The historical record crowns success. Those enshrined in its annals are men and women whose ideas, accomplishments, or personalities have dominated, endured, and most important of all, found champions. John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, and Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets are classic celebrations of the greatest, the brightest, the eternally constellated.Paul Collins’ Banvard’s Folly is a different k...

The first popular narrative history of Shakespeare’s First Folio, the world’s most obsessively pursued bookOne book above all others has transfixed connoisseurs for four centuries—a book sold for shillings in the streets of London, whisked to Manhattan for millions, and stored deep within the vaults of Tokyo. The book: William Shakespeare’s First Folio of 1623. Paul Collins, lover of odd books and author of the national bestseller Sixpence House, takes up ...

Ten years after graduating from Harvard, lawyer Jack Collins sets out to reinvent himself. The Ivy-leaguer leaves a small Connecticut law practice to join one of the nation’s most prestigious firms, trading a nondescript office for one in a gleaming New York City skyscraper. He surrounds himself with people far more glamorous than those he’s left behind. He basks in the pride of being with his famous new boss, his alluring new coworker, and his fascinating new client, Abigail Walker, wealt...

Blood and Money tells the story of money as a history of violence and human bondage.In most accounts of the origins of money we are offered pleasant tales in which it arises to the mutual benefit of all parties as a result of barter. In this groundbreaking study David McNally reveals the true story of money’s origins and development as one of violence and human bondage. Money’s emergence and its transformation are shown to be intimately connected to the buying and selling ...

I know the answer to the world’s deepest secret …Graham, a functioning alcoholic and Harvard medical student, stumbles across a puzzling communication from his deceased Navy SEAL brother. Graham must work to unravel a litany of secrets sobering in their implications not only for himself, but for the past twelve-thousand years of human history and the secrets of the universe. Had he not, in his hungover state, opened the email, Graham could have continued on his predetermined succes...

After the tragic loss of their best friend NP, and nearly bringing the Catholic Church to its knees, Graham, Hannah, and Rosette once again are stuck in the middle of a worldwide conspiracy that dates back ten thousand years. After discovering the main astrological code which led them to decode the Bible and nearly destroy the Catholic Church, they thought that they had gotten to the deepest secret of the universe. Boy were they wrong.When Graham learns that the capstones of the Eg...

For over 400 years, the mystery of Roanoke’s “Lost Colony” has puzzled historians and spawned conspiracies—until now. New discoveries link the lost colony of Roanoke to Hatteras Island.The legend of the Lost Colony has been captivating imaginations for nearly a century. When they left Roanoke Island, where did they go? What is the meaning of the mysterious word Croatoan? In the sixteenth century, Croatoan was the name of an island to the south now known as Hatteras...

Set in Jazz Age San Diego against the backdrop of yellow journalism, notorious Hollywood scandals, Prohibition corruption, and a lively culture war, Mystery at the Blue Sea Cottage tells the intriguing true-crime story of a beautiful dancer, a playboy actor, and a debonair doctor.In January 1923, twenty-year-old Fritzie Mann left home for a remote cottage by the sea to meet a man whose identity she had revealed to no one. The next morning, the barely clad body of the beaut...

Paul Collins travels the globe piecing together the missing body and soul of one of our most enigmatic founding fathers: Thomas Paine.A typical book about an American founding father doesn’t start at a gay piano bar and end in a sewage ditch. But then, Tom Paine isn’t your typical founding father. A firebrand rebel and a radical on the run, Paine alone claims a key role in the development of three modern democracies. In death, his story turns truly bizarre. Shunned...

In the final days of 2019, a new and deadly virus was quietly spreading through the city of Wuhan, China. Within six months it would kill half a million people worldwide, infect a further ten million, and change the way all of us live, work and play forever.Now, for the first time, the real story of the greatest global crisis of the age can be told.Reporters Dylan Howard and Dominic Utton, collaborating from New York and London—infection hotspots in what would become two of...

Reminiscences of the Civil War is John Brown Gordon’s first-hand account of the war as seen through the eyes of the prominent officer. Gordon was trusted and admired by many, including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. The work begins with him being elected as the commander of the “Raccoon Roughs” and his recollection of the Battle of Manassas. He also describes the South’s surrender at Appomattox, in which he participated. He recounts his role in individual battles such as Antie...

What does it mean to deeply love a home place that haunts us still? From Mark Twain to Grant Wood to Garrison Keillor, regionalists from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age have explored the American Gothic and the homegrown fatalism that flourishes in many of the nation’s most far-flung and forgotten places. The Haunt of Home introduces us to a cast of real-life midwestern characters grappling with the Gothic in their own lives, from promising young professionals debating the peren...