It’s the 1960s, and the Vietnam War is raging. You find yourself in the midst of the turmoil. Will you: Enlist in the Marines and volunteer to go to war? Join your fellow young Americans eager to protest the war? Be a young Vietnamese man forced to choose between the communist North and the capitalist South? Everything in this book happened to real people. And YOU CHOOSE what you do next. The choices you make could lead you to jail, to the jungles of Vietnam, or even to death.

“What a strange, fascinating, and ultimately powerful account of one man's endurance of life as a POW during the American war in Vietnam. . . . This book, I believe, will stand the test of time as one of the finest nonfiction narratives to emerge from the Vietnam War.” —Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They CarriedOn April 6, 1967, twenty-year-old U.S. Navy Seaman Apprentice Doug Hegdahl fell off his ship, a guided-missile cruiser, in the...

Assessing the legendary Frenchman and his remarkable military career on both sides of the AtlanticThe Marquis de Lafayette is an icon of both American and French history. In Marc Leepson’s concise and engaging biography of this captivating figure, we learn how Lafayette, born into an aristocratic French family of warriors, traveled to the colonies at the age of nineteen to fight as a volunteer in the American Revolutionary War. Continental Army Major General Lafaye...

This Civil War history offers a "sharp assessment of the single Confederate victory north of the Mason-Dixon line"—and the threat it posed to the capitol ( Kirkus ).The Battle of Monocacy is one of the Civil War's most significant yet little-known battles. On July 9, 1864, in the fields just south of Frederick, Maryland, some 12,000 Confederate troops led by the controversial Jubal Anderson Early were met by a much smaller...

The complete history of Thomas Jefferson's iconic American home, Monticello, and how it was not only saved after Jefferson's death, but ultimately made into a National Historic Landmark.When Thomas Jefferson died on the Fourth of July 1826, he was more than $100,000 in debt. Forced to sell thousands of acres of his lands and nearly all of his furniture and artwork, in 1831 his heirs bid a final goodbye to Monticello itself. The house their illustrious patriarch had...

"An interesting snapshot of one of the best-known—and least-known—figures in American history," the author of the U.S. national anthem ( Washington Post )."As Marc Leepson shows us, there is a lot to know about Francis Scott Key—much of it surprising, and all of it engrossing. A wonderful and long-overdue biography, and worth the wait." —Nelson DeMille, #1 New York Times

"The curious history of Old Glory and the special veneration it often evokes" comes alive in this comprehensive volume—preface by Nelson DeMille ( Kirkus Reviews).The thirteen-stripe, fifty-star flag is a quintessential American icon. It stirs something in the hearts of Americans like no other symbol. Yet the flag's history is cloaked in myth and misinformation. In Flag, historian Marc Leepson presents an illuminating, myth-busting look at the Amer...

The rough-and-tumble life of Special Forces vet and Sixties pop star Barry SadlerThe top Billboard Hot 100 single of 1966 wasn’t “Paint It Black” or “Yellow Submarine”--it was “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” a hyper-patriotic tribute to the men of the Special Forces by Vietnam vet Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler. But Sadler’s clean-cut, all-American image hid a darker side, a Hunter Thompson-esque life of booze, girls, and guns. Unable to score another hit song, he wrote articles for...

On April 6, 1967, twenty-year-old US Navy Seaman Apprentice Doug Hegdahl fell off his ship, a guided-missile cruiser, in the Gulf of Tonkin. Close to exhaustion after nearly four hours in the water, he was picked up by a small fishing boat and soon found himself in Hỏa Lò Prison, the notorious North Vietnamese POW camp the prisoners called the Hanoi Hilton. Under intense interrogation, Hegdahl pretended to be a country bumpkin who could barely read or write.But Doug Hegdahl was far...

The top Billboard Hot 100 single of 1966 wasn't The Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black" or the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine"—it was "The Ballad of the Green Berets," a hyper-patriotic tribute to the men of the Special Forces by Vietnam veteran, US Army Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler. But Sadler's clean-cut, all-American image hid a darker side, a Hunter Thompson-esque life of booze, girls, and guns. Unable to score another hit song, he wrote a string of popular pulp fiction paperbacks that made "R...

A New York Times bestseller and an “enriching…brilliant” (David W. Blight, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Frederick Douglass) examination of what “the pursuit of happiness” meant to our nation’s Founders and how that famous phrase defined their lives and became the foundation of our democracy.The Declaration of Independence identified “the pursuit of happiness” as one of our unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. Jeffrey Rosen, the pre...

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice**“Wide-ranging and thoroughly winning.” —Jordan Ellenberg, The New York Times Book Review“An absolute joy to read!" —Steven Levitt, New York Times bestselling author of Freakonomics**For fans of Seven Brief Lessons in Physics, an exploration of the many ways mathematics can transform our understanding of literature and vice versa, by the first woman to ...