This highly anticipated biography of Sylvia Plath was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography. Writer Glennon Doyle called it “one of the most beautiful biographies I have ever read.”  Laura Freeman of The Times (London) said, “I would not have wished it shorter.”  

Thanksgiving has been celebrated nationally on and off since 1789.  While Governors of Massachusetts had proclaimed a local holiday of Thanksgiving, Sarah, J. Hale, the editor of Goey’s Lady’s Book, promoted a National Day of Thanksgiving.

When George Washington became president in 1789, the United States of America was still a loose and quarrelsome confederation and a tentative political experiment. Washington undertook a tour of the ex-colonies to talk to ordinary citizens about his new government, and to imbue in them the idea of being one thing--Americans. In the fall of 2018, Nathaniel Philbrick embarked on his own journey into what Washington called "the infant woody country" to see for himself what America had become in the 229 years since.

Author Sarah Chayes thinks the United States resembles some of the most corrupt countries in the world. She says that corruption is an operating system of sophisticated networks in which government officials, key private-sector interests, and out-and-out criminals interweave. Their main objective: not to serve the public but to maximize returns for network members.

In December 1774, Benjamin Franklin met Caroline Howe in a London drawing room for “half a dozen Games of Chess.” These meetings weren’t about board games. That was the cover story. Caroline’s brothers—British General Sir William Howe and Richard Admiral Lord Howe—were there. They were all part of a last-ditch attempt to forestall the outbreak of the American War of Independence.

The last truly quiet town in America lies deep in the Appalachian Mountains: Green Bank, West Virginia. While astronomers at the Green Bank Observatory use the latest technology to search the depths of the universe, residents live device-free.  No WiFi. No iPads.  There is a ban on anything emanating radio frequencies that might interfere with the Observatory’s telescope.

Longtime ESPN writer Ivan Maisel never thought he’d write a story like this.  In February 2015, he received a call that would change his life forever: his son’s car had been found abandoned in a parking lot next to Lake Ontario. Two months later, Max's body was found in the lake.

His weapon of choice was poison. His victims were mostly women. In the span of 15 years, he murdered as many as ten people in the United States, Britain, and Canada, a death toll with almost no precedent in the late nineteen century. He was as brazen as Jack the Ripper. In fact, many people claimed he was the notorious serial killer. In truth, he was Thomas Neill Cream.  Dr. Thomas Neill Cream.  

This complex story begins in the eighteenth century. America’s Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams had great respect for the Persian Empire. In turn, Iranians saw America as an ideal to emulate for their own government.  So, how did two countries that once had such heartfelt admiration for each other became such committed enemies?

They called him the Little Giant.  But Illinois’ Stephen A. Douglas packed a lot of power and persuasion into his five-foot-four-inch frame. He was a U.S. senator, leader of the Democratic Party and one of two Democratic Party nominees for president in the 1860 election. The debates he held with Abraham Lincoln are some of the most famous in American history.  Well, we all know how that election turned out.  But Douglas never belonged where the history books put him: in Lincoln’s shadow.

Countries die. Sometimes it’s murder, sometimes it’s by accident, and sometimes it’s because they were so ludicrous, they didn’t deserve to exist in the first place. Occasionally they explode violently. A few slip away almost unnoticed. Often the cause of death is either “got too greedy” or “Napoleon turned up.” Now and then they just hold a referendum and vote themselves out of existence.

In 1932, Mildred Harnick began holding secret meetings in her apartment.  Together, this small band of political activists wrote leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution. Under the cover of night, they slipped the leaflets into mailboxes, public restrooms, and phone booths around Berlin. Mildred also began helping  Jews escape, plotting acts of sabotage, and recruiting more and more working class Germans to the cause.  By 1940, hers was the largest underground resistance group in Berlin.

A lawyer.  A mechanic. A Ouija board.  One of the greatest cons ever.  But Harry Jones and Cedric Hill weren’t your typical Confidence Men. They were British officers imprisoned in a remote Turkish POW camp during World War I.