#1 New York Times bestselling author Alan Dershowitz recounts his extraordinary coming of age in this legal autobiography, as well as the cases that have changed American jurisprudence over the past fifty years, most of which he has personally been involved in. “Overflowing with fascinating and funny vignettes involving his cases and clients, and probing and provocative insights into contemporary legal controversies.”— The Boston Globe Alan Dershowitz, the preeminent defense lawyer in America today, has been called the “winningest appellate criminal defense lawyer in history.” A professor at Harvard Law School since the age of twenty-five, he has led or been part of the defense team for such storied clients as Bill Clinton, Julian Assange, O. J. Simpson, Claus von Bülow, Mia Farrow, Jeffrey MacDonald, Patty Hearst, Mike Tyson, and countless others. In Taking the Stand, Dershowitz describes his evolution as a lawyer—from a C-minus student in Yeshiva High School to the youngest full professor in the history of Harvard Law School. In his #1 New York Times bestselling book Chutzpah, Alan described his Jewish life. In Taking the Stand, he looks at the people and events that have helped to shape his ideas about the law. He describes his formative years as a clerk for the United States Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. In the course of his career, he confronts the challenges of First Amendment law, the ongoing tension between individual freedom and national security, the questionable science often employed to prosecute accused murderers, the evolution of civil rights—and why the abortion rights debate in society hasn’t moved forward since Roe v. Wade . Filled with unforgettable cases and inside legal “baseball,” Taking the Stand is a deeply personal account of one of the legendary legal minds of our time.

"A groundbreaking history of ACT UP and the AIDS crisis"--

In this unique look at one of our most pervasive national myths, Studs Terkel persuades an extraordinary range of Americans to articulate their version of ''The American Dream.'' Beginning with an embittered winner of the Miss U.S.A. Contest who sees the con behind the dream of success and including an early interview with a highly ambitious Arnold Schwarzenegger, Terkel explores the diverse landscape of the promise of the United States - from farm kids dreaming of the city to city kids determined to get out, from the Boston Brahmin to the KKK member, from newly arrived immigrants to families who have lived in this country for generations, these narratives include figures both famous and infamous. Filtered through the lens of our leading oral historian, the chorus of voices in American Dreams highlights the hopes and struggles of coming to and living in the United States. Originally published in 1980, this is a classic work of oral history that provides an extraordinary and moving picture of everyday American lives.

Like other great figures of 20th-century American politics, Lyndon Johnson defies easy understanding. An unrivaled master of vote swapping, back room deals, and election-day skulduggery, he was nevertheless an outspoken New Dealer with a genuine commitment to the poor and the underprivileged. And he was also a representative figure. Johnson's career speaks volumes about American politics, foreign policy, and business in the forty years after 1930. As Charles de Gaulle said when he came to JFK's funeral: Kennedy was America's mask, but this man Johnson is the country's real face.In Lone Star Rising, Robert Dallek, winner of the prestigious Bancroft Prize for his study of Franklin D. Roosevelt, turns to this fascinating "sinner and saint" to offer a brilliant, definitive portrait of a great American politician. Based on seven years of research in over 450 manuscript collections and oral histories, as well as numerous personal interviews, this first book in a two-volume biography follows Johnson's life from his childhood to his election as vice-president under Kennedy. We see Johnson, the twenty-three-year-old aide to a pampered millionaire Representative, become a de facto Congressman, and at age twenty-eight the country's best state director of the National Youth Administration. We see Johnson, the "human dynamo," first in the House and then in the Senate, whirl his way through sixteen- and eighteen-hour days, talking, urging, demanding, reaching for influence and power, in an uncommonly successful congressional career.Dallek pays full due to Johnson's failings--his obsession with being top dog, his willingness to cut corners, and worse, to get there--but he also illuminates Johnson's sheer brilliance as a politician, the high regard in which key members of the New Deal, including FDR, held him, and his genuine concern for minorities and the downtrodden.No president in American history is currently less admired than Lyndon Johnson. Bitter memories of Vietnam have sent Johnson's reputation into free fall, and recent biographies have painted him as a scoundrel who did more harm than good. Lone Star Rising attempts to strike a balance. It does not neglect the tawdry side of Johnson's political career, including much that is revealed for the first time. But it also reminds us that Lyndon Johnson was a man of exceptional vision, who from early in his career worked to bring the South into the mainstream of American economic and political life, to give the disadvantaged a decent chance, and to end racial segregation for the well-being of the nation.

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.

In The Pursuit of Liberty, Jeffrey Rosen explores the clashing visions of Hamilton and Jefferson about how to balance liberty and power in a debate that continues to define--and divide--our country: Jefferson championed states' rights and individual liberties, while Hamilton pushed for a strong Federal government and a powerful executive. This ongoing tug-of-war has shaped all the pivotal moments in American history, including Abraham Lincoln's fight against slavery and southern secession, the expansion of federal power under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and Ronald Reagan's and Donald Trump's conservative push to shrink the size of the federal government. Rosen also shows how Hamilton and Jefferson's disagreement over how to read the Constitution has shaped landmark debates in Congress and the Supreme Court about executive power, from John Marshall's early battles with Andrew Jackson to the current divisions among the justices on issues from presidential immunity to control over the administrative state. More than ever, the clash between Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian ideals resonates today in our most urgent national debates over the question of whether modern presidents are consolidating power and subverting the Constitution -- the very threat to American democracy that both Hamilton and Jefferson were determined to avoid. The Pursuit of Liberty is a compelling history of the opposing forces that have shaped our country since its founding, and the ongoing struggle to define the balance between liberty and power. -- Provided by publisher.

“Step aside Tom Friedman, Sam Huntington, and Amy Chua. Franklin Foer’s dark and witty tale of the soccer world reveals the meaning of globalization in all its joys and horrors.”—Robert Kagan Just in time for the 2026 World Cup in North America—a reissue of the bestselling sports classic, featuring a new preface from the author. With the 2026 World Cup in all three nations of North America, the power and scope of soccer has truly become global. In this remarkably insightful, wide-ranging work, Franklin Foer argues that soccer is much more than a game, or even a way of life. It is a unique window into the crosscurrents of modern globalization, with all of its benefits and pitfalls. Soccer clubs don’t represent geographic areas; they stand for social classes and political ideologies. Unlike baseball or tennis, soccer is freighted with ancient hatreds and history. It’s a sport with real stakes—a catalyst capable of ruining regimes and launching liberation movements. Foer takes us on a surprising tour through the world of soccer, shattering myths and dire predictions. Instead of destroying local cultures, as the left warned, globalization has revived tribalism. Far from the triumph of capitalism that the right anticipated, it has entrenched corruption. From Brazil to Bosnia, Italy to Iraq, How Soccer Explains the World is an eye-opening chronicle of how a beautiful sport and its fanatical followers can illuminate the fault lines of a society, whether it’s terrorism, poverty, anti-Semitism, authoritarianism, or radical Islam—issues that continue to affect all of us. At a time when globalization is under attack and many Americans yearn for retrenchment and retreat from the world, this remarkable book—filled with blazing intelligence, colorful characters, wry humor, and an equal passion for soccer and humanity—continues to make sense of our troubled times.

The Declaration of Independence announced equality as an American ideal, but it took the Civil War and the subsequent adoption of three constitutional amendments to establish that ideal as American law. The Reconstruction amendments abolished slavery, guaranteed all persons due process and equal protection of the law, and equipped black men with the right to vote. They established the principle of birthright citizenship and guaranteed the privileges and immunities of all citizens. The federal government, not the states, was charged with enforcement, reversing the priority of the original Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In grafting the principle of equality onto the Constitution, these revolutionary changes marked the second founding of the United States. Eric Foner's compact, insightful history traces the arc of these pivotal amendments from their dramatic origins in pre-Civil War mass meetings of African-American "colored citizens" and in Republican party politics to their virtual nullification in the late nineteenth century. A series of momentous decisions by the Supreme Court narrowed the rights guaranteed in the amendments, while the state actively undermined them. The Jim Crow system was the result. Again today there are serious political challenges to birthright citizenship, voting rights, due process, and equal protection of the law. Like all great works of history, this one informs our understanding of the present as well as the past: knowledge and vigilance are always necessary to secure our basic rights. --

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue... Born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451, Christopher Columbus dreamed of going to sea. He knew the earth was round, and planned a voyage west into the unknown waters of the Atlantic to reach the Indies. But it wasn't until he was 41 years old that Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain gave him the funds, the three ships, and the men to make a voyage. Even though Columbus never reached the Indies, he made a more important discovery. On October 12, 1492, he landed on an island southeast of Florida. Since he thought he had reached the Indies, he called the natives "Indians". Columbus made three more voyages and is credited with discovering the New World. 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.

Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch, the bestselling authors of The First Conspiracy, which covers the secret plot against George Washington, now turn their attention to a little-known, but true story about a failed assassination attempt on the sixteenth president in The Lincoln Conspiracy . Everyone knows the story of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, but few are aware of the original conspiracy to kill him four years earlier in 1861, literally on his way to Washington, D.C., for his first inauguration. The conspirators were part of a white supremacist secret society that didn’t want an abolitionist in the White House. They planned an elaborate scheme to assassinate the President-elect in Baltimore as Lincoln’s inauguration train passed through, en route to the nation's capital. The plot was investigated by famed detective Allan Pinkerton, who infiltrated the group with undercover agents, including Kate Warne, one of the first female private detectives in America. Had the assassination succeeded, there would have been no Lincoln Presidency and the course of the Civil War and American history would have forever been altered.

An analysis by recently retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer that deconstructs the textualist philosophy of the current Supreme Court's supermajority and makes the case for a better way to interpret the Constitution.

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.

"Capitalism Hits the Fan differs sharply from most other explanations offered by politicians, media commentators, and academics. Step by step, Professor Wolff shows that deep economic structures - the relationship of wages to profits, of workers to boards of directors, and of debts to income - account for the crisis. Government bailout interventions have thrown too little money too late at a problem that requires more than money to solve. As this book shows, we must now ask basic questions about capitalism as a system that has now convulsed the world economy into two great depressions in 75 years (and countless lesser crises, recessions, and cycles in between). The book's essays engage the long-overdue public discussion about basic structural changes and systemic alternatives needed not only to fix today's broken economy but to prevent future crises." --Book Jacket.

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.

The author of The Best and the Brightest explores the complex dynamics of foreign policy in post-Cold War America, profiling Washington decision makers and providing an analysis of the Clinton presidency. 200,000 first printing.

Adler tells the story of Patrick Henry from his childhood on a tobacco plantation through his career as a lawyer, politician, and governor of Virginia. The author skillfully integrates quotations from primary sources into the narrative. There is no fictionalizing of thoughts or dialogue. Since Henry was known for his oratory prowess, excerpts from his most famous speeches are included and put into context with events of the time. Personal details, such as his wife's mental illness and his ownership of slaves, are mentioned but not explored in great detail. The subject matter is presented in a manner appropriate to its intended audience. The illustrations, all on double-page spreads, are softly colored and full of historical detail. Although the pictures do not have the stiff and formal look of period portraits, they do reflect the clothing styles and furnishings of the time. Teachers and students will appreciate this introduction to the patriot's life.This famous patriot served five terms as governor of Virginia.

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.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, "a brilliant biography"* of the 28th president of the United States. *Doris Kearns Goodwin One hundred years after his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson still stands as one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century, and one of the most enigmatic. And now, after more than a decade of research and writing, Pulitzer Prize–winning author A. Scott Berg has completed Wilson —the most personal and penetrating biography ever written about the twenty-eighth President. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of documents in the Wilson Archives, Berg was the first biographer to gain access to two recently discovered caches of papers belonging to those close to Wilson. From this material, Berg was able to add countless details—even several unknown events—that fill in missing pieces of Wilson’s character, and cast new light on his entire life. From the visionary Princeton professor who constructed a model for higher education in America to the architect of the ill-fated League of Nations, from the devout Commander in Chief who ushered the country through its first great World War to the widower of intense passion and turbulence who wooed a second wife with hundreds of astonishing love letters, from the idealist determined to make the world “safe for democracy” to the stroke-crippled leader whose incapacity—and the subterfuges around it—were among the century’s greatest secrets, from the trailblazer whose ideas paved the way for the New Deal and the Progressive administrations that followed to the politician whose partisan battles with his opponents left him a broken man, and ultimately, a tragic figure—this is a book at once magisterial and deeply emotional about the whole of Wilson’s life, accomplishments, and failings. This is not just Wilson the icon—but Wilson the man. INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS