A story of trauma, tragedy, and perseverance in a year that proved to be a turning point in the making of modern America.

At the height of WWI, historyÂ's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research and now revised to reflect the growing danger of the avian flu, The Great Influenza is ultimately a tale of triumph amid tragedy, which provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon.

A captivating look at a bygone era through the lens of a single, surprisingly momentous American year one century ago. 1908 was the year Henry Ford launched the Model T, the Wright Brothers proved to the world that they had mastered the art of flight, Teddy Roosevelt decided to send American naval warships around the globe, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series (a feat they have never yet repeated), and six automobiles set out on an incredible 20,000 mile race from New York City to Paris via the frozen Bering Strait. A charming and knowledgeable guide, Rasenberger takes readers back to a time of almost limitless optimism, even in the face of enormous inequality, an era when the majority of Americans believed that the future was bound to be better than the past, that the world’s worst problems would eventually be solved, and that nothing at all was impossible. As Thomas Edison succinctly said that year, “Anything, everything is possible.”

Drawing on period documents and interviews with survivors and their descendants, the author of Hurricane offers a definitive account of the 1921 race riot that destroyed the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, leaving hundreds of black residents dead, and describes the battle for belated justice and reparations to the victims. Reprint.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of God's Crucible presents the story of the 1940s Wall Street attorney and presidential candidate to explore his advocacy of civil rights, promotion of America's involvement in international politics and enduring legacy.

A social history of the creation of Rockefeller Center notes how its ambitious planning process was compromised by the Depression; identifies the roles of such individuals as Gertrude Vanderbilt, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Benito Mussolini; and cites the eccentric personalities that oversaw its construction. Reprint.

Analyzes the multinational conflicts that set the stage for World War II, the Chinese communist revolution, and the Korean War, documenting Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 diplomatic mission in the Pacific through which the United States forged ill-fated covert agreements. By the author of Flyboys.

One of the Best Books of the Year as chosen by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Time, USA TODAY, Christian Science Monitor, and more. “A tale so gripping that one questions the need for fiction when real life is so plump with drama and intrigue

A portrait of the influential U.S. Supreme Court Justice includes coverage of his achievements as a legal scholar, his Civil War service and his often-dissenting but prophetic views on free speech, criminal justice and economic reform.

Traces the massive effort to contain an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1900 San Francisco, detailing how the process was complicated by virulent racism, pseudoscience, and political cover-ups.