The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York

"Benjamin Day was the publisher of the New York Sun in the early 1800s who famously quipped,”If a dog bites a man, that’s not news. But if a man bites a dog, that’s news.” Day and his paper provide journalist Goodman with an entry point into the New York City of 1835—crowded, filthy, filled with cholera and crime, and alive with possibility for hucksters of all sorts. Goodman showcases a series of articles published by the Sun in the summer of 1835 that purported to describe life on the moon, filled with flying man-bats. He takes off from these articles and their success (papers sold out so fast that starving newsboys were kept in oysters and good lodgings for weeks) to a description of 1835 New York. Connections are fairly flimsy, and this lacks the narrative drive of The Devil in the White City or Seabiscuit. Still, if the book fails as creative nonfiction, it still tells an intriguing story and reveals some fascinating facts about nineteenth-century New York."

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Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11

By Kathryn S. Olmsted

The American Century's hidden narrative."The institutionalized secrecy of the modern U.S. government inspired a new type of conspiracy theories [which] proposed that the federal government itself was the conspirator," writes Olmsted (History/Univ. of California, Davis; Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley, 2002, etc.). Interestingly, the proponents of such theories changed over time from the conservative, moneyed elite epitomized by FDR's many enemies to a more marginalized demographic of embittered, frightened people on both the left and right. The author begins by examining how World War I swelled the federal budget and fostered an atmosphere in which dissent was equated with subversion, as demonstrated by the 1918 Palmer raids. In response, those defined as enemies of the state grew more paranoid. By the end of the '20s, Olmsted observes, skeptics might blame the president's inner circle or "the secret cabals of the international gold ring," but they all agreed that shadowy, powerful interests had manipulated America into war. The shock of Pearl Harbor only amplified these tendencies among a strange consensus of anti-Semites, anti-interventionists and New Deal haters who "had long feared [an] ‘incident' that would allow Roosevelt to drag an unwilling country into war." In the '50s, fears arising from the communists' victory in China and the Soviets' acquisition of the atom bomb were exploited by Joseph McCarthy, perhaps the most ruthless of the "official" conspiracy-mongers. With JFK's assassination, the author argues, conspiracy theories became the province of ordinary people, who formed grassroots networks to debunk the Warren Report. She concludes by looking at anti-government paranoia of the '90s, which produced Timothy McVeigh, and its disturbing resonance in skepticism about who really perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. Olmsted ably handles research into obscure and fringe source materials, explaining how real evidence like the top-secret intercepts of Japanese communications during WWII fed conspiracy fantasies, often over decades. Her energetic narrative shows an increasingly complex national security apparatus both prompting conspiracy theories and promulgating its own. Convincing study of how alternative histories develop.

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Lincoln on Race & Slavery

Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Generations of Americans have debated the meaning of Abraham Lincoln's views on race and slavery. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation, authorized the use of black troops during the Civil War, supported a constitutional amendment to outlaw slavery, and eventually advocated giving the vote to black veterans and to what he referred to as "very intelligent negroes." But he also harbored grave doubts about the intellectual capacity of African Americans, publicly used the n-word until at least 1862, enjoyed "darky" jokes and black-faced minstrel shows, and long favored permanent racial segregation and the voluntary "colonization" of freed slaves in Africa, the Caribbean, or South America. In this book--the first complete collection of Lincoln's important writings on both race and slavery--readers can explore these contradictions through Lincoln's own words. Acclaimed Harvard scholar and documentary filmmaker Henry Louis Gates, Jr., presents the full range of Lincoln's views, gathered from his private letters, speeches, official documents, and even race jokes, arranged chronologically from the late 1830s to the 1860s.

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Daily Life in the United States, 1960-1990: Decades of Discord

By Myron A. Marty

Students, teachers, and interested readers can use this important resource to examine the evolution of the everyday lives of ordinary people in the United States from 1960 to 1990. The volatility of the civil rights movement; the impact of the baby boom generation; the influences of television, advertising, and other media; the emergence of environmental and consumer-protection movements; and the effects the Vietnam War and Watergate had on the American public are just a few of the issues examined and outlined. From the space age to the computer age, the user can explore how change-induced discord and adjustment to "postmodern times" led to cultural standoffs, affecting everyday lives.

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Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East

By Martin Indyk


A former two-time U.S. ambassador to Israel draws on his own experiences and the lessons of the most recent presidential administrations to outline diplomacy-based solutions to key Middle East issues.

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The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900-1914

By Philipp Blom

Offers a look at how the changes from the Industrial Revolution prior to World War I brought about radical transformation in society that resulted in a new world order, changes in education, and massive migration in population that led to one of the bloodiest events in history in later years.

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1789: The Threshold of the Modern Age

By David Andress

Author of The Terror (2006), a popular history about the most radical phase of the French Revolution, Andress is more ambitious in this prequel. Setting events in France alongside contemporaneous politics in Britain and the U.S., Andress tests how Enlightenment ideals of liberties and rights met with the ancien régime of traditional privileges. In all three countries, this contest was made more acute by a common problem they faced: heavy debt incurred by the American War of Independence. Whose ox would be gored to pay it stressed existing political institutions to the limit and agitated both elite and popular grievances against existing states of affairs. Andress evokes the anxious atmosphere of the 1780s, while his presentation of schemes offered to master the financial crises illustrates an Atlantic world on its way toward constitutional democracy. With in-depth narrative and analysis about 1789 s events surrounding the new government of the U.S.; the Estates-General in France; and Parliament in Britain, Andress will intrigue readers piqued by this crucial year in history.

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The Road to Rescue: The Untold Story of Schindler's List

By Mietek Pemper

Spy, businessman, Nazi Party member, and righteous gentile this was Oskar Schindler, the controversial German who saved 1,200 Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust. He put the prisoners on the now-famous Schindler's list and transferred them to his factory in the Czech Republic. Pemper, a Polish Jew, spent 540 days in the Plaszow concentration camp, working as a stenographer to Amon Goth, the camp commander. Pemper was able to pass on secret information to Schindler so he could compile his list. After World War II, Pemper was witness for the prosecution in the trials of Goth and other SS officers. Pemper's memoir is the powerful story of one man's stand against the slaughter of Jews.

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