In this beautifully designed volume, America's top Lincoln historians offer a diverse array of perspectives on the life and legacy of America's sixteenth president. Spanning Lincoln's life -- from his early career as a Springfield lawyer, to his presidential reign during one of America's most troubled historical periods, to his assassination in 1865 -- these essays, developed from original C-SPAN interviews, provide a compelling, composite portrait of Lincoln, one that offers up new storie...

The Supreme Court grew out of a unique opportunity to interview all nine sitting Supreme Court Justices plus retired Justice O'Connor for a documentary on the Supreme Court. Through Brian Lamb and Susan Swain's interviews with our country's most influential judges, the book offers portraits of the Justices that introduces readers to the closed world of the Supreme Court, and what's it's really like to serve on the nation's highest Court.Accompanying the Justices around the...

For the last 25 years, Sunday nights at 8pm on C-SPAN has been appointment television for many Americans. During that time, host Brian Lamb has invited people to his Capitol Hill studio for hour-long conversations about contemporary society and history. In today's soundbite culture that hour remains one of television's last vestiges of in-depth, civil conversation.First came C-SPAN's Booknotes in 1989, which by the time it ended in December 2004, was the longest-running au...

A look inside the personal life of every first lady in American history, based on original interviews with major historiansC-SPAN's yearlong history series, First Ladies: Influence and Image, featured interviews with more than fifty preeminent historians and biographers. In this informative book, these experts paint intimate portraits of all forty-five first ladies -- their lives, ambitions, and unique partnerships with their presidential spouses. Susan Sw...

Some presidents have been larger than life but none of them have been larger than death. Brian Lamb has visited the gravesites of every American president, living and dead, in order to put together this book, with assistance from the staff of C-SPAN. Heavily illustrated and with contributions from historians Richard Norton Smith and Douglas Brinkley, Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? is about the presidents' lives as much as it is about their final resting places. The book's collecti...

Greed in the Gilded Age is a Gatsby-esque tale of mystery, money, sex, and scandal.‘Millionaire’ had just entered the American lexicon and Cassie Chadwick was front page news, becoming a media sensation before mass media, even eclipsing President Roosevelt’s inauguration. Using these newspaper articles, Hazelgrove tells the story of one of the greatest cons in American history.Combining the sexuality and helplessness her gender implied, Chadwick conned at least 2 mil...

**One of the country’s most powerful families embroiled in sex, lies, bigamy, and blackmail . . . and every new, deliciously humiliating morsel splashed across every newspaper in AmericaNow in paperback, the believe-it-or-not historical true crime behind one of the greatest scandals of the Gilded Age, and the story that gave rise to the sensational tabloid journalism still driving so much of the news cycle in the 21st century.**An Alexander Hamilton heir, a beau...

Finalist for the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction | One of Time Magazines's 100 Must-Read Books of 2020 | Longlisted for the 2020 Porchlight Business Book Awards"An entertaining quest to trace the origins and implications of the names of the roads on which we reside." —Sarah Vowell, The New York Times Book ReviewWhen most people think about street addresses, if they think of them at all, i...

A look at the royal women of twelfth-century England—from the empowered to the imprisoned—and their roles in the ruling dynasty.Eleanor of Aquitaine and her second husband, Henry II, are commonly considered medieval figures, but their era was really the violent transition from the Dark Ages, when countries' borders were defined with fire and sword. Henry grabbed the English throne thanks largely to Eleanor's dowry, because she owned one third of France. But their l...

The authoritative history of the pivotal conference between Allied leaders at the close of WWII, based on revealing firsthand accounts.Crimea, 1945. As the last battles of WWII were fought, US President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin—the so-called "Big Three" —met in the Crimean resort town of Yalta. Over eight days of bargaining, bombast, and intermittent bonhomie, they decided on the endgame...

Catherine Hewitt's richly told biography of Suzanne Valadon, the illegitimate daughter of a provincial linen maid who became famous as a model for the Impressionists and later as a painter in her own right.In the 1880s, Suzanne Valadon was considered the Impressionists' most beautiful model. But behind her captivating façade lay a closely-guarded secret.Suzanne was born into poverty in rural France, before her mother fled the provinces, taking her to Montmart...

The most recent state to join the union, Hawaii is the only one to have once been a royal kingdom. After its "discovery" by Captain Cook in the late 18th Century, Hawaii was fought over by European powers determined to take advantage of its position as the crossroads of the Pacific. The arrival of the first missionaries marked the beginning of the struggle between a native culture with its ancient gods, sexual libertinism and rites of human sacrifice, and the rigid values of the Calvinists...