The evocative and riveting stories of four brothers—Gershom the Zionist, Werner the Communist, Reinhold the nationalist, and Erich the liberal—weave together in The Scholems, a biography of an eminent middle-class Jewish Berlin family and a social history of the Jews in Germany in the decades leading up to World War II.

Across four generations, Jay Howard...

In a book that has been called "a love song to nature," the author documents the latest decade of his explorations of the Baja peninsula and the Sea of Cortez. While much of the book narrates his experience as a writing professor taking undergraduates on sea kayak expeditions to the Isla Espiritu Santo archipelago each year during spring break, the book...

And now for something completely different. Professor at Large features beloved English comedian and actor John Cleese in the role of Ivy League professor at Cornell University. His almost twenty years as professor-at-large has led to many talks, essays, and lectures on campus. This collection of the very best moments from Cleese under his mortarboard...

U.S. military conflicts abroad have left nine million Americans dependent on the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) for medical care. Their "wounds of war" are treated by the largest hospital system in the country—one that has come under fire from critics in the White House, on Capitol Hill, and in the nation's media. The resulting public debate about the...

The United States has been the world's dominant power for more than a century. Now many analysts believe that other countries are rising and the United States is in decline. Is the unipolar moment over? Is America finished as a superpower?

In this book, Michael Beckley argues that the United States has unique advantages over other nations that, if used...

Before Brooklyn rose to international fame there existed a vibrant borough of neighborhoods rich with connections and traditions. During the 1970s and 1980s, photographer Larry Racioppo, a South Brooklynite with roots three generations deep, recorded Brooklyn on the cusp of being the trendy borough we know today.

In Brooklyn Before Racioppo lets us see the...

In 1975, two centuries after her birth, Pope Paul VI canonized Elizabeth Ann Seton, making her the first saint to be a native-born citizen of the United States in the Roman Catholic Church. Seton came of age in Manhattan as the city and her family struggled to rebuild themselves after the Revolution, explored both contemporary philosophy and Christianity...

In 2017, nearly six thousand people were killed in suicide attacks across the world.

In The Smile of the Human Bomb, Gideon Aran dissects the moral logic of the suicide terrorism that led to those deaths. The book is a firsthand examination of the bomb site at the moment of the explosion, during the first few minutes after the explosion, and in the last...

Organizations, like people, get stuck! They get ensnared in routines and processes, and they fall back into old habits. This is the dangerous period of inertia, the period that precedes failure, when organizations show signs of sluggishness.

In Transforming the Clunky Organization Samuel B. Bacharach specifies why organizations fall into patterns of inertia...

An accusation of attempted murder rudely interrupted Mary Arnold’s dalliances with working men and her extensive shopping sprees. When her husband Benedict fell deathly ill and then asserted she had tried to kill him with poison, the result was a dramatic petition for divorce. The case before the Rhode Island General Assembly and its tumultuous aftermath...

In Embattled River, David Schuyler describes the efforts to reverse the pollution and bleak future of the Hudson River that became evident in the 1950s. Through his investigative narrative, Schuyler uncovers the critical role of this iconic American waterway in the emergence of modern environmentalism in the United States.

Writing fifty-five years after...

The fiercely lyrical poetry of Stanley’s Girl is rooted in Susan Eisenberg’s experience as one of the first women to enter the construction industry and from her decades gathering accounts of others to give scaffolding to that history. Eisenberg charts her own induction into the construction workplace culture and how tradeswomen from across the country...

Anyone interested in the history of U.S. foreign relations, Cold War history, and twentieth century intellectual history will find this impressive biography of Hans Speier, one of the most influential figures in American defense circles of the twentieth century, a must-read.

In Democracy in Exile, Daniel Bessner shows how the experience of the Weimar...

When Eric Wendel was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 1966, the survival rate was 10 percent. Today, it is 90 percent. Even as politicians call for a "Cancer Moonshot," this accomplishment remains a pinnacle in cancer research.

The author’s daughter, then a medical student at Georgetown Medical School, told her father about this amazing success...

Acclaimed biographer John Loughery tells the story of John Hughes, son of Ireland, friend of William Seward and James Buchanan, founder of St. John’s College (now Fordham University), builder of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, pioneer of parochial-school education, and American diplomat. As archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York in the 1840...

Darryl Jones is fascinated by bird feeders. Not the containers supplying food to our winged friends, but the people who fill the containers.

Why do people do this? Jones asks in The Birds at My Table. Does the food even benefit the birds? What are the unintended consequences of providing additional food to our winged friends?

Jones takes us on a wild flight...