White America

This indelible quote from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance applies especially well to California, where legend has so thoroughly become fact that it is visible in everyday landscapes. Our foremost historian of the West, Richard White, never content to "print the legend," collaborates here with his son, a talented photographer, in excavating the layers of legend built into California's landscapes. Together they expose the bedrock of the past, and the history they uncover is astonishing.

When Lt. Commander Bobby Thompson surfaced in Tampa in 1998, it was as if he had fallen from the sky, providing no hint of his past life. Eleven years later, St. Petersburg Times investigative reporter Jeff Testerman visited the rundown duplex Thompson used as his home and the epicenter of his sixty-thousand-member charity, the US Navy Veterans Association. But something was amiss. Thompson’s charity’s addresses were just maildrops, his members nonexistent, and his past a black hole.

Marijuana, once considered worthy of condemnation, has in recent years become a "medicine", legalized fully in four states, with others expected to follow. But the dangers are clear. According to Bennett's research, more Americans are admitted to treatment facilities for marijuana use than for any other illegal drug. Studies have shown a link between marijuana use and abnormal brain structure and development.

The mainstream media and ultra-liberal Democrats can't understand why white voters, especially white men, are so angry. Wayne Allyn Root is an angry white male, and he knows why. This is his story, his testimony, and a look at what's happening to an entire group of good people: law-abiding, tax-paying, hard-working, middle-class people. They're being targeted, silenced, intimidated, persecuted - virtually wiped off the planet.

From the early 1800s, American presidents and their families have called the White House home. But as secret service agent Keneesha explains, the White House is more than just a place to live; it's also the president's office and one of the country's greatest symbols of leadership.

Michelle Obama's family saga is a remarkable, quintessentially American story - a journey from slavery to the White House in five generations. Yet, until now, little has been reported on the First Lady's roots. Prodigiously researched, American Tapestry traces the complex and fascinating tale of Michelle Obama's ancestors, a history that the First Lady did not even know herself. Rachel L. Swarns, a correspondent for the New York Times, brings into focus the First Lady's Black, White, and multiracial forebears.

During a dark time in United States history, thousands of freedom seekers traveled the Underground Railroad through Ohio. The Buckeye State hosted about half of all fugitive slave traffic of the antebellum era. A mix of Northern and Southern settlers in the state added drama to a struggle that led to major benefits for the state and the country. Unfortunately, this epic past was obscured by silence and secrecy and then distorted with misinformation and folklore—until now.

The Presidents and the Pastime draws on Curt Smith's extensive background as a former White House presidential speechwriter to chronicle the historic relationship between baseball, the "most American" sport, and the US presidency. Smith, who USA Today calls "America's voice of authority on baseball broadcasting", starts before America's birth, when would be presidents played baseball antecedents. He charts how baseball cemented its reputation as America's pastime in the 19th century and tracks every US president from Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump

A poetic and inspiring tribute to the beauty and wonder of America's history, landscape, and symbols. With wonderfully spare, deceptively simple verses, Sarvinder Naberhaus has composed a lyrical celebration of the iconic imagery of our nation, beginning with the American flag. Each spread depicts a richly evocative tableau, from the view of the Statue of Library at Ellis Island to civil rights marchers banded together, to a spacecraft at Cape Canaveral blasting off. This book is an ode to America then and now, from sea to shining sea.

Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence, and the Last Lynching in America recounts the story of three innocent victims, all of whom suffered violent deaths through no fault of their own: Vaudine Maddox in 1933 in Tuscaloosa, Sergeant Gene Ballard in 1979 in Birmingham, and Michael Donald in 1981 in Mobile. The death of Vaudine Maddox - and the lynchings that followed - serves as a cautionary tale about the violence that occurred in the same region nearly 50 years later.

Joe Mitchell was born in North Idaho in 1963 and lived on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation for 18 years. The humor in the stories may make you willing to learn a little history, and think about life on the rez in a new way.

In April 1991, the New York Times ran an op-ed alleging that Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign had conspired with the Iranian government to delay the release of 52 American hostages until after the 1980 election. The Iranian hostage crisis was President Jimmy Carter’s largest political vulnerability, and his lack of success freeing them ultimately sealed his fate at the ballot box. In return for keeping Americans in captivity until Reagan assumed the oath of office, the Republicans had secretly funneled arms to Iran.

No Justice is the harrowing story of Robbie Tolan, who early on one New Year's Eve morning, found himself being rushed to the hospital. A White police officer had shot him in the chest after mistakenly accusing him of stealing his own car...while in his own driveway.

This revelatory and gripping nonfiction middle grade book explores a deeply troubling chapter in American history that is still playing out today: the strange case of Prince Edward County, Virginia, the only place in the United States to ever formally deny its citizens a public education, and the students who pushed back.

Every catastrophe has a beginning. For the opioid crisis in America, the seed was a drug called OxyContin. First hailed as a miracle drug for severe pain in the early 1990s, OxyContin went on to ignite a plague of addiction and death across America. Equal parts crime thriller, medical detective story and business exposé, Pain Killer is the origin story of the opioid crisis, a hard-hitting look at how a supposed wonder drug became the trigger for a national tragedy.

On Palm Sunday 1964, at the Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis, a group of black and white students began a "kneel-in" to protest the church's policy of segregation, a protest that would continue in one form or another for more than a year and eventually force the church to open its doors to black worshippers. In The Last Segregated Hour, Stephen Haynes tells the story of this dramatic yet little studied tactic which was the strategy of choice for bringing attention to segregationist policies in Southern churches.

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.

If talking about racism makes you anxious, afraid, or even angry, you're not alone. In Anxious to Talk About It, pastor and professor Carolyn B. Helsel draws on her success with White congregations to offer insight and tools to embrace, explore, and work through the anxious feelings that often arise in these hard conversations. Through powerful personal stories, new observations on racial identity development, and spiritual practices to help engage issues of racial justice prayerfully, you'll gain a deeper understanding of race in America and your place in it.

In this compelling new book, relying on original reporting from the most dangerous corners of Rio to the halls of power in Washington, DC, Dave Zirin examines how sports and politics are colliding in remarkable fashion in Brazil, opening up an international conversation on the culture, economics, and politics of sports.

For over two centuries, the capital of America has been located in Washington, D.C. And among all the iconic landmarks and monuments associated with the city, nothing provides symbolism quite like the White House, the primary residence and office of the president.