Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it’s the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it’s the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What’s more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history. With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? What’s the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do? This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can’t provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins of the subprime mortgage crisis.

    Illiberal nationalism, however, emerged in the United States after the Civil War—resulting in the failure of Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow, and the restriction of immigration. Much of American history, Lepore argues, has been a battle between these two forms of nationalism, liberal and illiberal, all the way down to the nation’s latest, bitter struggles over immigration.Defending liberalism, as This America demonstrates, requires making the case for the nation. But American historians largely abandoned that defense in the 1960s when they stopped writing national history. By the 1980s they’d stopped studying the nation-state altogether and embraced globalism instead. “When serious historians abandon the study of the nation,” Lepore tellingly writes, “nationalism doesn’t die. Instead, it eats liberalism.” But liberalism is still in there, Lepore affirms, and This America is an attempt to pull it out. “In a world made up of nations, there is no more powerful way to fight the forces of prejudice, intolerance, and injustice than by a dedication to equality, citizenship, and equal rights, as guaranteed by a nation of laws.”A manifesto for a better nation, and a call for a “new Americanism,” This America reclaims the nation’s future by reclaiming its past.

    Harris offers a balanced look at the man behind the legend and the circumstances that created him and shaped his choices.

    Lincoln became an instant martyr, immortalized as the "The Great Emancipator." After Lincoln's assassination, the commonest of men tried to fill the gigantic void. Andrew Johnson, a self-educated tailor from Tennessee, became the 17th President of the United States, and the first to enter office after the murder of his predecessor. Rising above an impoverished childhood, Johnson was truly a self-made man, learning a useful trade and developing his own successful business. At the same time, he rapidly ascended the poltical ladder--Alderman, Mayor, State Legislator, Congressman, Governor of Tennessee, United States Senator, Military Governor of Union-occupied Tennessee, Vice-President, and President of the United States. As the only lawmaker from the South to remain in Congress after the outbreak of the Civil War, Andrew Johnson was the ultimate "Loyalist." In recognition for his dedication to the Union, Johnson was nominated as Abraham Lincoln's running mate in the 1864 presidential election. Barely a month into his vice-presidency, Johnson was thrust on the center stage of America politics. After Lincoln was murdered, the tailor from Tennessee ascended into the unenviable position of succeeding a legend. Johnson's obstinancy and rigid interpretaion of the Constitution soon placed him at odds with the Republican congression leadership and the national press. The bitter chasm widened as the Johnson presidency lurched forward, and ultimately led to his being the first President in American history to be impeached by the House of Representatives. By a single vote, Johnson avoided conviction by the Senate, and forfeiture of of office. After narrowly surving this constitutional crisis, Johnson's historical legacy was irrevocably damaged, and his hopes for an elected term as President were dashed. Returning to Tennessee after his presidency, Johnson was determined to return to political office. In remarkable fashion, he was elected to the United States Senate, marking the first and only time that a former President has returned to serve in that legislative body. Ambitous, lacking humility, and largely humorless, Johnson was unable to tolerate criticism. He angrily attacked his foes, once likening himself to Christ on the Crucifix. His combative personality and intemperate remarks readily allowed his enemies to portray him as vindictive and unstable. "The Loyalist: The Life and Times of Andrew Johnson" is a concise biography of the 17th President of the United States, focusing upon the tumultuous years surrounding the American Civil War. Sustained by courage and ambition, Johnson was inevitably doomed by petulance, leading to a remarkable rise, dramatic fall, and partial vindication.

    border policy." (The Atlantic) The author of Across the Wire offers brilliant investigative reporting of what went wrong when, in May 2001, a group of 26 men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona. Only 12 men came back out.A national bestseller, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a "book of the year" in multiple newspapers, and a work proclaimed as a modern American classic.

    Arnett’s clear-eyed coverage incurred the wrath of President Lyndon Johnson and officials on all sides of the conflict. Writing candidly and vividly about his gambles and glories, Arnett also shares his fears and fights in reporting against the backdrop of war. Arnett places readers at the historic pivot-points of Vietnam: covering Marine landings, mountaintop battles, Saigon’s decline and fall, and the safe evacuation of a planeload of 57 infants in the midst of chaos. Peter Arnett’s sweeping view and his frank, descriptive, and dramatic writing brings the Vietnam War to life in a uniquely insightful way for this year’s 40th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. Arnett won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for his Vietnam coverage. He later went on to TV-reporting fame covering the Gulf War for CNN. Includes 21 dramatic photographs from the AP Archive and the personal collection of Peter Arnett. About the Author Peter Arnett started as an intern at his local newspaper at age 18, but knew even then his interest was in covering the world. Less than a decade later, he was traveling the globe for The Associated Press, the first of several major American news organizations he would work for. His Vietnam War coverage for the AP won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1966. Arnett joined CNN at its birth in the early 1980s, earning a television Emmy for his live television coverage of the first Gulf War from Baghdad in 1991. Born in New Zealand in 1934, he later became an American citizen and now lives in Fountain Valley, CA. About The Associated Press The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. Founded in 1846, AP today is the most trusted source of independent news and information. On any given day, more than half the world's population sees news from AP.

    Violence swept through the island: assassins were sent to kill President Harry Truman, gunfights roared in eight towns, police stations and post offices were burned down. In order to suppress this uprising, the US Army deployed thousands of troops and bombarded two towns, marking the first time in history that the US government bombed its own citizens.Nelson A. Denis tells this powerful story through the controversial life of Pedro Albizu Campos, who served as the president of the Nationalist Party. A lawyer, chemical engineer, and the first Puerto Rican to graduate from Harvard Law School, Albizu Campos was imprisoned for twenty-five years and died under mysterious circumstances. By tracing his life and death, Denis shows how the journey of Albizu Campos is part of a larger story of Puerto Rico and US colonialism.Through oral histories, personal interviews, eyewitness accounts, congressional testimony, and recently declassified FBI files, War Against All Puerto Ricans tells the story of a forgotten revolution and its context in Puerto Rico's history, from the US invasion in 1898 to the modern-day struggle for self-determination. Denis provides an unflinching account of the gunfights, prison riots, political intrigue, FBI and CIA covert activity, and mass hysteria that accompanied this tumultuous period in Puerto Rican history.

    According to official reports, the students commandeered several buses to travel to Mexico City to commemorate the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre. During the journey, local police intercepted the students and a confrontation ensued. By the morning, they had disappeared without a trace. Hernández reconstructs almost minute-by-minute the events of those nights in late September 2014, giving us what is surely the most complete picture available: her sources are unparalleled, since she has secured access to internal government documents that have not been made public, and to video surveillance footage the government has tried to hide and destroy. Hernández demolishes the Mexican state's official version, which the Peña Nieto government cynically dubbed the "historic truth." State officials at all levels, from police and prosecutors to the upper echelons of the PRI administration, conspired to put together a fake case, concealing or manipulating evidence, and arresting and torturing dozens of "suspects" who then obliged with full "confessions" that matched the official lie. In the wake of the students' disappearances, protestors in Mexico took up the slogan "Fue el estado"--"It was the state." Hernández's book is the one that gives most precision and credibility to the claim: by following the role of the various Mexican state agencies through the events in such remarkable detail, she allows to see exactly which parts of the state are responsible for which component of this monumental crime.

    Yet they should be asking what the global economy will look like in the years to come—where will the long-term risks and opportunities arise? These are the questions that Daniel Altman confronts in his provocative and indispensable book.The fate of the global economy, Altman argues, will be determined by deeper factors than those that move markets from moment to moment. His incisive analysis brings together hidden trends, societal pressures, and policy endgames to make twelve surprising but logical predictions about the years ahead. And his forecasts for the future raise a pressing question for today: With so many challenges awaiting us, are our political and economic institutions up to the task?Outrageous Fortunes tells which industries will grow, which economies will crumble, which investments will pay off, and where the next big crisis may occur. Altman's carefully reasoned text is an essential guide for the road ahead.

    With Kilo, cocaine now has its own Dispatches. Simply kickass.”— Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker and author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary LifeCocaine is glamour, sex and murder. From the badlands of Colombia, it stretches across the globe, seducing, corrupting and destroying. A product that must be produced, distributed, and protected, it is both a harbinger of violence and a source of immense wealth. Beginning in the jungles and mountains of Colombia, it filters down to countryside villages and the nightclubs of the cities, attracting money, sex, and death. Each step in the life of a kilo reveals a different criminal underworld with its own players, rules, and dangers, ranging from the bizarre to the diabolical. The killers, the drug-lords, all find themselves seduced by cocaine and trapped in her world.Seasoned war correspondent Toby Muse has witnessed each level of this underworld, fueled by the appetite for cocaine in America and Europe. In this riveting chronicle, he takes the reader inside Colombia’s notorious drug cartels to offer a never before look at the drug trade. Following a kilo of cocaine from its production in a clandestine laboratory to the smugglers who ship it abroad, he reveals the human lives behind the drug’s complicated legacy. Reporting on Colombia for the world’s most prestigious networks and publications, Muse gained unprecedented access to the extraordinary people who survive on the drug trade—farmers, smugglers, assassins—and the drug lords and their lovers controlling these multi-billion dollar enterprises. Uncovering stories of violence, sex, and money, he shows the allure and the madness of cocaine. And how the War on Drugs has been no match for cocaine.Piercing this veiled world, Kilo is a gripping portrait of a country struggling to end this deadly trade even as the riches flow. A human portrait of criminals and the shocking details of their lives, Kilo is a chilling, unforgettable story that takes you deep into the belly of the beast.Kilo includes 16 pages of photographs.

    Martin Luther King, Jr.

    And while the election of Jeremy Corbyn may have thrown a harsher spotlight on the crisis, it is by no means a recent phenomenon.The widening gulf between British Jews and the anti-Israel left - born out of antiapartheid campaigns and now allying itself with Islamist extremists who demand Israel’s destruction - did not happen overnight or by chance: political activists made it happen. This book reveals who they were, why they chose Palestine and how they sold their cause to the left.Based on new academic research into the origins of this phenomenon, combined with the author's daily work observing political extremism, contemporary hostility to Israel, and anti-Semitism, this book brings new insight to the left's increasingly controversial 'Jewish problem'.

    Born to working-class Democrats in Virginia, Bannon has barrelled through the Navy, Harvard, Wall Street, and Hollywood; he is fluent in esoteric philosophies and political theories; and he has diagnosed the problem with today's America---the rot that has eaten away at working Americans' hopes, opportunities, and freedoms---and developed a winning strategy for taking America back.With inside information on Bannon's current White House projects and his relationships with other figures in the Trump orbit---and with President Trump himself---Bannon: Trump's Rebel in the White House is not only a three-dimensional guide to one of the most fascinating figures of modern American history; it's also a guide to understanding the Trump administration's plans for our future.

    And it carries through to the vote that made Barack Obama the forty-fourth president of the United States.

    By 15,000 BC, humans had migratedfrom northeastern Asia across the frozen Beringland bridge to the Americas. When the world warmed up and the last Ice Age came to an end,the Bering Strait refilled with water, dividing America from Eurasia. This division—with two great populations on Earth, each unaware of theater—continued until Christopher Columbus voyaged to the New World in the fifteenth century.The Great Divide compares the development of human kind in the Old World and the New between 15,000 BC and AD 1500. Watson identifies three major differences between the two worlds—climate, domesticable mammals, and hallucinogenic plants—that combined to produce very different trajectories of civilization in the two hemispheres. Combining the most up-to-date knowledge in archaeology, anthropology, geology, meteorology, cosmology, and mythology, this unprecedented, masterful study offers uniquely revealing insight into what it means to be human.