book talk

The war that we now call the American Revolution was not only fought in the colonies with muskets and bayonets. On both sides of the Atlantic, artists armed with paint, canvas, and wax played an integral role in forging revolutionary ideals. Zara Anishanslin charts the intertwined lives of three such figures who dared to defy […]

"The whole world was against me, and I won," said Donald Trump in an exclusive interview, ten days before his second inauguration. Nearly four years after Trump's first turbulent presidency concluded in a violent attempt to overturn the election, he made a political comeback on a scale that stunned the nation. How did the first […]

Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions. By 2050, we're going to need a lot more calories to fill nearly 10 billion bellies, but we can't feed the world without frying it if we keep tearing […]

In the early hours of March 24th, 1976, the streets of Buenos Aires rumbled with tanks as soldiers seized the presidential palace and toppled Argentina's leader. The country was now under the control of a military junta, with army chief Jorge Rafael Videla at the helm. With quiet support from the United States and tacit […]

Told with a page-turning pace, New York Times bestselling author and historian Scott Ellsworth has written the most compelling new book about the Civil War in years. Focusing on the last, desperate months of the war, when the outcome was far from certain, Midnight on the Potomac is a story of titanic battles, political upheaval, and the long-forgotten Confederate […]

At the turn of the century, the Central Intelligence Agency was in crisis. The end of the Cold War had robbed the agency of its mission. More than thirty overseas stations and bases had been shuttered, and scores that remained had been severely cut back. Many countries where surveillance was once deemed crucial went uncovered. […]

Grant's Enforcer offers a gripping story of the early years after the Civil War and the campaign led by President Grant's attorney general Amos T. Akerman to destroy the Ku Klux Klan. Akerman, a former Georgia slaveholder and the only Southerner to serve in a Reconstruction cabinet, was the first federal lawman to propose using the […]

Michael Ansara was on the front lines. In this fascinating memoir, he traces an arc of discovery: from the hope and moral clarity of the Civil Rights Movement to the ten-year struggle to end the war in Vietnam, with its sit-ins, marches, confrontations, and antiwar riots. Ansara takes the reader into the minds of the […]

This provocative debut from a bold new voice combines a fascinating range of research to show us the psychological and sociological factors that really shape our politics. Drawing from ancient philosophy to modern neuroscience and social science, Dr Sarah Stein Lubrano reveals the surprising truth about how people think and behave politically. From friendship to […]