A "brilliant" history of American beliefs about the family, and how those ideas have affected our politics since the 1960s ( Washington Monthly).In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty promised an array of federal programs to assist working-class families. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan declared the GOP the party of "family values" and promised to keep government out of Americans' lives. Again and again, historians have sought to expla...

Fourteen essays examine the unexpected relationships between government power and intimate life in the last 150 years of United States history.The last few decades have seen a surge of historical scholarship that analyzes state power and expands our understanding of governmental authority and the ways we experience it. At the same time, studies of the history of intimate life—marriage, sexuality, child-rearing, and family—also have blossomed. Yet these two literatu...

Controversy swirled around the Black Panthers from the moment the revolutionary black nationalist Party was founded in Oakland, California, in 1966. Since that time, the group that J. Edgar Hoover called “the single greatest threat to the nation’s internal security” has been celebrated and denigrated, deified and vilified. Rarely, though, has it received the sort of nuanced analysis offered in this rich interdisciplinary collection. Historians, along with scholars in the fields of politica...

A gripping portrait of black power politics and the struggle for civil rights in postwar OaklandAs the birthplace of the Black Panthers and a nationwide tax revolt, California embodied a crucial motif of the postwar United States: the rise of suburbs and the decline of cities, a process in which black and white histories inextricably joined. American Babylon tells this story through Oakland and its nearby suburbs, tracing both the history of civil rights a...

“An elegant, wide-ranging history” (The New York Review of Books) of the centuries-long quest to discover the critical role of germs in disease thatreveals as much about human reasoning—and the pitfalls of ego—as it does about microbes.“Levenson takes readers through an entertaining . . . journey of missed opportunities in microbiology and the eventual advances that arose in this field.”—ScienceScientists and enthusiastic ...

"No part of the judiciary exposes the chasm between American ideals and institutional practice like federal Indian law. In By the Fire We Carry, Nagle, a Cherokee journalist, turns a case most Americans haven’t heard of into a legal thriller." —New York Times Book ReviewNATIONAL BESTSELLERThe New Yorker’s Best Books of 2024 • Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year • NPR 2024 "Books We Loved" Pick • Esquire Best Book o...

An entertaining, deeply informative explanation of how high-level financial crimes work, written “with verve and wit” (The Sunday Times, London) by an industry insider who’s an expert in the field.The way most white-collar crime works is by manipulating institutional psychology. That means creating something that looks as much as possible like a normal set of transactions. The drama comes later, when it all unwinds.Financial crime ...

**“Few people understand the centrality of the Vietnam War to our situation as much as Christian Appy."—Ken BurnsThe critically acclaimed author of Patriots offers profound insights into Vietnam’s place in America’s self-image**.How did the Vietnam War change the way we think of ourselves as a people and a nation? Christian G. Appy, author of the widely praised oral history of the Vietnam War Patriots, now examines the relationship between the war’s...

A revised and updated edition of the iconic grammar guide for the 21st century.In this expanded and updated edition of Woe Is I, former editor at The New York Times Book Review Patricia T. O'Conner unties the knottiest grammar tangles with the same insight and humor that have charmed and enlightened readers of previous editions for years. With fresh insights into the rights, wrongs, and maybes of English grammar and usage, O'Conner offers in Woe I...

The National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestseller that became a guide and balm for a country struggling to understand the election of Donald Trump"A generous but disconcerting look at the Tea Party. . . . This is a smart, respectful and compelling book."— Jason DeParle, The New York Times Book ReviewWhen Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a bewildered nation turned to ...

"Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book. It is both a refreshing antidote to what has passed for history in our educational system and a one-volume education in itself."—Howard ZinnA new edition of the national bestseller and American Book Award winner, with a new preface by the authorSince its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important—and su...

A larger-than-life account of family, greed, and a courtroom showdown between Big Oil rivals from the New York Times–bestselling author of Private Empire.Pulitzer Prize–winning author Steve Coll is renowned for "his ability to take complicated, significant business stories and turn them into quick-reading engaging narratives" ( Chicago Tribune). Coll is at the height of his talents in this "riveting" tale of one of the most spectacular—and...