Modern American Memoirs

Craig Glazer was an ordinary college student when he planned and successfully executed his first fake sting to get back at some drug dealers who had robbed him. The rush he got from the experience led him and a crew of 11 accomplices to mastermind a two-year, 33-sting spree that stretched coast to coast, posing as everything from local police to IRS agents and hotel managers.

A gripping history of banking and the booms and busts that shaped the world on both sides of the Atlantic, The House of Morgan traces the trajectory of the J. P.Morgan empire from its obscure beginnings in Victorian London to the crash of 1987. Ron Chernow paints a fascinating portrait of the private saga of the Morgans and the rarefied world of the American and British elite in which they moved. Based on extensive interviews and access to the family and business archives, The House of Morgan is an investigative masterpiece.

In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar, earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America.

J. P. Morgan is more than just the name on one of the largest banks in America. He was a man who altered the course of American finance and the chief financier for the strategic interests of the titans of the day, such as Carnegie and Rockefeller. He also financed new and ingenious technologies developed by Thomas Edison and was a visionary who saw the potential in Nikola Tesla. Hear all about him and find areas that you may have in common with this towering titan.

Andrew Marshall is a Pentagon legend. For more than four decades he has served as Director of the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon's internal think tank, under 12 defense secretaries and eight administrations. Yet Marshall has been on the cutting edge of strategic thinking even longer than that. Covering some of the most pivotal episodes of the last half century and peopled with some of the era's most influential figures, The Last Warrior tells Marshall's story for the first time, in the process providing an unparalleled history of the evolution of the American defense establishment.

Cameron Mitchell’s “dish room to boardroom story” began when he was 16-years-old and started working as a dishwasher at a local steakhouse in Columbus, Ohio. Two years later, when Mitchell was working as a line cook during a chaotic shift change, he had an epiphany. He realized he loved the restaurant business and set out to make it his lifelong career. He knew he wanted to be the president of a restaurant company, one day.

The first definitive exploration of the changing role of the twenty-first-century First Lady, painting a comprehensive portrait of Jill Biden—from a White House correspondent for The New York Times.

Ladies of the Canyons is the true story of remarkable women who left the security and comforts of genteel Victorian society and journeyed to the American Southwest in search of a wider view of themselves and their world....

In this groundbreaking book, Aldon D. Morris’ ambition is truly monumental: to help rewrite the history of sociology and to acknowledge the primacy of W. E. B. Du Bois’ work in the founding of the discipline. Calling into question the prevailing narrative of how sociology developed, Morris, a major scholar of social movements, probes the way in which the history of the discipline has traditionally given credit to Robert E. Park at the University of Chicago, who worked with the conservative Black leader Booker T. Washington to render Du Bois invisible.

John C. Calhoun is among the most notorious and enigmatic figures in American political history. First elected to Congress in 1810, Calhoun went on to serve as secretary of war and vice president. But he is perhaps most known for arguing in favor of slavery as a "positive good" and for his famous doctrine of "state interposition", which laid the groundwork for the South to secede from the Union - and arguably set the nation on course for civil war. The strain of radical politics he developed has found expression once again in the tactics and extremism of the modern Far Right.

How does a white kid from the New York suburbs, harmonica in hand, end up earning himself a busker's spot on the Harlem sidewalks next to Mr. Satan, a Mississippi-born legend? How did an interracial blues duo fare on the streets of New York during a turbulent, fractious time marked by racially-motivated murders in Howard Beach, Bensonhurst, and Crown Heights?

In 1988, a band of University of Wisconsin–Madison undergrads and dropouts began publishing a free weekly newspaper with no editorial stance other than “You Are Dumb.” Just wanting to make a few bucks, they wound up becoming the bedrock of modern satire over the course of twenty years, changing the way we consume both our comedy and our news. The Onion served as a hilarious and brutally perceptive satire of the absurdity and horrors of late twentieth-century American life and grew into a global phenomenon.

On a sunny May morning in 1998 in Cortez, Colorado, three desperados in a stolen truck opened fire on the town cop, shooting him 20 times; then they blasted their way past dozens of police cars and disappeared into 10,000 square miles of the harshest wilderness terrain on the North American continent. Self-trained survivalists, the outlaws eluded the most sophisticated law enforcement technology on the planet and a pursuit force that represented more than 75 local, state, and federal police agencies with dozens of SWAT teams, U.S. Army Special Forces....

For centuries, women who emerge as mystic leaders have played vital roles in American culture. For just as long, they've been subjugated and ridiculed. Today, women and others across the nation are once again turning to their mystic powers to #HexThePatriarchy and help fight the forces that seem bent on relegating them to second-class citizenry.

From the acclaimed Modern Library Chronicles comes an exploration of a promising theory that when put to practice wreaked havoc on the world. An expert on communism, Richard Pipes follows the history of the Soviet Union from the 1917 revolution to the Cold War, and finally, to its deterioration and collapse.

Patton's Shadow by Nathan C. Jones, a leading authority on George S. Patton, offers a definitive account of the creation of the Patton legend and what it illuminates about American culture and the worship of heroes. Jones traces how the persona of Patton, a brash and brilliant general in the European theater of World War II, transcended the individual man and became a cultural icon and byword for triumphal American might.

Love, Norm is a multifaceted retelling of inspirational profiles of famous Jewish fighters from across history, and it is also the singular story of how one man dug into his own past and found pieces to preserve his Jewish identity. Together, empathetically channeled through his heartfelt letters and remembrances, Love, Norm shares a collected wisdom with the next generation.

Pioneering historian, sociologist, editor, novelist, poet, and organizer, W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the foremost African American intellectuals of the 20th century. While Du Bois is remembered for his monumental contributions to scholarship and civil rights activism, the spiritual aspects of his work have been misunderstood, even negated. W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet, the first religious biography of this leader, illuminates the spirituality that is essential to understanding his achievements.

As fathers of nations, presidents have a huge role in the socioeconomic progress of countries. Because of that, presidents help kids secure a better future. But among the many presidents, there are those that have created the most impact to the youth. This book lists down the best of them. Encourage your child to listen today!

As the debate over the legality of marijuana continues to inspire passion around the country, this audiobook takes a deeper look at what it means and seeks another perspective on what the cannabis industry has already done. This is a nonfiction story about the subculture that formed around the marijuana industry in Northern California. It documents a unique time and place in American history that is today impacting society on a global scale. It is a personal narrative that tells the story of one young man's experiences over nearly a decade in the rapidly changing cannabis industry.