A chronicle of Pierre Elliot Trudeau's first term as prime minister and the attempt to bridge one of Canada's classic political fault lines.Trudeau appeared to enjoy the encounter. He stood his ground while escaping projectiles, including a tomato . . .In this insightful and lively history, Liberal insider Darryl Raymaker recalls the attempt to broker "a marriage from hell" between the federal Liberal Party and Alberta's Social Credit government in the late 1...

Trudeau appeared to enjoy the encounter. He stood his ground while escaping projectiles, including a tomato… In this insightful and lively history, Liberal insider Darryl Raymaker recalls the attempt to broker “a marriage from hell” between the federal Liberal Party and Alberta’s Social Credit government in the late 1960s. Raymaker uses his deep connections and backroom knowledge to trace the tangled political relationships that developed when charismatic statesman Pierre Trudeau confronte...

The Soo Line’s Famous Trains To Canada is a brief history of a small and unique Class 1 railway and its famous Canada–USA tourist trains.Initially chartered in 1883 to serve the needs of local millers in Minneapolis, the Soo would eventually come to join the Canadian Pacific line at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, with service to Montreal. In 1888, Canadian Pacific assumed controlling interest in the Soo Line, providing entry into the lucrative US market and le...

"This crisply written, well-documented account . . . examines diplomatic, military, political and economic developments in a crucial period leading up to WWII" ( Publishers Weekly)All Against All is the story of how a single winter, between November 1932 and April 1933, put the postwar world back on the path to global conflict. Historian Paul Jankowski reveals how domestic passions within various nations colluded to drive their governments towards ...

National Book Award Finalist: A study of national myths, lore, and identity that "will interest all those concerned with American cultural history" ( American Political Science Review).Winner of the American Historical Association's Albert J. Beveridge Award for Best Book in American HistoryIn Regeneration Through Violence, the first of his trilogy on the mythology of the American West, historian and cultural critic Richard Slotkin ...

National Book Award Finalist: The "impressive" conclusion to the "magisterial trilogy on the mythology of violence in American history" ( Film Quarterly)."The myth of the Western frontier—which assumes that whites' conquest of Native Americans and the taming of the wilderness were preordained means to a progressive, civilized society—is embedded in our national psyche. U.S. troops called Vietnam 'Indian country.' President John Kennedy invoked 'New Frontier...

What can we learn about the evolution of jaws from a pair of scissors? How does the flight of a tennis ball help explain how fish overcome drag? What do a spacesuit and a chicken egg have in common? Highlighting the fascinating twists and turns of evolution across more than 540 million years, paleobiologist Matthew Bonnan uses everyday objects to explain the emergence and adaptation of the vertebrate skeleton. What can camera lenses tell us about the eyes of marine reptiles? How does under...

A two-time National Book Award finalist's "ambitious and provocative" look at Custer's Last Stand, capitalism, and the rise of the cowboys-and-Indians legend ( The New York Review of Books).In The Fatal Environment, historian Richard Slotkin demonstrates how the myth of frontier expansion and subjugation of Native Americans helped justify the course of America's rise to wealth and power. Using Custer's Last Stand as a metaphor for what Americans fe...

A fascinating behind-the-scenes look at a year in American history that still resonates today, 1932: FDR, Hoover, and the Dawn of a New America tells the story of a battered nation fighting for its own future amid the depths of the Great Depression.At the start of 1932, the nation’s worst economic crisis has left one-in-four workers without a job, countless families facing eviction, banks shutting down as desperate depositors withdraw their savings, and gr...

In the bestselling tradition of Indianapolis and In Harm’s Way comes a “captivating…gripping” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) account of the USS Plunkett—a US Navy destroyer that sustained the most harrowing attack on any Navy ship by the Germans during World War II, later made famous by John Ford and Herman Wouk.“A reflection on the nature of storytelling itself” (The Wall Street Journal), Unsinkable traces th...

"A mesmerizing account that illuminates not just the Napoleonic wars but all of modern history . . . It reads like a novel" (Lynn Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of modern European history, UCLA).The twentieth century is usually seen as "the century of total war." But as the historian David A. Bell argues in this landmark work, the phenomenon actually began much earlier, in the era of muskets, cannons, and sailing ships—in the age of Napoleon.In a sweeping, evo...

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist "plunges into the battles and escapades of the entrepreneurs . . . who created the national rail system . . . engrossing" ( The New York Times).In 1869, when the final spike was driven into the transcontinental railroad, few were prepared for its seismic aftershocks. Once a hodgepodge of short, squabbling lines, America's railways soon exploded into a titanic industry helmed by a pageant of speculators, crooks, and vision...