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 ...

Who was behind the brutal murder of my great-grandmother? wondered Wayne Hoffman, a New York City–based journalist and novelist. The crime wasn’t just a family legend—it made headlines across Canada in 1913—but her killer had never been found. In The End of Her, Hoffman meticulously researches this century-old tragedy, while facing another: his mother’s decline from Alzheimer’s.Weaving back and forth between past and present, Hoffman invokes in dr...

When Paul Collins’s son Morgan was two years old, he could read, spell, and perform multiplication tables in his head … but not answer to his own name. A casual conversation—or any social interaction that the rest of us take for granted—will, for Morgan, always be a cryptogram that must be painstakingly decoded. He lives in a world of his own: an autistic world.In Not Even Wrong, Paul Collins melds a memoir of his son’s autism with a journey into this realm of permanent ou...

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...

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 ...

As the adopted son of two cult leaders, Benjamin Risha was raised to someday assume a place of leadership in the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation with the Bible, and his parents’ interpretation of it, as his guide. He believed the prophecies of his adoptive mother and father, which included them being the two prophets foretold in the Book of Revelations as preceding the second coming of Jesus Christ, then raising from the dead when they died, and such dire warnings as the ground o...

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...

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...

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...

We is the personal account of Charles A. Lindbergh and his historic transatlantic flight from New York to Paris. Published mere months after he completed the journey, his memoir includes his thoughts about the future of aviation and his life leading up to that solo journey.Taking off from Long Island in the Spirit of St. Louis on May twentieth, less than thirty-six hours later he landed in Le Bourget Field in Paris. And over night he transformed from anonymous mai...

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...

They sing songs about Matthew Johnson. The hero of dime novels, Matt won national fame during a range war in Idaho when he shot and killed an outlaw—and former saddle pal. But the past seventeen years have been an alcoholic blur rather than a heroic journey. Gone are the days when he was a free-wheeling cowboy, swapping poems with his best friend on the cattle ranges. The West has modernized—and practically disappeared—when Matt arrives in Denver in 1894 as the newly appointed US marshal f...