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.