From before the dawn of the 20th century until the arrival of the New Deal, one of the most protracted and deadly labor struggles in American history was waged in West Virginia. The fight for unionization and civil rights sparked a political crisis verging on civil war that stretched from the creeks and hollows to the courts and the US Senate. In THE DEVIL IS HERE IN THESE HILLS, celebrated labor historian James Green tells the story of West Virginia and coal like never before.

Building on fresh evidence --- including a detailed record of slave escapes secretly kept by Sydney Howard Gay, one of the key organizers in New York --- Eric Foner elevates the underground railroad from folklore to sweeping history. It eventually took a civil war to destroy American slavery, but here at last is the story of the courageous effort to fight slavery by "practical abolition" --- person by person, family by family.

DIRTY CHICK chronicles Antonia Murphy’s first year of life as an artisan farmer. Having bought into the myth that farming is a peaceful, fulfilling endeavor that allows one to commune with nature and live the way humans were meant to live, Antonia soon realized that the reality is far dirtier and way more disgusting than she ever imagined.

After Kate Mayfield was born, she was taken directly to a funeral home. Her father was an undertaker, and for 13 years the family resided in a place nearly synonymous with death. A place where the living and the dead entered their house like a vapor. The place where Kate would spend the entirety of her childhood. In a memoir that reads like a Harper Lee novel, the author draws the reader into a world of Southern mystique and ghosts.

Bob Hope is a household name. However, as Richard Zoglin shows in this revelatory biography, there is still much to be learned about this most public of figures --- from his secret first marriage and his stint in reform school, to his indiscriminate womanizing and his ambivalent relationship with Bing Crosby and Johnny Carson. Hope could be cold, self-centered, tight with a buck, and perhaps the least introspective man in Hollywood. But he was also a dogged worker, gracious with fans and generous with friends.

Compiled by Norman Mailer’s authorized biographer, J. Michael Lennon, and organized by decade, SELECTED LETTERS OF NORMAN MAILER features the most fascinating of Mailer’s missives from 1940 to 2007 --- letters to his family and friends, to fans and fellow writers (including Truman Capote, James Baldwin and Philip Roth), to political figures from Henry Kissinger to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and to such cultural icons as John Lennon, Marlon Brando and even Monica Lewinsky.

Rachel Cooke goes back in time to offer an entertaining and iconoclastic look at 10 women in the 1950s --- pioneers whose professional careers and complicated private lives helped to create the opportunities available to today's women. These plucky and ambitious individuals --- among them a film director, a cook, an architect, an editor, an archaeologist and a race car driver --- left the house, discovered the bliss of work, and ushered in the era of the working woman.

On the 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s death, Boris Johnson celebrates the singular brilliance of one of the most important leaders of the 20th century. Taking on the myths and misconceptions along with the outsized reality, he portrays --- with characteristic wit and passion --- a man of contagious bravery, breathtaking eloquence, matchless strategizing and deep humanity.

In JOAN OF ARC: A LIFE TRANSFIGURED, Kathryn Harrison gives us a Joan for our time --- a shining exemplar of unshakable faith, extraordinary courage and self-confidence during a brutally rigged ecclesiastical inquisition and in the face of her death by burning. Deftly weaving historical fact, myth, folklore, artistic representations, and centuries of scholarly and critical interpretation into a compelling narrative, she restores Joan of Arc to her rightful position as one of the greatest heroines in all of human history.

The legendary creator of iconic television programs such as “All in the Family” and "The Jeffersons," Norman Lear remade our television culture --- while leading a life of unparalleled political, civic and social involvement. EVEN THIS I GET TO EXPERIENCE is a memoir as touching and remarkable as the life he has led. Married three times and the father of six children ranging from 19 to 68, Lear’s penetrating look at family life, parenthood and marriage is a volume in itself.