America’s backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It is the story of the pilgrims on the Mayflower building a new nation. It is George Washington’s cherry tree and Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin. It is the fantastic tale of slaves that spontaneously teleported themselves here with nothing but strong backs and negro spirituals. It is a sugarcoated legend based on an almost true story. It should come...

"An intimate and one-of-a-kind look at the world of human smuggling in Latin America, by a MacArthur "genius" grant winner and anthropologist. Political instability, poverty, climate change, and the insatiable appetite for cheap labor all fuel clandestine movement across borders. As those borders harden, the demand for smugglers who aid migrants across them increases every year. Yet media and politicians have always characterized smugglers-or coyotes,...

"By the president of the prestigious Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, the life story of the most controversial, volatile, misunderstood provision of the Bill of Rights. At a time of renewed debate over guns in America, what does the Second Amendment mean? This book looks at history to provide some surprising, illuminating answers. The Amendment was written to calm public fear that the new national government would crush the state...

In this book the author shows how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life, and how it changed the history of capitalism and industry. He discusses the production and consumption of sugar, and reveals how closely interwoven are sugar's origins as a "slave" crop grown in Europe's tropical colonies with its use first as an extravagant luxury for the aristocracy, then as a staple of...

"In this modern-day abecedarium, Jamaica Kincaid shares her deep knowledge of plant history and nomenclature while writing about the intersections of the plant world with history, race, mythology, colonial appropriation, and independence. Accompanied by vivid, powerful illustrations by Kara Walker"--

"A Place Called America takes the long view of the land's history from its earliest formation and inhabitants up through today. Meet those indigenous to the deserts, prairies, forests, and shores of the land called Turtle Island and their relatives who contributed to World War II and whose ideas founded the basis of the Constitution. Meet immigrant communities, who came to the land from all around the world-at different times and against all odds,...

"En este cl̀sico de El Colegio de M̌xico est̀n registrados los acontecimientos que han dejado huella en la historia de M̌xico, desde los pasos inciertos de sus primeros pobladores, en los tiempos prehisp̀nicos, hasta los tambǐn inciertos de quienes atravesaron la crisis de los ąos ochenta del siglo XX. Entre ̌stos y aqǔllos, el lector puede seguir el curso de la era virreinal, el periodo formativo del M̌xico independiente, el tramo moderno...

"The tiny island of Run is an insignificant speck in the Indonesian archipelago--remote, tranquil, and, these days, largely ignored. Yet 370 years ago, Run's harvest of nutmeg (yielding a 3,200% profit by the time it arrived in England) made it the most lucrative of the Spice Islands, precipitating a battle between the Dutch East India Company and the British Crown. The outcome was that Britain ceded Run to Holland but in return was given Manhattan--leading...

"This Book sets the sexual revolution and its many ramifications within the broader context of changes in the West's understanding of selfhood"--

"We are now lucky enough to be living through the era of so-called Peak TV, in which television, in its various guises and formats, has seized the entertainment mantle from movies and dominates our leisure time. How and why this happened is the subject of this book. Instead of focusing on one service, like HBO, Pandora’s Box asks, 'What did HBO do, besides give us The Sopranos?' The answer: It gave us a revolution. Biskind bites off a big...