On the coldest night of 1975, Robbie Fitzgerald is late, sprinting through the snowy streets of a working-class British town. With a Van Morrison meets Robert Johnson singing voice, the young crooner is on the verge of his big break the legendary producer Dickie Vaughn is going to be in the house for his show. Both his own dreams and those of his young family are on the line, while on the other side of town, in a rough neighborhood, his son and young...

In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .45 from his pocket, and in front of everybody shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride's funny, moving novel and his first since...

This book tells the story of the Cold War from its beginnings in 1945 to the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.

When young Pablo Picasso arrived in Paris in October 1900 he made his way up the hillside of Montmartre ... The real revolution in the arts first took place not, as is commonly supposed, in the 1920s to the accompaniment of the Charleston, black jazz and mint juleps but more quietly and intimately, in the shadow of the windmills-- artificial and real-- and in the cafes and cabarets of Montmartre during the first decade of the century. The cross-fertilization...

Fifteen-year-old Julia Beaufort-Stuart wakes up in a hospital not knowing how she was injured, and soon befriends Euan McEwen, the Scottish Traveller boy who found her, and later, when a body is discovered, she experiences the prejudices his family has endured and tries to keep them from being framed for the crime.

The twentieth century was the most brutal in human history, featuring a litany of shameful events that includes the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Stalinist era, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda. This important book looks at the politics of our times and the roots of human nature to discover why so many atrocities were perpetuated and how we can create a social environment to prevent their recurrence. Jonathan Glover finds similarities in the psychology...

Relates the story of the National Memorial African Bookstore, founded in Harlem by Louis Michaux in 1939, as seen from the perspective of Louis Michaux Jr., who met famous men like Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X while helping there.

Bill McKibben - award-winning author, activist, educator - is fiercely curious. "I'm curious about what went so suddenly sour with American patriotism, American faith, and American prosperity." Like so many of us, McKibben grew up believing - knowing - that the United States was the greatest country on earth. As a teenager, he cheerfully led American Revolution tours in Lexington, Massachusetts. He sang "Kumbaya" at church. And with the remarkable...

Through profiles of the most colorful and powerful crime bosses, gang members, corrupt cops, and numerous mob associates as well as pivotal events in the history of organized crime, Big Apple Gangsters reveals just how influential the mob has been in controlling large numbers of businesses not just in New York, but also in other cities.

Cast adrift in the Depression-era West after the last of her relatives pass away, Zorrie survives by working at a radium processing plant before finding love, community and unexpected loss upon returning to her small Indiana hometown.