"In the early 1960s, most middle-class American women in their twenties had their lives laid out for them: marriage, children, and life in the suburbs. Most, but not all. Breathless is the story of a girl who represents those who rebelled against conventional expectations. Paris was a magnet for those eager to resist domesticity, and like many young women of the decade, Nancy K. Miller was enamored of everything French--from perfume and Hermès scarves to the writing of Simone de Beauvoir and the New Wave films of Jeanne Moreau. After graduating from Barnard College in 1961, Miller set out for a year in Paris, with a plan to take classes at the Sorbonne and live out a great romantic life inspired by the movies. After a string of sexual misadventures, she gave up her short-lived freedom and married an American expatriate who promised her a lifetime of three-star meals and five-star hotels. But her husband turned out to be a con man whose promises were lies, and she had to leave Paris and her dreams behind. Upon returning to New York, with more than half of her twenties behind her, Miller was determined to start over. In an era of Vietnam anti-war protests, student unrest, and sexual liberation, she sought to become a new woman: autonomous and creative at a time when women were only expected to look pretty and smile. This stunning memoir chronicles a young woman's coming-of-age tale, and offers a glimpse into the intimate lives of girls before feminism"--

On October 30, 1975, fifteen-year-old Martha Moxley headed home from Halloween Eve antics with her Greenwich, Connecticut, neighbors Tommy and Michael Skakel. She never made it. Her brutal murder with a golf club in her own backyard made national headlines. But for years no one was arrested, despite troubling clues pointing to the Skakels, a rich and powerful family related to the Kennedys. After the police department's first unsuccessful attempts to catch the killer, the case lay dormant, and the culprit remained free. Enter Leonard Levitt. In 1982, the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time newspapers asked investigative reporter Levitt to look into the murder and the undying rumors of a cover-up. Levitt soon uncovered groundbreaking information about how the police had bungled the investigation, and he learned that Tommy and Michael had lied about their activities on the night of the murder. But Levitt's articles about his findings -- and the haunting questions they raised -- almost never saw the light of day. For years, Levitt's superiors mysteriously refused to publish the stories. Convinced that the Moxley family deserved the peace and closure they had so long been denied, Levitt fought desperately to keep his discoveries alive. Finally, after Levitt's first article appeared, the case was reopened. Enter Frank Garr. As the newly appointed investigator on the Moxley case, the seasoned Greenwich detective doggedly pursued unexplored leads and became increasingly convinced that for over a decade, his colleagues had been pursuing the wrong suspects. At first mistrustful of one another, as reporters and detectives often are, Levitt and Garr became friends, encouraging each other in their quest for the truth as the obstacles against them piled up. In 2002, more than twenty-five years after Moxley's death, a shocked world watched as Michael Skakel was convicted of the murder, thanks largely to the evidence Garr alone had marshaled against him. Now, for the first time, Leonard Levitt tells the amazing true story of Garr's fight to solve the case and of how their friendship with each other, and with Martha Moxley's mother, Dorthy, sustained them over the years. A riveting, suspenseful drama that unfolds like a mystery novel, this incredible memoir also reveals how a police officer and a reporter refused to give up, and how they helped justice to prevail, against all odds.

The turn of the century was a time of explosive growth for American cities, a time of nascent hopes and apparently limitless possibilities. In Children of the City, David Nasaw re-creates this period in our social history from the vantage point of the children who grew up then. Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, autobiographies, oral histories and unpublished—and until now unexamined—primary source materials from cities across the country, he provides us with a warm and eloquent portrait of these children, their families, their daily lives, their fears, and their dreams. Illustrated with 68 photographs from the period, many never before published, Children of the City offers a vibrant protrait of a time when our cities and our grandparents were young.

A profoundly moving biographical study of George Kennan by the fine historian John Lukacs A man of impressive mental powers, of extraordinary intellectual range, and--last but not least--of exceptional integrity, George Frost Kennan (1904-2005) was an adviser to presidents and secretaries of state, with a decisive role in the history of this country (and of the entire world) for a few crucial years in the 1940s, after which he was made to retire; but then he became a scholar who wrote seventeen books, scores of essays and articles, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir. He also wrote remarkable public lectures and many thousands of incisive letters, laying down his pen only in the hundredth year of his life. Having risen within the American Foreign Service and been posted to various European capitals, and twice to Moscow, Kennan was called back to Washington in 1946, where he helped to inspire the Truman Doctrine and draft the Marshall Plan. Among other things, he wrote the "X" or "Containment" article for which he became, and still is, world famous (an article which he regarded as not very important and liable to misreading). John Lukacs describes the development and the essence of Kennan's thinking; the--perhaps unavoidable--misinterpretations of his advocacies; his self-imposed task as a leading realist critic during the Cold War; and the importance of his work as a historian during the second half of his long life.

Streaming Video on Love In Black & White now available at Expandedbooks.com Most Americans regard the World War II period as belonging to the "greatest generation," but it was also a time when religious intolerance and racial violence flourished. Shamefully, it was commonplace to see signs that read "Whites Only" or "Jews Not Allowed." It is within this world that this compelling memoir is set. William Cohen, born in Bangor, Maine, was the eldest son of a Jewish father and a Protestant Irish mother. Janet Langhart, an African-American, was raised in Indianapolis, Indiana by her single parent mother, a Southern Baptist. The book draws fascinating parallels between the histories of two people from different regions, races, and religions, as both are witnesses to and targets of the social tensions of the day. Throughout Love in Black and White, readers accompany Bill and Janet in their struggle to overcome to the barriers of ethnic and racial bigotry and hatred. The stories are rich and profound. At times they are amusing. Other times, harrowing. Against impossible odds, Bill would be elected to serve his country as a U.S. Congressman and Senator, and Janet would become a prominent television personality, activist, and highly respected businesswoman and author. Opposites in so many ways―in color, faith and culture―seemingly a bundle of contradictions, they meet in 1974, become friends, and eventually fall in love. They decide to marry on Valentine's Day 1996 in the very place that once harbored some of the nation's most prominent racists-the U.S. Capitol. They receive the surprise of a lifetime when Bill is asked by President Bill Clinton to serve as the nation's 20th Secretary of Defense. It is a calling that proves to be life transforming for both him and Janet, as they lead, inspire and bring comfort to the men and women who defend our nation. It is at the Pentagon where they witness just how powerful our nation ca

The Wolf Man's Magic Word reopens the examination of the "Wolf Man," a Russian emigre who was Freud's patient and who wrote his own memoirs. Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok's work is at once the account of the Wolf Man's psychological inventions, a reading of his dreams and symptoms, and a critique of basic Freudian notions.