American Political Crime

A century after Appomattox, the civil rights movement won full citizenship for black Americans in the South. It should not have been necessary: by 1870 those rights were set in the Constitution. This is the story of the terrorist campaign that took them away.

On July 4, 1826, as Americans lit firecrackers to celebrate the country’s 50th birthday, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were on their deathbeds. The young nation had outlived the men who made it, but could it survive intensifying divisions over the very meaning of the land of the free? American Radicals is a dynamic, timely history of 19th-century activists - free-lovers and socialists, abolitionists and vigilantes - and the social revolution they sparked in the turbulent Civil War era.

First, in a small Midwestern city, the deer population starts attacking people. So Beryl, a feisty senior with a troubled past, decides to take matters into her own hands, training a squad of fellow retirees to hunt the animals down and reclaim their own vitality. At the same time, a group of protesters decides to abandon the "system" and live in the woods, leaving their children and all responsibility behind.

Sulick reveals six fundamental elements of espionage in these stories: the motivations that drove them to spy; their access and the secrets they betrayed; their tradecraft, i.e., the techniques of concealing their espionage; their exposure; their punishment; and, finally, the damage they inflicted on America's national security.

Freedom’s Detective reveals the untold story of the Reconstruction-era US Secret Service and their battle against the Ku Klux Klan, through the career of its controversial chief, Hiram C. Whitle.

On January 20, 2009, a new occupant had moved into the White House. The transition of power from the previous administration had been orderly and uneventful, and on the surface, seemed to move smoothly through the process as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.

What millions of Americans couldn't know was that a few years before the new president was born, another man had been offered two lives to live. His choice would change the lives of every man, woman and child on our planet. Many famous assassinations had been left behind in the wake of his ascension. He destroyed many large individual fortunes and the economies of some countries.

The Korean Demilitarized Zone, 1970s: A battered corpse is found a few feet north of the line dividing North and South Korea. When Eighth Army CID Agents George Sueno and Ernie Bascom are ordered by superiors to pull the body to the South Korean side, they have no idea of the international conflict the action will spark.

True Believer reveals the life of Noel Field, an American who betrayed his country and crushed his family. Field, once a well-meaning and privileged American, spied for Stalin during the 1930s and '40s. Then, a pawn in Stalin's sinister master strategy, Field was kidnapped and tortured by the KGB and forced to testify against his own Communist comrades.

In The Assassin’s Accomplice, historian Kate Clifford Larson tells the gripping story of Mary Surratt, a little-known conspirator in the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln, and the first woman ever to be executed by the federal government. A Confederate sympathizer, Surratt ran the boarding house where the conspirators met to plan Lincoln’s assassination. Set against the backdrop of the Civil War, The Assassin’s Accomplice tells the intricate story of the Lincoln conspiracy through the eyes of its only female participant, offering a fresh perspective on America’s most famous murder.

For the last decade, Margaret Regan has reported on the escalating chaos along the Arizona-Mexico border, ground zero for immigration since 2000. Undocumented migrants cross into Arizona in overwhelming numbers, a state whose anti-immigrant laws are the most stringent in the nation. And Arizona has the highest number of migrant deaths. Fourteen-year-old Josseline, a young girl from El Salvador who was left to die alone on the migrant trail, was just one of thousands to perish in its deserts and mountains.

For the last 60 years, fear has seeped into every area of American life: Americans own more guns than citizens of any other country, sequester themselves in gated communities, and retreat from public spaces. And yet, crime rates have plummeted, making life in America safer than ever. Why, then, are Americans so afraid - and where does this fear lead to? In this remarkable work of social history, May demonstrates how our obsession with security has made citizens fear each other and distrust the government, making America less safe and less democratic.

Black voters have overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party for the last fifty years - and for their loyalty, black Americans have been rewarded with worsening schools, collapsed families, skyrocketed incarceration rates, disappearing jobs, and rising crime. Crystal Wright, editor of the blog Conservative Black Chick, exposes how the Democratic Party has systematically betrayed black voters.

An extraordinary fiction debut: a large, stirring novel of suspense that is, at the same time, a work of brilliantly astute social observation. Publishers Weekly predicts this "will be the talk of the political in-crowd this summer," and Booklist's starred review calls it "a roman à clef with fascinating insights into the behind-the-scenes machinations of racial and power politics." Don't miss this one!

A narrative that originates in the garment industry of mid-century New York, which produced over 80 percent of the nation's dresses at the time, Murder in the Garment District quickly moves to a national stage, where congressional anti-corruption hearings gripped the nation and forever tainted the reputation of American unions. Replete with elements of a true-crime thriller, Murder in the Garment District includes a riveting cast of characters, from wheeling and dealing union president David Dubinsky to the notorious gangster Abe Chait and the crusading Robert F. Kennedy.

On August 21, 2015, Ayoub El-Khazzani boarded train #9364 in Brussels, bound for Paris. There could be no doubt about his mission: he had an AK-47, a pistol, a box cutter, and enough ammunition to obliterate every passenger on board. Slipping into the bathroom in secret, he armed his weapons. Another major ISIS attack was about to begin. Khazzani wasn't expecting Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, and Spencer Stone. Stone was a martial arts enthusiast and airman first class in the US Air Force, Skarlatos was a member of the Oregon National Guard, and all three were fearless.

Since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, uncounted thousands of civilians have died in the fighting and as a result of the destruction. In The Bodies in Person, Nick McDonell introduces us to some of the civilians who died, along with the rescue workers who tried to save them, US soldiers grappling with their deaths, and everyone in between. He shows us how decent Americans, inside and outside the government and military, looked away from the mounting death toll, even as they claimed to do everything in their power to prevent civilian casualties.

It’s no secret that hundreds of companies have been slashing pensions and health coverage earned by millions of retirees. Employers blame an aging workforce, stock market losses, and spiraling costs - a perfect storm of external forces that has forced them to take drastic measures. But this so-called retirement crisis is no accident. Award-winning investigative reporter Ellen E. Schultz reveals how large companies and the retirement industry - benefits consultants, insurance companies, and banks - have all played a huge, hidden role in the death spiral of American pensions and benefits.

During of the War of 1812, British troops ransacked the White House and made off with valuables that were never returned. Two centuries later, a British curator finds a vital clue to the long-vanished loot. Within hours, the curator is assassinated-and Ayesha Ryder, a Palestinian-born antiquities expert, is expertly framed for his murder. Who could be behind such a conspiracy? And why do they want Ryder out of the way? To find out, she picks up a trail leading from a mysterious nineteenth-century letter to the upcoming presidential election.

Expresiva, enérgica y divertida, Sonia Sotomayor ha logrado convertir cada lucha de su vida en un triunfo. Nacida en el Bronx de padres inmigrantes de Puerto Rico, Sonia descubrió a los nueve años que tenía diabetes, una enfermedad grave ahora, pero aún más peligrosa hace cincuenta años. ¿Cómo afrontó la joven Sonia la devastadora noticia? Aprendió a administrarse sus inyecciones diarias de insulina y se empeñó en aprovechar al máximo su vida. Fue la popular serie de televisión de los años sesenta Perry Mason la que hizo que Sonia quisiera convertirse en abogada.