This mesmerizing novel is about a sixteen-year-old girl who lives in a rectory and works in a dance hall. Gradually she embarks upon a "personal project": she digs pits in the rectory garden and "loo
Charmingly, Mari Sandoz tells of a long-ago Christmas in western Nebraska when her father's house was filled with good music. Old Jules had ordered an Edison phonograph and boxes of cylinder records
First published in Germany in 1894, after being banned in Russia, The Kingdom of God Iswithin You reveals Tolstoy’s world outlook after his conversion to Christianity. He argues that the
Winner of the Douglas Southall Freeman History Award, Gentleman and Soldier is the first biography in more than fifty years of Wade Hampton III (1818–1902), a Confederate general whose life pro
Every now and then violence erupts in the banlieues of France allowing the world a glimpse into the grimmest corners of these multiethnic suburban ghettos. From such a corner comes the story of Samir
“Robert Vivian’s prose is lyrical and harrowing—harrowing in the Biblical sense,” Sven Birkerts said of The Mover of Bones, the first book in Vivian’s Tall Grass Trilogy
Every spring, the first four days of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament attracts a horde of basketball bettors to Las Vegas. From the tip-off of the tournament’s first game on Thursday
An unheralded military hero, Charles Young (1864–1922) was the third black graduate of West Point, the first African American national park superintendent, the first black U.S. military attach&
This study explodes prevailing myths about the Phoenix Program, the CIA's top-secret effort to destroy the Viet Cong by neutralizing its “civilian” leaders. Drawing on recently declassifi
A long time ago, fire belonged only to the animals in the land above, not to those on the earth below. Curlew, keeper of the sky world, guarded fire and kept it from the earth. Coyote, however, devis
In Young, Black, Rich, and Famous, Todd Boyd chronicles how basketball and hip hop have gone from being reviled by the American mainstream in the 1970s to being embraced and imitated globally today.
Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus chronicles the story of an American family against the backdrop of one of the civil rights movement’s lesser-known stories. In January 1957, Joseph Spagna and fiv
The stories in this prize-winning collection evoke a complete world, one so richly imagined and finely realized that the stories themselves are not so much read as experienced. The world of these sto
With tales from the tribal peoples of Greenland, Canada, Siberia, Alaska, Japan, and the polar region, told and retold during months-long winter nights, Northern Tales gathers together a rich diversit
Lt. Gen. George S. Patton remarked that the “45th Infantry Division is one of the best, if not the best division that the American army has ever produced.” Such praise, however, came at a
Lt. Charles B. Gatewood (1853–96), an educated Virginian, served in the Sixth U.S. Cavalry as the commander of Indian scouts. Gatewood was largely accepted by the Native peoples with whom he wo
Jubal A. Early’s disastrous battles in the Shenandoah Valley ultimately resulted in his ignominious dismissal. But Early’s lesser-known summer campaign of 1864, between his raid on Washin
You may already know that Belgium is the most boring country on planet Earth, but do you know why? Or what makes the Mark 44, Model O Lazy Dog Missile Cluster, the sexiest piece of military hardware o
Writers have long been attracted to boxing. Hemingway, Mailer, Algren, Plimpton, Oates, and many others have stepped into the ring—at least in spirit—to give voice to an otherwise wordles
Cinderella’s sisters surgically modify their feet to win the prince’s love. A werewolf gathers up enough courage to visit a dentist. A medium trying to reach the afterworld gets a recorde
