Mark Binelli turns his sharp, forceful prose to fiction, in an inventive retelling of the outrageous life of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, a bluesman with one hit and a string of inflammatory guisesHe came on stage in a coffin, carried by pallbearers, drunk enough to climb into his casket every night. Onstage he wore a cape, clamped a bone to his nose, and carried a staff topped with a human skull. Offstage, he insisted he'd been raised by a tribe of Blackfoot Indians, tha...

The first major biography of Martin Scorsese, America’s greatest modern filmmaker, a book as stylish and audacious as the director’s movies, drawing on previously unseen sources, original research, and new interviews to reveal the origins, genius, and influence of his life and workJust a Shot Away chronicles the brilliant and tumultuous life and career of Martin Scorsese, one of the world’s foremost living filmmakers, from his childhood on...

Once America's capitalist dream town, the Silicon Valley of the Jazz Age, Detroit became the country's greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the furthest. The city of Henry Ford, modernity, and Motown found itself blighted by riots, arson, unemployment, crime and corruption.But what happens to a once-great place after it has been used up and discarded? Who stays there to try to make things work again? And what sorts of newcomers are drawn there?Mark Binelli ...

Once America's capitalist dream town, Detroit is our country's greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the farthest. But the city's worst crisis yet (and that's saying something) has managed to do the unthinkable: turn the end of days into a laboratory for the future. Urban planners, land speculators, neopastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmentalists—all have been drawn to Detroit's baroquely decaying, nothing-left-to-lose frontier.With an eye for both the da...

Once America’s capitalist dream town, Detroit is our country’s greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the farthest. But the city’s worst crisis yet (and that’s saying something) has managed to do the unthinkable: turn the end of days into a laboratory for the future. Urban planners, land speculators, neopastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmentalists―all have been drawn to Detroit’s baroquely decaying, nothing-left-to-lose frontier.With an eye for both the d...

The first major biography of Martin Scorsese, America’s greatest modern filmmaker, a book as stylish and audacious as the director’s movies, drawing on previously unseen sources, original research, and new interviews to reveal the origins, genius, and influence of his life and workJust a Shot Away chronicles the brilliant and tumultuous life and career of Martin Scorsese, one of the world’s foremost living filmmakers, from his childhood on...

“A fascinating political, racial, economic, and cultural tapestry” (Detroit Free Press), Once in a Great City is a tour de force from David Maraniss about the quintessential American city at the top of its game: Detroit in 1963.Detroit in 1963 is on top of the world. The city’s leaders are among the most visionary in America: grandson of the first Ford; Henry Ford II; Motown’s founder Berry Gordy; the Reverend C.L. Franklin and his daughter, the i...

**An explosive exposé of America’s lost prosperity by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Charlie LeDuff“One cannot read Mr. LeDuff's amalgam of memoir and reportage and not be shaken by the cold eye he casts on hard truths . . . A little gonzo, a little gumshoe, some gawker, some good-Samaritan—it is hard to ignore reporting like Mr. LeDuff's.” —The Wall Street Journal“Pultizer-Prize-winning journalist LeDuff . . . writes with honesty and compassion about a city tha...

“A fascinating political, racial, economic, and cultural tapestry” (Detroit Free Press), Once in a Great City is a tour de force from David Maraniss about the quintessential American city at the top of its game: Detroit in 1963.Detroit in 1963 is on top of the world. The city’s leaders are among the most visionary in America: grandson of the first Ford; Henry Ford II; Motown’s founder Berry Gordy; the Reverend C.L. Franklin and his daughter, the i...

A classic, must-read Vietnam war memoir about the unforgettable story and unflinching portrait of a young soldier's journey from the roads of upstate New York to the jungles of Vietnam.…and a hard rain fell, has been updated for its 20th anniversary with a new afterword on the Iraq War and its parallels to Vietnam. John Ketwig's message is as relevant today as it was twenty years ago."A magnetic, bloody, moving, and worm's-eye view of soldiering in...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYJanet Maslin, The New York Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch**When Pulitzer Prize*–*winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a t...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNERA NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKAN NPR BEST BOOKSelected by New York Times' critic Dwight Garner as a Favorite BookA Washington Post Best Political BookA New Republic Best BookA riveting examination of a nation in crisis, from one of the ...