The Other Side of the Hoop is a book about the multitude of experiences and obstacles that a young black American guy encountered while playing professional basketball in Europe. Unlike most books written by players who experienced playing professional basketball in the United States in the National Basketball Association (NBA), players like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, and Wilt Chamberlain to name a few, this story is about a totally different basketball exp...

The bestselling author of Overthrow and The Brothers brings to life the forgotten political debate that set America’s interventionist course in the world for the twentieth century and beyond.How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat—until the cycle begins again.No matter how often we debate this question, n...

The English had long dreamed of colonizing America, especially after Sir Francis Drake brought home Spanish treasure and dramatic tales from his raids in the Caribbean. Ambitions of finding gold and planting a New World colony seemed within reach when, in 1606, Thomas Smythe extended overseas trade with the launch of the Virginia Company. But from the beginning the American enterprise was a disaster. Within two years, warfare with Indians and dissent among the settlers threatened to destro...

Our idea of the Founders’ America and its values is not true. We are not the heirs of the Founders, but we can be the heirs of Reconstruction and its vision for equality.There’s a common story we tell about America: that our fundamental values as a country were stated in the Declaration of Independence, fought for in the Revolution, and made law in the Constitution. But, with the country increasingly divided, this story isn’t working for us anymore—what’s more, it’...

From a Pulitzer Prize winner, a powerful history that reveals how the twin strands of liberty and slavery were joined in the nation's founding."Gut-wrenching. . . . While acknowledging that the study of liberty and slavery in the Revolutionary era remains a 'partisan minefield,' Mr. Larson plunges in, sparing none of the era's most prominent revolutionaries from scrutiny." —Harold Holzer, Wall Street JournalNew attention from histo...

"Vivid with a Mesozoic bestiary" (Tom Holland), this on-the-ground, must-listen narrative weaves together the chance discovery of dinosaurs and the rise of the secular age.When the twelve-year-old daughter of a British carpenter pulled some strange-looking bones from the country's southern shoreline in 1811, few people dared to question that the Bible told the accurate history of the world. But Mary Anning had in fact discovered the "first" ichthyosaur, and over th...

**NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST AND THE GUARDIAN“Absorbing. . . . A revealing look at the hidden role that games have played in human development for centuries.” —Kirkus“By turns philosophical and polemical, this is a provocative and fascinating book.” —The EconomistA wide-ranging intellectual history that reveals how important games have been to human progress, and what’s at stake when we forget what games we’re ...

An astonishing window into the inner world of plants, and the cutting-edge science in plant intelligence.Decades of research document plants' impressive abilities: they communicate with one another, manipulate other species, and move in sophisticated ways. Lesser known, however, is the new evidence that plants may actually be sentient. Although plants may not have brains, their microscopic commerce exposes a system not unlike the neuronal networks running through o...

Between 1927 and 1979, more than 8,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in five hospitals across the state of Virginia. From this plain and terrible fact springs Elizabeth Catte's Pure America, a sweeping, unsparing history of eugenics in Virginia, and by extension the United States. Virginia's twentieth-century eugenics program was not the misguided initiative of well-meaning men of the day, writes Catte, with clarity and ferocity. It was a manifestation of white supremacy. I...

For a hundred years after the end of the Civil War, a quarter of all Americans lived under a system of legalized segregation called Jim Crow. Together with its rigidly enforced canon of racial "etiquette," these rules governed nearly every aspect of life—and outlined draconian punishments for infractions.The purpose of Jim Crow was to keep African Americans subjugated at a level as close as possible to their former slave status. Exceeding even South Africa's notorious apartheid in ...

The years from 1815 to 1848 were arguably the richest period in American life. In Waking Giant, award-winning historian David S. Reynolds illuminates the era's exciting political story alongside the fascinating social and cultural movements that influenced it. He casts fresh light on Andrew Jackson, who redefined the presidency, as well as John Quincy Adams and James K. Polk, who expanded the nation's territory and strengthened its position internationally.Waking Giant...

The literature of the Gettysburg Address tends to fall into one of two extremes. At one end are those books that maintain that Lincoln wrote his speech hastily, even on a scrap of paper on the train en route from Washington to Gettysburg. In this version, Lincoln delivered his remarks to an uncomprehending public, which applauded politely, failing to appreciate his genius. Many of the books that argue this point of view are out of print today, but the myths and legends live on.At t...