Andy Rooney's Sunday evening observations on 60 Minutes are an American institution, shaping the way people see everything from coffee percolators to the state of the nation. Rooney's books, most rec
How and why did this quintessential American folk-hero and pioneering industrialist become one of the most obsessive anti-Semites of our time-a man who devoted his immense financial resources to publ
Lawrence Epstein's The Haunted Smile tackles a subject both poignant and delightful: the story of Jewish comedians in America. For the past century and more, American comedy has drawn its strength an
A vast and previously undisclosed underground economy exists in the United States. The products bought and sold: animals. In Animal Underworld, veteran investigative journalist Alan Green exposes the
Every schoolchild in America knows that Benjamin Franklin flew a kite during a thunderstorm in the summer of 1752. Electricity from the clouds above traveled down the kite's twine and threw a spark fr
Despite the many social changes of the last half-century, many Americans still "pass": black for white, gay for straight, and now in many new ways as well. We tend to think of passing in negative term
In December 1998, San Antonio Express-News reporter Philip True vanished during a solo backcountry trek in western Mexico, home of the reclusive Huichol Indians and the Chapalagana, the Twisted Serpen
Hailed as "absorbing" by the New York Times and "suspense-filled" by Foreign Affairs, Patrick Tyler's A Great Wall became an instant classic; a must-read for anyone concerned with the complicated and
What does it mean to work in the forgotten America where millions toil in the shadow of prosperity? To find out, award-winning journalist Gabriel Thompson spent a year working in the fields and the fa
The two-hundred-year-long relationship between the Arab world and United States has been fraught with tension and resentment. What began in the nineteenth century as a favorable exchange of cultural u
On September 30, 2006, gunfire echoed through thin air on Cho Oyu Mountain. Climbers preparing to summit watched in horror as Chinese guards fired at a group of Tibetans en route to India, executing K
Surprisingly, no book of quotations on God and religion by atheists and agnostics exists. Luckily, for the millions of American nonbelievers who have quietly stewed for years as the religious right ma
The third volume of Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire trilogy, Century of the Wind offers a panorama of Galeano’s singular vision of the past, turbulent century: from the bucolic New Jersey laboratory
At 4:00 am, Leonida Wanyama lit a lantern in her house made of sticks and mud. She was up long before the sun to begin her farm work, as usual. But this would be no ordinary day, this second Friday of
Over the course of five years, investigative reporters Sherry Sontag and Chris Drew interviewed hundreds of men who had never spoken about their underwater livesnot even to their wives and children. T
A generation after the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia shows every sign of having overcome its history--the streets of Phnom Penh are paved; skyscrapers dot the skyline. But under this facade lies a country sti
A journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist describes how a German-born biergarten owner who knew nothing about baseball bought the St. Louis Browns baseball team in an effort to sell more beer and unwit
Muhammad Yunus is that rare thing: a bona fide visionary. His dream is the total eradication of poverty from the world. In 1983, against the advice of banking and government officials, Yunus establish
"In the past few decades, personality psychology has made considerable progress in raising new questions about human nature-and providing some provocative answers. New scientific research has transfor
