Thompson’s Las Vegas, with the Good Doctor as tour guide. A Lord of the Rings-like adventure in the city’s underground flood channels. A seven-day stay at a seedy motel on East Fremont Street.The stories in My Week at the Blue Angel aren’t about Steve Wynn, Cirque du Soleil, or how to play poker and they aren’t set in Caesars Palace, XS Nightclub, or a 2,000-seat showroom. They’re about prostitutes, ex-cons, and the homeless and they’re set under Caesars Palace and in trailer parks and weekly motels.In this creative-nonfiction collection, Matthew O’Brien—author of Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas—and veteran photographer Bill Hughes show a side of the city rarely seen. A side beyond the neon lights, themed facades, and motel-room doors. A side beyond the barbwire fences, “No Trespassing” signs, and midnight shadows.A side of Las Vegas many locals and visitors are curious about, but few ever explore.

    Evelyn Nakano Glenn untangles this complex history in a unique comparative regional study from the end of Reconstruction to the eve of World War II. During this era the country experienced enormous social and economic changes with the abolition of slavery, rapid territorial expansion, and massive immigration, and struggled over the meaning of free labor and the essence of citizenship as people who previously had been excluded sought the promise of economic freedom and full political rights.After a lucid overview of the concepts of the free worker and the independent citizen at the national level, Glenn vividly details how race and gender issues framed the struggle over labor and citizenship rights at the local level between blacks and whites in the South, Mexicans and Anglos in the Southwest, and Asians and haoles (the white planter class) in Hawaii. She illuminates the complex interplay of local and national forces in American society and provides a dynamic view of how labor and citizenship were defined, enforced, and contested in a formative era for white-nonwhite relations in America.

    Born to privilege as the daughter of one of Pakistan’s great feudal families, she was groomed for a diplomatic career and was thrust into the political arena when her father, Pakistan's charismatic and controversial prime minister, was executed. She then led Pakistan, one of the most turbulent and impoverished nations in the world, through two terms as prime minister in the 1980s and 1990s, but she struggled to ward off charges of corruption and retain her tenuous hold on power and was eventually forced into exile. Bhutto returned to Pakistan in 2007, only to be assassinated in Rawalpindi after a triumphant speech.Including interviews with key figures who knew Bhutto and have never before spoken on the record, Benazir Bhutto: Favored Daughter illuminates Bhutto’s tragic life as well as the role she played as the first female prime minister of Pakistan. Celebrated literary critic Brooke Allen approaches Bhutto in a way not many have done before in this taut biography of a figure who had a profound effect on the volatile politics of the Middle East, drawing on contemporary news sources and eyewitness reports, as well as accounts from her supporters and her enemies.

    The Seven Deadly Virtues sits down next to readers at the bar, buys them a drink, and an hour or three later, ushers them into the revival tent without them even realizing it.   The book’s contributors include Sonny Bunch, Christopher Buckley, David “Iowahawk” Burge, Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, Jonah Goldberg, Michael Graham, Mollie Hemingway, Rita Koganzon, Matt Labash, James Lileks, Rob Long, Larry Miller, P. J. O’Rourke, Joe Queenan, Christine Rosen, and Andrew Stiles. Jonathan V. Last, senior writer at the Weekly Standard, editor of the collection, is also a contributor. All eighteen essays in this book are appearing for the first time anywhere.   In the book’s opening essay, P. J. O’Rourke observes: “Virtue has by no means disappeared. It’s as much in public view as ever. But it’s been strung up by the heels. Virtue is upside down. Virtue is uncomfortable. Virtue looks ridiculous. All the change and the house keys are falling out of Virtue’s pants pockets.”   Here are the virtues everyone (including the book’s contributors) was taught in Sunday school but have totally forgotten about until this very moment.  In this sanctimony-free zone:   • Joe Queenan observes: “In essence, thrift is a virtue that resembles being very good at Mahjong. You’ve heard about people who can do it, but you’ve never actually met any of them.” • P. J. O’Rourke notes: “Fortitude is quaint. We praise the greatest generation for having it, but they had aluminum siding, church on Sunday, and jobs that required them to wear neckties or nylons (but never at the same time). We don’t want those either.” • Christine Rosen writes: “A fellowship grounded in sociality means enjoying the company of those with whom you actually share physical space rather than those with whom you regularly and enthusiastically exchange cat videos.” • Rob Long offers his version of modern day justice: if you sleep late on the weekend, you are forced to wait thirty minutes in line at Costco. • Jonah Goldberg offers: “There was a time when this desire-to-do-good-in-all-things was considered the only kind of integrity: ‘Angels are better than mortals. They’re always certain about what is right because, by definition, they’re doing God’s will.’ Gabriel knew when it was okay to remove a mattress tag and Sandalphon always tipped the correct amount.” • Sonny Bunch dissects forbearance, observing that the fictional Two Minutes Hate of George Orwell’s 1984 is now actually a reality directed at living, breathing people. Thanks, in part, to the Internet, “Its targets are designated by a spontaneously created mob—one that, due to its hive-mind nature—is virtually impossible to call off.”   By the time readers have completed The Seven Deadly Virtues, they won’t even realize that they’ve just been catechized into an entirely different—and better—moral universe.

    But in her groundbreaking, thought-provoking exploration of the region, Tracy Thompson, a Georgia native and Pulitzer Prize finalist, asserts that it has merely drawn on its oldest tradition: an ability to adapt and transform itself. Thompson spent years traveling through the region and discovered a South both amazingly similar and radically different from the land she knew as a child. African Americans who left en masse for much of the twentieth century are returning in huge numbers, drawn back by a mix of ambition, family ties, and cultural memory. Though Southerners remain more churchgoing than other Americans, the evangelical Protestantism that defined Southern culture up through the 1960s has been torn by bitter ideological schisms. The new South is ahead of others in absorbing waves of Latino immigrants, in rediscovering its agrarian traditions, in seeking racial reconciliation, and in reinventing what it means to have roots in an increasingly rootless global culture. Drawing on mountains of data, interviews, and a whole new set of historic archives, Thompson upends stereotypes and fallacies to reveal the true heart of the South today—a region still misunderstood by outsiders and even by its own people. In that sense, she is honoring the tradition inaugurated by Wilbur Joseph Cash in 1941 in his classic, The Mind of the South. Cash’s book was considered the virtual bible on the origins of Southern identity and its transformation through time. Thompson has written its sequel for the twenty-first century.

    If women are more liberated than ever before, why aren't they happier? In this shocking, funny, and bluntly honest tour of today’s gender discontents, Andrea Tantaros, one of Fox News' most popular and outspoken stars, exposes how the rightful feminist pursuit of equality went too far, and how the unintended pitfalls of that power trade have made women (and men!) miserable.In a covetous quest to attain the power that men had, women were advised to work like men, talk like men, party like men, and have sex like men. There’s just one problem: women aren’t men. Instead of feeling happy with their newfound freedoms, females today are tied up in knots, trying to strike a balance between their natural, feminine and traditional desires and what modern society dictates—and demands—through the commandments of feminism. Revealing the mass confusion this has caused among both sexes, Tantaros argues that decades of social and economic progress haven’t brought women the peace and contentedness they were told they'd gain from their new opportunities. The pressure both to have it all and to put forth the perfectly post-worthy, filtered life for social media and society at large has left women feeling twisted. Meanwhile, in their rightful quest for equality, women have promoted themselves at the expense of their male counterparts, leaving both genders frayed and frustrated. In this candid and humorous romp through the American cultural landscape, Tantaros reveals how gaining respect in the office - where women earned it - made them stop demanding it where they really wanted it: in their love lives. The impact of this power trade has been felt in every way, from sex to salaries, to dating and marriage, to fertility and female friendships, to the personal details they share with each other.  As a result, we've lost the traditional virtues and values that we all want, regardless of our politics: intimacy, authenticity, kindness, respect, discretion, and above all commitment. With scathing wit -- and insights born of personal experience -- Tantaros explores how women have taken guys off the hook in dating (much to their own detriment) and exposes how we’ve become a nation averse to intimacy and preoccupied with porn, one that has traded kindness for control, intimacy for sexting, and monogamy for polygamy.  Sorry romance. Sorry decency and manners. Long talks over the telephone have been supplanted by the "belfie."  All this indicates a culture that's devolving, not evolving.  And it’s only getting worse. Tied Up in Knots is a no-holds-barred gut check for the sexes and a wake-up call for a society that has decayed -- faster than anyone thought possible.  It’s time to remember what we all really want out of work, love and life. Only then can we finally begin untying those knots.

    Stuart’s cavalry. General Stuart was greatly impressed by von Borke, reporting: “Capt. Heros von Borcke, a Prussian cavalry officer, who lately ran the blockade, assigned me by the honorable Secretary of War, joined in the charge of the First Squadron in gallant style, and subsequently, by his energy, skill, and activity, won the praise and admiration of all”. Major von Borcke’s friendship with Stuart plays a significant role in this book. His unique standing in the General’s life allows the reader to gain an insight into one of the most fascinating figures in Civil War history. Also serving under General Stonewall Jackson and General Robert E. Lee, von Borcke’s dealings with leading Confederate figures sets his autobiography apart from the average Civil War memoir. In addition to the detailed battleground accounts, von Borcke recalls the comradery of the Confederate army and revelry that often took place in their downtime. Written in 1866, Heros von Borcke’s Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence is one of the most important and enlightening memoirs of this tumultuous time in American history. “One of the most exhilarating of war memoirs”—Confederate Shop Heros von Borcke (1836–1895) served in the Confederate army and participated in numerous battles before being wounded at the beginning of the Gettysburg Campaign. Prevented by injury from continuing in active service, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and sent by the Confederate Congress on a diplomatic mission to England. When the war ended in 1865 he remained abroad and returned to his native Prussia, where he later served with distinction in the Franco-Prussian War. He wrote his memoirs in 1866 and died in 1895.

    Loewen, exposes the secret communities and hotbeds of racial injustice that sprung up throughout the twentieth century unnoticed, forcing us to reexamine race relations in the United States.In this groundbreaking work, bestselling sociologist James W. Loewen, author of the national bestseller Lies My Teacher Told Me, brings to light decades of hidden racial exclusion in America. In a provocative, sweeping analysis of American residential patterns, Loewen uncovers the thousands of “sundown towns”—almost exclusively white towns where it was an unspoken rule that blacks could not live there—that cropped up throughout the twentieth century, most of them located outside of the South. These towns used everything from legal formalities to violence to create homogenous Caucasian communities—and their existence has gone unexamined until now. For the first time, Loewen takes a long, hard look at the history, sociology, and continued existence of these towns, contributing an essential new chapter to the study of American race relations.Sundown Towns combines personal narrative, history, and analysis to create a readable picture of this previously unknown American institution all written with Loewen’s trademark honesty and thoroughness.

    . . extraordinarily far-reaching. . . . highly accessible."-Notes"No one has written this way about music in a long, long time. Lucid, insightful, with real spiritual, political, intellectual, and emotional grasp of the whole picture. A book about why music matters, and how, and to whom."-Dave Marsh, author of Louie, Louie and Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story"This book is urgently needed: a comprehensive look at the various forms of black popular music, both as music and as seen in a larger social context. No one can do this better than Craig Werner."-Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University"[Werner has] mastered the extremely difficult art of writing about music as both an aesthetic and social force that conveys, implies, symbolizes, and represents ideas as well as emotion, but without reducing its complexities and ambiguities to merely didactic categories."-African American ReviewA Change Is Gonna Come is the story of more than four decades of enormously influential black music, from the hopeful, angry refrains of the Freedom movement, to the slick pop of Motown; from the disco inferno to the Million Man March; from Woodstock's "Summer of Love" to the war in Vietnam and the race riots that inspired Marvin Gaye to write "What's Going On."Originally published in 1998, A Change Is Gonna Come drew the attention of scholars and general readers alike. This new edition, featuring four new and updated chapters, will reintroduce Werner's seminal study of black music to a new generation of readers.Craig Werner is Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and author of many books, including Playing the Changes: From Afro-Modernism to the Jazz Impulse and Up Around the Bend: An Oral History of Creedence Clearwater Revival. His most recent book is Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul.

    The Blues, as they were called, were perpetually understrength and considered to be acceptable losses in hopeless situations—but their amazingly successful record proved otherwise.A firsthand account of mortal combat with the Ninth Cavalry, Flashing Saber is the remarkable story of the brave men who served in the First Air Cavalry Division's reconnaissance squadron. Included is an account of an air-ground raid that overran a regimental command post and killed more high-ranking enemy officers than any similar engagement of the war. The story begins when a teenager, an Eagle Scout and West Point Prep School student, goes to Vietnam in 1965. Motivated by patriotism and the desire to see combat firsthand, Brennan volunteers for front line duty and spends years as an artillery forward observer and infantryman. Promoted to sergeant and then to lieutenant, Brennan participates in hundreds of assault landings.An expansion and careful reworking of his previous work, Brennan's War, published in 1985, and in the vein of classic memoirs by Johnnie Clark and Frederick Downs, Flashing Saberis a harrowing firsthand account of life and death in war, one filled with breathtaking details about a renowned unit.

    Complaints abound: from inflated ticket prices, $6 hot dogs, and $9 beers to owners endlessly demanding new multimillion-dollar stadiums funded by public tax dollars. Those sitting in the owners’ boxes are increasingly placing profit over players’ performances and fan loyalty. Bad Sports cuts through the hype and bombast to zero in on tales of abusive, dictatorial owners who move their teams thousands of miles away from their fan base, use their stadiums as religious and political platforms, or hold communities ransom for millions of dollars of taxpayer money to fund their gargantuan stadiums.As the multibillion-dollar sports-industrial complex continues to lumber along, Dave Zirin is the voice in the wilderness, speaking out for the common fan with a tough, passionate, and intelligent voice that will remind readers that there is more to sportswriting than glowing athlete profiles.

    Two years later she was killed by American forces not far from where she worked. Written between 1968 and 1970, her diary speaks poignantly of her devotion to family and friends, the horrors of war, her yearning for her high school sweetheart, and her struggle to prove her loyalty to her country. At times raw, at times lyrical and youthfully sentimental, her voice transcends cultures to speak of her dignity and compassion and of her challenges in the face of the war’s ceaseless fury.The American officer who discovered the diary soon after Dr. Tram’s death was under standing orders to destroy all documents without military value. As he was about to toss it into the flames, his Vietnamese translator said to him, “Don’t burn this one. . . . It has fire in it already.” Against regulations, the officer preserved the diary and kept it for thirty-five years. In the spring of 2005, a copy made its way to Dr. Tram’s elderly mother in Hanoi. The diary was soon published in Vietnam, causing a national sensation. Never before had there been such a vivid and personal account of the long ordeal that had consumed the nation’s previous generations.Translated by Andrew X. Pham and with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner Frances FitzGerald, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is an extraordinary document that narrates one woman’s personal and political struggles. Above all, it is a story of hope in the most dire of circumstances—told from the perspective of our historic enemy but universal in its power to celebrate and mourn the fragility of human life.

    Through original oral history interviews with key activists and analysis of previously unexamined organizational records, Kimberly Springer traces the emergence, life, and decline of several black feminist organizations: the Third World Women’s Alliance, Black Women Organized for Action, the National Black Feminist Organization, the National Alliance of Black Feminists, and the Combahee River Collective. The first of these to form was founded in 1968; all five were defunct by 1980. Springer demonstrates that these organizations led the way in articulating an activist vision formed by the intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality.The organizations that Springer examines were the first to explicitly use feminist theory to further the work of previous black women’s organizations. As she describes, they emerged in response to marginalization in the civil rights and women’s movements, stereotyping in popular culture, and misrepresentation in public policy. Springer compares the organizations’ ideologies, goals, activities, memberships, leadership styles, finances, and communication strategies. Reflecting on the conflicts, lack of resources, and burnout that led to the demise of these groups, she considers the future of black feminist organizing, particularly at the national level. Living for the Revolution is an essential reference: it provides the history of a movement that influenced black feminist theory and civil rights activism for decades to come.

    Ten highly motivated and trained terrorists, armed with guns, grenades and improvised explosive devices, slip past coastal security cordons on India's western seacoast in a fishing trawler. They board a rubber dinghy and disembark at Machhimar Nagar, Colaba, Mumbai. Over the next three agonizing days, India's 'Maximum City' is brought to its knees as the fidayeen wreak unprecedented havoc at pre-selected landmarks, holding India's commercial capital hostage. The 26/11 attacks, as they are now known, is widely regarded as the world's first hybrid terrorist attack. The attackers achieved through this long-drawn siege what Al Qaeda did through the high-visibility mass-casualty attack of 11 September 2001. The response to this attack was the first instance of all three wings of the Indian armed forces coming together to fight terror. The attacks tested the mettle of India's elite counter-terrorist force, the National Security Guard, whose strike element was entirely made up of army personnel; the navy dispatched its marine commandos in the initial hours of the attack; the air force flew the NSG into the city and air-dropped them over Nariman House. Black Tornado, as the operation was called by the NSG, is the story of these men called into action in the desperate hours following the most sensational terrorist attack the country has ever seen. Sandeep Unnithan puts together a blow-by-blow account of the terrorist strike and how the siege of Mumbai was thwarted by India's security forces.

    As hostile debates raged over how to protect their new hard-won freedoms, two men formed an improbable partnership that would launch the fledgling United States: George Washington and Alexander Hamilton.Washington and Hamilton chronicles the unlikely collaboration between these two conflicting characters at the heart of our national narrative: Washington, the indispensable general devoted to classical virtues, and Hamilton, an ambitious officer and lawyer eager for fame of the noblest kind.Working together, they laid the groundwork for the institutions that govern the United States to this day and protected each other from bitter attacks from Jefferson and Madison, who considered their policies a betrayal of the republican ideals they had fought for.Yet while Washington and Hamilton's different personalities often led to fruitful collaboration, their conflicting ideals also tested the boundaries of their relationship—and threatened the future of the new republic.From the rumblings of the American Revolution through the fractious Constitutional Convention and America's turbulent first years, this captivating history reveals the stunning impact of this unlikely duo that set the United States on the path to becoming a superpower.