A vivid narration of the history of the tulip, from its origins on the barren, windswept steppes of central Asia to its place of honor in the lush imperial gardens of Constantinople, to its starring moment as the most coveted—and beautiful—commodity in Europe.In the 1630s, visitors to the prosperous trading cities of the Netherlands couldn't help but notice that thousands of normally sober, hardworking Dutch citizens were caught up in an extraordinary frenzy of buy...

From the bestselling author of Tulipomania comes Batavia’s Graveyard, the spellbinding true story of mutiny, shipwreck, murder, and survival.It was the autumn of 1628, and the Batavia, the Dutch East India Company’s flagship, was loaded with a king’s ransom in gold, silver, and gems for her maiden voyage to Java. The Batavia was the pride of the Company’s fleet, a tangible symbol of the world’s richest and most powerful commercial monopoly. She set...

They called it Satan’s Circus—a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was a place where everyone from the chorus girls to the beat cops was on the take and where bad boys became wicked men; a place where an upstanding young policeman such as Charley Becker could become the crookedest cop who ever stood behind a shield.Murder was so common in the vice district that few people...

Hundreds of books have been written about the American Mafia, but none has told how it came into existence. This one does. Mafia books are notoriously unreliable, too often filled with the recycled errors of earlier authors. This one has been painstakingly researched from primary sources, including interviews with surviving family members and a vast, previously unexamined Secret Service archive. The result is an extraordinary work of history that grips, astonishes and chills the blood like...

The definitive exploration of the unknown and paranormal. BORDERLANDS contains hundreds of personal accounts of strange phenomena ranging from surviving mammoths in Siberia to intelligent clouds over New Zealand, from frozen frogs to plagues of murderous manhole covers. It also examines how and why these stories are reported and what they mean. The book sets out the scientific and psychological explanations for these phenomena, while remaining accessible to the casual reader. BORDERLANDS i...

It was the autumn of 1628, and the Batavia, the Dutch East India Company's flagship, was loaded with a king's ransom in gold, silver, and gems for her maiden voyage to Java. The Batavia was the pride of the Company's fleet, a tangible symbol of the world's richest and most powerful commercial monopoly. She set sail with great fanfare, but the Batavia and her gold would never reach Java, for the Company had also sent along a new employee, Jeronimus Corneliszoon, a...

A vivid narration of the history of the tulip, from its origins on the barren, windswept steppes of central Asia to its place of honor in the lush imperial gardens of Constantinople, to its starring moment as the most coveted—and beautiful—commodity in Europe.In the 1630s, visitors to the prosperous trading cities of the Netherlands couldn't help but notice that thousands of normally sober, hardworking Dutch citizens were caught up in an extraordinary frenzy of buy...

Before the Five Families who so notoriously dominated U.S. organized crime for a bloody half-century, there was the one-fingered, surpassingly cunning Giuseppe Morello and his murderous coterie of brothers. Born into a life of poverty in rural Sicily, Morello became an American nightmare, pioneering the bizarre initiation rituals, imaginative protection rackets, influential underworld reigns, and Mafia wars later popularized by countless books, television shows, and movies.In T...

Nearly five million men and women have served the United States as police officers. Only one has been executed for murder.They called it Satan’s Circus–a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the twentieth century, murder was so common in the vice district that few people were surprised when the loudmouthed owner of a shabby casino was gunned down on the steps of its best hotel. But when, two weeks l...

Nearly five million men and women have served the United States as police officers. Only one has been executed for murder.They called it Satan’s Circus–a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the twentieth century, murder was so common in the vice district that few people were surprised when the loudmouthed owner of a shabby casino was gunned down on the steps of its best hotel. But when, two weeks l...

As seen on 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper and in the Emmy-award-winning New York Times documentary, the gripping true story of a Jewish teenager who became "The Forger of Paris" for the French Resistance.The Forger of Paris presents Adolfo Kaminsky’s biography in its only authorized edition, expanded with photographs from Kaminsky's 2019 exhibition at the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris and accompanied by essays from MAHJ director Paul Salmona a...

Six moving profiles reveal the complex realities behind gun violence in the United States. These are the stories of the shooters. In South Carolina, a young man embarks on a life of crime that culminates in a drug-related shooting and decades in prison; in Chicago, an off-duty police officer engages in a shootout with a murderous gunman, saving a fellow patrolman; in rural Tennessee, a troubled teenager shoots her abusive father in his sleep. The Trigger recounts the dramatic life stories ...