You really can't believe everything you read . . .A premature newswire report announces the end of World War I, spurring wild celebrations in American streets days before the actual treaty was signed. A St. Louis newspaper prints reviews of theatrical performances that never took place—they had been canceled due to bad weather. New York newspaper reporters plant evidence in the apartment of the man accused of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby and then call him a liar i...

“Burns examines the fame of a number of the Founding Fathers: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton and Henry most prominently.” —Kirkus ReviewsTheir ambitions, intrigues, and jealousies shaped the birth of the nation, but they overcame their foibles and imperfections to throw off the chains of tyranny and form a more perfect union. We think of them now as faces on money or statues on pedestals, and, as Burns illustrates in luminous prose, that’...

There has never been a novel like Mid-Strut, virtually a genre unto itself Friday, October 1, 1965. Arnie Stats Castig is a fine, upstanding citizen of a dying western Pennsylvania steel town---until he snaps. He dashes onto the field at halftime of a high school football game and throws his arms around a majorette. But their feet get tangled and he falls on top of her. I just wanna hold you, he keeps saying, as she shrieks into the night. He wishes he could let her go, but he cant---for s...

Celebrities can come from many different realms: film, music, politics, sports. But what do all these major celebrities have in common? What elevates them to the status of household names while their equally talented peers remain in relative obscurity? Is it just a question of charisma, or does fame depend more on the collective fantasies of fans than the actual accomplishments of celebrities?In search of answers, cultural historian Eric Burns delves deep into the biographies of so...

Jane Taylor is independent and happy raising her daughter, Britt any, as a single mother. With a fulfilling and lucrative job, she and Brittany have a good life together. But its all cut short when Jane is attacked and murdered by an unknown, masked assailant. The same man also goes after fourteen year-old Brittany, who barely manages to escape his clutches. Five years later, she is still struggling to cope with the loss.Now a sophomore in college, Brittany is getting ready for a c...

In 1957, America turned its back on its earlier self and jumped headlong into the nation it has become today. From Sputnik and the beginning of the space race to Little Richard and the underappreciated influence of rock n' roll in bringing blacks and whites closer together, to President Eisenhower's Interstate Highway Act, which forever changed the landscape, 1957 represents the year when all of the energy and anxiety that had followed the end of World War II exploded. In compelling storie...

Art and industry are often seen as mutually exclusive, but it wasn't always that way. In this modern myth, we learn the story of a nemesid named Adrastia Young -- one of the spirits of vengeance and retribution, partnered to a spirit of Good Order and a muse.When Adrastia sees her partners grow closer to each other, she feels excluded. Her response doesn't just affect her relationships, but the world's relationship to the practical and the aesthetic from that point forward....

"Fox News Watch" host Eric Burns, who chronicled the social history of alcohol in The Spirits of America turns to tobacco in The Smoke of the Gods. Ranging from ancient times to the present day, The Smoke of the Gods is a lively history of tobacco, especially in the United States. Although tobacco use is controversial in the U.S. today, Burns reminds us that this was not always the case. For centuries tobacco was generally thought to have medicinal and even spiri...

"Thousands of years ago, before Christ or Buddha or Muhammad...before the Roman Empire rose or the Colossus of Rhodes fell," Eric Burns writes, "people in Asia Minor were drinking beer." So begins an account as entertaining as it is extensive, of alcohol's journey through world—and, more important, American—history. In The Spirits of America, Burns relates that drinking was "the first national pastime," and shows how it shaped American politics and culture from the earliest coloni...

Infamous Scribblers is a perceptive and witty exploration of the most volatile period in the history of the American press. News correspondent and renowned media historian Eric Burns tells of Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Sam Adams -- the leading journalists among the Founding Fathers; of George Washington and John Adams, the leading disdainers of journalists; and Thomas Jefferson, the leading manipulator of journalists. These men and the writers who abused and praised them...

When the first television was demonstrated in 1927, a headline in The New York Times read, “Like a Photo Come to Life.” It was a momentous occasion. But the power of television wasn’t fully harnessed until the 1950s, when the medium was, as Eric Burns says, “At its most preoccupying, its most life-altering.” And Burns, a former NBC News correspondent who is an Emmy-winner for his broadcast writing*,* knows about the impact of television.Invasion of the Mind Snatchers

Theodore Roosevelt is one of the most fascinating and written-about presidents in American history—yet the most poignant tale about this larger-than-life man has never been told.More than a century has passed since Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, but he still continues to fascinate. Never has a more exuberant man been our nation’s leader. He became a war hero, reformed the NYPD, busted the largest railroad and oil trusts, passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, created nation...