A "highly entertaining history [of] global hustling, cola wars and the marketing savvy that carved a niche for Coke in the American social psyche" ( Publishers Weekly).Secret Formula follows the colorful characters who turned a relic from the patent medicine era into a company worth $80 billion. Award-winning reporter Frederick Allen's engaging account begins with Asa Candler, a nineteenth-century pharmacist in Atlanta who secured the rights to the...

Bourbon whiskey has had a long, rugged ride from the frontier to the top shelf. Here, in this essay by award-winning journalist Frederick Allen, is its seldom-told story.

This book is an attempt to tell, and in some measure to interpret, the story of what in the future may be considered a distinct era in American history: the eleven years between the end of the war with Germany (November 11, 1918) and the stock-market panic which culminated on November 13, 1929, hastening and dramatizing the destruction of what had been known as Coolidge (and Hoover) Prosperity.Obviously the writing of a history so soon after the event has i...

The deadliest campaign of vigilante justice in American history erupted in the Rocky Mountains during the Civil War when a private army hanged twenty-one troublemakers. Hailed as great heroes at the time, the Montana vigilantes are still revered as founding fathers.Combing through original sources, including eye-witness accounts never before published, Frederick Allen concludes that the vigilantes were justified in their early actions, as they fought violent crime in a remote corne...

In his fifty-year career as an award-winning journalist, CNN commentator, and author of multiple books, Rick Allen has had a front-row seat on dramatic change in race relations in America. In this collection of eighteen essays, he explores his ongoing efforts to understand the struggle of black and white Americans to navigate a shared history at once wicked and intimate, full of love and hate, as they seek to level an uneven playing field. Allen examines issues from the era of Reconstructi...

For visitors and recent arrivals, Atlanta Rising, will serve as the essential primer on the ins and outs of the South's capital city. For natives, the book offers up a rich menu of surprising new facts and fresh insights about their own hometown.

A "highly entertaining history [of] global hustling, cola wars and the marketing savvy that carved a niche for Coke in the American social psyche" (Publishers Weekly).Secret Formula follows the colorful characters who turned a relic from the patent medicine era into a company worth $80 billion. Award-winning reporter Frederick Allen's engaging account begins with Asa Candler, a nineteenth-century pharmacist in Atlanta who secured the rights to the...

Secret Formula follows the colorful characters who turned a relic from the patent medicine era into a company worth $80 billion. Award-winning reporter Frederick Allen's engaging account begins with Asa Candler, a nineteenth-century pharmacist in Atlanta who secured the rights to the original Coca-Cola formula and then struggled to get the cocaine out of the recipe. After many tweaks, he finally succeeded in turning a backroom belly-wash into a thriving enterprise. Written with unprecedent...

This political biography reveals how the legendary Prime Minister was the driving force in the fight against evil during WWII.How Churchill Saved Civilization examines how Winston Churchill’s wisdom and fortitude were central to the Allied victory against the forces of Fascism in the Second World War. John Harte shows how Churchill was the first to see the early warning signs of unrest in Germany, how he opposed the British policy of appeasement that encou...

After years of prosecuting hard-core criminals, rising legal star Alan Bell took a private sector job in South Florida’s newest skyscraper. Suddenly, he suffered such bizarre medical symptoms, doctors suspected he’d been poisoned by the Mafia. Bell’s rapidly declining health forced him to flee his glamorous Miami life to a sterile “bubble” in the remote Arizona desert.As his career and marriage dissolved, Bell pursued medical treatments in a race against time, hoping to stay alive ...

In Breaking van Gogh, James Grundvig investigates the history and authenticity of van Gogh’s iconic Wheat Field with Cypresses, currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Relying on a vast array of techniques from the study of the painter’s biography and personal correspondence to the examination of the painting’s style and technical characteristics, Grundvig proves that the most expensive purchase” housed in the Met is a fake.The Whe...

An irreverent look at Presidential foibles, follies, fibs, and moral failuresWere past presidents smarter, more honest, and better behaved that those we elect today? Don’t bet on it! White House Confidential shows that commanders-in-chief have been lying, cheating, stealing, and womanizing from the days of the Founding Fathers. Focusing on the qualities that never made it into White House press releases, the authors look at their sexual misdeeds and strang...