The Kennedys may well be the most photographed, written about, talked about, admired, hated, and controversial family in American history. But for all the words and pictures, the real story was not told until Peter Collier and David Horowitz spent years researching archives and interviewing both family members and hundreds of people close to the Kennedys. An immediate classic, The Kennedys combines intimate knowledge with a perspective free of obligations to family loyalties and myths, bringing the story of four generations of "America's family" fully into view. Collier and Horowitz capture the strain of ambition; the dynastic ebb and flow; the invention of a mythic identity; the corrosive underside of the dream of Camelot--developed over four generations--that led one young Kennedy to say, "We broke the rules and in turn we were broken by them." The Kennedys: An American Drama is a fascinating and brilliantly comprehensive history that brings together, for the first time, all the complex strains of the story of the Kennedys' rise and fall. The authors have added new material showing the effect of the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., and the other family tragedies of the last few years, on the Kennedys and their mythic role in American life. In addition to The Kennedys , Peter Collier and David Horowitz are the authors of dynastic biographies of the Fords, Roosevelts, Rockefellers, and Fondas.

A moving, illustrated account of the first African American baseball player in the major leagues. In April 1947, Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, and forever changed the history of sports. But it took more than talent for Jackie to reach the major leagues—his courage and determination helped him overcome unjust policies and racist backlash. From his early life in Georgia through his 1955 World Series victory and beyond, this account of Robinson's life is an inspiring look at how one person can effect real change in the world. Written in simple, narrative style and beautifully illustrated, this is a perfect introduction for young readers interested in baseball, history, and civil rights. An authors note acknowledges some of the other pioneers in desegregating baseball, and a timeline of important dates is included. For almost thirty years, David Adler’s Picture Book Biography series has profiled famous people who changed the world. Colorful, kid-friendly illustrations combine with Adler’s "expert mixtures of facts and personality" ( Booklist ) to introduce young readers to history through compelling biographies of presidents, heroes, inventors, explorers, and adventurers. These books are ideal for first and second graders interested in history or who need reliable sources for school book reports.

"Ask not what your country can do for you..." How did the man who spoke those words grow from a young boy to become President? In an easy-to-follow mix of biography, facts, and history supported with lifelike illustrations, Adler traces Kennedy's life as a boy, World War II hero, best-selling author, politician, family man, and thirty-fifth President of the United States. The book ends with Kennedy's assassination and its aftermath. A time line of important dates in Kennedy's life helps young readers place the President in history. For almost thirty years, David Adler’s Picture Book Biography series has profiled famous people who changed the world. Colorful, kid-friendly illustrations combine with Adler’s “expert mixtures of facts and personality” ( Booklist ) to introduce young readers to history through compelling biographies of presidents, heroes, inventors, explorers, and adventurers. These books are ideal for first and second graders interested in history or who need reliable sources for school book reports.

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes a riveting history of New York's iconic public hospital that charts the turbulent rise of American medicine. Bellevue Hospital, on New York City's East Side, occupies a colorful and horrifying place in the public imagination: a den of mangled crime victims, vicious psychopaths, assorted derelicts, lunatics, and exotic-disease sufferers. In its two and a half centuries of service, there was hardly an epidemic or social catastrophe—or groundbreaking scientific advance—that did not touch Bellevue. David Oshinsky, whose last book, Polio: An American Story , was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution. From its origins in 1738 as an almshouse and pesthouse, Bellevue today is a revered public hospital bringing first-class care to anyone in need. With its diverse, ailing, and unprotesting patient population, the hospital was a natural laboratory for the nation's first clinical research. It treated tens of thousands of Civil War soldiers, launched the first civilian ambulance corps and the first nursing school for women, pioneered medical photography and psychiatric treatment, and spurred New York City to establish the country's first official Board of Health. As medical technology advanced, "voluntary" hospitals began to seek out patients willing to pay for their care. For charity cases, it was left to Bellevue to fill the void. The latter decades of the twentieth century brought rampant crime, drug addiction, and homelessness to the nation's struggling cities—problems that called a public hospital's very survival into question. It took the AIDS crisis to cement Bellevue's enduring place as New York's ultimate safety net, the iconic hospital of last resort. Lively, page-turning, fascinating, Bellevue is essential American history.

Her bravery, brilliance, and spirit brought hope to millions of disabled people. Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama on June 27, 1880. When she was just a year and a half old, she was left blind and deaf from an illness. In a very simple text, the author covers the important facts of Helen Keller's life. Besides her extraordinary work with teacher Anne Mansfield Sullivan, she published several books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. For almost thirty years, David Adler’s Picture Book Biography series has profiled famous people who changed the world. Colorful, kid-friendly illustrations combine with Adler’s “expert mixtures of facts and personality” ( Booklist ) to introduce young readers to history through compelling biographies of presidents, heroes, inventors, explorers, and adventurers. These books are ideal for first and second graders interested in history or who need reliable sources for school book reports.

One if by land, two if by sea.... So began the midnight ride of Paul Revere. But before he was a member of the Sons of Liberty, before he led raiders in the Boston Tea Party, before he was a silversmith, he was one of nine children growing up in colonial Boston. Adler's biography traces the life of this famous American patriot with insight into his youth, his family, and his professional life. Some of Paul Revere's lasting fame is due to "Paul Revere's Ride," a ballad written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Child-friendly illustrations of the period help readers see Revere's world, and back matter includes additional details and a time line of Revere's adventures. For almost thirty years, David Adler’s Picture Book Biography series has profiled famous people who changed the world. Colorful, kid-friendly illustrations combine with Adler’s “expert mixtures of facts and personality” ( Booklist ) to introduce young readers to history through compelling biographies of presidents, heroes, inventors, explorers, and adventurers. These books are ideal for first and second graders interested in history or who need reliable sources for school book reports.

Learn more about the incredible life of an escaped slave turned famous abolitionist, orator, journalist, and author. Born into slavery on a Maryland plantation, Frederick Douglass grew up to have a way with words. Contemporaries found it hard to believe that an escaped slave with no formal education could be so eloquent. Yet thousands turned out to hear him speak. A tireless advocate to end slavery, Douglass urged slaves to escape and revolt. He inspired many with his bestselling autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave . Later on, Douglass cemented his status as a pivotal figure in American history when he helped Abraham Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He continued to fight for equality during Reconstruction and became the first African American to receive a vote for President of the United States in a major party's roll call vote. This accessible biography for children examines Douglass's amazing life with easy-to-understand facts and details, alongside elegant illustrations. Back matter includes a timeline and author's notes. For almost thirty years, David Adler’s Picture Book Biography series has profiled famous people who changed the world. Colorful, kid-friendly illustrations combine with Adler’s “expert mixtures of facts and personality” ( Booklist ) to introduce young readers to history through compelling biographies of presidents, heroes, inventors, explorers, and adventurers.

Our sixteenth president, whom some say was our greatest, was born in a one-room log cabin in Kentucky. As a boy he helped his father clear land and even built a boat that he floated to New Orleans. As president, he led the country through the Civil War, and wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, setting all slaves free in the Confederate states. Young readers will be inspired by Lincoln's story of hard work, success, and justice. For almost thirty years, David Adler’s Picture Book Biography series has profiled famous people who changed the world. Colorful, kid-friendly illustrations combine with Adler’s “expert mixtures of facts and personality” ( Booklist ) to introduce young readers to history through compelling biographies of presidents, heroes, inventors, explorers, and adventurers. These books are ideal for first and second graders interested in history, or who need reliable sources for school book reports.

In 1979 a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the U.S. Army. Defying all known accepted military practice -- and indeed, the laws of physics -- they believed that a soldier could adopt a cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls, and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them. Entrusted with defending America from all known adversaries, they were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren't joking. What's more, they're back and fighting the War on Terror. With firsthand access to the leading players in the story, Ronson traces the evolution of these bizarre activities over the past three decades and shows how they are alive today within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and in postwar Iraq. Why are they blasting Iraqi prisoners of war with the theme tune to Barney the Purple Dinosaur? Why have 100 debleated goats been secretly placed inside the Special Forces Command Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina? How was the U.S. military associated with the mysterious mass suicide of a strange cult from San Diego? "The Men Who Stare at Goats" answers these and many more questions. Ronson's "Them: Adventures with Extremists," a highly acclaimed international bestseller, examined the paranoia at the fringes of hate-filled extremist movements around the globe. "The Men Who Stare at Goats" reveals extraordinary and very nutty military secrets at the core of George W. Bush's War on Terror.

During the Cold War, superpowers amassed nuclear arsenals containing the explosive power of one million Hiroshimas. The Soviet Union secretly plotted to create the "Dead Hand," a system designed to launch an automatic retaliatory nuclear strike on the United States, and developed a fearsome biological warfare machine. President Ronald Reagan, hoping to awe the Soviets into submission, pushed hard for the creation of space-based missile defenses. This, the first full account of how the arms race finally ended, provides an unprecedented look at the inner motives and secret decisions of each side.

An introduction to the lives of Lewis and Clark and to the exploratory expedition they led from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean in the early nineteenth century.

Okrent explores the origins, implementation, and failure of that great American delusion known as Prohibition. "Last Call" explains how Prohibition happened, what life under it was like, and what it did to the country.

"A biography of Walt Disney with a focus on his work making dreams come true for himself and for generations of children"--

"This picture book biography ifollows American boxing champion and civil rights activist Muhammad Ali"--

"A picture book biography about the late American politician and civil rights activist John Lewis"--

"From the congressman who led the first impeachment of Donald J. Trump, the vital inside account of American democracy in its darkest hour, and a warning that the forces of autocracy unleashed by Trump remain as potent as ever. In the years leading up to the election of Donald Trump, Congressman Adam Schiff had already been sounding the alarm over the resurgence of autocracy around the world, and the threat this posed to the United States. But as he led the probe into Donald Trump's Russia and Ukraine-related abuses of presidential power, Schiff came to the terrible conclusion that the principal threat to American democracy now came from within. In Midnight in Washington, Schiff argues that the Trump presidency has so weakened our institutions and compromised the Republican Party that the peril will last for years, requiring unprecedented vigilance against the growing and dangerous appeal of authoritarianism. The congressman chronicles step by step just how our democracy was put at such risk, and traces his own path to meeting the crisis--from serious prosecutor, to congressman with an expertise in national security and a reputation for bipartisanship, to liberal lightning rod, scourge of the right, and archenemy of a president. Schiff takes us inside his team of impeachment managers and their desperate defense of the constitution amid the rise of a distinctly American brand of autocracy. Deepening our understanding of prominent public moments, Schiff reveals the private struggles, the internal conflicts, and the triumphs of courage that came with defending the republic against a lawless president--but also the slow surrender of people that he had worked with and admired to the dangerous immorality of a president engaged in an historic betrayal of his office. Schiff's fight for democracy is one of the great dramas of our time, told by the man who became the president's principal antagonist. It is a story that began with Trump but does not end with him, taking us through the disastrous culmination of the presidency and Schiff's account of January 6, 2021, and how the anti-democratic forces Trump unleashed continue to define his party, making the future of democracy in America more uncertain than ever."--Publisher's website.

From the Publisher: A cultural history of the last forty years, The Age of American Unreason focuses on the convergence of social forces-usually treated as separate entities-that has created a perfect storm of anti-rationalism. These include the upsurge of religious fundamentalism, with more political power today than ever before; the failure of public education to create an informed citizenry; and the triumph of video over print culture. Sparing neither the right nor the left, Jacoby asserts that Americans today have embraced a universe of "junk thought" that makes almost no effort to separate fact from opinion

On May 21, 1927, the Spirit of St Louis landed, having flown 3614 miles from New York in 33 hours, 30 minutes and 30 seconds. In that instant, everything changed for the pilot, history was made. This is a biography covering the many facets of the private Lindbergh.

Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, is the subject of the sixteenth picture book in the New York Times bestselling series of biographies about heroes. This friendly, fun biography series focuses on the traits that made our heroes great--the traits that kids can aspire to in order to live heroically themselves. Each book tells the story of one of America's icons in a lively, conversational way that works well for the youngest nonfiction readers and that always includes the hero's childhood influences. At the back are an excellent timeline and photos. This volume features Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina Supreme Court Justice. From her home in the Bronx to law school, Sonia Sotomayor was always driven by her love of learning and her commitment to justice. With the support of her loving family and supportive mentors, she pursued a career in law and proved there's no limit to what someone can accomplish. She was proof that opportunity comes with justice. This friendly, fun biography series inspired the PBS Kids TV show Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum. One great role model at a time, these books encourage kids to dream big. Included in each book are: • A timeline of key events in the hero’s history • Photos that bring the story more fully to life • Comic-book-style illustrations that are irresistibly adorable • Childhood moments that influenced the hero • Facts that make great conversation-starters • A virtue this person embodies: Justice Sonia Sotomayor's enthusiasm carried her through life's challenges You’ll want to collect each book in this dynamic, informative series

The hidden history of the FBI and its hundred-year war against terrorists, spies, and anyone it deemed subversive—including even American presidents. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A SHOWTIME ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY SERIES “Turns the long history of the FBI into a story that is as compelling, and important, as today’s headlines.”—Jeffrey Toobin, author of American Heiress Enemies is the first definitive history of the FBI’s secret intelligence operations, from an author whose work on the Pentagon and the CIA won him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. We think of the FBI as America’s police force. But secret intelligence is the Bureau’s first and foremost mission. The FBI’s secret intelligence and surveillance techniques have created a tug-of-war between national security and civil liberties, a tension that strains the very fabric of a free republic. Enemies is the story of how presidents have used the FBI to conduct political warfare—and how it has sometimes been turned against them. And it is the story of how the Bureau became the most powerful intelligence service the United States possesses. Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, New York Daily News, and Slate “Pulitzer Prize–winning author Tim Weiner has written a riveting inside account of the FBI’s secret machinations that goes so deep into the Bureau’s skulduggery, readers will feel they are tapping the phones along with J. Edgar Hoover. This is a book that every American who cares about civil liberties should read.” —Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money “Outstanding.” — The New York Times “Absorbing . . . a sweeping narrative that is all the more entertaining because it is so redolent with screw-ups and scandals.” — Los Angeles Times “Fascinating.” — The Wall Street Journal “Important and disturbing . . . with all the verve and coherence of a good spy thriller.” —The New York Times Book Review “Exciting and fast-paced.” — The Daily Beast