Best of
United-States

1988

Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877


Eric Foner - 1988
    It redefined how Reconstruction was viewed by historians and people everywhere in its chronicling of how Americans -- black and white -- responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. This "smart book of enormous strengths" (Boston Globe) has since gone on to become the classic work on the wrenching post-Civil War period -- an era whose legacy reverberates still today in the United States.

Patriots: The Men Who Started The American Revolution


A.J. Langguth - 1988
    From the secret meetings of the Sons of Liberty to the final victory at Yorktown and the new Congress, Patriots vividly re-creates one of history's great eras.

Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party & the American Indian Movement


Ward Churchill - 1988
    Agents of Repression includes an incisive historical account of the FBI siege of Wounded Knee, and reveals the viciousness of COINTELPRO campaigns targeting the Black Liberation movement. The authors' new introduction examines the legacies of the Panthers and AIM, and shows how the FBI still presents a threat to those committed to fundamental social change.Ward Churchill is author of From a Native Son. Jim Vander Wall is co-author of The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States, with Ward Churchill.

Listening for Coyote: A Walk Across Oregon's Wilderness


William L. Sullivan - 1988
    Sullivan's classic account of his sixty-five day, 1,361-mile solo backpacking trek across Oregon offers an intimate tour of the state's renowned wilderness.

The Bradleys


Peter Bagge - 1988
    This volume collects all of Bagge's early, explosively funny pre-Hate tales of the dysfunctional Bradley family from Neat Stuff, including "You're Not the Boss of Me!," "Merry F*cking Christmas!," and "Rock 'n' Roll Refugee." The best-selling humor cartoonist of his generation, Bagge has been hailed as one of comics' great satirists along with James Thurber, Harvey Kurtzman, and Matt Groening. The Bradleys remain his most enduring creation. Created in the 1980s while Bagge was also editing R. Crumb's Weirdo magazine, this family for the ages has its roots firmly planted in All In the Family's Bunker family and MAD magazine, with a healthy punk rock anger occasionally exploding—think of an R-rated Simpsons and you're close.

Mattie


Judy Alter - 1988
    Through the years of her practice, Mattie's life is filled with romance and disappointments, battles won and loved ones lost, challenges met and opportunities passed. Through it all she endures. And as the years pass, her life takes on a richness and quality she knows she coiuld not have found anywhere else or at any other time.Mattie offers a realistic and haunting portrait of life on the plains and of a most unforgettable woman.

Wittgenstein's Mistress


David Markson - 1988
    It is the story of a woman who is convinced, and, astonishingly, will ultimately convince the reader as well, that she is the only person left on earth. Presumably she is mad. And yet so appealing is her character, and so witty and seductive her narrative voice, that we will follow her hypnotically as she unloads the intellectual baggage of a lifetime in a series of irreverent meditations on everything and everybody from Brahms to sex to Heidegger to Helen of Troy. And as she contemplates aspects of the troubled past which have brought her to her present state, so too will her drama become one of the few certifiably original fictions of our time.

Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Destructive Impact on Our Domestic and Foreign Policy


Christopher Simpson - 1988
    As the Soviets consolidated power in Eastern Europe, the CIA scrambled to gain the upper hand against new enemies worldwide. To this end, senior officials at the CIA, National Security Council, and other elements of the emerging US national security state turned to thousands of former Nazis, Waffen Secret Service, and Nazi collaborators for propaganda, psychological warfare, and military operations. Many new recruits were clearly responsible for the deaths of countless innocents as part of Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution,” yet were whitewashed and claimed to be valuable intelligence assets. Unrepentant mass murderers were secretly accepted into the American fold, their crimes forgotten and forgiven with the willing complicity of the US government.Blowback is the first thorough, scholarly study of the US government’s extensive recruitment of Nazis and fascist collaborators right after the war. Although others have approached the topic since, Simpson’s book remains the essential starting point. The author demonstrates how this secret policy of collaboration only served to intensify the Cold War and has had lasting detrimental effects on the American government and society that endure to this day.

Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville


David S. Reynolds - 1988
    David Reynolds reveals how these authors broadly assimilated the themes and images of popular culture. Their classic works--among them Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Leaves of Grass, Walden, and the tales of Poe--are given strikingly original reading when viewed against the rich, often startling background of long neglected popular writings of the time. Reynolds also explores a whole lost world of sensational literature, including grisly novels, openly sold on the street, that combined intense violence with explicit eroticism. He demonstrates as well how common concerns with issues of religion, slavery, and workers' (as well as women's) rights resonate in the major writings.

The Cape Ann


Faith Sullivan - 1988
    But when Lark's father's gambling threatens the down payment her mother has worked so hard to save, Lark's mother takes matters into her own indomitable hands. A disarmingly involving portrait of a family struggling to stay together through the Great Depression, The Cape Ann is an unforgettable story of life from a child's-eye view.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas: Voice of the River


Marjory Stoneman Douglas - 1988
    -- Story of an influential life told in a unique and spirited voice-- Nationally known as the first lady of conservation, the woman who "saved" the Florida Everglades-- Founder of the Friends of the Everglades, a feminist, a fighter for racial justice, and always a writer-- Her intelligence, wit, and insight mirror an indomitable spirit-- A must-have for anyone interested in conservation, the environment, or biographies of fascinating people-- Now in its 7th printing

Night Over Day Over Night


Paul Watkins - 1988
    His struggle to survive a war he scarcely comprehends is rendered in the urgent, beautifully spare, memorable prose of a born storyteller.

Wyoming


Colleen Coble - 1988
    Men join the military to defend the frontier, while their women support them - striving to keep families together no matter what the hardship. Only after she agrees to marry another man does Sarah Montgomery realize her fiance was not killed in the Civil War. Fort Laramie is Where Leads the Heart, but does love still await her? Abandoned and pregnant, Emmie Croftner leaves her gossip-filled hometown, seeking refuge with old friends on the Plains of Promise. Can a gentle lieutenant convince her that all men are not the same? For Jessica DuBois, privileged daughter of an army officer, The Heart Answers only to money and male attention. But when her world changes, can she prove herself a woman of substance - worthy of a righteous man's notice? Thanks to her sister's meddling, Bessie Randall discovers that she is now married by proxy to Jasper Mendenhall. Shocked, Bessie travels to Fort Bridger to learn To Love a Stranger - and experiences the surprising things God has in store for them both. Discover love, faith, and adventure in the forts of frontier Wyoming.

A Treasury of American Folklore


B.A. Botkin - 1988
    This spectacular collection of five hundred stories and one hundred songs represents the best of American tall tales, yarns, myths, ballads, and more, about such legends as Buffalo Bill and Jesse James.

Tom of Finland: Retrospective


Tom of Finland - 1988
    Originally published in 1988.[ca. 180] pages (unpaginated).

Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder


Jack McLaughlin - 1988
    For over half a century, it was his consuming passion, his most serious amusement. With a sure command of sources and skilled intuitive understanding of Jefferson, McLaughlin crafts and uncommon portrait of builder and building alike. En route he tells us much about life in Virginia; about Monticello's craftsmen and how they worked their materials; about slavery, class, and family; and, above all, about the multiplicity of domestic concerns that preoccupied this complex man. It is and engaging and incisive look at the eighteenth-century mind: systematic, rational, and curious, but also playful, comfort-loving, and amusing. Ultimately, it provides readers with great insight into daily life in Colonial and Federal America.

War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination


Howard Bruce Franklin - 1988
    Bruce Franklin brings the epic story of the superweapon and the American imagination into the ominous twenty-first century, demonstrating its continuing importance both to comprehending our current predicament and to finding ways to escape from it. Sweeping through two centuries of American culture and military history, Franklin traces the evolution of superweapons from Robert Fulton's eighteenth-century submarine through the strategic bomber, atomic bomb, and Star Wars to a twenty-first century dominated by "weapons of mass destruction," real and imagined. Interweaving culture, science, technology, and history, he shows how and why the American pursuit of the ultimate defensive weapon—guaranteed to end all war and bring universal triumph to American ideals—has led our nation and the world into an epoch of terror and endless war.

Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego, and the Twilight Zone Case


Stephen Farber - 1988
    But on July 23, 1982, a spectacular explosion on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie knocked a helicopter out of the sky and into the path of two small children and veteran actor Vic Morrow, crushing one child and decapitating Morrow and the other youngster.How could this tragedy occur? Was anyone to blame? Outrageous Conduct reveals the facts behind the accident, when skilled movie-makers exceeded the bounds of safety; the anxiety, when Hollywood closed ranks to protect its own; and the raucous and very public trial, when countercharges of "outrageous conduct" flew between the attorney and the furious film director, John Landis.Here are the intimate stories of the people behind the headlines: Landis, the driven young director of Animal House and other hits; Steven Spielberg, the superstar co-producer; Deputy District Attorney Lea D'Agostino, who accused Landis of manslaughter, but would have preferred a charge of murder; Vic Morrow, the fading star who would risk everything to salvage his career; and Renee Chen, six, and Myca Lee [sic], seven, whose parents had emigrated to the United States in search of a better life only to lose their children in a "make-believe" war. Here too are the opinions of top Hollywood professionals, forced to choose sides in a legal battle that tore the movie world apart.Outrageous Conduct probes the boundaries between art and safety, daring and responsibility. Like Indecent Exposure and Final Cut, it exposes the excesses and hubris of the world's most glamorous and seductive profession.STEPHEN FARBER was the film critic for New West magazine. He has also written for The New York Times, Esquire, and Film Comment.MARC GREEN was the film critic for Books and Arts and has written for California Magazine. He and Stephen Farber have reported on the Hollywood scene for almost twenty years and are the authors of Hollywood Dynasties.

My Weeds: A Gardener's Botany


Sara Bonnett Stein - 1988
    Think of the author as a sort of jujitsu gardener; in her hands the very strengths of weeds are turned to her advantage."—New York Times Book Review"In this manual cum philosophical treatise, Stein discloses an amazing amount of information, from anatomy to propagation, about more than 100 species of North American weeds."—Washington Post Book WorldFrom the author of the native gardening classic Noah’s Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Backyard comes My Weeds, a foray into the secret and fascinating lives of the world’s most hated plants. By asking of the common weed, "What kind of plant is this? How does it behave? What is it up to in my garden? Can I thwart its plans?" Stein shows how a thorough understanding of the enemy is the gardener’s best defense. Incredibly adaptive, weeds are also good teachers, and Stein shows us what they tell us about our gardens and the lives of all plants. She entertains with tales of famous—and notorious—weeds of the world, compares weeding tools and methods, and discusses the uses of weeds. Along the way, Stein also explains the intricate workings of photosynthesis, plant anatomy and reproduction, evolution, and the laws of succession by which nature tries to reclaim the land a gardener has disturbed. First published in 1988, My Weeds was among the first generation of books to advocate the use of native plants, and Stein’s discussions of backyard ecology, pesticides, and the threat of exotic species were as groundbreaking then as they are relevant today.  A biography of the plant world’s most maligned members and a fascinating primer of the most useful aspects of plant biology and ecology, My Weeds is essential reading even for the gardener who never leaves the armchair!Sara Stein is the author of Noah’s Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Backyards and Planting Noah’s Garden: Further Adventures in Backyard Ecology.

The Great Divide


Studs Terkel - 1988
    Studs Terkel talks to 100 Americans, from housewives and bartenders to teachers and cops. What they have to say presents a candid portrait of a nation divided. A hardcover bestseller. HC: Pantheon.

Buddy Boys


Mike McAlary - 1988
    What is it that can turn law-abiding family men into thieves and worse -- taking pride in being members of the elite criminal cops gang The Buddy Boys? Could he redeem himself or was his treasured police career over for good?

AIDS Inc.: Scandal of the Century


Jon Rappoport - 1988
    Badgley, M.D Author of Healing AIDS Naturally Investigative reporter Jon Rappoport uncovers the shocking truth about AIDS: Thousands are dying needlessly as the medical world and media pull off the biggest scandal of our time - all for the love of power and money. AIDS INC: takes you on a sizzling behind-the-scenes tour of laboratories, newsrooms and even the White House to expose the real killers behind the disease. It's the most explosive, myth-shattering book you'll read this year. Book Size: 216x140

Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier


Robert M. Utley - 1988
    The name evokes instant recognition in almost every American and in people around the world. No figure in the history of the American West has more powerfully moved the human imagination.When originally published in 1988, Cavalier in Buckskin met with critical acclaim. Now Robert M. Utley has revised his best-selling biography of General George Armstrong Custer. In his preface to the revised edition, Utley writes about his summers (1947-1952) spent as a historical aide at the Custer Battlefield-as it was then known-and credits the work of several authors whose recent scholarship has illuminated our understanding of the events of Little Bighorn. He has revised or expanded chapters, added new information on sources, and revised the map of the battlefield.

Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900


Altina L. Waller - 1988
    Ironically, the extraordinary endurance of the myth that has grown up around the Hatfields and McCoys has obscured the consideration of the feud as a serious historical event. In this study, Altina Waller tells the real story of the Hatfields and McCoys and the Tug Valley of West Virginia and Kentucky, placing the feud in the context of community and regional change in the era of industrialization.Waller argues that the legendary feud was not an outgrowth of an inherently violent mountain culture but rather one manifestation of a contest for social and economic control between local people and outside industrial capitalists—the Hatfields were defending community autonomy while the McCoys were allied with the forces of industrial capitalism. Profiling the colorful feudists "Devil Anse" Hatfield, "Old Ranel" McCoy, "Bad" Frank Phillips, and the ill-fated lovers Roseanna McCoy and Johnse Hatfield, Waller illustrates how Appalachians both shaped and responded to the new economic and social order.

African Game Trails: An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist


Theodore Roosevelt - 1988
    In 1908 he took a long safari holiday in East Africa with his son Kermit. His account of this adventure is as remarkably fresh today as it was when these adventures on the veldt were first published. Roosevelt describes the excitement of the chase, the people he met (including such famous hunters as Cunninghame and Selous), and flora and fauna he collected in the name of science. Long out of print, this classic is one of the preeminent examples of Africana, and belongs on every collector's shelf.African Game Trails includes stories about President Theodore Roosevelt advertures throughout East Africa, Belgian Congo, Mombassa, Khartoum, etc. Travelling the world to hunt and kill dozens of animals including Lions, Rhinos, Giraffes, Leopards, Buffalo, Hippos and Elephants. This fascinating story about Teddy Roosevelt's hunting adventures are not for the squeamish or the politcally correct as it includes heart-pounding stories.

Labrador


Kathryn Davis - 1988
    In LABRADOR, Davis conjures two unforgettable sisters. Willie, the elder, is beautiful and wayward. Kitty, the younger, is a loner whose only means of escaping the bewitching influence of her sister is to follow her grandfather to his home in Labrador, where she cannot avoid confronting the demons that haunt her. A tale of two sisters and the ambiguous, sometimes destructive ties that bind them, LABRADOR is a tender meditation on love, its joys, its limitations, and its hidden bitterness.

Power Game: How Washington Works


Hedrick Smith - 1988
    Pulitzer Prize winner Hedrick Smith goes inside America's power center in Washington, DC to reveal how the game of governing was played in the 1980s.

The Courage of Their Convictions: Sixteen Americans Who Fought Their Way to the Supreme Court


Peter Irons - 1988
    Tribe.

The Yellowstone


Win Blevins - 1988
    A gargantuan land, bristling with mountains and swelling with rivers. A woman to share his fire and his buffalo robes. Children to learn and live beyond. A living, maybe an empire, to leave to them.Mac Maclean wanted all that and more. He came ahead of the emigrants to the valley of the Yellowstone River, he and a handful of other white men, venturers deep into Indian territory, companions of Indians, friends of Indians, husbands and fathers to Indians. He hunted, he traded, he battled, he wed and bred—he gave his all for the life that made his heart pump hard. He lives still in the Yellowstone country, as legend.

The Hand of God and a Few Bright Flowers


William Olsen - 1988
    A reissuing of The Hand of God and a Few Bright Flowers, the debut collection of poetry by William Olsen.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address


Franklin D. Roosevelt - 1988
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.