"At the midpoint of the twentieth century, Sir Winston Churchill called the United States "this gigantic capitalist organization, with its vast and superabundant productive power." The dollar reigned supreme and Pittsburgh and Detroit were at the summit of their power and prestige. From Washington, American statesmen sought to guide the destiny of nations. Victorious in the elections of 1948, Harry Truman and the leaders of the Democratic Party hoped...

"Hollywood starlet Lana Turner was one Tinseltown's most recognizable faces in the 1940s and 50s. But, when the Academy Award-winning actress began dating mobster Johnny Stompanato--a thug for west coast mob boss Mickey Cohen--all the lights and glamor of Hollywood did not brighten the darkness of her personal life. Johnny's intense jealousy over Lana ruled their relationship from the get-go and Lana's daughter, Cheryl, witnessed her mother's bruises...

"Marty Baron took charge of The Washington Post newsroom in 2013, after nearly a dozen years leading The Boston Globe. Just seven months into his new job, Baron received explosive news: Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, would buy the Post, marking a sudden end to control by the venerated family that had presided over the paper for 80 years. Just over two years later, Donald Trump won the presidency. Now, the capital's newspaper, owned by one of the...

"A magnificent, foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, in resistance to the lies of racism and often in heated disagreement with each other, over the course of the country's history. Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s legendary Harvard introductory course in African American Studies, The Black Box: Writing the Race, is the story of Black self-definition in...

"Far from being a lifeless ornament in the sky, the Moon holds the answers to some of science's central questions. Silent, dry, and barren, Earth's 4.34-billion-year-old companion is essential to life on earth. Its gravity stabilized the Earth's orbit, and, as it once guided evolution, its tide stirring up nutrients that fostered complex life, it now influences everything from animal migrations and reproduction to the movements of plants' leaves....

""It was not the Baby Boomers who ushered in the first era of widespread drug experimentation. It was their parents." Far from the repressed traditionalists they are often painted as, the generation that survived the second World War emerged with a profoundly ambitious sense of social experimentation. In the '40s and '50s, transformative drugs rapidly entered mainstream culture, where they were not only legal, but openly celebrated. American physician...

"How did Puerto Rico end up in its current situation? A Spanish-speaking territory controlled by the United States and populated by the descendants of conquistadors, enslaved Africans, and indigenous inhabitants, this island (or rather archipelago) has aunique history. Jorell Melaendez-Badillo begins the book with an overview of the pre-Columbian societies and cultures that first inhabited Borikaen, the indigenous name of the Puerto Rican archipelago....

In this masterful hybrid of nature writing and cultural studies, the author investigates our connection with deer, from mythology to biology, offering a unique and intimate perfective on a very human relationship while inviting us to contemplate the paradoxes of how we interact with and shape the natural world.

"During those dark pre-antibiotic days, when tuberculosis killed one in seven people, white nurses at Sea View, New York's largest municipal hospital, began quitting. Desperate to avert a public health crisis, city officials summoned Black southern nurses, luring them with promises of good pay, a career, and an escape from the strictures of Jim Crow. But after arriving, they found themselves on an isolated hilltop in the remote borough of Staten Island,...

"Jack Kerouac was one of America's great writers of the latter half of the 20th century, yet he endured a life characterized by persistent hardship and disillusion. Leading Kerouac scholar Paul Maher Jr. targets the writer's embattled insight of self as central to his life and work. He reveals how Kerouac's troubled interactions with alcohol, drugs, and spirituality stamped its importance on his autobiographical prose and poetry and created a singular...