Collection: Politics

Honor and Fidelity. That is the motto of the 65th Infantry Regiment, also known as the Borinqueneers, the only Puerto Rican unit in the United States Army.

Since the regiment's creation in 1899, the men of the 65th have proudly served the US through multiple wars, despite facing racial discrimination. Their courage, loyalty, and patriotism earned them hundreds of accolades, including the Congressional Gold Medal in 2014.

But the honor and fidelity of the men of the 65th came into question in 1952, in the midst of the Korean War, when ninety-one Borinqueneers were arrested and tried for desertion and disobeying orders. How could this happen in one of the most distinguished and decorated units of the Army?

In this telling of one of the forgotten stories of the Korean War, author Talia Aikens-Nuñez guides us through the history of the Borinqueneers and the challenges they faced leading up to what was the largest court martial in the entire war. Rediscover the bravery of the men of the 65th through Aikens-Nuñez's thorough writing and the soldiers' firsthand accounts of the Korean War.

New Surrealism: The Uncanny in Contemporary Painting by Robert Zeller offers a sweeping exposition of both historical Surrealism and its legacy in the world of contemporary art. It demonstrates the many ways in which the most significant art movement of the last century continues to be relevant today, featuring an international selection of contemporary artists whose compositions and studio practice reveal its influence.

There are many modalities of historical Surrealism that still maintain contemporary currency: presenting the familiar as unfamiliar and uncanny, the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated imagery, the use of absurdity to critique political or social issues, and the use of erotic imagery in an irrational, non-linear context. Not all the artists brought together in this book self-identify as Surrealist, per se, but each uses some variation of Surrealism in a personal manner.

The book begins with a study of the origins, leadership, participating artists, and major milestones of historical Surrealism. Zeller chronicles the movement starting at the end of World War I and the birth of Dada. The most important players and events emerge throughout the timeline of events--including World War II, and such notable artists as Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Leonora Carrington, and many others--up until the death of its leader Andre Breton in 1966. Zeller then explores how elements of New Surrealism are being put into practice in the contemporary art world.

Section Two offers a survey of 29 contemporary artists who engage in New Surrealism's seemingly unlimited variations of the movement's original themes, including Rosa Loy, Glenn Brown, and Arghavan Khosravi. Section Three features 14 artists, including important contemporary artists such as Inka Essenhigh, Ginny Casey and Anna Weyant, who speak to Surrealism's influence on their studio practice, detailing in their own words how they create a composition from start to finish.

You've probably seen her on T-shirts, mugs, and even tattoos. Now that famous face graces the cover of this Who Was? book.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was famous for her stylish collars (called jabots) and her commanding dissents. This opera-loving New Yorker always spoke her mind; as a young lawyer, RBG advocated for gender equality and women's rights when few others did. She gained attention for the cases she won when arguing in front of the Supreme Court, before taking her place on the bench in 1993. Author Patricia Brennan Demuth answers all the questions about what made RBG so irreplaceable and how the late Supreme Court justice left a legacy that will last forever.

An unsparing, incisive, yet ultimately hopeful look at how we can shed the American obsession with self-reliance that has made us less healthy, less secure, and less fulfilled

The promise that you can "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" is central to the story of the American Dream. It's the belief that if you work hard and rely on your own resources, you will eventually succeed. However, time and again we have seen how this foundational myth, with its emphasis on individual determination, brittle self-sufficiency, and personal accomplishment, does not help us. Instead, as income inequality rises around us, we are left with shame and self-blame for our condition.

Acclaimed journalist Alissa Quart argues that at the heart of our suffering is a do-it-yourself ethos, the misplaced belief in our own independence and the conviction that we must rely on ourselves alone. Looking at a range of delusions and half solutions--from "grit" to the false Horatio Alger story to the rise of GoFundMe--Quart reveals how we have been steered away from robust social programs that would address the root causes of our problems. Meanwhile, the responsibility for survival has been shifted onto the backs of ordinary people, burdening generations with debt instead of providing the social safety net we so desperately need.

Insightful, sharply argued, and characterized by Quart's lively writing and deep reporting, and for fans of Evicted and Nickel and Dimed, Bootstrapped is a powerful examination of what ails us at a societal level and a plan for how we can free ourselves from these self-defeating narratives.

In a divided America, the biggest solvable problem fueling political extremism and dysfunction is hiding in plain sight: party primaries. The Primary Solution shows how to fix them.

Congress has become an unproductive and unaccountable mess. Polls show that only 20 percent of Americans think it's doing a good job--yet 90 percent of incumbents are reelected. This shocking discrepancy is a natural outcome of our system of party primaries and their polarizing incentives.

Party primaries were invented over a century ago to democratize candidate nominations, but today their exclusionary rules and low turnout guarantee the exact opposite: only a small fraction of voters wind up deciding the vast majority of our elections. The result is a Congress that, rather than representing a majority of Americans, is instead beholden to the fringes of both major parties. This is the "primary problem" in our politics today. Fortunately, the solution is both powerful and practical.

Nick Troiano, founding Executive Director of Unite America, makes a bold proposal to abolish party primaries in our country. Doing so does not require a Constitutional amendment or an act of Congress. In fact, several states have already replaced party primaries with nonpartisan primaries that give all voters the freedom to vote for any candidate in every election, regardless of party.

As America heads into another critical election year, The Primary Solution offers voters across the political spectrum a realistic roadmap to a more representative and functional democracy.

A rollicking history of America's most iconic weekly newspaper told through the voices of its legendary writers, editors, and photographers.

You either were there or you wanted to be. A defining New York City institution co-founded by Norman Mailer, The Village Voice was the first newspaper to cover hip-hop, the avant-garde art scene, and Off-Broadway with gravitas. It reported on the AIDS crisis with urgency and seriousness when other papers dismissed it as a gay disease. In 1979, the Voice's Wayne Barrett uncovered Donald Trump as a corrupt con artist before anyone else was paying attention. It invented new forms of criticism and storytelling and revolutionized journalism, spawning hundreds of copycats.

With more than 200 interviews, including two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Colson Whitehead, cultural critic Greg Tate, gossip columnist Michael Musto, and feminist writers Vivian Gornick and Susan Brownmiller, former Voice writer Tricia Romano pays homage to the paper that saved NYC landmarks from destruction and exposed corrupt landlords and judges. With interviews featuring post-punk band, Blondie, sportscaster Bob Costas, and drummer Max Weinberg, of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, in this definitive oral history, Romano tells the story of journalism, New York City and American culture--and the most famous alt-weekly of all time.

The development of Auftragstaktik was the foundation stone of Prussia's, and later Germany's, astounding battlefield performances. Universally praised in military circles, Auftragstaktik remains both poorly understood and badly practised. This uniquely German leadership philosophy lies shrouded in a fog of mystery and misinterpretation.

Colonel Oliviero clears away that fog. He succinctly explains the early intellectual and structural growth of this leadership philosophy from before the French Revolution to the eve of the First World War, with a glimpse at the interwar period. He thereby provides the necessary background and understanding, without which Auftragstaktik cannot be fully understood.

A tiny American town's plans for radical self-government overlooked one hairy detail: no one told the bears.
Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, they set their sights on Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road.
When they descended on Grafton, public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws became meek suggestions, scarcely heard in the town's thick wilderness.
The anything-goes atmosphere soon spread into the neighboring woods. Freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city in an effort to get off the grid. And it all caught the attention of Grafton's neighbors: the bears.
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is the sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying tale of what happens when a government disappears into the woods. Complete with gunplay, adventure, and backstabbing politicians, this is the ultimate story of a quintessential American experiment -- to live free or die, perhaps from a bear.

Michael Lewis's brilliant narrative of the Trump administration's botched presidential transition takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its leaders through willful ignorance and greed. The government manages a vast array of critical services that keep us safe and underpin our lives from ensuring the safety of our food and drugs and predicting extreme weather events to tracking and locating black market uranium before the terrorists do. The Fifth Risk masterfully and vividly unspools the consequences if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works.

National Bestseller

NPR Best Book of the Year

"Not all superheroes wear capes, and Elizebeth Smith Friedman should be the subject of a future Wonder Woman movie." --The New York Times

Joining the ranks of Hidden Figures and In the Garden of Beasts, the incredible true story of the greatest codebreaking duo that ever lived, an American woman and her husband who invented the modern science of cryptology together and used it to confront the evils of their time, solving puzzles that unmasked Nazi spies and helped win World War II.

In 1916, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the U.S. government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code-breaking. There she met the man who would become her husband, groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman. Though she and Friedman are in many ways the "Adam and Eve" of the NSA, Elizebeth's story, incredibly, has never been told.

In The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Fagone chronicles the life of this extraordinary woman, who played an integral role in our nation's history for forty years. After World War I, Smith used her talents to catch gangsters and smugglers during Prohibition, then accepted a covert mission to discover and expose Nazi spy rings that were spreading like wildfire across South America, advancing ever closer to the United States. As World War II raged, Elizebeth fought a highly classified battle of wits against Hitler's Reich, cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine used by German spies. Meanwhile, inside an Army vault in Washington, William worked furiously to break Purple, the Japanese version of Enigma--and eventually succeeded, at a terrible cost to his personal life.

Fagone unveils America's code-breaking history through the prism of Smith's life, bringing into focus the unforgettable events and colorful personalities that would help shape modern intelligence. Blending the lively pace and compelling detail that are the hallmarks of Erik Larson's bestsellers with the atmosphere and intensity of The Imitation Game, The Woman Who Smashed Codes is page-turning popular history at its finest.

"Hide your phone, stop hustling for a second, and read this passionate argument for the importance of unstructured pre-digital hang." --People

Loneliness is an epidemic; it feels harder than ever to connect with others meaningfully. What can we do to remedy this? Sheila Liming has the answer: we need to hang out more.

With the introduction of AI and constant Zoom meetings, our lives have become more fractured, digital and chaotic. Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time shows us what we have lost to the frenetic pace of digital life and how to get it back.

Combining personal narrative with pungent analyses of books, movies, and TV shows, Sheila Liming shows us how the new social landscape deadens our connections with others -- connections that are vital to both self-care and to a vibrant community. Whether drinking with strangers in a distant city or jamming with musician friends in an abandoned Pittsburgh row house, Liming demonstrates that unstructured social time is the key to a freer, happier sense of self.

Hanging Out shows how simple acts of casual connection are the glue that binds us together, and how community is the antidote to the disconnection and isolation that dominates contemporary life.

"The book conceives of hanging out as a way to reclaim time as something other than a raw ingredient to be converted into productivity." --New York Times

"Rich with illuminating stories." --Slate

"We could all use more of that blissfully unstructured social time, posits Sheila Liming in the well-considered series of arguments found in Hanging Out." --Reader's Digest

"Opens with a simple and expansive account of what hanging out is ... Liming dedicates much of the book to stories from her past. She has lived an interesting life, and she tells these stories well." --Washington Post

"Sharp and vivid writing ... a layered exploration of social dynamics that contains some textured literary criticism." --Bookforum

"More books about hanging out, less about productivity please. Sheila Liming sees the gap in our thinking about time, and the true worth in spending it in an unstructured fashion with members of our community." --LitHub

Discover how a young girl who was the star of her school's debate team became a federal jurist and the first Black woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court.

Presenting Who HQ Now: an exciting addition to the #1 New York Times Best-Selling Who Was? series!

Born in Washington, DC, in 1970, and raised in Miami, Florida, Ketanji Brown Jackson developed an interest in law and politics at an early age. As a preschooler, she sat with her father and watched him complete his law school assignments. And even though some people, including a school guidance counselor, discouraged Ketanji from aiming high, she proved them wrong and graduated with honors from Harvard Law School. She went on to serve on the U.S. District Court in 2013 and the United States Court of Appeals in 2021 before making history and becoming the first Black woman to be confirmed to the United States Supreme Court in 2022.

Learn more about Ketanji Brown Jackson's story in this addition to the New York Times bestselling series.

George Stephanopoulos, former senior advisor to President Clinton and for more than 20 years anchor of This Week and co-anchor of Good Morning America, recounts the crises that decided the course of history, from the place 12 presidents made their highest-pressure decisions: the White House Situation Room.

No room better defines American power and its role in the world than the White House Situation Room. And yet, none is more shrouded in secrecy and mystery. Created under President Kennedy, the Sit Room has been the epicenter of crisis management for presidents for more than six decades. Time and again, the decisions made within the Sit Room complex affect the lives of every person on this planet. Detailing close calls made and disasters narrowly averted, THE SITUATION ROOM will take readers through dramatic turning points in a dozen presidential administrations, including:

• Incredible minute-by-minute transcripts from the Sit Room after both Presidents Kennedy and Reagan were shot
• The shocking moment when Henry Kissinger raised the military alert level to DEFCON III while President Nixon was drunk in the White House residence
• The extraordinary scene when President Carter asked for help from secret government psychics to rescue American hostages in Iran
• A vivid retelling of the harrowing hours during the 9/11 attack
• New details from Obama administration officials leading up to the raid on Osama Bin Laden
• And a first-ever account of January 6th from the staff inside the Sit Room

THE SITUATION ROOM is the definitive, past-the-security-clearance look at the room where it happened, and the people--the famous and those you've never heard of--who have made history within its walls.

What if we could help loved ones misusing opioids and support them as they seek treatment?

In Ending the Crisis, addiction medicine specialist Dr. Holly Geyer goes beyond the science of addiction to offer those struggling with opioids a real solution.

Developed by trusted Mayo Clinic experts, this empowering and accessible book contains vital information about opioids and addiction, as well as practical tools for recovery, and impactful personal stories from those who've lived through the experience.

Recovery is a marathon, not a sprint.

Key topics include:

• Managing pain and using prescribed opioids safely
• Understanding addiction and opioid use disorder
• The intervention: a play-by-play example
• Treatment programs and help taking the first step
• Helping loved ones recover from opioid use disorder
• Opioid overdose: how you can save a life

"The opioid epidemic is a story about all of us. It's about the people we love, the people we've lost and the people we fear losing. Whether the stories we have shared come from friends, family, or total strangers, they're all passed on with a purpose: to educate and plead for change, to pave the path for a different tomorrow."

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"This is history at its most immediate and moving...A marvelous and memorable book." --Jon Meacham

​"Remarkable...A priceless civic gift...On page after page, a reader will encounter words that startle, or make him angry, or heartbroken." --The Wall Street Journal

"Had me turning each page with my heart in my throat...There's been a lot written about 9/11, but nothing like this. I urge you to read it." --Katie Couric

The first comprehensive oral history of September 11, 2001--a panoramic narrative woven from voices on the front lines of an unprecedented national trauma.

Over the past eighteen years, monumental literature has been published about 9/11, from Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower to The 9/11 Commission Report. But one perspective has been missing up to this point--a 360-degree account of the day told through firsthand.

Now, in The Only Plane in the Sky, Garrett Graff tells the story of the day as it was lived--in the words of those who lived it. Drawing on never-before-published transcripts, declassified documents, original interviews, and oral histories from nearly five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, friends, and family members, he paints the most vivid and human portrait of the September 11 attacks yet.

Beginning in the predawn hours of airports in the Northeast, we meet the ticket agents who unknowingly usher terrorists onto their flights, and the flight attendants inside the hijacked planes. In New York, first responders confront a scene of unimaginable horror at the Twin Towers. From a secret bunker under the White House, officials watch for incoming planes on radar. Aboard unarmed fighter jets in the air, pilots make a pact to fly into a hijacked airliner if necessary to bring it down. In the skies above Pennsylvania, civilians aboard United 93 make the ultimate sacrifice in their place. Then, as the day moves forward and flights are grounded nationwide, Air Force One circles the country alone, its passengers isolated and afraid.

More than simply a collection of eyewitness testimonies, The Only Plane in the Sky is the historic narrative of how ordinary people grappled with extraordinary events in real time: the father and son caught on different ends of the impact zone; the firefighter searching for his wife who works at the World Trade Center; the operator of in-flight telephone calls who promises to share a passenger's last words with his family; the beloved FDNY chaplain who bravely performs last rites for the dying, losing his own life when the Towers collapse; and the generals at the Pentagon who break down and weep when they are barred from trying to rescue their colleagues.

At once a powerful tribute to the courage of everyday Americans and an essential addition to the literature of 9/11, The Only Plane in the Sky weaves together the unforgettable personal experiences of the men and women who found themselves caught at the center of an unprecedented human drama. The result is a unique, profound, and searing exploration of humanity on a day that changed the course of history, and all of our lives.