"Edward Curtis was dashing, charismatic, a passionate mountaineer, a famous photographer--the Annie Liebowitz of his time. And he was thirty-two years old in 1900 when he gave it all up to pursue his great idea: He would try to capture on film the Native American nation before it disappeared. At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, Egan's book tells the remarkable untold story behind Curtis's iconic photographs,...

Are you fed up with bickering politicians, self-satisfied bureaucrats, and a government that never seems to address the real problems facing our country? Can we create a government that is small, efficient, and responsive-from the state house to the White House? Is that kind of real change even possible? Newt Gingrich, architect of the Contract with America, says it is time for citizens to demand results from our elected officials. In this revealing...

"An explosive expose of the right's relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, and change the Constitution. "Perhaps the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government." --Booklist (starred review) Behind today's headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling...

"The remarkable life of one of the most influential men of the greatest generation, James B. Conant--a savvy architect of the nuclear age and the Cold War--told by his granddaughter, New York Times bestselling author Jennet Conant. James Bryant Conant was a towering figure. He was at the center of the mammoth threats and challenges of the twentieth century. As a young eminent chemist, he supervised the production of poison gas in WWI. As a controversial...

"Nina Sankovitch's American Rebels explores, for the first time, the intertwined lives of the Hancock, Quincy, and Adams families, and the role each person played in sparking the American Revolution. Before they were central figures in American history, John Hancock, John Adams, Josiah Quincy Junior, Abigail Smith Adams, and Dorothy Quincy Hancock had forged intimate connections during their childhood in Braintree, Massachusetts. Raised as loyal British...

"Once a most unlikely candidate, Barack Obamas successful campaign for the White House made him a worldwide sensation and a transformative figure even before he was inaugurated. Elected as the Iraq War and Great Recession discouraged millions of Americans, Obamas promise of hope revived the national spirit.Had he only saved the economy, Obama would be considered a truly successful president. However he has achieved so much more, against ferocious...

"The late nineteenth century was a period of explosive technological creativity, but arguably the most important invention of all was Thomas Edison's incandescent lightbulb. Unveiled in his Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory in 1879, the lightbulb overwhelmed the American public with the sense of the birth of a new age. More than any other invention, the electric light marked the arrival of modernity. The lightbulb became a catalyst for the nation's...

"From a bestselling author, the heartbreaking, redemptive story of two World War II soldiers whose fateful encounter in the Forgotten War of Alaska has fascinated Americans for decades. In researching his bestselling book The Big Year, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mark Obmascik rediscovered a long-lost document from World War II: the diary of a Japanese surgeon, recovered from his body by the soldier who killed him. In the Cradle of Storms reveals...

"A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy-from his family's roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, healthcare, criminal justice, and policing-telling the singular story of how one man's tragic experience brought about a global movement for change. The events of that day are now tragically familiar: on...

At a time when standardized testing businesses are raking in huge profits, when many schools are struggling, and students and educators everywhere are suffering under the strain, Ken Robinson argues for an end to our outmoded industrial educational system. He proposes instead a highly personalized, organic approach that draws on today's unprecedented technological and professional resources to engage all students, develop their love of learning, and...