The life that inspired the major motion picture The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese.Howard Hughes has always fascinated the public with his mixture of secrecy, dashing lifestyle, and reclusiveness. This is the book that breaks through the image to get at the man. Originally published under the title Empire: The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes.

A New York Times bestsellerAmerica's unique prosperity is based on its creation of a middle class. In the twentieth century, that middle class provided the workforce, the educated skills, and the demand that gave life to the world's greatest consumer economy. It was innovative and dynamic; it eclipsed old imperial systems and colonial archetypes. It gave rise to a dream: that if you worked hard and followed the rules you would prosper in America, and your ...

Award-winning journalists expose the horrific practices within America’s health care system, profiling patients and doctors and offering startling personal stories to illuminate what’s gone wrong.“Every American ought to read this book.”—The Plain DealerTens of millions of people with inadequate or no medical coverage . . . dirty examination and operating rooms in doctors’ offices and hospitals . . . more people killed by mistakes ...

Howard Hughes lived one of the greatest, most heroic, misunderstood, mysterious, bizarre, and tragic lives in American history. Here at last, in a uniquely full and brilliantly documented biography by a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative team, the mythology that surrounded that life is disentangled from the truth.Hughes had always been different. Raised by overprotective parents, pathologically fearful of germs, in awe of his father, unable to make friends, he grew into a man rul...

Howard Hughes lived one of the greatest, most heroic, misunderstood, mysterious, bizarre, and tragic lives in American history. Here at last, in a uniquely full and brilliantly documented biography by a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative team, the mythology that surrounded that life is disentangled from the truth.Hughes had always been different. Raised by overprotective parents, pathologically fearful of germs, in awe of his father, unable to make friends, he grew into a man rul...

America’s unique prosperity is based on its creation of a middle class. In the twentieth century, that middle class provided the workforce, the educated skills, and the demand that gave life to the world’s greatest consumer economy. It was innovative and dynamic; it eclipsed old imperial systems and colonial archetypes. It gave rise to a dream: that if you worked hard and followed the rules you would prosper in America, and your children would enjoy a better life than yours.The Ame...

**From the author of 1491—the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas—a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs.More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driv...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed author of No god but God comes “a lucid, intelligent page-turner” (Los Angeles Times) that challenges long-held assumptions about Jesus.“Riveting . . . [Reza] Aslan synthesizes Scripture and scholarship to create an original account.”—The New YorkerTwo thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establ...

From the bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia: discover Malcolm Gladwell's breakthrough debut and explore the science behind viral trends in business, marketing, and human behavior.The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popular...

Picking up where Fall of Giants, the first novel in the extraordinary Century Trilogy, left off, Winter of the World follows its five interrelated families—American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh—through a time of enormous social, political, and economic turmoil, beginning with the rise of the Third Reich, through the great dramas of World War II, and into the beginning of the long Cold War.Carla von Ulrich, born of German and English parent...

A young New Yorker grieving his mother's death is pulled into a gritty underworld of art and wealth in this “extraordinary” and beloved novel that "connects with the heart as well as the mind" (Stephen King, New York Times Book Review), named a New York Times Best Book of the 21st Century.Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a weal...

Many people know about Howard Hughes, Americas first billionaire. He was an aviation engineer, an Oscar-winning motion picture producer and director, and a hotel and casino owner in Las Vegas and Reno, with seven establishments. He built the biggest airplane in the world at the timeknown as the Spruce Gooseand the Glormar Explorer supership for the CIA. He owned RKO Motion Picture Studios in Hollywood, as well as tens of thousands of acres in California, Nevada, and Texas.Fewer peo...