Ever wondered how “factory farms” came to be, why chicken nuggets were invented, or where the idea of feeding hormones and antibiotics to livestock came from in the first place?The Price of Plenty offers answers that may surprise you, in a compulsively readable and distinctly American tale of abundance, invention, and exceptionalism.Historian Maureen Ogle unfolds the good, the bad, and the ugly behind the nation’s meat-making infrastructure, from colonial cattle wa...

AMBITIOUS BREW is the story of how beer became American. In the mid-nineteenth century, a wave of German immigrants, dismayed by Americans' penchant for whiskey and drunkenness, re-created their beloved, old-world bier culture. Fifty years later, the American-style lager beer they invented was the nation's most popular beverage---and brewing was the nation's fifth-largest industry, ruled by titans Frederick Pabst and Adolphus Busch. But brewers' ambitions collided with Americans' continued...

Ever wondered how "factory farms" came to be, why chicken nuggets were invented, or where the idea of feeding hormones and antibiotics to livestock came from in the first place?The Price of Plenty offers answers that may surprise you, in a compulsively readable and distinctly American tale of abundance, invention, and exceptionalism.Historian Maureen Ogle unfolds the good, the bad, and the ugly behind the nation's meat-making infrastructure, from colonial cattle wa...

"Ogle captures this island city in all its quirky charm. Her story breezes along in typical Key West fashion--full of gossip and humor, with the jolt of a good cup of Cuban coffee."--Lee Irby, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg Parrotheads, Hemingway aficionados, and sun worshipers view Key West as a tropical paradise, and scores of writers have set tales of mystery and romance on the island. The city's real story--told by Maureen Ogle in this lively and engaging illustrated accou...

Ever wondered how “factory farms” came to be, why chicken nuggets were invented, or where the idea of feeding hormones and antibiotics to livestock came from in the first place?The Price of Plenty offers answers that may surprise you, in a compulsively readable and distinctly American tale of abundance, invention, and exceptionalism.Historian Maureen Ogle unfolds the good, the bad, and the ugly behind the nation’s meat-making infrastructure, from colonial cattle wars to the...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELELR"A fine piece of muckraking, alarming without being alarmist. . . . Schlosser makes it hard to go on eating fast food in blissful ignorance.” – New York Times“One of the most important books on the precarious nature of the modern American food system.” – The ObserverIn 2001, Fast Food Nation was published to critical acclaim and became an international bes...

The National Book Award–winning epic chronicle of the creation of the Panama Canal, a first-rate drama of the bold and brilliant engineering feat that transformed global trade routes and shaped modern American history, as told by Pulitzer Prize–winning author and master historian David McCullough.A national bestseller and testament to human determination, The Path Between the Seas tells the stories of the men and women who fought against all odds to fulfil...

"Epic and engrossing." —The New York Times Book ReviewFrom the #1 New York Times bestselling author and pioneering journalist, an expansive look at how history has been shaped by humanity’s appetite for food, farmland, and the money behind it all—and how a better future is within reach.The story of humankind is usually told as one of technological innovation and economic influence—of arrowheads and atomic ...

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in HistoryFinalist for the National Book Award in NonfictionFinalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award“Grandin tells a gripping story of high hopes and deep failure, a saga that in some ways is a morality tale for the American century.” —The Boston GlobeFrom Pulitzer Prize-winning author Greg Grandin comes the stunning,...

**Named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and The Times-PicayuneThe fascinating untold tale of Samuel Zemurray, the self-made banana mogul who went from penniless roadside banana peddler to kingmaker and capitalist revolutionary**When Samuel Zemurray arrived in America in 1891, he was tall, gangly, and penniless. When he died in the grandest house in New Orleans sixty-nine years later, he was among the richest, most powerful men in the...

The bestselling author of Deep Economy shows that we’re living on a fundamentally altered planet — and opens our eyes to the kind of change we’ll need in order to make our civilization endure.Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we’ve waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but alre...

The fast-paced and gripping true account of the extraordinary construction and spectacular demise of the Key West Railroad—one of the greatest engineering feats ever undertaken, destroyed in one fell swoop by the strongest storm ever to hit U.S. shores.In 1904, the brilliant and driven entrepreneur Henry Flagler, partner to John D. Rockefeller, dreamed of a railway connecting the island of Key West to the Florida mainland, crossing a staggering 153 miles of open oc...