"There's a cancer, and it's killing our democracy. A poor man has to sell his soul to get elected. I cry for this country."On February 29, 2000, ninety-year-old Doris “Granny D” Haddock completed her 3,200-mile, fourteen-month walk from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. She walked through 105-degree deserts and blinding blizzards, despite arthritis and emphysema. Along her way, her remarkable speeches — rich with wisdom, love, and political insight — transformed individuals and commun...

An international bestseller which has sold over a million copies in the UK, Dreams From My Father is a refreshing, revealing portrait of a young man asking big questions about identity and belonging.The son of a Black African father and a white American mother, Barack Obama recounts an emotional odyssey, retracing the migration of his mother's family from Kansas to Hawai'i, then to his childhood home in Indonesia. Finally he travels to Kenya, where he confronts the bitter ...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Gloria Steinem—writer, activist, organizer, and inspiring leader—shares a candid account of her life as a traveler, a listener, and a catalyst for change.“Like Steinem herself, [My Life on the Road] is thoughtful and astonishingly humble. It is also filled with a sense of the momentous while offering deeply personal insights into what shaped her.”—Oprah Daily (Ten Best Books of the Year)

The acclaimed author of The Great Railway Bazaar takes a revealing journey through the Southern US in a " vivid contemporary portrait of rural life " ( Atlanta Journal-Constitution).Paul Theroux has spent decades roaming the globe and writing of his experiences with remote people and far-flung places. Now, for the first time, he turns his attention to a corner of America—the Deep South. On a winding road trip thro...

Reflections on America and the American experience as he has lived and observed it by the bestselling author of The Greatest Generation, whose iconic career in journalism has spanned more than fifty yearsFrom his parents’ life in the Thirties, on to his boyhood along the Missouri River and on the prairies of South Dakota in the Forties, into his early journalism career in the Fifties and the tumultuous Sixties, up to the present, this personal story is a r...

For at least forty years, Calvin Trillin has committed blatant acts of funniness all over the place—in The New Yorker, in one-man off-Broadway shows, in his “deadline poetry” for The Nation, in comic novels like Tepper Isn’t Going Out, in books chronicling his adventures as a happy eater, and in the column USA Today called “simply the funniest regular column in journalism.”Now Trillin selects the best of his funny stuff and organizes it into topi...

What begins as a road trip through America soon becomes a journey of discovery into themselves and into the heart of the next-door neighbour they thought they knew. For Wayne Grady, the thrill of landscape and history is tempered by memories of racism and his own family roots. Merilyn Simonds, her ear tuned for the offbeat, finds curious echoes of the ex-pat promised land she grew up with. Together they travel against the tide of American history, followin...

From This American Life contributor and self-described “history nerd” Sarah Vowell comes a collection of humorous and personal essays investigating American history, pop culture, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.In this insightful and funny collection of personal stories Vowell travels through the American past and in doing so ponders a number of curious questions: Why is she happiest when visiting the sites of bloody struggles like Salem or Gettysbur...

From journalists Agnes Hooper Gottlieb and Henry Gottlieb, and Brent Bowers and Barbara Bowers, the acclaimed co-authors of 1,000 Years, 1,000 People, comes a new book that celebrates the reasons we’re proud to call America home—from jazz and the Gettysburg Address to baseball and the White Castle hamburger. Chock full of anecdotes and often surprising insights and historical information, 1,000 Things to Love About America is a smart, breezy, and unabashed love song to the good old U.S.A.

“What caused the American Revolution? This is indeed a rhetorical question that for many years historians have begun chapters with. As well they should. For the American Revolution is without a doubt the single most important historical event to occur in this nation except of course for Super Bowl III (Jets 16. Colts 7. This historian won $35).”So goes the skewed sensibility, the muddied mind, the bent pen of one of America's funniest writers, Dave Barry. This time his subject is U...

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, Kansas City Star.A profoundly moving and deeply personal memoir by the co-host of National Public Radio’s flagship program All Things Considered.While exploring the hidden conversation on race unfolding throughout America in the wake of President Obama’s election, Michele Norris discovered that there were painful secrets within her o...

**New York Times BestsellerThe creator of The New Yorker’s long running satirical column, and “one of the funniest people in America,” pays tribute to comedic geniuses both past and present, including Mark Twain, George Saunders, Nora Ephron, and more (CBS Sunday Morning).**Library of America’s collection of hilarious stories, essays, and articles is an exclusive Who’s Who of the very best American comic writing. Classic pieces of American humor appear her...