Examines the origins and history of the Cold War

Draws on period newspaper accounts, eyewitness testimony, archival footage, and weather forecasters to provide an in-depth account of the Great Hurricane of 1938, which left a trail of death and destruction across seven states and obliterated entire communities and families. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

Recreates the harrowing, real-life adventure of the successful prison break engineered by Col. Bull Simons, a World War II and Vietnam commando, who rescued two Texans imprisoned in a Teheran jail

The smoke had barely cleared from the booze-fueled gun battles of Prohibition and the Roaring 20s when a new breed of gangster stepped onto the American stage. Unlike the slick mobsters of New York and Chicago, the new outlaws were often born from the hunger and desperation of the Great Depression. These back-road bandits emerged from the farmlands of Indiana, Oklahoma and Texas to launch wild and daring crime sprees that captured the imagination of the nation. In Dustbowl Desperadoes you'll enjoy a rogue's gallery of bad guys and diabolical dolls, from bank robber John Dillinger to criminal mastermind Ma Barker to the star-crossed duo Bonnie and Clyde.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning writer focuses on a crucial two-day battle in Vietnam that was also marked by an ill-fated protest by University of Wisconsin students at the Dow Chemical Company, in an hour-by-hour narrative that offers insight into the president's reactions and the first-hand experiences of people who were there. 150,000 first printing.

“The history of the Barbary Coast properly begins with the gold rush to California in 1849. If the precious yellow metal hadn’t been discovered ... the development of San Francisco’s underworld in all likelihood would have been indistinguishable from that of any other large American city. Instead, owing almost entirely to the influx of gold-seekers and the horde of gamblers, thieves, harlots, politicians, and other felonious parasites who battened upon them, there arose a unique criminal district that for almost seventy years was the scene of more viciousness and depravity, but which at the same time possessed more glamour, than any other area of vice and iniquity on the American continent.” The Barbary Coast is Herbert Asbury’s classic chronicle of the birth of San Francisco—a violent explosion from which the infant city emerged full-grown and raging wild. From all over the world practitioners of every vice stampeded for the blood and money of the gold fields. Gambling dens ran all day including Sundays. From noon to noon houses of prostitution offered girls of every age and race. (In the 1850s, San Francisco was home to only one woman for every thirty men. It was not until 1910 that the sexes achieved anything close to parity in their populations.) This is the story of the banditry, opium bouts, tong wars, and corruption, from the eureka at Sutter’s Mill until the last bagnio closed its doors seventy years later.

Extravagantly praised by critics, a memoir by the longtime owner of The Washington Post recounts how she rebounded from her influential husband's suicide to command the Post during Vietnam and Watergate. Reprint. 100,000 first printing.

While the Second World War produced numerous acts of self-sacrifice, it also made many people rich. The criminal activities of the British underworld that extended from the civilian population right through to the armed forces constitute one of the great untold stories of the war. The Blitz of 1940 may have made a nation of heroes, but in the shadows the shelter gangs and looters prowled. Acclaimed author Donald Thomas draws on extensive archival material for these tales of profiteering. He retells how between 1940 and 1941 a Liverpool ship repairer cheated the government of the modern equivalent of $30 million, while $120 million a month was looted from relief supplies at the port of Trieste. Professional gangs raided British government offices for ration books, and underground presses counterfeited gasoline and clothing coupons by the tens of thousands. Illegal food supplies threatened the nation's health?a consignment of black market sausages in Hackney contained tuberculous meat, while the industrial alcohol, or "hooch", served to pilots in London's West End clubs could produce blindness and brain damage. The Enemy Within also recounts colossal theft within the army. Vehicles would arrive at front line railheads stripped of tools, spare parts, and removable components, and whole consignments of cigarettes and razor blades disappeared. In addition to these stories, The Enemy Within includes revealing photos of known law-breakers, victims, and illegal transactions. The facts Thomas uncovers are often so preposterous that in a novel they would seem unbelievable. These are the extraordinary and often absurd stories of less-than-heroic Britons.

A collection of oral histories, memories, researched monographs, and newspaper reports capture the experience of the Great Depression as lived by ordinary people, chronologically following the huge economic crisis as it developed and showing its wide-ranging effects. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Traces the birth of the American civil rights movement and profiles Martin Luther King, Jr., detailing the roles played by key figures around him and in government