American Century

"I just begin to find out that whaling will never do for me and have determined to leave the ship here if possible." That sentiment, expressed by a foremast hand aboard the ship Caroline in 1843, is one shared by many of the whalemen in this fascinating book. Interest in Herman Melville's Moby Dick has contributed to a substantial literature on the history and lore of the industry. But not until now has the vast body of surviving whaleship logs and journals been used to paint an encompassing picture of the difficult but colorful life aboard 19-century American whaling vessels.

Little People, BIG DREAMS is a bestselling biography series for kids that explores the lives of outstanding people, from designers and artists to scientists and activists. All of them achieved incredible things, yet each began life as a child with a dream.

A Silent Spring for the human body, this wide-ranging, genre-crossing literary mystery interweaves the author’s quest to understand the source of her own condition with her telling of the story of the chronically ill 19th-century diarist Alice James—ultimately uncovering the many hidden health hazards of life in America.

The role and range of the American presidency has undergone significant changes in the twenty-first century, with George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden transforming the office in distinct ways. Many but not all of these changes stem from the numerous crises of this young century: 9/11 and the resulting war on terror, Hurricane Katrina, the Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the social unrest of 2020.

Winner of the 2019 American Association for the History of Nursing Lavinia L. Dock Award for Exemplary Historical Research and Writing in a Book.

“Catchin’ babies” was merely one aspect of the broad role of African American midwives in the twentieth-century South. Yet, little has been written about the type of care they provided or how midwifery and maternity care evolved under the increasing presence of local and federal health care structures.

While traditional drugs mostly help us manage the effects of disease, cell therapies promise genuine cures for a broad range of intractable ailments, from Alzheimer’s to heart damage to cancer. They could even reverse the effects of aging. For the first time in history, on an unprecedented scale, we possess the power to modify the biology that gives rise to disease, ultimately restoring individuals to a state of normalcy and reversing debilitating ailments. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb traces the scientific achievements that propelled progress in cell therapies.

""Beautifully crafted and captivating.This triumphant tale is sure to be an instant classic.""--Victoria Christopher Murray, New York Times bestselling co-author of The Personal Librarian ""How do we not all know the name of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield? The story of this brilliant singer -- a...

Chargée d'écrire une préface pour l'extraordinaire journal que Marie Curie a tenu après la mort de Pierre Curie, Rosa Montero s'est vue prise dans un tourbillon de mots. Au fil de son récit du parcours extraordinaire et largement méconnu de cette femme hors normes, elle construit un livre à mi-chemin entre les souvenirs personnels et la mémoire collective, entre l'analyse de notre époque et l'évocation intime. Elle nous parle du dépassement de la douleur, de la perte de l'homme aimé qu'elle vient elle-même de vivre, du deuil, de la reconstruction de soi, des relations entre les hommes et les femmes, de la splendeur du sexe, de la bonne mort et de la belle vie, de la science et de l'ignorance, de la force salvatrice de la littérature et de la sagesse de ceux qui apprennent à jouir de l'existence avec plénitude et légèreté.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction Winner of the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction Winner of the Ferro-Grumley award for LGBTQ Fiction Finalist for the 2025 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award Finalist for the...

At the age of twelve, under the Wind moon, Will is given a horse, a key, and a map, and sent alone into the Indian Nation to run a trading post as a bound boy. It is during this time that he grows into a man, learning, as he does, of the raw power it takes to create a life, to find a home. In a card game with a white Indian named Featherstone, Will wins–for a brief moment–a mysterious girl named Claire, and his passion and desire for her spans this novel.

From the author of the classic coming-of-age memoir Fresh off the Boat, tragicomic autofiction about how one very messed up and haunted manchild finds love in spite of himself. Hubie lives an exciting life. He hosts a traveling food show, produces it with his two best friends, and tastes the...

“What a beautifully imagined and important narrative. Sanders’ clear-eyed and powerful writing made this a hard one to stop reading!” —Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award-Winning Author "This is a novel to cherish and share. And this is a history to sing about and affirm --...

When Malena Sevilla's tidy, carefully planned world collapses following her father’s mysterious suicide, she finds a letter - signed with an “A” - that reveals that her mother, whom she thought dead, is very much alive in San Isidro, a quaint town tucked in the Andes Mountains. Intent on meeting her, Malena arrives at Alameda Street and meets four sisters who couldn’t be more different from one another, but who share one thing in common: all of their names begin with an A.

One night at a dinner party in Florence, historian Daniel Lee was told about a remarkable discovery. An upholsterer in Amsterdam had found a bundle of swastika-covered documents inside the cushion of an armchair he was repairing. They belonged to Dr. Robert Griesinger, a lawyer from Stuttgart, who joined the S.S. and worked at the Reich's Ministry of Economics and Labor in Nazi-occupied Prague during the war.

A critically acclaimed novelist pulls Nick Carraway out of the shadows and into the spotlight in this "masterful" look into his life before Gatsby (Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls and Chances Are). Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into Gatsby's periphery...

“I’ll take my share of the blame. I only ask that he take his.” In Bringing Down the Colonel, journalist Patricia Miller tells the story of Madeline Pollard, an unlikely nineteenth-century women’s rights crusader. After an affair with a prominent politician left her “ruined,” Pollard...

""Do you want to read something funny? Let’s say, a novel set at a divorce ranch in Reno in the 1930s? A book with memorably eccentric characters, sparkling dialogue, a satisfying plot twist, and some romance and sex? A feel-good literary comedy/western? Here it is, then, the book...

En 1928, Max, gigolo, chasseur de femmes fortunées, fait route vers Buenos Aires à bord du Cap Polonio où il travaille comme danseur mondain, quand il aperçoit une pièce de choix : Mecha Inzunza, épouse richissime d'un célèbre compositeur, qui danse merveilleusement le tango. La passion de Max est immédiate et à Buenos Aires, où il guide le couple dans les cabarets des faubourgs, il noue avec elle une liaison qui tourne mal.

A radically vulnerable and virtuosic inquiry into the pursuit of freedom and the interminable nature of struggle, from the award-winning author of What We Lose Weaving personal reflections with piercing insight and expansive vision across nine brilliant essays, Clemmons explores the complexities...

Over a few weeks in 1741, 10 fires blazed across Manhattan. With each new fire, panicked whites saw more evidence of a slave uprising. Tried and convicted before the colony's Supreme Court, 13 black men were burned at the stake and 17 were hanged. Four whites, the alleged ringleaders of the plot, were also hanged, and seven more were pardoned on condition that they never set foot in New York again.