The Generation No event in American history which was so improbable at the time has seemed so inevitable in retrospect as the American Revolution. On the inevitability side, it is true there were voices back then urging prospective patriots to regard American independence as an early version of manifest ... more »

What do you need to make money making movies? The answer, according to cult hero, creator of the sexploitation film, and the man the Wall Street Journal once dubbed the King Leer of Hollywood, Russ Meyer, is: "big bosoms and square jaws." In the first candid and fiendishly researched account ... more »

Souad was a 17-year-old girl living in a small village in Palestine when she had the misfortune of falling in love.  It was an emotion that would lead to an unspeakable act of violence-to near-death and to a lifetime of exile from her homeland.This is Souad's true story of a childhood filled with ... more »

In his temperament as in the circumstances of his time the young Buonaparte was destined for an extraordinary career. Into a tottering civilization he burst with all the masterful force of an Alaric. But he was an Alaric of the south, uniting the untamed strength of his island kindred with the mental ... more »

The White Witch, Aslan, fauns and talking beasts, centaurs and epic battles between good and evil -- all these have become a part of our collective imagination through the classic volumes of The Chronicles of Narnia . Over the past half century, children everywhere have escaped into this world and delighted ... more »

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin' continues his personal history of the Deep South with an evocation of his mother's childhood in the Appalachian foothills during the Great Depression, and the magnificent story of the man who raised her. Charlie Bundrum was a roofer, a carpenter ... more »

Leaving the Saints is an unforgettable memoir about one woman's spiritual quest and journey toward faith. As "Mormon royalty" within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Martha Beck was raised in a home frequented by the Church's high elders--known as the apostles--and her existence ... more »

Almost everyone can claim a crazy childhood. But did you have a childhood with: An electroshock machine as your favorite toy? Parades through the neighborhood led by your adopted psychiatrist/father? The whole family sleeping on the front lawn for weeks on end? Scotch for breakfast at age 13? A faked ... more »

Ingrid Betancourt, a senator and a presidential candidate in Colombia, grew up among diplomats, literati, and artists who congregated at her parents' elegant home in Paris, France. Her father served as Colombia's ambassador to UNESCO and her mother, a political activist, continued her work on behalf ... more »

When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10,1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. As he turned to begin the perilous descent from 29,028 feet (roughly the cruising altitude of an Airbus ... more »

Benjamin Franklin is the Founding Father who winks at us. An ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings, he seems made of flesh rather than of marble. In bestselling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we ... more »

Paul Williams has been writing about pop music for decades, never flagging in his enthusiasm or his emotional and intellectual openness to the newest music. His insight into how it feels when we listen to certain performers or certain performances makes a connection between music and reading that is ... more »