Sadie’s Jim was an ambitious young slave and seer who, when faced with the prospect of being sold, escaped down the Mississippi with a white boy named Huck Finn. Sadie is suddenly left alone, worried about her children, reviled as a witch, punished for Jim’s escape, and convinced her husband is dead. But Sadie’s will and her love for Jim animate her life and see her through.Told with spare eloquence and mirroring the true stories of countless slave women, My Jim recreates one of the most controversial characters in American literature. A nuanced critique of the great American novel, My Jim is a haunting and inspiring story about freedom, longing, and the remarkable endurance of love.Look for the Reader’s Group Guide at the back of this book.

    Whether or not you have children, you know that education is vital to the prosperity and future of our society. Yet our current system simply doesn't work. Parents feel increasingly powerless, and nearly half of Americans give our schools a grade of "C". Now, in his new book, Ron Paul attacks the problem head-on and provides a focused solution that centers on strong support for home schooling and the application of free market principles to the American education system. Examining the history of education in this country, Dr. Paul identifies where we've gone wrong, what we can do about it, and how we can change the way we think about education in order to provide a brighter future for Americans.

    Through these converging narratives, the award-winning investigative reporter Seth Rosenfeld tells a dramatic and disturbing story of FBI surveillance, illegal break-ins, infiltration, planted news stories, poison-pen letters, and secret detention lists all centered on the nation's leading public university. Rosenfeld vividly evokes the campus counterculture, as he reveals how the FBI’s covert operations—led by Reagan’s friend J. Edgar Hoover—helped ignite an era of protest, undermine the Democrats, and benefit Reagan personally and politically.The FBI spent more than $1 million trying to block the release of the secret files on which Subversives is based, but Rosenfeld compelled the bureau to reveal more than 300,000 pages, providing an extraordinary view of what the government was up to during a turning point in our nation.Part history, part biography, and part police procedural, Subversives reads like a true-crime mystery as it provides a fresh look at the legacy of the 1960s, sheds new light on one of America’s most popular presidents, and tells a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked secrecy and power.

    Now the acclaimed author turns to World War I, bringing to life the sweeping, emotional story of the war that devastated a generation and established America as a world power.Spring 1916: the horror of a stalemate on Europe’s western front. France and Great Britain are on one side of the barbed wire, a fierce German army is on the other. Shaara opens the window onto the otherworldly tableau of trench warfare as seen through the eyes of a typical British soldier who experiences the bizarre and the horrible–a “Tommy” whose innocent youth is cast into the hell of a terrifying war.In the skies, meanwhile, technology has provided a devastating new tool, the aeroplane, and with it a different kind of hero emerges–the flying ace. Soaring high above the chaos on the ground, these solitary knights duel in the splendor and terror of the skies, their courage and steel tested with every flight.As the conflict stretches into its third year, a neutral America is goaded into war, its reluctant president, Woodrow Wilson, finally accepting the repeated challenges to his stance of nonalignment. Yet the Americans are woefully unprepared and ill equipped to enter a war that has become worldwide in scope. The responsibility is placed on the shoulders of General John “Blackjack” Pershing, and by mid-1917 the first wave of the American Expeditionary Force arrives in Europe. Encouraged by the bold spirit and strength of the untested Americans, the world waits to see if the tide of war can finally be turned.From Blackjack Pershing to the Marine in the trenches, from the Red Baron to the American pilots of the Lafayette Escadrille, To the Last Man is written with the moving vividness and accuracy that characterizes all of Shaara’s work. This spellbinding new novel carries readers–the way only Shaara can–to the heart of one of the greatest conflicts in human history, and puts them face-to-face with the characters who made a lasting impact on the world.

    People everywhere saw Paris as the centre of Europe and the hub of culture, fashion and invention. But suddenly France, not least to the disbelief of her own citizens, was gripped in the vice of the Prussian armies and forced to surrender on humiliating terms. Almost immediately Paris was convulsed by the savage self-destruction of the newly formed Socialist government, the Commune.In this brilliant study of the Siege of Paris and its aftermath, Alistair Horne researches first-hand accounts left by official observers, private diarists and letter-writers to evoke the high drama of those ten tumultuous months and the spiritual and physical agony that Paris and the Parisians suffered as they lost the Franco-Prussian war.'Compulsively readable'  The Times'The most enthralling historical work'  Daily Telegraph'Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the civil war that still stirs the soul of France'  Evening StandardOne of Britain's greatest historians, Sir Alistair Horne, CBE, is the author of a trilogy on the rivalry between France and Germany, The Price of Glory, The Fall of Paris and To Lose a Battle, as well as a two-volume life of Harold Macmillan.

    Poet Laureate’s Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning poetry collection, Time and Materials, as well as his earlier book of essays, the NBCC Award-winner Twentieth Century Pleasures. Haas brilliantly discourses on many of his favorite topics—on writers ranging from Jack London to Wallace Stevens to Allen Ginsberg to Cormac McCarthy; on California; and on the art of photography in several memorable pieces—in What Light Can Do, a remarkable literary treasure that might best be described as “luminous.”

    A story of two sisters voyaging to America during the Great War, from one of the most popular novelists of her time

    Originally published in 1992, it was Thom Gunn's first book of verse in ten years.

    Felt—a fabric made of tangled fibers—becomes a metaphor for the interweavings of humans, animals, and planet. But Felt is also the past tense of "feel." This is a book of emotions both ordinary and untoward: the shadings of humiliation, obsession, love, and loneliness—as well as states so subtle they have yet to be named. Reticent and passionate, elliptical yet available, Fulton's poems consider flaws and failure, touching and not touching. They are fascinated with proximity: the painter's closeness to the canvas, the human kinship with animals, the fan's nearness to the star. Privacy, the opening and closing of doors, is at the heart of these poems that sing the forms of solitude-the meanings and feelings of virginity, the single-mindedness of fetishism, the tragedy of suicide. Rather than accept the world as given, Fulton encounters invisible assumptions with magnitude and grace. Hers is a poetry of inconvenient knowledge, in which the surprises of enlightenment can be cruel as well as kind. Felt, a deeply imagined work, at once visceral and cerebral, illuminates the possibilities of twenty-first century poetry.

    Beloved award-winning author and library darling Ann Bausum brings her friendly writing style and in-depth research to her first-ever book for adults. Stubby's story begins in 1917 when America is about to enter the war. A stowaway dog befriends Private James Robert "Bob" Conroy at the Connecticut National Guard camp at Yale University and the two become inseparable. Stubby also wins over the commanding officer and is soon made an official member of the 102nd Infantry of the 26th division. What follows is an epic tale of how man's best friend becomes an invaluable soldier on the front lines and in the trenches, a decorated war hero and an inspiration to a country long after the troops returned home.For those who loved New York Times bestseller Rin Tin Tin comes the memorable story of Sergeant Stubby--World War I dog veteran, decorated war hero, American icon, and above all, man's best friend.

    Alex Housman is a kid who at the age of sixteen has had fourteen cars, harbors many hurts, and seems to fade into his environment while raging inside. His father is an alcoholic, losing his grip on life even as he wants the best for his son. The Car Thief explores the love Alex and his father share, in a tremendously poignant story that is filled with unusual triumphs.

    It is the surprising story of America in the year 1919. In the aftermath of an unprecedented worldwide war and a flu pandemic, Americans began the year full of hope, expecting to reap the benefits of peace. But instead, the fear of terrorism filled their days. Bolshevism was the new menace, and the federal government, utilizing a vast network of domestic spies, began to watch anyone deemed suspicious. A young lawyer named J. Edgar Hoover headed a brand-new intelligence division of the Bureau of Investigation (later to become the FBI). Bombs exploded on the doorstep of the attorney general's home in Washington, D.C., and thirty-six parcels containing bombs were discovered at post offices across the country. Poet and journalist Carl Sandburg, recently returned from abroad with a trunk full of Bolshevik literature, was detained in New York, his trunk seized. A twenty-one-year-old Russian girl living in New York was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for protesting U.S. intervention in Arctic Russia, where thousands of American soldiers remained after the Armistice, ostensibly to guard supplies but in reality to join a British force meant to be a warning to the new Bolshevik government.In 1919, wartime legislation intended to curb criticism of the government was extended and even strengthened. Labor strife was a daily occurrence. And decorated African-American soldiers, returning home to claim the democracy for which they had risked their lives, were badly disappointed. Lynchings continued, race riots would erupt in twenty-six cities before the year ended, and secret agents from the government's "Negro Subversion" unit routinely shadowed outspoken African-Americans.Adding a vivid human drama to the greater historical narrative, "Savage Peace" brings 1919 alive through the people who played a major role in making the year so remarkable. Among them are William Monroe Trotter, who tried to put democracy for African-Americans on the agenda at the Paris peace talks; Supreme Court associate justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who struggled to find a balance between free speech and legitimate government restrictions for reasons of national security, producing a memorable decision for the future of free speech in America; and journalist Ray Stannard Baker, confidant of President Woodrow Wilson, who watched carefully as Wilson's idealism crumbled and wrote the best accounts we have of the president's frustration and disappointment.Weaving together the stories of a panoramic cast of characters, from Albert Einstein to Helen Keller, Ann Hagedorn brilliantly illuminates America at a pivotal moment.

    The car you drive, the church you attend, where you went to school, the house you live in -- even your choice of words -- are brandings of your place in society. This is your status -- and you may be stuck with it, like it or not. The author minces no words in letting the reader know exactly who he is, how he measures up, where he is likely to go -- and where, because of society's harsh rules, he is NOT likely to go."~ from back cover (1963 Cardinal Books paperback edition)

     Two years. Three magnificent horses. Ten countries. A thousand stories of drug cartels, mass migration, the glorious wilderness, the old cowboy ways, the kindness of strangers and the powerful connection between man and beast. This is a tale of grit and inspiration, of Filipe and Frenchie, Bruiser and Dude chasing a dream, one hoof at a time. Please scroll up to grab your copy today!

    Funny, liberal and left-leaning, she is an unlikely candidate to be writing speeches on derivatives in a Manhattan tower, 'putting words in the mouths of plutocrats deeply suspicious of metaphors and words of more than two syllables'. She finds herself on Wall Street because she needs serious money. After ten good years, her beloved older husband Bailey is suffering from Alzheimer's. So begins Cath's journey into two nightmare worlds. By day she deals with the topsy-turvy logic and ingrown personalities at work in high finance; by night she has to watch the slow disintegration of the man she loves. In between, she must stop herself from falling apart. As the money markets hurtle towards financial meltdown, Cath faces personal disaster and a moral hazard that she cannot ignore.Kate Jennings' prose is lean yet rich in unexpected, telling detail. Tense, taut and compulsively readable, Moral Hazard is peopled by extraordinary characters and informed by a mordant, witty intelligence.