by the Japanese. Within hours, war is declared and suddenly Hiroko has become an enemy in a foreign land. Terrified, begging to go home, she is nonetheless ordered by her father to stay. He is positive she will be safer in California than at home, and for a brief time she is--until her entire world cavesin. On February 19, Executive Order 9066 is signed by President Roosevelt, giving the military the power to remove the Japanese from their communities at will. Takeo and his family are given ten days to sell their home, give up their jobs, and report to a relocation center, along with thousands of other Japanese and Japanese Americans, to face their destinies there. Families are divided, people are forced to abandon their homes, their businesses, their freedom, and their lives. Hiroko and her uncle's family go first to Tanforan, and from there to the detention center at Tule Lake. This extraordinary novel tells what happened to them there, creating a portrait of human tragedy and strength, divided loyalties and love. It tells of Americans who were treated as foreigners in their own land. And it tells Hiroko's story, and that of her American family, as they fight to stay alive amid the drama of life and death in the camp at Tule Lake. With clear, powerful prose, Danielle Steel portrays not only the human cost of that terrible time in history, but also the remarkable courage of a people whose honor and dignity transcended the chaos that surrounded them. Set against a vivid backdrop of war and change, her thirty-eighth bestselling novel is both living history and outstanding fiction, revealing the stark truth about the betrayal of Americans by their own government...and the triumph of a woman caught between cultures and determined to survive.

It was the most radical human-breeding experiment in American history, and no one knew how it turned out. The Repository for Germinal Choice–nicknamed the Nobel Prize sperm bank–opened to notorious fanfare in 1980, and for two decades, women flocked to it from all over the country to choose a sperm donor from its roster of Nobel-laureate scientists, mathematical prodigies, successful businessmen, and star athletes. But the bank quietly closed its doors in 1999–its founder dead, its confidential records sealed, and the fate of its children and donors unknown. In early 2001, award-winning columnist David Plotz set out to solve the mystery of the Nobel Prize sperm bank. Plotz wrote an article for Slate inviting readers to contact him–confidentially–if they knew anything about the bank. The next morning, he received an email response, then another, and another–each person desperate to talk about something they had kept hidden for years. Now, in The Genius Factory, Plotz unfolds the full and astonishing story of the Nobel Prize sperm bank and its founder’s radical scheme to change our world. Believing America was facing genetic catastrophe, Robert Graham, an eccentric millionaire, decided he could reverse the decline by artificially inseminating women with the sperm of geniuses. In February 1980, Graham opened the Repository for Germinal Choice and stocked it with the seed of gifted scientists, inventors, and thinkers. Over the next nineteen years, Graham’s “genius factory” produced more than two hundred children. What happened to them? Were they the brilliant offspring that Graham expected? Did any of the “superman” fathers care about the unknown sons and daughters who bore their genes? What were the mothers like? Crisscrossing the country and logging countless hours online, Plotz succeeded in tracking down previously unknown family members–teenage half-brothers who ended up following vastly different paths, mothers who had wondered for years about the identities of the donors they had selected on the basis of code names and brief character profiles, fathers who were proud or ashamed or simply curious about the children who had been created from their sperm samples. The children of the “genius factory” are messengers from the future–a future that is bearing down on us fast. What will families be like when parents routinely “shop” for their kids’ genes? What will children be like when they’re programmed for greatness? In this stunning, eye-opening book, one of our finest young journalists previews America’s coming age of genetic expectations.

"Like the bestselling Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, this book is a brilliant reinvention of the traditional atlas, one that provides a vivid, complex look at the multi-faceted nature of New Orleans, a city replete with contradictions. More than twenty essays assemble a chorus of vibrant voices, including geographers, scholars of sugar and bananas, the city's remarkable musicians, prison activists, environmentalists, Arab and Native voices, and local experts, as well as the coauthors' compelling contributions. Featuring 22 full-color two-page-spread maps, Unfathomable City plumbs the depths of this major tourist destination, pivotal scene of American history and culture and, most recently, site of monumental disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill. The innovative maps' precision and specificity shift our notions of the Mississippi, the Caribbean, Mardi Gras, jazz, soils and trees, generational roots, and many other subjects, and expand our ideas of how any city is imagined and experienced. Together with the inspired texts, they show New Orleans as both an imperiled city-by erosion, crime, corruption, and sea level rise-and an ageless city that lives in music as a form of cultural resistance. Compact, lively, and completely original, Unfathomable City takes readers on a tour that will forever change the way they think about place. "--

"The definitive biography of the most dangerous demagogue in American history, based on first-ever access to his personal and professional papers, medical and military records, and recently-unsealed transcripts of his closed-door Congressional hearings."--

“Zinn writes with an enthusiasm rarely encountered in the leaden prose of academic history. . .” – New York Times Book Review A Power Governments Cannot Suppress is Howard Zinn’s major new collection of essays on American history, class, immigration, justice, and ordinary citizens who have made a difference. Howard Zinn unlocks America’s current political/ ethical crisis and challenges us to confront power for the common good. Bringing a profoundly human perspective to the diverse subjects he writes about – the Founding Fathers, government dishonesty, winning the war on terrorism, respecting the holocaust, defending the rights of immigrants – Zinn approaches history from an active, engaged point of view. He writes, “America’s future is linked to how we understand our past. For this reason, writing about history, for me, is never a neutral act.” Zinn opens the book with an essay titled “If History is to be Creative,” a reflection on the role and responsibility of the engaged historian. “To think that history-writing must aim simply to recapitulate the failures that dominate the past,” writes Zinn, “is to make historians collaborators in an endless cycle of defeat.” “If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, and occasionally win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past’s fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.” Buzzing with ideas, stories, and anecdotes spanning from the Revolutionary War and the War with Mexico through to World War II, Vietnam, 9/11, and the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Zinn’s view of American history is not a praise of famous leaders, but those who rebelled against them in the name of social justice. While writing extensively on current events and the consequences of U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Iraq, Zinn also dedicates entire chapters to troublemakers like Henry David Thoreau, Eugene Debs, Philip Berrigan, Italian immigrants Sacco & Vanzetti, and heralds not the soldiers who fought for George Washington, but those who deserted the Revolutionary Army because of intolerable mistreatment from elitist commanding officers. For Zinn, the voices and stories of ordinary working Americans, immigrants, working people, and soldiers comprise the real storyline of our history. Featuring essays penned over an eight-year period, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress is Howard Zinn’s first writerly work in several years, an invaluable post-9/11-era addition to the themes that run through his bestselling classic, A People’s History Of the United States. "Thank you, Howard Zinn. Thank you for telling us what none of our leaders are willing to: The truth. And you tell it with such brilliance, such humanity. It is a personal honor to be able to say I am a better citizen because of you." —Michael Moore “This brilliant new book – like Howard Zinn’s presence, and his whole life, is the best possible antidote to political despair. Read it, and rejoin the struggle for a human world and a foreign policy that’s good for children.” – Daniel Ellsberg

Russian Roulette is a story of political skullduggery unprecedented in American history. It weaves together tales of international intrigue, cyber espionage, and superpower rivalry. After U.S.-Russia relations soured, as Vladimir Putin moved to reassert Russian strength on the global stage, Moscow trained its best hackers and trolls on U.S. political targets and exploited WikiLeaks to disseminate information that could affect the 2016 election. The Russians were wildly successful and the great break-in of 2016 was no third-rate burglary. It was far more sophisticated and sinister - a brazen act of political espionage designed to interfere with American democracy. At the end of the day, Trump, the candidate who pursued business deals in Russia, won. And millions of Americans were left wondering, what the hell happened? This story of high-tech spying and multiple political feuds is told against the backdrop of Trump's strange relationship with Putin and the curious ties between members of his inner circle - including Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn - and Russia. Russian Roulette chronicles and explores this bizarre scandal, explains the stakes, and answers one of the biggest questions in American politics: How and why did a foreign government infiltrate the country's political process and gain influence in Washington?[Bokinfo]

The rise of Barack Obama is one of the great stories of this century: a defining moment in American history, and one with truly global resonance. 'The Bridge' offers a portrait of the man who was determined to become the first African-American president.

Throughout American history, presidents have faced difficult choices–decisions that have had grave political and personal consequences. Will leadership prevail? Or will the office cede power to popular opinion? At these critical times, many of our presidents have chosen a path of genuine courage. They stood up for what they believed was right for the country and displayed tremendous character, which made them leaders of men. With the indispensable contributions of Richard E. Neustadt– author of the seminal Presidential Power, former adviser to presidents Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson, and founder of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government–Wallace has chosen nearly twenty notable acts of presidential courage in our nation’s history, including: George Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion, Theodore Roosevelt and the Russo-Japanese War, Harry Truman and the Berlin Airlift, and George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. How and why did these men choose the hard way? What experiences from their civilian lives came to bear on their decisions? What forces shaped them? Who influenced them? Who didn’t? What gave them their inner fortitude? Using this Socratic approach, Wallace brings out the humanity of these power brokers and lets their personal histories shine through. The result is a completely involving and tremendously informative look at the presidents who’ve made defining choices for our nation in times of national uncertainty. Just in time for the 2004 election, Character: Profiles in Presidential Courage is a must read for every citizen who has lost his or her faith in our executive branch of government–a captivating and informative narrative of courage and determination in our nation’s presidential history.

In this revised and updated edition, the author not only recreates this whole glorious era from the silent days through the Hollywood golden age to Spielberg's American Tail, he traces the evolution of the art of animation and vividly portrays the key creative talents and their studios. This definitive history of American animated cartoons also brings Maltin's many fans up to date on work being done today at the Walt Disney and Warner Bros. studios, and other developments in the world of animation. Drawing on colorful interviews with many of the American cartoon industry's principals, Maltin has come up with a gold mine of anecdotes and film history. Behind the scenes were genius animators and entrepreneurs such as Walt Disney, Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Mel Blanc, and a legion of others. In all, Maltin has put together a glorious celebration of a universally loved segment of Americana. -- from Back Cover.

the American Heritage picture history of world war

In his tell-all, legendary Doors guitarist, Robby Krieger, one of Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time," opens up about his band's meteoric career, his own darkest moments, and the most famous black eye in rock 'n' roll. Few bands are as shrouded in the murky haze of rock mythology as The Doors, and parsing fact from fiction has been a virtually impossible task. But now, after fifty years, The Doors' notoriously quiet guitarist is finally breaking his silence to set the record straight. Through a series of vignettes, Robby Krieger takes readers back to where it all happened: the pawn shop where he bought his first guitar; the jail cell he was tossed into after a teenage drug bust; his parents' living room where his first songwriting sessions with Jim Morrison took place; the empty bars and backyard parties where The Doors played their first awkward gigs; the studios where their iconic songs were recorded; and the many concert venues that erupted into historic riots. SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE is packed with never-before-told stories from The Doors' most vital years, and offers a fresh perspective on the most infamous moments of the band's career. Krieger also goes into heartbreaking detail about his life's most difficult struggles, ranging from drug addiction to cancer, but he balances out the sorrow with humorous anecdotes about run-ins with unstable fans, famous musicians, and one really angry monk. SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE is at once an insightful time capsule of the '60s counterculture, a moving reflection on what it means to find oneself as a musician, and a touching tale of a life lived non-traditionally. It's not only a must-read for Doors fans, but an essential volume of American pop culture history.