Berlin, 1936. The Olympic finals of the eight-oared rowing race. Germany, Italy, USA. The American boat touches the finish line first, beating all odds and sending Hitler away in a silent rage. In the midst of the Great Depression, the nine rowers showed the world what true grit really meant. They were western, working-class boys who never expected to beat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did. At the center of the tale...

"The Way I Heard It presents thirty-five mysteries "for the curious mind with a short attention span." Every one is a trueish tale about someone you know, filled with facts that you don't. Movie stars, presidents, bloody do-gooders, and villains--they're all here, waiting to shake your hand, hoping you'll remember them. Delivered with Mike's signature blend of charm, wit, and ingenuity, their stories are part of a larger mosaic--a memoir full of surprising...

The NBC news correspondent assigned to cover the Trump campaign for the 2016 presidential election shares her perspective on witnessing Trump's unexpected campaign successes.

The magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of a proud stranger in his native land. He was a young American Indian named Abel, and he lived in two worlds. One was that of his father, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the land, the ecstasy of the drug called peyote. The other was the world of the twentieth century, goading him into a compulsive cycle of sexual exploits, dissipation, and disgust. Home from a foreign war,...

"Over one hundred and fifty years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French nobleman and an astute political scientist, came to the United States to evaluate the meaning and actual functioning of democracy. Democracy in America is the classic treatise on the American way of life that he wrote as a result of his visit." "Tocqueville discusses the advantages and dangers of the majority rule -- which he thought could be as tyrannical as the rule of...

History of the 1920's from the collapse of Wilson and the New Freedom to the collapse of Wall Street and the New Era.

The Wars of America is a dramatic and compelling narrative history by an outstanding military historian of America's armed conflicts and the political, cultural and economic factors behind them since the earliest explorers and settlers arrived on this continent. First published in 1968, It was revised and updated in 1981 to include the Vietnam War. It has now been updated to include all the events of the last ten years in Lebanon, Grenada, Panama,...

"A memoir that braids the evolution of one of America's most iconic branding campaigns with the stirring tales of the women who lived behind its facade--told by the inheritor of their stories. In 1899, Allie Rowbottom's great-great-great-uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor for $450. The sale would turn out to be one of the most profitable business deals in American history, and the generations that followed enjoyed immense privilege--but...

Battle Ready follows the evolution of both General Zinni and the Marine Corps, from the cauldron of Vietnam through the operational revolution of the seventies and eighties, to the new realities of the post-Cold War, post-9/11 military-a military with a radically different job and radically different tools for accomplishing it. It is an eye-opening book-a front-row seat to a man, an institution, and a way of both war and peace that together make this...

"Life is a constant struggle for the eighteen-year-old Nowak twins as they raise their three younger siblings in rural Poland under the shadow of the Nazi occupation ... Helena discovers an American paratrooper stranded outside their small mountain village ... Risking the safety of herself and her family, she hides Sam--a Jew--but Helena's concern for the American grows into something much deeper ... [as] Helena is forced to contend with the jealousy...