Adult

In THE NIXON DEFENSE, former White House Counsel John W. Dean, one of the last major surviving figures of Watergate, draws on his own transcripts of almost a thousand conversations, a wealth of Richard Nixon’s secretly recorded information, and more than 150,000 pages of documents in the National Archives and the Nixon Library to provide the definitive answer to the question: What did President Nixon know and when did he know it?

In A DREADFUL DECEIT, award-winning historian Jacqueline Jones traces the lives of six African Americans to illustrate the strange history of “race” in America. In truth, Jones shows, race does not exist, and the very factors that we think of as determining it --- a person’s heritage or skin color --- are mere pretexts for the brutalization of powerless people by the powerful. These stories expose the fluid, contingent and contradictory idea of race, and the disastrous effects it has had, both in the past and in our own supposedly post-racial society.

Rinker Buck’s bestseller is an epic account of traveling the length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way --- in a covered wagon with a team of mules, an audacious journey that hasn’t been attempted in a century --- which also chronicles the rich history of the trail, the people who made the migration, and its significance to the country.

In AMERICAN CRUCIFIXION, Alex Beam tells how Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of Mormonism, went from charismatic leader to public enemy: How his most seismic revelation --- the doctrine of polygamy --- created a rift among his people; how that schism turned to violence; and how, ultimately, Smith could not escape the consequences of his ambition and pride.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN RUSSIA is the untold true story of the larger-than-life billionaire oligarchs who surfed the waves of privatization to reap riches after the fall of the Soviet regime: “Godfather of the Kremlin” Boris Berezovsky, a former mathematician whose first entrepreneurial venture was running an automobile reselling business, and Roman Abramovich, his dashing young protégé who built a multi-billion-dollar empire of oil and aluminum.

The image of a scorpion surrounded by a ring of fire, stinging itself to death, was widespread among antislavery leaders before the Civil War. It captures their long-standing strategy for peaceful abolition: they would surround the slave states with a cordon of freedom, constricting slavery and inducing the social crisis in which the peculiar institution would die. The image opens a fresh perspective on antislavery and the coming of the Civil War, brilliantly explored here by one of our greatest historians of the period.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) was an English writer, physician and philosopher whose work has inspired everyone from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf to Stephen Jay Gould. In an intellectual adventure like Sarah Bakewell's book about Montaigne, HOW TO LIVE, Hugh Aldersey-Williams sets off not just to tell the story of Browne's life but to champion his skeptical nature and inquiring mind.

In November 1596, a woman signed a document that would nearly destroy the career of William Shakespeare. Who was this woman who played such an instrumental, yet little known, role in Shakespeare's life? Never far from controversy when she was alive, Lady Elizabeth Russell, the self-styled Dowager Countess of Bedford, has been edited out of public memory, yet the chain of events she set in motion would make Shakespeare the legendary figure we all know today.

David Leadbetter is the most recognized golf instructor in the history of the game. His new book, THE A SWING, is his first in a decade and is an evolution of his swing theories that have successfully helped thousands of golfers globally. His tour players, whom he has coached over the years, have amassed 19 major golf championships. David has been prolific during his 30+ year career in producing books, videos and teaching aids that have inspired golfers of every level to reach their potential.

Ben Hogan’s accomplishments on the golf course are the stuff of legends, but his life off it was exceedingly private. In this biography, author Tim Scott demonstrates why such public perception was not representative of Hogan’s personality, offering a firsthand glimpse into the famous golfer’s humor and sensitivity. Hogan wasn’t perfect, and many of his fine qualities were never made public until now, as Tim Scott shares his personal experience with Hogan, as well as Hogan’s friends, family and acquaintances.