A journalist leads readers on a revealing journey through the Old South, tangling with the forces of white rage, rebel grit, and regional pride in places where the Civil War is more than a memory

Harry Houdini. Say his name and a number of things come to mind. Escapes. Illusions. Magic. Chains. Safes. Live burials. Close to a century after his death, nearly every person in America knows his name from a young age, capturing their imaginations with his death-defying stunts and daring acts. He inspired countless people, from all walks of life, to find something magical within themselves. This is a book about a man and his extraordinary life,...

"When President Theodore Roosevelt welcomed the country's most visible Black man, Booker T. Washington, into his circle of counselors in 1901, the two confronted a shocking and violent wave of racist outrage. In the previous decade, Jim Crow laws had legalized discrimination in the South, eroding social and economic gains for former slaves. Lynching was on the rise, and Black Americans faced new barriers to voting. Slavery had been abolished, but...

"A gripping, multigenerational tale of a French Algerian woman, her family's past, and the legacies of colonialism"--

"With The Firm, financial journalist Duff McDonald pulled back the curtain on consulting giant McKinsey and Company. In The Golden Passport, he reveals the inner works of a singular nexus of power, ambition, and influence: Harvard Business School. Harvard University still occupies a unique place in the public's imagination, but the Harvard Business School eclipsed its parent in terms of influence on modern society long ago. A Harvard degree guarantees...

"Effortlessly blending biography, criticism, and memoir, National Book Award-winning poet and best- selling memoirist Mark Doty explores his personal quest for Walt Whitman. Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman's bold, new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul and what it means to be a self. In What Is the Grass, Doty-a poet, a lover of men, a New Yorker, and an American-keeps company with Whitman and his...

When his physicist mentor is murdered for his possible knowledge about Einstein's Unified Theory, Columbia University professor David Swift is swept up by a violent struggle for control of the information and its staggering potential.

Ousted from his burrow by construction sprawl, Gimble joins several other similarly desperate animals to seek refuge elsewhere. This story is of a journey inspired by hope. With the exception of Cotton (an eastern cottontail), these travelers are state or federally classified as "threatened" or "species of special concern": burrowing owl; gopher frog; Florida mouse; indigo snake---and Gimble Gopher Tortoise himself. In their exodus, the friends try...