History Essays

"A gripping guide to the modern taming of the infinite." —New York Times Part history, part philosophy, part love letter to the study of mathematics, Everything and More is an illuminating tour of infinity. With his infectious curiosity and trademark verbal pyrotechnics, David Foster Wallace...

The remarkable life and times of the man who popularized American folk music and created the science of songFolklorist, archivist, anthropologist, singer, political activist, talent scout, ethnomusicologist, filmmaker, concert and record producer, Alan Lomax is best remembered as the man who...

In this pyrotechnic memoir-in-essays, Mak ranges widely over our landscape of paranoia, crisis, and frenetic, clickable consumption. He grants listeners an inside pass to the spaces where culture was made and unmade over the past decade, from the antiseptic glare of white-walled galleries to the darkest corners of Berlin techno clubs. As the gay son of an evangelical minister, Mak fled to those spaces, hoping to join a global, influential elite. But when calamity struck, it forced Mak to confront the costs of mistaking status for belonging.

An entertaining and insightful history of martial arts and the role of the warrior, drawing on pop culture, philosophy, mythology, religion, and spirituality The urge to forge one’s character by fighting, in daily life as well as on the mat, appeals to something deep within us. More than a...

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A stunning history of the first national anti-terrorist campaign waged on American soil—when Ulysses S. Grant wielded the power of the federal government to dismantle the KKK The Ku Klux Klan, which celebrated historian Fergus Bordewich defines as “the...

A dazzling novel from one of our finest writers—an epic yet intimate family saga about three generations of all-American radicals At the center of Jonathan Lethem’s superb new novel stand two extraordinary women: Rose Zimmer, the aptly nicknamed Red Queen of Sunnyside, Queens, is an...

Essays on all 46 American Presidents who have held the office over the last 230 years - from George Washington to Joe Biden. There was a huge upsurge of global interest in US politics during the Trump presidency, culminating in the November 2020 election, the victory of the Democrat candidate...

Unpacks and pulls the curtain back on what happens to our brains and our behaviors each time we addictively engage social media and the influencers we encounter there. Individuals seeking to widen their tribes of friends, fans, and followers have an abundance of resources for building their...

An Epic Memoir of an Intrepid Solo Adventurer, a Woman Who Lived by the Philosophy "Go Simple, Go Solo, Go Now" In a memoir remarkable for its quiet confidence and acute natural observation, the author of Paddling Hawaii and Paddling My Own Canoe begins with her decision, at age 60, to undertake...

A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the US. Structured around the forty questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016...

Continuing the pitch-perfect critiques begun in The Great Movies, Roger Ebert's The Great Movies II collects 100 additional essays, each one of them a gem of critical appreciation and an amalgam of love, analysis, and history that will send readers back to films with a fresh set of eyes and...

THE WORLD THROUGH A FEMINIST LENSFor Nivedita Menon, feminism is not about a moment of final triumph over patriarchy but about the gradual transformation of the social field so decisively that old markers shift forever. From sexual harassment charges against international figures to the...

During the Depression, economic anxieties found an outlet in a series of child murders that triggered an irrational nationwide hysteria: pedophiliac psychopaths were overrunning the country. As America was brought to rage and fury by the press and the FBI, lynch mobs took to the streets, reason gave way to doomsday scenarios, and one father was even driven to murder his three daughters to “save them” from a degenerate crime wave. A terrifying cautionary essay, Panic explores the combustible mix of unfounded fears, moral crusades, and the dangers of collective thinking.

New York Times bestselling authors Mike Schur and Joe Posnanski travel the world in a hilarious and heartwarming celebration of fans and the things they love: baseball, basketball, chess, darts, football, futbol, Indigenous North American stickball, pickleball, WWE, Taylor Swift, Star Wars, and...

A National Book Critics Circle finalist One of Vogue's Best Books of the Year A dazzling biography of one of the twentieth century's most respected painters, Helen Frankenthaler, as she came of age as an artist in postwar New York “The magic of Alexander Nemerov's portrait of Helen...

"Powerfully insightful reading." —Kirkus Reviews How would you like to be judged for the rest of your life by the worst thing you’ve ever done? We all think we are compassionate just like we all think we are honest. But true compassion is not innate. Compassion for others, especially those...

In this hugely entertaining sequel to the New York Times bestselling memoir An Appetite for Wonder, Richard Dawkins delves deeply into his intellectual life spent kick-starting new conversations about science, culture, and religion and writing yet another of the most audacious and widely read...

Noam Chomsky’s backpocket classic on wartime propaganda and opinion control begins by asserting two models of democracy—one in which the public actively participates, and one in which the public is manipulated and controlled. According to Chomsky, "propaganda is to democracy as the bludgeon...

"Wonderful... Physicans would do well to learn this most important lesson about caring for patients." —The New York Times Book Review Over the years that Victoria Sweet has been a physician, “healthcare” has replaced medicine, “providers” look at their laptops more than at their...

During the first hundred years of Chinese immigration--from 1848 to 1943--San Francisco was home to a shockingly extensive underground slave trade in Asian women, who were exploited as prostitutes and indentured servants. In this gripping, necessary book, bestselling author Julia Flynn Siler...