A revelatory political history that uncovers the innocence of alleged Communist spy Alger Hiss and points a finger at who was really behind one of the most sensational and divisive accusations of the twentieth century.When Alger Hiss was accused by Whittaker Chambers in 1948 of being a secret Communist spy in the 1930s, the subsequent perjury trials were some of the most sensational and politically significant trials of the century. Although Hiss was convicted, he maintain...

Guaranteed to keep you up long after prime time, The Box re-creates the old-time TV years through more than three hundred interviews with those who invented, manufactured, advertised, produced, directed, wrote, and acted in them. Their reminiscences are intertwined with a chronological narrative that tells the technological, business, and entertainment stories—from pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth, through the Golden Age of comedy and drama, to FCC chairman Newt Minow's historic speech declarin...

"An invigorating collection of fifteen testimonials from counter-culturists, conscientious objectors, and artists who came of age" during the '60s ( Publishers Weekly).Many of the freedoms and rights Americans enjoy today are the direct result of those who defied the established order during the Civil Rights Era. It was an era that challenged both mainstream and elite American notions of how politics and society should function. In Generation on Fire

Filled with biographical anecdotes, batting stats and historical comparisons, here is the one book young fans can use to become instant experts in baseball's great debate.Who is it: Babe Ruth? Ted Williams? Ty Cobb? Mark McGwire? or . . .?Here is your one-stop resource for answering the question all baseball fans ask: Who is the best batter ever? You'll find thirty-two of baseball's greatest hitters, with each player's batting statistics, special ac...

Jeff Kisseloff brings together 137 New Yorkers who witnessed daily life in Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II. Dividing the city into ten neighborhoods and devoting a chapter and about a dozen voices to each, Kisseloff offers a brief historical introduction, then lets the eyewitnesses speak for themselves. We hear a survivor's account of the harrowing Triangle Shirtwaist fire as well as tales of the sweatshops, the settlement houses, and the immigrants from around the world who poure...

A collection of strange-but-true crime tales featuring cops, lawyers, and some very unusual suspects . . .The fact-finding folks at Bathroom Readers' Institute have rounded up the best cops-and-robber articles we've ever done, plus a rogues' gallery of new offenders. You'll read about dumb crooks and criminal masterminds, mafia henchmen and low-level goons, ancient warriors and Old West gunslingers, crazed cops and jovial judges, and even a few loony lawyers and cr...

Perfect for fans of The United States vs. Billie Holiday, this is the fiercely honest, no-holds-barred memoir of the legendary jazz, swing, and standards singing sensation—a fiftieth-anniversary edition updated with stunning new photos, a revised discography, and an insightful foreword by music writer David RitzTaking the reader on a fast-moving journey from Billie Holiday’s rough-and-tumble Baltimore childhood (where she ran errands at a whorehouse in exc...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “[This] absorbing, affectionate portrait manages to bring [Newman] back to us. . . . Paul Newman leaves readers with a surprisingly cheering message. If the rest of us can’t aspire to having Newman’s life, we can at least take inspiration from the way he lived his.”—The Washington Post“A graceful tribute to a one-of-a-kind man.”—The Seattle Times“Newman’...

A Curious Man is the marvelously compelling biography of Robert “Believe It or Not” Ripley, the enigmatic cartoonist turned globetrotting millionaire who won international fame by celebrating the world's strangest oddities, and whose outrageous showmanship taught us to believe in the unbelievable.As portrayed by acclaimed biographer Neal Thompson, Ripley’s life is the stuff of a classic American fairy tale. Buck-toothed and cursed by shyness, Ripley turned his sense of bei...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year • A delicious romp through the heyday of rock and roll and a revealing portrait of Jann Wenner, the man at the helm of Rolling Stone magazine, with candid look backs at the era from major musicians • "Come for the essayist in Hagan, stay for the eye-popping details and artful gossip."–Dwight Garner, The New York Times"Through his nuanced portrait of We...

“This isn’t a story about black people—it’s a story about the Left’s agenda to patronize blacks and lie to everyone else.”For decades, the Left has been putting on a play with themselves as heroes in an ongoing civil rights movement—which they were mostly absent from at the time. Long after pervasive racial discrimination ended, they kept pretending America was being run by the Klan and that liberals were black America’s only protectors.It took the O. J. Simpson verdict—the...

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...