American Birth

On December 28, 1958, the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts met under the lights of Yankee Stadium for that season's NFL Championship game. Football was still greatly over-shadowed by the country's favored pastime - baseball - but the 1958 championship proved to be the turning point for pro football.

On the field and roaming the sidelines were 17 future Hall of Famers, including Colts stars Johnny Unitas, Raymond Berry, and Gino Marchetti, and Giants greats Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, and assistant coaches Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry.

The Best Game Ever is a brilliant portrait of how a single game changed the history of American sports.

“In December 1776, a small boat delivered an old man to France.” So begins a dazzling narrative account of Benjamin Franklin’s French mission, the most exacting—and momentous—eight years of his life. When Franklin embarked, the colonies were without money, munitions, gunpowder, or...

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY LIBRARY JOURNAL The extraordinary life of forgotten World War II hero Evans Carlson, commander of America’s first special forces, secret confidant of FDR, and one of the most controversial officers in the history of the Marine Corps, who dedicated...

Shane is getting married—but can he forget the girl he loved years ago? Lauren’s dreams of happiness walked out the door with Shane and the daughter she gave up, and now Emily searches for the mother she never met. Can three hurting people find hope in the ashes of yesterday? Shane Galanter...

Inspired by a real midwife who became one of the most controversial figures in Victorian New York City, this “action-packed, thought-provoking page-turner” (The New York Times) is an unforgettable tale—a love story and a family saga, featuring a charismatic and passionate woman who became...

“In December 1776, a small boat delivered an old man to France.” So begins a dazzling narrative account of Benjamin Franklin’s French mission, the most exacting–and momentous–eight years of his life. When Franklin embarked, the colonies were without money, munitions, gunpowder or...

Black women have higher rates of premature birth than other women in America. This cannot be simply explained by economic factors, with poorer women lacking resources or access to care. Even professional, middle-class Black women are at a much higher risk of premature birth than low-income White women in the United States. Dána-Ain Davis looks into this phenomenon, placing racial differences in birth outcomes into a historical context, revealing that ideas about reproduction and race today have been influenced by the legacy of ideas which developed during the era of slavery.

In this sweet Regency romance, Amelia Barret will risk everything to keep her word—even to the point of proposing to a sea captain she’s never met. Amelia Barrett, heiress to an estate nestled in the English moors, defies family expectations and promises to raise her dying friend’s baby...

From the admired judicial authority, author of Louis D. Brandeis (“Remarkable”—Anthony Lewis, The New York Review of Books; “Monumental”—Alan M. Dershowitz, The New York Times Book Review), Division and Discord, and Supreme Decisions—Melvin Urofsky’s major new book looks at the...

The astonishing story of America’s airwaves, the two friends—one a media mogul, the other a famous inventor—who made them available to us, and the government which figured out how to put a price on air. This is the origin story of the airwaves—the foundational technology of the...

Inspired by the author’s harrowing experience giving birth to her premature daughter, a compelling and empathetic work that combines memoir with rigorous reporting to tell the story of neonatology—and to meditate on the questions raised by premature birth. The heart of many hospitals is the...

In the last three decades of the nineteenth century, an American buffalo herd once numbering 30 million animals was reduced to twenty-three. It was the era of Manifest Destiny, a gilded age that viewed the West as nothing more than a treasure chest of resources to be dug up or shot down...

“Ms. Haigh is an expertly nuanced storyteller long overdue for major attention. Her work is gripping, real, and totally immersive, akin to that of writers as different as Richard Price, Richard Ford, and Richard Russo.”—Janet Maslin, New York Times The highly anticipated new novel by...

Zahra Starling and her younger half sister, Aurora, have nothing in common. Not their childhoods or their personalities. And certainly not their outlooks. After a terrible loss, Zahra prefers the solitude of her LA kitchen to people, especially family. Bubbly Aurora, a rising Hollywood starlet, has everything she’s ever dreamed of, except a relationship with her sister. Then comes a plea from their dying father, who wants both daughters by his side. He has a secret to share that’s been a long time coming.

Between 1965 and 1985, the world underwent profound social, political, and technological transformations. The Civil Rights Movement in the United States achieved key victories, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but racial tensions and systemic inequalities persisted. Meanwhile, the Vietnam War escalated, igniting widespread anti-war protests and fracturing American trust in government. This disillusionment culminated in the Watergate scandal, leading to President Nixon's resignation in 1974 and reshaping public perception of political leadership.

From bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H.W. Brands, a revelatory history of the shocking emergence of vicious political division at the birth of the United States. To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were a fatal threat to republican virtues. They had suffered...

What elevates teaching my mother how to give birth, what gives the poems their disturbing brilliance, is Warsan Shire's ability to give simple, beautiful eloquence to the veiled world where sensuality lives in the dominant narrative of Islam; reclaiming the more nuanced truths of earlier times -...

In Ever After, bestselling author Karen Kingsbury has created a moving sequel to Even Now. The book opens as Emily Anderson, now twenty years old, attends college on a soccer scholarship. Through an off-campus job at Fort Lewis, Emily meets a young Army reservist, Justin Baker. Their love—deep...

For many Americans, the birth certificate is a mundane piece of paper, unearthed from deep storage when applying for a driver's license, verifying information for employers, or claiming state and federal benefits. Yet as Donald Trump and his fellow "birthers" reminded us when they claimed that Barack Obama wasn't an American citizen, it plays a central role in determining identity and citizenship. The Birth Certificate: An American History traces the document's two-hundred-year history to explain when, how, and why birth certificates came to matter so much in the United States.

During a 30-year boom period in France between the end of World War II and the 1974 oil crisis, Paris was not only the world's most delicious, stylish, and exciting tourist destination; it was also the world capital of gastronomic genius and innovation. The Gourmands' Way explores the lives and writings of six Americans who chronicled the food and wine of this era, paying particular attention to their individual struggles as writers, to their life circumstances, and to their particular genius at sharing awareness of French food with mainstream American audiences.