Audiobooks by Lawrence Goldstone

Days of Infamy: How a Century of Bigotry Led to Japanese American Internment

In another unrelenting look at the iniquities of the American justice system, Lawrence Goldstone, acclaimed author of Unpunished Murder, Stolen Justice, and Separate No More, examines the history of racism against Japanese Americans, exploring the territory of citizenship and touching on fears of non-white immigration to the US -- with hauntingly contemporary echoes. On December 7, 1941 -- 'a date which will live in infamy' -- the Japanese navy launched an attack on the American military bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt declared war on Japan, and the US Army officially entered the Second World War. Three years later, on December 18, 1944, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which enabled the Secretary of War to enforce a mass deportation of more than 100,000 Americans to what government officials themselves called 'concentration camps.' None of these citizens had been accused of a real crime. All of them were torn from their homes, jobs, schools, and communities, and deposited in tawdry, makeshift housing behind barbed wire, solely for the crime of being of Japanese descent. President Roosevelt declared this community 'alien,' -- whether they were citizens or not, native-born or not -- accusing them of being potential spies and saboteurs for Japan who deserved to have their Constitutional rights stripped away. In doing so, the president set in motion another date which would live in infamy, the day when the US joined the ranks of those Fascist nations that had forcibly deported innocents solely on the basis of the circumstance of their birth. In 1944 the US Supreme Court ruled, in Korematsu v. United States, that the forcible deportation and detention of Japanese Americans on the basis of race was a 'military necessity.' Today it is widely considered one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time. But Korematsu was not an isolated event. In fact, the Court's racist ruling was the result of a deep-seated anti-Japanese, anti-Asian sentiment running all the way back to the California Gold Rush of the mid-1800s. Starting from this pivotal moment, Constitutional law scholar Lawrence Goldstone will take young readers through the key events of the 19th and 20th centuries leading up to the fundamental injustice of Japanese American internment. Tracing the history of Japanese immigration to America and the growing fear whites had of losing power, Goldstone will raise deeply resonant questions of what makes an American an American, and what it means for the Supreme Court to stand as the 'people's' branch of government.

Lawrence Goldstone (Author), Elaina Erika Davis (Narrator)

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Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution

On September 17, 1787, at the State House in Philadelphia, thirty-nine men from twelve states, after months of often bitter debate, signed America's Constitution. Yet very few of the delegates, at the start, had had any intention of creating a nation that would last. Most were driven more by pragmatic, regional interests than by idealistic vision. Many were meeting for the first time, others after years of contention, and the inevitable clash of personalities would be as intense as the advocacy of ideas or ideals. No issue was of greater concern to the delegates than that of slavery. Lawrence Goldstone chronicles the forging of the Constitution through the prism of the crucial compromises made by men consumed with the needs of the slave economy. As the daily debates and backroom conferences in inns and taverns stretched through July and August of that hot summer-and as the philosophical leadership of James Madison waned-Goldstone clearly reveals how tenuous the document was, and how an agreement between unlikely collaborators-John Rutledge of South Carolina, and Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut-got the delegates past their most difficult point. Dark Bargain recounts an event as dramatic and compelling as any in our nation's history . . .

Lawrence Goldstone (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravaging of African American Voting

One promise of democracy is the right of every citizen to vote. And yet, from our founding, strong political forces were determined to limit that right. The Supreme Court, Alexander Hamilton wrote, would protect the weak against this very sort of tyranny. Still, as On Account of Race forcefully demonstrates, through the better part of American history the Court has instead been a protector of white rule. And complex threats against the right to vote persist even today. Beginning in 1876, the Supreme Court systematically dismantled both the equal protection guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment and what seemed to be the right to vote in the Fifteenth. And so a half million African Americans across the South who had risked their lives and property to be allowed to cast ballots were stricken from voting rolls by white supremacists. This vacuum allowed for the rise of Jim Crow. None of this was done in the shadows—those determined to wrest the vote from black Americans could not have been more boastful in either intent or execution. On Account of Race tells the story of an American tragedy, the only occasion in United States history in which a group of citizens who had been granted the right to vote then had it stripped away. It is a warning that the right to vote is fragile and must be carefully guarded and actively preserved lest American democracy perish.

Lawrence Goldstone (Author), Rhett Samuel Price (Narrator)

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Stolen Justice: The Struggle for African American Voting Rights

A thrilling and incisive examination of the post-Reconstruction era struggle for and suppression of African American voting rights in the United States. Following the Civil War, the Reconstruction era raised a new question to those in power in the US: Should African Americans, so many of them former slaves, be granted the right to vote? In a bitter partisan fight over the legislature and Constitution, the answer eventually became yes, though only after two constitutional amendments, two Reconstruction Acts, two Civil Rights Acts, three Enforcement Acts, the impeachment of a president, and an army of occupation. Yet, even that was not enough to ensure that African American voices would be heard, or their lives protected. White supremacists loudly and intentionally prevented black Americans from voting -- and they were willing to kill to do so. In this vivid portrait of the systematic suppression of the African American vote, critically acclaimed author Lawrence Goldstone traces the injustices of the post-Reconstruction era through the eyes of incredible individuals, both heroic and barbaric, and examines the legal cases that made the Supreme Court a partner of white supremacists in the rise of Jim Crow. Though this is a story of America's past, Goldstone brilliantly draws direct links to today's creeping threats to suffrage in this important and, alas, timely book.

Lawrence Goldstone (Author), James Shippy (Narrator)

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Assassin of Shadows

Just after 4 p.m. on September 6, 1901, twenty-eight-year-old anarchist Leon Czolgosz pumped two shots into the chest and abdomen of President William McKinley. Czolgosz had been on a receiving line waiting to shake the president's hand, his revolver concealed in an oversized bandage covering his right hand and wrist. McKinley had two Secret Service agents by his side, but neither made a move to stop the assailant. After he was apprehended, Czolgosz said simply "I done my duty." Both law enforcement and the press insisted that Czolgosz was merely the tip of a vast and murderous conspiracy, likely instigated by the "high priestess of anarchy," Emma Goldman. To untangle its threads and bring the remaining conspirators to justice, the president's most senior advisors chose two other Secret Service agents: Walter George and Harry Swayne. What they uncovered not only absolved the anarchists but also exposed a plot that threatened the foundations of American democracy and their lives. As in his other brilliant novels combining history and fiction, Lawrence Goldstone creates a remarkable and chilling tableau filled with suspense and unexpected turns of fate, detailing events that actually might have happened.

Lawrence Goldstone (Author), Joel Richards (Narrator)

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Deadly Cure: A Novel

In Brooklyn in 1899, Dr. Noah Whitestone is called urgently to his wealthy neighbor's house to treat a five-year-old boy with a shocking set of symptoms. When the child dies suddenly later that night, Noah is accused by the boy's regular physician-the powerful and politically connected Dr. Arnold Frias-of prescribing a lethal dose of laudanum. To prove his innocence, Noah must investigate the murder-for it must be murder-and confront the man he is convinced is the real killer. His investigation leads him to a reporter for a muckraking magazine and a beautiful radical editor who are convinced that a secret experimental drug from Germany has caused the death of at least five local children. By degrees, Noah is drawn into a dangerous world of drugs, criminals, and politics, which threatens not only his career but also his life.

Lawrence Goldstone (Author), John Chancer (Narrator)

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Higher, Steeper, Faster

Discover the daring aviation pioneers who made the dream of powered flight a reality, forever changing the course of history. Aviator Lincoln Beachey broke countless records: he looped-the-loop, flew upside down and in corkscrews, and was the first to pull his aircraft out of what was a typically fatal tailspin. As Beachey and other aviators took to the skies in death-defying acts in the early twentieth century, these innovative daredevils not only wowed crowds, but also redefined the frontiers of powered flight. Higher, Steeper, Faster takes readers inside the world of the brave men and women who popularized flying through their deadly stunts and paved the way for modern aviation. With heart-stopping accounts of the action-packed race to conquer the skies, plus photographs and fascinating archival documents, this book will exhilarate readers as they fly through the pages. **Contact Customer Service for Additional Content**

Lawrence Goldstone (Author), Robertson Dean (Narrator)

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Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies

Wilbur and Orville Wright are two of the greatest innovators in history, and together they solved the centuries-old riddle of powered, heavier-than-air flight. Glenn Hammond Curtiss was the most talented machinist of his day; he first became the fastest man alive when he perfected the motorcycle, then turned his eyes toward the skies to become the fastest man aloft. But between the Wrights and Curtiss bloomed a poisonous rivalry and a patent war so powerful that it shaped aviation in its early years and drove one of the three men to his grave. Birdmen is at once a thrilling ride through flight's wild early years and a surprising look at the battle that defined an era of American innovation. Lawrence Goldstone is the author or co-author of fourteen books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently LEFTY: An American Odyssey. His work has been profiled in the New York Times, The Toronto Star, Salon, and Slate, among others. He lives on Long Island with his wife and daughter.

Lawrence Goldstone (Author), Jonathan Fried (Narrator)

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The Anatomy of Deception

In the morgue of a Philadelphia hospital, a group of physicians open a coffin and uncover the corpse of a beautiful young woman. Within days one of them strongly suspects that he knows the woman's identity . . . and the horrifying events that led to her death. But in this richly atmospheric novel, the most compelling moment is yet to come, as young Ephraim Carroll is plunged into a maze of murder, secrets, and unimaginable crimes. . . . Dr. Ephraim Carroll came to Philadelphia to study with a leading professor, the brilliant William Osler, believing that he would gain the power to save countless lives. As America hurtles toward a new century, medicine is changing rapidly, in part due to the legalization of autopsy-a crime only a few years before. But Carroll and his mentor are at odds over what they glimpsed that morning in the hospital's Dead House. And when a second mysterious death is determined to have been a ruthless murder, Carroll can feel the darkness gathering around him-and he ignites an investigation of his own. Ultimately, Carroll is forced to confront an agonizing moral choice-between exposing a killer, undoing a wrong, and, quite possibly, protecting the future of medicine itself.

Lawrence Goldstone (Author), David Ackroyd (Narrator)

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