Books
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Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire
A groundbreaking journey tracing America's forgotten path to global power--and how its legacies shape our world today--told through the extraordinary life of a complicated Marine."The book is far more extraordinary than even the life of Smedley Butler... a compelling and insightful meditation on the trauma people still feel as a result of Butler's career and the American ambitions it represented."--The Washington Post Smedley Butler was the most celebrated warfighter of his time. Bestselling books were written about him. Hollywood adored him. Wherever the flag went, "The Fighting Quaker" went--serving in nearly every major overseas conflict from the Spanish War of 1898 until the eve of World War II. From his first days as a 16-year-old recruit at the newly seized Guantánamo Bay, he blazed a path for empire: helping annex the Philippines and the land for the Panama Canal, leading troops in China (twice), and helping invade and occupy Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Mexico, and more. Yet in retirement, Butler turned into a warrior against war, imperialism, and big business, declaring: "I was a racketeer for capitalism." Award-winning author Jonathan Myerson Katz traveled across the world--from China to Guantánamo, the mountains of Haiti to the Panama Canal--and pored over the personal letters of Butler, his fellow Marines, and his Quaker family on Philadelphia's Main Line. Along the way, Katz shows how the consequences of the Marines' actions are still very much alive: talking politics with a Sandinista commander in Nicaragua, getting a martial arts lesson from a devotee of the Boxer Rebellion in China, and getting cast as a P.O.W. extra in a Filipino movie about their American War. Tracing a path from the first wave of U.S. overseas expansionism to the rise of fascism in the 1930s to the crises of democracy in our own time, Gangsters of Capitalism tells an urgent story about a formative era most Americans have never learned about, but that the rest of the world cannot forget.
$20.00
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Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-Up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The knockdown, drag-out, untold story of the other scandal that rocked Nixon's White House, and reset the rules for crooked presidents to come--with new reporting that expands on Rachel Maddow's Peabody Award-nominated podcast"Both a thriller and a history book, Bag Man is a triumph of storytelling."--Preet Bharara, New York Times bestselling author of Doing Justice and host of the podcast Stay Tuned with Preet Is it possible for a sitting vice president to direct a vast criminal enterprise within the halls of the White House? To have one of the most brazen corruption scandals in American history play out while nobody's paying attention? And for that scandal to be all but forgotten decades later? The year was 1973, and Spiro T. Agnew, the former governor of Maryland, was Richard Nixon's second-in-command. Long on firebrand rhetoric and short on political experience, Agnew had carried out a bribery and extortion ring in office for years, when--at the height of Watergate--three young federal prosecutors discovered his crimes and launched a mission to take him down before it was too late, before Nixon's impending downfall elevated Agnew to the presidency. The self-described "counterpuncher" vice president did everything he could to bury their investigation: dismissing it as a "witch hunt," riling up his partisan base, making the press the enemy, and, with a crumbling circle of loyalists, scheming to obstruct justice in order to survive. In this blockbuster account, Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz detail the investigation that exposed Agnew's crimes, the attempts at a cover-up--which involved future president George H. W. Bush--and the backroom bargain that forced Agnew's resignation but also spared him years in federal prison. Based on the award-winning hit podcast, Bag Man expands and deepens the story of Spiro Agnew's scandal and its lasting influence on our politics, our media, and our understanding of what it takes to confront a criminal in the White House.
$28.00
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Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space
Winner of the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction - Winner of the 2024 Kirkus Nonfiction Prize - Shortlisted for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction - A New York Times Notable Book of 2024 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "Stunning...A heart-pounding thriller...Challenger is a remarkable book." --The Atlantic - "Devastating...A universal story that transcends time." --The New York Times - "Dramatic...a moving narrative." --The Wall Street Journal From the New York Times bestselling author of Midnight in Chernobyl comes the definitive, "compelling, and exhaustively researched" (The Washington Post) minute-by-minute account of the Challenger disaster, based on fascinating and new archival research--a riveting history that reads like a thriller. On January 28, 1986, just seventy-three seconds into flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven people on board. Millions of Americans witnessed the tragic deaths of the crew, which included New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. Like the assassination of JFK, the Challenger disaster is a defining moment in 20th-century history--one that forever changed the way America thought of itself and its optimistic view of the future. Yet the full story of what happened, and why, has never been told. Based on extensive archival research and metic-ulous, original reporting, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space follows a handful of central protagonists--including each of the seven members of the doomed crew--through the years leading up to the accident, and offers a detailed account of the tragedy itself and the inves-tigation afterward. It's a compelling tale of ambition and ingenuity undermined by political cynicism and cost-cutting in the interests of burnishing national prestige; of hubris and heroism; and of an investigation driven by leakers and whistleblowers determined to bring the truth to light. Throughout, there are the ominous warning signs of a tragedy to come, recognized but then ignored, and later hidden from the public. Higginbotham reveals the history of the shuttle program and the lives of men and women whose stories have been overshadowed by the disaster, as well as the designers, engineers, and test pilots who struggled against the odds to get the first shuttle into space. A masterful blend of riveting human drama and fascinating and absorbing science, Challenger identifies a turning point in history--and brings to life an even more complex and astonishing story than we remember.
$35.00
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Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio
From Derf Backderf, the bestselling author of My Friend Dahmer, comes the Eisner and ALA/YALSA Alex Award-winning tragic and unforgettable story of the Kent State shootings, told in graphic novel form. Named a Best Book of the Year by New York Times, Forbes, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and NPR, Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio is a moving and troubling story about the bitter price of dissent--as relevant today as it was in 1970. On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard gunned down unarmed college students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University. In a deadly barrage of 67 shots, four students were killed and nine shot and wounded. It was the day America turned guns on its own children--a shocking event burned into our national memory. The fatal shootings triggered immediate and massive outrage on campuses around the country. More than four million students participated in organized walkouts at hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools, the largest student strike in the history of the United States at that time. It was a day that shocked the nation and helped turn the tide of public opinion against America's war in Vietnam. A few days prior, 10-year-old Derf Backderf saw those same guardsmen patrolling his nearby hometown, sent in by the governor to crush a trucker strike. Using the journalism skills he employed on My Friend Dahmer and Trashed, Backderf has conducted extensive interviews and research to explore the lives of these four young people and the events of those four days in May, when the country seemed on the brink of tearing apart. In this award-winning and powerful graphic novel, Derf Backderf takes us back to the age of the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon, Woodstock, and the Cold War and explores, in words and images, a scene of tragedy: the campus of Kent State University, where National Guard Troops attacked unarmed protestors and killed four students (Allison Beth Krause, age 19, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, age 20, Sandra Lee Scheuer, age 20, and William Knox Schroeder, age 19).
$19.99
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What Happened to Millennials: In Defense of a Generation
From an award-winning journalist, a reflective, smart, and deeply reported look at the millennial generation that draws on the experiences of five diverse individuals and explores where we go from here What happened to millennials? At the birth of America's largest living generation, the outlook was strong: unparalleled economic growth, the emerging Internet, the rise of the cell phone, and a geopolitics that had allegedly reached "the end of history" all set expectations exceedingly high for a cohort entering adulthood at the dawn of the new millennium. That adulthood--a work in progress for more than a quarter century--has been disrupted by war, recession, pandemic, and a sharp turn toward cultural and economic polarization. It has also been endlessly critiqued by others as immature, lazy, weak, incomplete, selfish, and supposedly riddled with failure. Now, 25 years after the first millennials began turning 18, Bloomberg News reporter Charlie Wells comes to the generation's defense with a cultural history of an adulthood disrupted. Drawing on hundreds of hours of intimate interviews with five millennials from across the country, he explores how the biggest events, ideas, and transformations of the century played out in private lives. Between the data points and statistical studies, news reports and archival records, his brutally honest, on-the-record conversations about love, loss, work, addiction, tragedy, and sacrifice reveal how a generation once minimized can no longer be ignored. What Happened to Millennials charts a path from our nostalgic past to a better future, shaped by the challenges we have surmounted, the people we have loved, and the adults we have become.
$28.00
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Truly
The long-awaited memoir of the legendary Lionel Richie. As a storyteller second to none, Lionel Richie is ready to tell it all. In this intimate, deeply candid memoir, Lionel revisits hilarious and harrowing events to inspire all who doubt themselves or feel their dreams don't matter. Lionel chronicles lessons learned during his unlikely story of remarkable success--his dramatic transformation from painfully shy, "tragically" late bloomer to world-class entertainer and composer of love songs that have played as the soundtrack of our lives. Funny, warm, and riveting, Lionel recalls his childhood in Tuskegee, Alabama, where he grew up on its university campus during the heyday of the Civil Rights movement, raucous adventures as a member of The Commodores, coming-of-age in late 1960s Harlem, culture shock playing gigs on the French Riviera, the big break of being signed to Motown, his meteoric solo career that included an Olympics performance witnessed by two billion around the globe, all the way through to writing and recording "We Are the World" and his current multi-generational fame as a judge on American Idol. Even with its turbulence, loss, and near-calamity, Lionel's journey takes us on a thrill ride and delivers a memoir for the ages--reminding us of the power of love to elevate our own lives and our world.Lionel Richie's memoir includes three eight-page photo inserts.
$36.00
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Nobody Can Give You Freedom: The Political Life of Malcolm X
A "provocative, insightful, and urgent" (Peniel E. Joseph) new examination of Malcolm X that shows how the iconic figure was always dedicated to a global movement for Black liberation Malcolm X is one of the most iconic figures of the twentieth century. Across countless films, documentaries, and books, we have come to know him as a violent and tragic figure, who, when considered next to Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, was ultimately and perhaps dangerously misguided. But in the wake of continued police brutality and the rise of white supremacy, it's time to revisit Malcolm X and ask: What do we really know about what he believed, and what can we do with that political philosophy today? In Nobody Can Give You Freedom, Kehinde Andrews draws on the speeches and writings of Malcolm X to upend the conventional understanding of Malcolm--from his alleged misogyny to his putative proclivity for violence. Instead, Andrews argues that Malcolm X embraced equality across genders and foresaw a more inclusive approach to Black liberation that relied on grassroots efforts and community building. Far from a doomed ideologue, Malcolm X was in fact one of the most important, and misunderstood, intellectuals of the twentieth century, whose lessons on how to fight white supremacy are more important than ever.
$30.00
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McNamara at War: A New History
Robert S. McNamara was widely considered to be one of the most brilliant men of his generation. He was an invaluable ally of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as U.S. secretary of defense, and he had a deeply moving relationship with Jackie Kennedy. But to the country, McNamara was the leading advocate for American escalation in Vietnam. He strongly advised Johnson to deploy hundreds of thousands of American ground troops, just weeks before concluding that the war was unwinnable, and for the next two and a half years, McNamara failed to urge Johnson to cut his losses and withdraw. McNamara at War examines McNamara's life of intense personal contradictions, following his childhood, his career as a young faculty member at Harvard Business School, and his World War II service, to his leadership of the Ford Motor Company and the World Bank. Philip and William Taubman had access to materials previously unavailable to McNamara biographers, including Jacqueline Kennedy's warm letters to McNamara during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and beyond; family correspondence dating back to McNamara's service in World War II; and a secret diary maintained by McNamara's top Vietnam policy aide. What emerges is the comprehensive story of the infamous former leader of the Pentagon: riven by melancholy, guilt, zealous loyalty, and a profound inability to admit his flawed thinking about Vietnam before it was too late. McNamara at War is a portrait of a man at war with himself--with a grave influence on the history of the United States and the world.
$39.99
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People's History of the United States
THE CLASSIC NATIONAL BESTSELLER"A wonderful, splendid book--a book that should be read by every American, student or otherwise, who wants to understand his country, its true history, and its hope for the future." -Howard FastHistorian Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States chronicles American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official narrative taught in schools--with its emphasis on great men in high places--to focus on the street, the home, and the workplace.Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, it is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of--and in the words of--America's women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers. As Zinn shows, many of our country's greatest battles--the fights for a fair wage, an eight-hour workday, child-labor laws, health and safety standards, universal suffrage, women's rights, racial equality--were carried out at the grassroots level, against bloody resistance. Covering Christopher Columbus's arrival through President Clinton's first term, A People's History of the United States features insightful analysis of the most important events in our history. This edition also includes an introduction by Anthony Arnove, who wrote, directed, and produced The People Speak with Zinn and who coauthored, with Zinn, Voices of a People's History of the United States.
$23.99
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