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Hello, Summer
The Court of Miracles
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (A Hunger Games Novel)
Whiskey Beach
The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir
Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons From a Small-Town Obituary Writer
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Be
Between the World and Me
The Beekeeper of Aleppo: A moving testament to the human spirit
Cross My Heart
How do you stop a rogue president? How do you protect our country from a man who lies, who obstructs justice, and who seeks to cheat with foreign powers to get re-elected? Our constitution offers one remedy: impeachment. Thanks to the courageous actions of public servants who came forward to report his abuses of power, on December 18, 2019, President Donald J. Trump became just the third president in US history to be impeached by the House of Representatives. In Endgame, Congressman Eric Swalwell offers his personal account of his path to office and how he and his colleagues resisted, investigated, and impeached a corrupt president. After the shock of the 2016 election and Trump's inauguration (including the luncheon afterward), Swalwell, as a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Judiciary Committee, quickly became involved in pushing back against Trump's outrageous actions as he sought to get to the bottom of foreign interference in our elections. But Republicans were in control of the investigation, and it became clear that taking back the House was essential. Swalwell takes listeners inside Congress and through the impeachment process, from Trump's disgraceful phone call with the Ukrainian president, just one day after Robert Mueller testified to Congress, to depositions in the SCIF, from caucus meetings and conversations with the Speaker to the bombshell public hearings and the historic vote, and then what followed next-the holding of the articles, the news of more possible witnesses, and the sham trial in the Senate. Endgame is fascinating, a gripping read by a unique witness to extraordinary events.
Show moreFrom the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed #1 best-selling memoir, Duty, a candid, sweeping examination of power in all its manifestations, and how it has been exercised, for good and bad, by American presidents in the post-Cold War world. Since the end of the Cold War, the global perception of the United States has progressively morphed from dominant international leader to disorganized entity, seemingly unwilling to accept the mantle of leadership or unable to govern itself effectively. Robert Gates argues that this transformation is the result of the failure of political leaders to understand the complexity of American power, its expansiveness, and its limitations. He makes clear that the successful exercise of power is not limited to the use of military might or the ability to coerce or demand submission, but must encompass as well diplomacy, economics, strategic communications, development assistance, intelligence, technology, ideology, and cyber. By analyzing specific challenges faced by the American government in the post-Cold War period--Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Russia, China, and others--Gates deconstructs the ways in which leaders have used the instruments of power available to them. With forthright judgments of the performance of past presidents and their senior-most advisers, firsthand knowledge, and insider stories, Gates argues that U.S. national security in the future will require learning, and abiding by, the lessons of the past, and re-creating those capabilities that the misuse of power has cost the nation.
Show moreA Publishers Weekly most anticipated spring book From a young Harvard- and Cambridge-trained historian, the secret history of the fight for gay rights that began a generation before Stonewall. In 1957, Frank Kameny, a rising astronomer working for the U.S. Defense Department in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny, like countless gay men and women before him, was promptly dismissed from his government job. Unlike many others, though, Kameny fought back. Based on firsthand accounts, recently declassified FBI records, and forty thousand personal documents, Eric Cervini's The Deviant's War unfolds over the course of the 1960s, as the Mattachine Society of Washington, the group Kameny founded, became the first organization to protest the systematic persecution of gay federal employees. It traces the forgotten ties that bound gay rights to the Black Freedom Movement, the New Left, lesbian activism, and trans resistance. Above all, it is a story of America (and Washington) at a cultural and sexual crossroads; of shocking, byzantine public battles with Congress; of FBI informants; murder; betrayal; sex; love; and ultimately victory. A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Show more#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER November 1958: the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Into the rarefied atmosphere of wealth and tradition comes the most unlikely of horses-a drab white former plow horse named Snowman-and his rider, Harry de Leyer. They were the longest of all longshots-and their win was the stuff of legend. Harry de Leyer first saw the horse he would name Snowman on a bleak winter afternoon between the slats of a rickety truck bound for the slaughterhouse. He recognized the spark in the eye of the beaten-up horse and bought him for eighty dollars. On Harry's modest farm on Long Island, the horse thrived. But the recent Dutch immigrant and his growing family needed money, and Harry was always on the lookout for the perfect thoroughbred to train for the show-jumping circuit-so he reluctantly sold Snowman to a farm a few miles down the road. But Snowman had other ideas about what Harry needed. When he turned up back at Harry's barn, dragging an old tire and a broken fence board, Harry knew that he had misjudged the horse. And so he set about teaching this shaggy, easygoing horse how to fly. One show at a time, against extraordinary odds and some of the most expensive thoroughbreds alive, the pair climbed to the very top of the sport of show jumping. Here is the dramatic and inspiring rise to stardom of an unlikely duo, based on the insight and recollections of "the Flying Dutchman" himself. Their story captured the heart of Cold War-era America-a story of unstoppable hope, inconceivable dreams, and the chance to have it all. Elizabeth Letts's message is simple: Never give up, even when the obstacles seem sky-high. There is something extraordinary in all of us.
Show moreIn Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King, Thomas J. Balcerski explores the lives of these two politicians and discovers one of the most significant collaborations in American political history. He traces the parallels in the men's personal and professional lives before elected office, including their failed romantic courtships and the stories they told about them. Unlikely companions from the start, they lived together as congressional messmates in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse and became close confidantes. Around the nation's capital, the men were mocked for their effeminacy and perhaps their sexuality, and they were likened to Siamese twins. Over time, their intimate friendship blossomed into a significant cross-sectional political partnership. Balcerski examines Buchanan's and King's contributions to the Jacksonian political agenda, manifest destiny, and the increasingly divisive debates over slavery, while contesting interpretations that the men lacked political principles and deserved blame for the breakdown of the union. He closely narrates each man's rise to national prominence, as William Rufus King was elected vice-president in 1852 and James Buchanan the nation's fifteenth president in 1856, despite the political gossip that circulated about them.
Show moreDenied citizenship by the Roman Empire, a soldier named Alaric changed history by unleashing a surprise attack on the capital city of an unjust empire. Stigmatized and relegated to the margins of Roman society, the Goths were violent 'barbarians' who destroyed 'civilization,' at least in the conventional story of Rome's collapse. But a slight shift of perspective brings their history, and ours, shockingly alive. Alaric grew up near the river border that separated Gothic territory from Roman. He survived a border policy that separated migrant children from their parents, and he was denied benefits he likely expected from military service. In stark contrast to the rising bigotry, intolerance, and zealotry among Romans during Alaric's lifetime, the Goths, as practicing Christians, valued religious pluralism and tolerance. The marginalized Goths preserved virtues of the ancient world that we take for granted. The three nights of riots Alaric and the Goths brought to the capital struck fear into the hearts of the powerful, but the riots were not without cause. Combining vivid storytelling and historical analysis, Douglas Boin reveals the Goths' complex and fascinating legacy in shaping our world.
Show moreA stirring true story of the journalists who dared to oppose Hitler-and the campaign waged against them. After serving in the First World War, Adolf Hitler encountered a serious obstacle to his plotting for power when the Munich Post, drawing on sources within the Nazi Party, began tracking the corruption and dark dreams of his inner circle. With leaked documents from Hitler's political rivals, who were shocked by his violent rhetoric and fearing the worst, the Post battled Hitler for ownership of the truth. After starting with libel lawsuits and anti-press propaganda and proceeding to assaults on editors at the Post, the Nazis finally resorted to raiding the paper's offices, shutting production down, and rounding up the staff. Enemy of the People brilliantly captures the dangerous times of Germany's Weimar era and the courage of the free press-people driven to speak louder than the enemy himself.
Show moreThis delightful memoir provides a unique 'Upstairs, Downstairs' account of what life was really like in a bygone era At the age of sixteen, Flo Wadlow left her family to begin what would become a distinguished life 'in service.' Starting as a kitchen maid in London, she soon rose through the ranks and worked at many of England's great houses, including Woodhall in Hilgay, where she met scullery maid Mollie Moran, author of Aprons and Silver Spoons; and Hatfield House and Blicking Hall. By her early twenties, Flo was in charge of the kitchen and cooked for prime ministers and royalty. Over a Hot Stove is a must-listen for fans of Downton Abbey.
Show moreSociologist Stephen Klineberg presents fascinating and groundbreaking research that shows how the city of Houston has emerged as a microcosm for America's future—based on an unprecedented thirty-eight-year study of its changing economic, demographic, and cultural landscapes. Houston, Texas, long thought of as a traditionally blue-collar black/white southern city, has transformed into one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse metro areas in the nation, surpassing even New York by some measures. With a diversifying economy and large numbers of both highly-skilled technical jobs in engineering and medicine and low-skilled minimum-wage jobs in construction, restaurant work, and personal services, Houston has become a magnet for the new divergent streams of immigration that are transforming America in the 21st century. And thanks to an annual systematic survey conducted over the past thirty-eight years, the ongoing changes in attitudes, beliefs, and life experiences have been measured and studied, creating a compelling data-driven map of the challenges and opportunities that are facing Houston and the rest of the country. In Prophetic City, we'll meet some of the new Americans, including a family who moved to Houston from Mexico in the early 1980s and is still trying to find work that pays more than poverty wages. There's a young man born to highly-educated Indian parents in an affluent Houston suburb who grows up to become a doctor in the world's largest medical complex, as well as a white man who struggles with being prematurely pushed out of the workforce when his company downsizes. This timely and groundbreaking book tracks the progress of an American city like never before. Houston is at the center of the rapid changes that have redefined the nature of American society itself in the new century. Houston is where, for better or worse, we can see the American future emerging.
Show moreA detailed examination of the controversial expeditions to the Tayos Cave complex in Ecuador and the treasures glimpsed in its depths • Reconstructs the expeditions from the 1960s and '70s, including the Mormon Church's search for lost tablets, Stanley Hall's quest with Neil Armstrong, and sightings of a metal library, books of gold, copper plates, and a quartz sarcophagus • Explores connections to Atlantis, Ancient Astronauts, and the Hollow Earth theory and the possibility of tunnel networks that extend from the Rocky Mountains to Patagonia The Cuevas de los Tayos is a cavern complex in the Amazon rain forest of Ecuador. Named for the tayos, the oil birds that reside within them, these caves have countless enigmas connected with them, from the discovery of inexplicable architectural details, to claims of curses and treasures, to dangerous encounters with the indigenous people, the Shuar, for whom the caves are sacred. Sharing his more than 30 years of research into the Tayos Caves as well as his own explorations, Alex Chionetti examines the legends and mysteries associated with this site and the explorers who have ventured within. He details the discovery of the Tayos Cave complex by Hungarian explorer Janos Juan Moricz in the 1960s, including Moricz's claims of finding a metal library with books of gold. Exploring the oral tradition of the Shuar, he explains how this region was the possible origin of Incan culture and the legend of El Dorado. The author shares his own dangerous explorations within the Tayos Caves, and, drawing on unpublished interviews with speleologist Julio Goyén Aguado, he reconstructs the expeditions of the 1960s and '70s, revealing the Mormon Church's search for lost tablets, a British army incursion, and sightings of paintings, gold statues and skeletons, copper plates, and a quartz sarcophagus--treasures akin to the Crespi treasure. The author also shares details from Stanley Hall's suspicious expedition in 1976, which included astronaut Neil Armstrong. Investigating the lost civilizations behind the Tayos treasures, Chionetti explores the possible connections to Atlantis, aliens, Ancient Astronauts, and the Hollow Earth theory; the caves' links with hermetic societies; and claims of tunnel networks that extend thousands of miles through both American continents, from the Rocky Mountains to Patagonia. Sharing a real-life adventure story wilder than an Indiana Jones plot, the author shows that Earth's ancient past has many secrets waiting to be uncovered.
Show moreIncludes audio exclusive bonus material: Suranne Jones, Maya Jama, Gemma Cairney and Anneka Harry discuss their favourite Gender Rebels, feminism, their female role models and how women are missing (or misrepresented) in the history books. Meet the unsung sheroes of history: the diverse, defiant and daring (wo)men who changed the rules, and their identities, to get sh*t done. You'll encounter Kit Cavanagh, the swaggering Irish dragoon who was the first woman to be buried in London with full military honours; marauding eighteenth-century pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny, who collided on the high seas after swapping their petticoats for pantaloons; Ellen Craft, an escaped slave who masqueraded as a white master to spirit her husband-to-be to freedom; and Billy Tipton, the swinging jazz musician, who led a double life as an adult, taking five wives along the way. Then there are the women who still have to dress like men to live their best lives, like the inspirational football-lovers in Iran, who risk everything to take their place in the stands. A call to action for the modern world, this book celebrates the #GenderRebels who paved the way for women everywhere to be soldiers and spies; kings and queens; firefighters, doctors, pilots; and a Swiss Army knife's-worth more. These superbly spirited (wo)men all had one thing in common: they defied the rules to progress in a man's world.
Show moreThe cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk.
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