The pop world accelerated and broke through the sound barrier in 1966. In the worlds of pop, pop art, fashion and radical politics --- often fueled by perception-enhancing substances and literature --- the "Sixties," as we have come to know them, hit their Modernist peak. Jon Savage's 1966 is a monument to the year that shaped the pop future of the balance of the century. Exploring canonical artists like The Beatles, The Byrds, Velvet Underground, The Who and The Kinks, 1966 also goes much deeper into the social and cultural heart of the decade through unique archival primary sources.

Set against the backdrop of an expanding nation, BRILLIANT BEACONS traces the evolution of America's lighthouse system from its earliest days, highlighting the political, military and technological battles fought to illuminate the nation's hardscrabble coastlines. Beginning with "Boston Light," America's first lighthouse, Eric Jay Dolin shows how the story of America --- from colony to regional backwater, to fledgling nation, and eventually to global industrial power --- can be illustrated through its lighthouses.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, Washington, D.C. found itself caught between warring sides in a four-year battle that would determine the future of the United States. With their husbands, brothers and fathers marching off to war, the women of Washington, D.C. joined the cause as well. Cokie Roberts chronicles their increasing independence, their political empowerment, their indispensable role in keeping the Union unified through the war, and in helping heal it once the fighting was done.

For the entire history of human civilization, gold has enraptured people around the globe. The Nazis were no less enthralled by it and felt that gold was the solution to funding Hitler's war machine. Gold was also on the mind of FDR across the Atlantic, as he worked with Europe's other leaders to bring the United States and the rest of the world out of a severe depression. CHASING GOLD is the story of how the Nazis attempted to grab Europe’s gold to finance history’s bloodiest war.

One of the most underestimated --- and challenging --- positions in the world, the First Lady of the United States must be many things: an inspiring leader with a forward-thinking agenda of her own; a savvy politician, skilled at navigating the treacherous rapids of Washington; a wife and mother operating under constant scrutiny; and an able CEO responsible for the smooth operation of countless services and special events at the White House. Former White House correspondent Kate Andersen Brower draws on a wide array of untapped, candid sources to tell the stories of the 10 remarkable women who have defined that role since 1960.

Among the military leaders of World War II, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz remains a deeply controversial figure. As chief of the German submarine fleet he earned Allied respect as a formidable enemy. But after he succeeded Adolf Hitler --- to whom he was unquestioningly loyal --- as head of the Third Reich, his name became associated with all that was most hated in the Nazi regime. Yet Doenitz deserves credit for ending the war quickly while trying to save his compatriots in the east. Barry Turner's closely examined and even-handed portrait gives a fascinating new perspective on this complex figure, to whom history has not been kind.

KICK KENNEDY begins with Kick’s arrival in England in 1938 as her father became the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St James’s. In the closed world of the British aristocracy, Kick was gloriously, exhilaratingly different, the girl with whom all the boys fell in love. But she was the star of a world in the midst of tumultuous social and political change, and as war came, she would have to confront crushing sadness and the consequences of forsaking much dear to her for love, before her heartbreaking death in 1948.

Left off her company's fifth anniversary tribute but described by Thomas Mann as "the soul of the firm," Blanche Knopf began her career when she founded Alfred A. Knopf with her husband in 1915. With her finger on the pulse of a rapidly changing culture, Blanche quickly became a driving force behind the firm. As Knopf celebrates its centennial, Laura Claridge looks back at the firm's beginnings and the dynamic woman who helped to define American letters for the 20th century. Drawing on a vast cache of papers, Claridge also captures Blanche's "witty, loyal, and amusing" personality, and her charged yet oddly loving relationship with her husband.

Betty Pack was charming, beautiful and intelligent. As an agent for Britain’s MI-6 and then America’s OSS during World War II, these qualities proved crucial to her success. THE LAST GOODNIGHT is the remarkable story of this “Mata Hari from Minnesota” and the passions that ruled her tempestuous life --- a life filled with dangerous liaisons and death-defying missions vital to the Allied victory. For decades, much of Betty’s career working for MI-6 and the OSS remained classified. Through access to recently unclassified files, Howard Blum discovers the truth about the attractive blond, codenamed “Cynthia.”

A hundred years after her sinking, Lusitania remains an evocative ship of mystery. Was she carrying munitions that exploded? Did Winston Churchill engineer a conspiracy that doomed the liner? Lost amid these tangled skeins is the romantic, vibrant and finally heartrending tale of the passengers who sailed aboard her. Authors Greg King and Penny Wilson resurrect this lost, glittering world to show the golden age of travel and illuminate the most prominent of Lusitania’s passengers.

Beginning in December 1884, Austin, Texas was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, using axes, knives and long steel rods to rip apart women. Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders. When Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD --- the 20th century's most widely read American novel --- has sold over 40 million copies and still sells a million yearly. In this in-depth biography, first published in 2006, Charles J. Shields brings to life the woman who gave us two of American literature's most unforgettable characters: Atticus Finch and his daughter, Scout. Now, years after its initial publication --- with updates throughout the book and a new Afterword --- Shields finishes the story of Harper Lee's life, up to its end.

Today it is the most valuable book in the world. Recently one sold for over five million dollars. It is the book that rescued the name of William Shakespeare and half of his plays from oblivion. THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE BARD tells the miraculous and romantic story of the making of the First Folio, and of the American industrialist whose thrilling pursuit of the book became a lifelong obsession.

No U.S. president is more popularly associated with nature and wildlife than Theodore Roosevelt --- prodigious hunter, tireless adventurer and ardent conservationist. We think of him as a larger-than-life original, yet Darrin Lunde has firmly situated Roosevelt’s indomitable curiosity about the natural world in the tradition of museum naturalism. Drawing on his diaries and travel journals, as well as Lunde’s own role as a leading figure in museum naturalism today, THE NATURALIST reads Roosevelt through the lens of his love for nature.

When members of the founding generation protested against British authority, debated separation, and then ratified the Constitution, they formed the American political character we know today --- raucous, intemperate and often mean-spirited. REVOLUTIONARY DISSENT brings alive a world of colorful and stormy protests that included effigies, pamphlets, songs, sermons, cartoons, letters and liberty trees. Stephen D. Solomon explores through a series of chronological narratives how Americans of the Revolutionary period employed robust speech against the British and against each other.

In the 1940s and ’50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible. For the first time, RISE OF THE ROCKET GIRLS tells the stories of these women --- known as "human computers" --- who broke the boundaries of both gender and science.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, Virginia’s Prince Edward County refused to obey the law. Rather than desegregate, the county closed its public schools. Kristen Green grew up in Farmville and attended Prince Edward Academy, which didn’t open its doors to black students until 1986. Thirty-four years after the Supreme Court ended school segregation, Green first began to learn the truth about her hometown’s shameful history. As she peels back the layers of this haunting period in our nation’s past, her own family’s role comes to light.

John Hay, famous as Lincoln’s private secretary and later as secretary of state under presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, and Samuel Langhorne Clemens, famous for being “Mark Twain,” grew up 50 miles apart in the same rural antebellum stew of race and class and want. This shared history helped draw them together when they first met as up-and-coming young men in the late 1860s, and their mutual admiration never waned in spite of sharp differences in personality, worldview and public conduct. In THE STATESMAN AND THE STORYTELLER, the last decade of their lives plays out against the tumultuous events of the day.

From the horseback days of the Old West through the gangster days of the 1930s, Frank Hamer (known only as the “villain” of the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde) stood on the frontlines of some of the most important and exciting periods in American history. He participated in the Bandit War of 1915, survived the climactic gunfight in the last blood feud of the Old West, battled the Mexican Revolution’s spillover across the border, protected African Americans from lynch mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, and ran down gangsters, bootleggers and Communists. When at last his career came to an end, it was only when he ran up against another legendary Texan: Lyndon B. Johnson.

What made Ronald Reagan tick? What was the secret to his greatness, the source of his influence, the key to his character, the strength behind his leadership? And why does it matter to the nation today? Just the mention of his name still evokes deep admiration and affection among Americans of every stripe, on both sides of the aisle. Many have previously sought to capture the essence of this very public figure often called "mysterious and unknowable." But now, as James Rosebush tells Reagan's story from first-hand experience, we come closer to understanding the heart of this great American.

Midnight, Sunday, June 18, 1815. Britain holds its breath. Since Napoleon’s escape from Elba in February, Europe has been jolted from 11 months of peace back into the frenzied panic of a war it believed had ended. The nation is awash in reports and rumors. The Battle of Waterloo is close at hand. WENT THE DAY WELL? is an astonishing hour-by-hour chronicle that starts the day before the battle that reset the course of world history and continues to its aftermath.