A startling and gripping reexamination of the Jim Crow era, as seen through the eyes of some of the most important American writers"Walker has opened up a fresh way of thinking about the intellectual history of the South during the civil-rights movement."—Robert Greene, The NationIn this dramatic reexamination of the Jim Crow South, Anders Walker demonstrates that racial segregation fostered not simply terror and ...

In "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King, Jr. asserted that "the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice." To date, our understanding of the Civil Rights era has been largely defined by high-profile public events such as the crisis at Little Rock high school, bus boycotts, and sit-ins-incidents that were met with massive resistan...

Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women. Holding It Together chronicles the causes and dire consequences.America runs on women—women who are tasked with holding society together at the seams and fixing it when things fall apart. In this tour de force, acclaimed Sociologist Jessica Calarco lays bare the devastating consequences of our status quo.Holding It Together draws on five years of research in which Calarc...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A fascinating and eye-opening look at how American schools have helped build and reinforce an infrastructure of racial inequality . . . a must-read for every American parent and educator.”—Esquire“Though the argument of this book is bleak, it illuminates a path for a more just future that is nothing short of dazzling.”—Oprah Daily“This book will transform the way you see this country.”—Michelle Alexander, author of

The New York Times–bestselling author looks at the real history of the corrupting influence of oligarchy in America—and how we can fight back.Billionaire oligarchs want to own our republic, and they're nearly there thanks to legislation and Supreme Court decisions that they have essentially bought. They put Trump and his political allies into office and support a vast network of think tanks, publications, and social media that every day push our nation clos...

The "utterly fascinating" untold story of Soviet Russia's global military mapping program—featuring many of the surprising maps that resulted (Marina Lewycka, author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian).From 1950 to 1990, the Soviet Army conducted a global topographic mapping program, creating large-scale maps for much of the world that included a diversity of detail that would have supported a full range of military planning. For big cities like Ne...

The second volume in a prize-worthy two-book series based on years of irreplicable personal interviews with survivors about each of the atomic bomb drops, first in Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, that hastened the end of the Pacific War.On August 6, 1945, the United States unleashed a weapon unlike anything the world had ever seen. Then, just three days later, when Japan showed no sign of surrender, the United States took aim at Nagasaki.Rendered in harrowing ...

This economic and cultural history reveals how five significant stock market crashes in the past century define the modern United States.The Panic of 1907 1929: Black Tuesday 1987: Black Monday 2008: The Great Recession 2010: The Flash CrashEach of these financial implosions that caused a catastrophic drop in the American stock market is a remarkable story in its own right filled with drama, human foibles, and heroic rescues. Taken together they tell the la...

"The best single-volume history of the Revolution I have read." —Howard ZinnUpon its initial publication, Ray Raphael's magisterial A People's History of the American Revolution was hailed by NPR's Fresh Air as "relentlessly aggressive and unsentimental." With impeccable skill, Raphael presented a wide array of fascinating scholarship within a single volume, employing a bottom-up approach that has served as a revelation.A People's Hist...

"A very powerful and unsettling story of our nation's century-long 'pogrom' by vengeful white Southerners against their black neighbors." — The Washington TimesFor 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 infract...

From Alex Kershaw, author of the New York Times bestseller Against All Odds, comes an epic story of courage, resilience, and faith during the Second World WarGeneral George Patton needed a miracle. In December 1944, the Allies found themselves stuck. Rain had plagued the troops daily since September, turning roads into rivers of muck, slowing trucks and tanks to a crawl. A thick ceiling of clouds had grounded American warplanes, allowing the Germa...

A provocative exploration of how humans are wired to seek short-term success at the expense of long-term survival—an evolutionary “glitch” that explains everything from toxic workplaces to climate change“Essential reading . . . a lively, ultimately hopeful examination of how incentivizing the wrong values and actions has led to some of our most intractable problems.”—Eric Ries, New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup...