“Bradford Martin’s fascinating and extensively researched book will take you on a revelatory trip to the other side of Reagan’s 1980s.”—Judith E. Smith, Professor of American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston

"Exactly what political history ought to be—incisive, fast-paced and fun to read."—Matt Bai, The New York Times Book Review

"In an engaging biography, Miller shows that even though the flag story is riddled with improbabilities, the life of the woman who came to be known as Betsy Ross is worth recovering . . . Through skillful use of small details, Miller sustains her repeated assertion that the future Betsy Ross was often 'only a handshake away' from the men who made the Revolution . . . Miller's admiring biography will warm the hearts of those who love the Betsy Ross legend. It may also convince skeptics (Miller refers to them as 'naysayers') that there is something in the flag stories worth considering."—Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The New York Times

“Ian Morris is a classical archaeologist, an ancient historian, and a writer whose breathtaking vision and scope make him fit to be ranked alongside the likes of Jared Diamond and David Landes. His magnum opus is a tour not just d’horizon but de force, taking us on a spectacular journey to and from the two nodal cores of the Euramerican West and the Asian East, alighting and reflecting as suggestively upon 10,800 BC as upon AD 2010. The shape of globalizing history may well never be quite the same again.”—Paul Cartledge, A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, Clare College

"Ben Steele, a young cowboy on his home range in Montana who had enlisted as a soldier in World War II, was caught up in the battle for Bataan in the Philippines, then in the ensuing death march as a prisoner of the Japanese, which he barely survived. Beginning with harrowing sketches of that experience, and in the course of various adventures and misadventures, he continued to draw and paint, and has since become a truly distinguished artist of the West. Tears in the Darkness is a well-told, well-researched, and moving narrative."—Peter Matthiessen, author of Shadow Country

“Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, a woman who spent her life in voyages both literal and metaphorical, above all longed to leave her mark on the landscape of the life she passed through. The noted historian Michael O’Brien gives Louisa her voice, assuring her place in history as a woman ‘who was,’ as she put it. Take these twin journeys, rendered with precision and grace by a master—across the dramatic frozen landscape of Napoleon’s Europe, and deep within the mind and heart of one of the most compelling characters in American history.”—Catherine Allgor, Presidential Chair and Professor of History, University of California at Riverside

“This revelatory and exhilarating and funny book not only tells us of the Beat generation, but of a time when we as individuals felt truly free. It is as fresh and pertinent as the latest scholarly history only far more entertaining.”—Studs Terkel

“Texas Tough is a raw, compelling assessment of racial disparity and southern culture as they have determined the massive over-incarceration of African Americans. If you want to understand how politics, not crime control, governs today’s prison population, read this book. Anyone concerned with justice and fairness should place this on their must-read list.”—Charles J. Ogletree Jr., Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and author of When Law Fails

“Clear and beautifully lyrical . . . Of all the books that mark this anniversary, [There Is No Freedom Without Bread] is one that must be read. Pleshakov writes history with a human face.”—Gerard DeGroot, The Washington Post

"'An army travels on its stomach,' wrote Napoleon Bonaparte in one of his most astute maxims. That truth certainly applied to Union and Confederate armies in the Civil War, giving a weighty advantage to the normally well fed Federals in their campaigns against enemy armies weakened by hunger. Malnutrition on the home front also sapped the will of Southern people to sustain the war effort, as Andrew Smith demonstrates in this important and readable study."—James McPherson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

"A fascinating history of the role of food in causing, enabling and influencing successive transformations of human society. This is an extraordinary and well-told story, a much neglected dimension of history."—Financial Times

"An excellent introduction to China for anyone in search of solid but concise information about that complicated country. Packed with facts and figures, but enlivened with firsthand observations."—Lucian W. Pye, The New York Times

 

“[A] rollicking chronicle of the rise and fall of the homely little hatchback that couldn’t . . . [Jason Vuic] weaves a tale about crazy socialist factories, just-as-crazy Western financial practices, geopolitics in the days of the Cold War and an American public yearning for affordable cars—all combined with the ‘cutting edge Serbo-Croatian technology,’ as the Yugo was referred to in the spoof movie version of ‘Dragnet’ . . . Mr. Vuic is as hard on the Western capitalism that fleetingly embraced the car as he is on the socialist system that produced it.”—Dick Teresi, The Wall Street Journal

"Was the American Constitution as originally ratified a proslavery document? In this unflinching, deeply intelligent, and persuasive work, David Waldstreicher answers yes. Sure to spark interest and debate, Slavery's Constitution is an immensely engaging and valuable contribution to the literature on the founding of the American nation."—Annette Gordon-Reed, professor of law at New York Law School and winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History

“[An] elegant history of the ideas that shape American foreign policy. And no idea has influenced America’s understanding of its role in the world as decisively as the concept of liberty. Widmer meticulously traces the contradictions, triumphs, and betrayals of liberty that have unfolded across the centuries of the American experience.”—Evan R. Goldstein, The Chronicle of Higher Education

"Wilentz's concise and clear short biography (part of the remarkable and useful series of short presidential biographies under the editorship of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.) reflects the research behind his accomplished Rise of American Democracy."—Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs

“The author’s often unconventional and funny takes on even the most familiar of subjects keep the pages turning.”—Stephen Lowman, The Washington Post

“[An] idiosyncratic history of modern Britain . . . In The Victorians and After the Victorians, Mr. Wilson showed an uncanny capacity for getting at the heart of past ages. In Our Times, the trilogy’s concluding volume . . . The author once again gives us a multifaceted portrait of an era. Like its predecessors, the book is enlivened by Mr. Wilson’s gift for anecdote [and] character analysis . . . His discussion of the time is infused with a directly personal memory of people, places and events. The result is a piquant refraction of an era of enormous change through a prism that is highly individualistic, even at times eccentric, but in the end deeply rooted and fundamentally true . . . The enthusiasms expressed in Our Times are enjoyable to encounter, but it is Mr. Wilson’s wicked wit that carries the reader along.”—Martin Rubin, The Wall Street Journal

“Vivid, accessible prose . . . Wyman colorfully describes the rough camaraderie among hobos riding the rails and sharing their scant food in outdoor ‘jungles,’ the only accommodations available to transients so distrusted by settled folks that any hobo venturing into a town was likely to be jailed as a vagrant. Later chapters stirringly cover the battles fought by the radical Industrial Workers of the World, the only group willing to represent migrant workers viewed by other labor unions as unskilled and impossible to organize.”—Wendy Smith, Los Angeles Times