Seismic shifts during a single generation have created a country of winners and losers, allowing unprecedented freedom while rending the social contract, driving the political system to the verge of breakdown, and setting citizens adrift to find new paths forward. In The Unwinding, George Packer, author of The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, tells the story of the United States over the past three decades in an utterly original way, with his characteristically sharp eye for detail and gift for weaving together complex narratives.The Unwinding journeys through the lives of several Americans, including Dean Price, the son of tobacco farmers, who becomes an evangelist for a new economy in the rural South; Tammy Thomas, a factory worker in the Rust Belt trying to survive the collapse of her city; Jeff Connaughton, a Washington insider oscillating between political idealism and the lure of organized money; and Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire who questions the Internet's significance and arrives at a radical vision of the future. Packer interweaves these intimate stories with biographical sketches of the era's leading public figures, from Newt Gingrich to Jay-Z, and collages made from newspaper headlines, advertising slogans, and song lyrics that capture the flow of events and their undercurrents.The Unwinding portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation. Packer's novelistic and kaleidoscopic history of the new America is his most ambitious work to date.One of the iTunes Bookstore's "Ten Books You Must Read This Summer"

    As a military aide to George Washington, forceful critic of the Articles of Confederation, persuasive proponent of ratification of the Constitution, first Secretary of the Treasury, and leader of the Federalist party, Hamilton devoted himself to the creation of a militarily and economically powerful American nation guided by a strong republican government. His public and private writings demonstrate the perceptive intelligence, confident advocacy, driving ambition, and profound concern for honor and reputation that contributed both to his rise to fame and to his tragic early death.Arranged chronologically, Writings contains more than 170 letters, speeches, essays, reports, and memoranda written between 1769 and 1804. Included are all 51 of Hamilton's contributions to The Federalist, as well as subsequent writing calling for a broad construction of federal power under the Constitution; his famous speech to the Constitutional Convention, which gave rise to accusations that he favored monarchy; early writings supporting the Revolutionary cause and a stronger central government; his visionary reports as Treasury secretary on the public credit, a national bank, and the encouragement of American manufactures; a detailed confession of adultery made by Hamilton in order to defend himself against charges of official misconduct; and his self-destructive attack on John Adams during the 1800 campaign. An extensive selection of private letters illuminates Hamilton's complex relationship with George Washington, his deep affection for his wife andchildren, his mounting fears during the 1790s regarding the Jeffersonian opposition and the French Revolution, and his profound distrust of Aaron Burr. Included in an appendix are conflicting eyewitness accounts of the Hamilton-Burr duel.

    It covers an incredible range of topics and offers fresh insights on nearly every page... the author's great gift is his ability to penetrate the minds of both slaves and masters, revealing not only how they viewed themselves and each other, but also how they contradictory perceptions interacted.

    Lawrence Wright's remarkable book is based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews that he conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States.The Looming Tower achieves an unprecedented level of intimacy and insight by telling the story through the interweaving lives of four men: the two leaders of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri; the FBI's counterterrorism chief, John O'Neill; and the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal.As these lives unfold, we see revealed: the crosscurrents of modern Islam that helped to radicalize Zawahiri and bin Laden . . . the birth of al-Qaeda and its unsteady development into an organization capable of the American embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the USS Cole . . . O'Neill's heroic efforts to track al-Qaeda before 9/11, and his tragic death in the World Trade towers . . . Prince Turki's transformation from bin Laden's ally to his enemy . . . the failures of the FBI, CIA, and NSA to share intelligence that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks.The Looming Tower broadens and deepens our knowledge of these signal events by taking us behind the scenes. Here is Sayyid Qutb, founder of the modern Islamist movement, lonely and despairing as he meets Western culture up close in 1940s America; the privileged childhoods of bin Laden and Zawahiri; family life in the al-Qaeda compounds of Sudan and Afghanistan; O'Neill's high-wire act in balancing his all-consuming career with his equally entangling personal life--he was living with three women, each of them unaware of the others' existence--and the nitty-gritty of turf battles among U.S. intelligence agencies.Brilliantly conceived and written, The Looming Tower draws all elements of the story into a galvanizing narrative that adds immeasurably to our understanding of how we arrived at September 11, 2001. The richness of its new information, and the depth of its perceptions, can help us deal more wisely and effectively with the continuing terrorist threat.

    Schlesinger, Jr., comes one of the most important and influential investigations of the American presidency. The Imperial Presidency traces the growth of presidential power over two centuries, from George Washington to George W. Bush, examining how it has both served and harmed the Constitution and what Americans can do about it in years to come. The book that gave the phrase “imperial presidency” to the language, this is a work of “substantial scholarship written with lucidity, charm, and wit” (The New Yorker).

    In Inventing a Nation, Vidal transports the reader into the minds, the living rooms (and bedrooms), the convention halls, and the salons of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and others. We come to know these men, through Vidal’s splendid and percipient prose, in ways we have not up to now—their opinions of each other, their worries about money, their concerns about creating a viable democracy. Vidal brings them to life at the key moments of decision in the birthing of our nation. He also illuminates the force and weight of the documents they wrote, the speeches they delivered, and the institutions of government by which we still live. More than two centuries later, America is still largely governed by the ideas championed by this triumvirate.

    Across the globe, violent coups have been orchestrated, high-profile targets kidnapped, and world leaders dispatched at the hands of CIA agents. During the 1960s, on domestic soil, the methods used to protect their interests and themselves at the expense of the American people were no less ruthless. In CIA Rogues and the Killing of the Kennedys, Patrick Nolan fearlessly investigates the CIA’s involvement in the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy—why the brothers needed to die and how rogue intelligence agents orchestrated history’s most infamous conspiracy.Nolan furthers the research of leading forensic scientists, historians, and scholars who agree that there remain serious unanswered questions regarding the assassinations of John F. Kennedy fifty years ago and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. He revisits and refutes what is currently known about Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, and offers readers a compelling profile of the CIA’s Richard Helms, an amoral master of clandestine operations with a chip on his shoulder.Bolstered by a foreword by Dr. Henry C. Lee, one of the world’s foremost forensic authorities, CIA Rogues and the Killing of the Kennedys is an unmatched effort in forensic research and detective work. As the fiftieth anniversary of the JFK assassination approaches, Nolan has made a significant contribution to the literature on that fateful day in Dallas as well as shed light on that dark night at the Ambassador Hotel. Readers interested in conspiracy, the Kennedy family, or American history will find this book invaluable.

    The Anarchists' Convention is his first short story collection, providing a prism of America through fifteen stories. These everyday people -- a kid on the road heading west, aging political activists, a lonely woman in Boston -- go about their business with humor and resilience, dealing more in possibility than fact. In the widely anthologized and O. Henry Award-winning "I-80 Nebraska," Sayles perfectly renders the image of a pill-popping trucker who has become a legend of the road.

    Covers the Scottsboro case since its inception as a 1931 freight car incident, accentuating national and international ramifications.

    The most virulent form of this ongoing persecution was the practice of lynching carried out by mob rule, often as local law enforcement officials looked the other way. During the 1880s and 1890s, more than 100 African Americans per year were lynched, and in 1892 alone the toll of murdered men and women reached a peak of 161.In that awful year, the twenty-three-year-old Ida B. Wells, the editor of a small newspaper for blacks in Memphis, Tennessee, raised one lone voice of protest. In her paper she charged that white businessmen had instigated three local lynchings against their black competitors. In retaliation for her outspoken courage a goon-squad of angry whites destroyed her editorial office and print shop, and she was forced to flee the South and move to New York City.So began a crusade against lynching which became the focus of her long, active, and very courageous life. In New York she began lecturing against the abhorrent vigilante practice and published her first pamphlet on the subject called Southern Horrors. After moving to Chicago and marrying lawyer Ferdinand Barnett, she continued her campaign, publishing A Red Record in 1895 and Mob Rule in New Orleans, about the race riots in that city, in 1900.All three of these documents are here collected in this work, a shocking testament to cruelty and the dark American legacy of racial prejudice. Anticipating possible accusations of distortion, Wells-Barnett was careful to present factually accurate evidence and she deliberately relied on southern white sources as well as statistics gathered by The Chicago Tribune. Using the words of white journalists, she created a damning indictment of unpunished crimes that was difficult to dispute since southern white men who had witnessed the appalling incidents had written the descriptions.Along with her husband she played an active role in the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Due to her efforts, the NAACP launched an intensive campaign against lynching after World War I.Her work remains important to this day not only as a cry of protest against injustice but also as valuable historical documentation of terrible crimes that must never be forgotten. This new edition is enhanced by an introduction by Patricia Hill Collins, professor and chair of the Department of African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati.

    Now Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America's "first white president."But the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period--and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation's old and unreconciled history. Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective--the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president.We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates's iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including Fear of a Black President, The Case for Reparations and The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration, along with eight fresh essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates's own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the Obama era. We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America, from one of the definitive voices of this historic moment.

    'The Washington Post' called them "the most significant material in American history" and they remain relevant today as a reminder of the importance of a free press and First Amendment rights. 'THE PENTAGON PAPERS' demonstrated that the government had systemically lied to both the public and to Congress.THIS INCOMPARABLE VOLUME INCLUDES:• The Truman and Eisenhower Years: 1945-1960 by Fox Butterfield• Origins of the insurgency in South Vietnam by Fox Butterfield• The Kennedy Years: 1961-1963 by Hedrick Smith• The Overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem: May-November, 1963 by Hedrick Smith• The Covert War and Tonkin Gulf: February-August, 1964 by Neil Sheehan• The Consensus to Bomb North Vietnam: August, 1964-February, 1965 by Neil Sheehan• The Launching of the Ground War: March-July, 1965 by Neil Sheehan• The Buildup: July, 1965-September, 1966 by Fox Butterfield• Disenchantment: October, 1966-May, 1967 by Hedrick Smith• The Tet Offensive and the Turnaround by E.W. Kenworthy• Analysis and Comment• Court Records• Biographies of Key FiguresWith a brand-new foreword by James L. Greenfield, this edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning story is sure to provoke discussion about free press and government deception, and shed some light on issues in the past and the present so that we can better understand and improve the futureRUNNING TIME ⇒ 37hrs.©2018 Neil Sheehan, E.W. Kenworthy, Fox Butterfield, Hendrick Smith (P)2018 Brilliance Audio, Inc., all rights reserved.

    Winner of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry.

    The renowned NPR correspondent offers a fresh perspective of the sixties, in a candid memoir of civil-rights work, the Free Speech Movement, and her correspondence with a young American soldier in Vietnam.

    Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."Drawing on more than a decade of research into secret Pentagon archives and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time the workings of a military machine that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded-what one soldier called "a My Lai a month." Devastating and definitive, Kill Anything That Moves finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts America to this day.