"An electric story filled with gripping personalities, compelling backstage histories, and a clear message for the divided America of today: the forces that fear change can win for a time, but in America the future always get...

A cornucopia of Christmas delights from the bestselling author of A Short History of Nearly Everything andNotes from a Small Island. Christmas is the single biggest annual event on the planet, a time for merry-making, over-indulgence...

From Leonardo Da Vinci to Oliver Sacks: the first history of the western polymath, from the Renaissance to the present "An absorbing group portrait and intellectual history."—Kirkus Reviews"An admirable m...

Thin Mint Memories: Scouting for Empowerment through the Girl Scout Cookie Program celebrates an American treasure by examining the first century of the cookie's history and explores how participating in the Girl Scout cookie program ...

Historically, three sexual revolutions have influenced Catholics, Christians, and Non-believers ...and the story is not yet finished. The Catholic revolution arose with the coming of Christianity into the Roman Empire, replacing a ...

At the turn of the last century, it was widely accepted by conventional science that feeble-mindedness was one of the greatest threats to society in the modern era. But while hereditary diseases or defects of the mind and body were mo...

Sport is big business; international in nature and the focus of much media and cultural attention. In this Very Short Introduction, Mike Cronin charts the history of sport, from its traditional origins in folk football and cock fighti...

This rollercoaster ride through the colorful history of slang―from highwaymen to hip-hop―is a fresh and exciting take on the subject: entertaining and authoritative without being patronizing, out-of-touch or voyeuristic. Slang is ...

America's favorite cultural historian and author of Ghostland takes a "thought-provoking and delicoiusly unsettling" (Publisher's Weekly) tour of the country's most persistent "unexplained" phenomena In a world ...

The sweeping story of the struggle for gay and lesbian rights—based on amazing interviews with politicians, military figures, and members of the entire LGBT community who face these challenges every day: “This is the history of th...

The New York Times bestselling author of Just My Type and On the Map offers an ode to letter writing and its possible salvation in the digital age. Few things are as exciting—and potentially life-changing—as discovering an old le...

It is 1952. Communism is spreading through Asia. Students at UCLA develop a bold new idea - a youth ambassador program that will send a diverse group of real Americans to the politically strategic country of India to speak directl...

UNLOCK THE SECRETS OF PRINCE HALL FREEMASONRY... An aura of mystery surrounds the Masonic tradition Prince Hall founded. Part of this aura comes from the false perception, held even by many fellow Masons, that Prince Hall Freemasonry ...

Noise explores the human dramas that have revolved around sound at various points in the last 100,000 years, allowing us to think in fresh ways about the meaning of our collective past.

In the tradition of Ian Frazier's Great Plains, and as vivid as the work of Cormac McCarthy, an intoxicating, singularly illuminating history of the Texas borderlands from their settlement through seven generations of Roger D. Hodge's...

Throughout history we have told ourselves stories to try and make sense of our place in the universe. Richard Holloway takes us on a personal, scientific and philosophical journey to explore what he believes the answers to the biggest...

In Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga defines play as the central activity in flourishing societies. He identifies five characteristics of play: it is free; it is not "ordinary" or "real" life; it is distinct from "o...

Common as Air offers a stirring defense of our cultural commons, that vast store of art and ideas we have inherited from the past and continue to enrich in the present. Suspicious of the current idea that all creative work is "in...

First published in 1954, "Stolen Legacy" is the thought-provoking and controversial book by George G. M. James, a Guyanese-American historian and author. James makes the argument that Greek philosophy originated in Ancient E...

A definitive history of mescaline that explores its mind-altering effects across cultures, from ancient America to Western modernity Mescaline became a popular sensation in the mid-twentieth century through Aldous Huxley’s The D...

"[An] elucidating cultural history of Hollywood's most popular child star . . . a must-read."―Bill Desowitz, USA Today Her image appeared in periodicals and advertisements roughly twenty times daily; she rivaled FDR and Ed...

What does diaspora mean? Until quite recently, the word had a specific and restricted meaning, referring principally to the dispersal and exile of the Jews. But since the 1960s, the term diaspora has proliferated to a remarkable exten...

A rich mosaic of diary entries and letters from Marilyn Monroe, Cesar Chavez, Susan Sontag, Albert Einstein, and many more, this is the story of Los Angeles as told by locals, transplants, and some just passing through."Los Angel...

Can a song change a nation? In 1964, Marvin Gaye, record producer William "Mickey" Stevenson, and Motown songwriter Ivy Jo Hunter wrote "Dancing in the Street." The song was recorded at Motown's Hitsville USA Studi...

Designed to educate readers of the rich history and functionality of the art of hoodoo/conjure as practiced in the low country areas of South Carolina and Georgia, "Low Country Shamanism" will clear up misunderstandings that...

On May 25, 2012, President Obama announced that the United States would spend the next thirteen years – through November 11, 2025 – commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War, and the American soldiers, "more than ...

Greasy Bend is a collection of historical short stories about people and places along a segment of U.S. Highway 58 that passes through the mountains of Southwest Virginia. The highway through the section of the road near its intersect...

Disney's World's FairFor the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, the Disney company designed four paviliions, which later they reimagined for Disneyland. In this first volume of a definitive series, historian Andrew Kiste presents the stor...

History's greatest tour guide, Ian Mortimer, takes us on an eye-opening and expansive journey through the last millennium of human innovation. In Millennium, bestselling historian Ian Mortimer takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of t...

An entertaining, accessible guide to Elizabethan England-the latest in the Time Traveler's Guide series Acclaimed historian Ian Mortimer shows readers that the past is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived...