"A sweeping history of the legislative battle to reform American immigration laws that set the stage for the immigration debates roiling America today. The idea of the United States as a nation of immigrants is today so pervasive, and seems so foundational, that it can be hard to believe Americans ever thought otherwise. But a 1924 law passed by Congress instituted a system of ethnic quotas so stringent that it choked off large-scale immigration for...

From the team of Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard, bestselling authors of the blockbuster Killing series, now comes Killing Reagan. This page-turning epic account of the career of President Ronald Reagan tells the vivid story of his rise to power -- and the forces of evil that conspired to bring him down. Just two months into his presidency, Ronald Reagan lay near death after an gunman's bullet came within inches of his heart. His recovery was nothing...

Shares the inside story of the dangerous Apollo 8 mission, focusing on the lives of astronaut heroes Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, while illuminating the political factors that prompted the decision to risk lives to save the Apollo program and define the space race. "By August 1968, the American space program was in danger of failing in its two most important objectives: to land a man on the Moon by President Kennedy's end-of-decade...

The triumphant true story of a woman who rode her horse across America in the 1950s, fulfilling her dying wish to see the Pacific Ocean, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Horse and The Eighty-Dollar Champion The gift Elizabeth Letts has is that she makes you feel you are the one taking this trip. This is a book we can enjoy always but especially need now. Elizabeth Berg, author of The Story of Arthur Truluv In 1954, sixty-three-year-old...

Los Angeles in the 1960s gave the world some of the greatest music in rock 'n' roll history: "California Dreamin'" by the Mamas and the Papas, "Mr. Tambourine Man" by the Byrds, and "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys, a song that magnificently summarized the joy and beauty of the era in three and a half minutes. But there was a dark flip side to the fun fun fun of the music, a nexus between naive young musicians and the hangers-on who exploited the...

An account of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the 'scapegoat' Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel, the failure of the top brass in Washington to provide Kimmel with vital intelligence prior to the attack, and the continuing efforts of the family to have Kimmel formally exonerated. "We thought we knew the story well: On December 7, 1941, 2,403 Americans died when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, devastating the nation and precipitating entry into...

"Prizewinning historian Glen Jeansonne delves into the life of our most misunderstood president, offering up a surprising new portrait of Herbert Hoover--dismissing previous assumptions and revealing a political Progressive in the mold of Theodore Roosevelt, and the most resourceful American since Benjamin Franklin. Orphaned at an early age and raised with strict Quaker values, Hoover earned his way through Stanford University. His hardworking ethic...

"America has long been criticized for refusing to give harbor to the Jews of Europe as Hitler and the Nazis closed in. Now a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum scholar tells the extraordinary story of the War Refugee Board, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's little-known effort late in the war to save the Jews who remained. In January 1944, a young Treasury lawyer named John Pehle accompanied his boss to a meeting with the president. For more than a decade,...

"At the end of World War II, navy lieutenant "Nick" Nixon returned from the Pacific and set his cap at Congress, an idealistic dreamer seeking to build a better world. Yet amid the turns of that now-legendary 1946 campaign, Nixon's finer attributes gave way to unapologetic ruthlessness. The story of that transformation is the stunning overture to John A. Farrell's magisterial biography of the president who came to embody postwar American resentment...

"Literary nonfiction account of the history and legend of abolitionist John Fairfield, one of the most successful conductors of the Underground Railroad before the American Civil War. A master of disguise and subterfuge, Fairfield used extortion and violence, when necessary, to deliver slaves to freedom in Canada"--Provided by publisher"-- "One of the most amazing characters in American history was John Fairfield, a member of the Underground Railroad...