Discover the twists and turns of one of America's great infrastructure projects with this "engrossing history of the creation of the U.S. interstate system" ( Los Angeles Times).It's become a part of the landscape that we take for granted, the site of rumbling eighteen-wheelers and roadside rest stops, a familiar route for commuters and vacationing families. But during the twentieth century, the interstate highway system dramatically changed the face of ou...

"An extraordinary portrait of the AT." —Outside34 years after hiking the Appalachian Trail, Earl Swift returned, haunted by a tragedy that befell two of his fellow hikers . . ."A deeply personal meditation on death, aging and nature." —New York Times"A masterpiece of the trail." —Radical Grammar“A helluva book.” —John GrishamIn 1990, a youthful Earl Swift backpacked the Appalachian Trail from Maine ...

"THRILLING. ... Up-end[s] the Apollo narrative entirely." —The Times (London)A "brilliantly observed" (Newsweek) and "endlessly fascinating" (WSJ) rediscovery of the final Apollo moon landings, revealing why these extraordinary yet overshadowed missions—distinguished by the use of the revolutionary lunar roving vehicle—deserve to be celebrated as the pinnacle of human adventure and exploration.One of The Wall Street Jou...

A New York Times–bestselling portrait of a two-hundred-year-old crabbing community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay as it faces extinction.A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Washington Post, NPR, Outside, Smithsonian, Bloomberg, Science Friday, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Review of Books, and Kirkus ReviewsTangier Island, Virgin...

PEN/Martha Albrand Award Finalist: The suspenseful, "poignant" true story of the search for an American military pilot's remains in Southeast Asia (James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers).Where They Lay is both an account of an elite military team's high-tech, high-risk search for a Vietnam War pilot's remains, and a moving retelling of his intense final hours.In far-flung rain forests and its futuristic lab near Pearl Harbor, the C...

A brilliant blend of Shop Class as Soulcraft and The Orchid Thief, Earl Swift's wise, funny, and captivating Auto Biography follows an outlaw auto dealer as he struggles to save a rusted '57 Chevy—a car that has already passed through twelve pairs of hands before his—while financial ruin, government bureaucrats and the FBI close in on him.Slumped among hundreds of other decrepit hulks on a treeless, windswept moor in eastern North Carolina, the Chevy evok...

A Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award Finalist (Best Fact Crime) * A Virginia Literary Awards Finalist"A haunted, historical legal thriller." — Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionFrom the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Chesapeake Requiem comes "a powerfully unsettling portrait of the single most savage episode in the long decades of savagery inflicted by white southerners on their Black neighbors in the 20th century" (Do...

From its beginnings as a trickle of icy water in Virginia's northwest corner to its miles-wide mouth at Hampton Roads, the James River has witnessed more recorded history than any other feature of the American landscape -- as home to the continent's first successful English settlement, highway for Native Americans and early colonists, battleground in the Revolution and the Civil War, and birthplace of America's twentieth-century navy.In 1998, restless in his job as a reporter for t...

Go where the story is--that’s one tenet of journalism Earl Swift has had little trouble living up to. In two decades of covering the commonwealth, Swift has hiked, canoed--even spelunked--a singular path through Virginia. He has also stopped and listened. This collection brings together some twenty Virginia tales wherein hardship is revealed as tragedy, and humor appears as uncanny, illuminating strangeness.The Pulitzer-nominated title story takes us to the Chesapeake island of Tan...

Author Earl Swift narrates his own powerful story.From the New York Times bestselling author of Chesapeake Requiem comes an intricately plotted tale of two end-to-end adventures through the Appalachian Trail’s twenty-two hundred miles, braided around a third strand, that of the trail’s most notorious tragedy that has haunted Earl Swift for thirty years.In 1990, a youthful Earl Swift backpacked the Appalachian Trail from Ma...

A brilliant, soulful, and timely portrait of a two-hundred-year-old crabbing community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay as it faces extinction.A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Washington Post, **NPR, *Outside,***Smithsonian, Popular Science, Bloomberg, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Review of Books, Science Friday, and Kirkus""BE...

“Earl Swift lays out this great unsung saga with verve and magisterial sweep."" —Hampton SidesIn this ""brilliantly observed"" (Newsweek) rediscovery of the final Apollo moon landings, the acclaimed author of *Chesapeake Requiem*reveals that these extraordinary yet overshadowed missions—distinguished by the use of the revolutionary lunar roving vehicle—deserve to be celebrated as the pinnacle of human adventure and exploration....