America First History

Washington's rise constitutes one of the greatest self-reinventions in history. In his mid-20s, this third son of a modest Virginia planter had ruined his own military career thanks to an outrageous ego. But by his mid-40s, that headstrong, unwise young man had evolved into an unassailable leader chosen as the commander in chief of the fledgling Continental Army. By his mid-50s, he was unanimously elected the nation's first president. How did Washington emerge from the wilderness to become the central founder of the United States of America?

At first light on Tuesday, May 28th, 1918, waves of American riflemen from the US Army's First Division climbed from their trenches, charged across the shell-scarred French dirt of no-man's-land, and captured the hilltop village of Cantigny from the grip of the German Army. Those who survived the enemy machine-gun fire and hand-to-hand fighting held on for the next two days and nights in shallow foxholes under the sting of mustard gas and crushing steel of artillery fire.

As Margaret Truman knows from firsthand experience, living in the White House can be exhilarating and maddening, alarming and exhausting, but it is certainly never dull. Part private residence, part goldfish bowl, and part national shrine, the White House is both the most important address in America and the most intensely scrutinized.

In 1819 John Adams came across a stunning story in his hometown Essex Register that he breathlessly described to his political frenemy Thomas Jefferson as “one of the greatest curiosities and one of the deepest mysteries that ever occurred to me…entitled the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. The genuine sense of America at that moment was never so well expressed before, nor since.”

Before the Five Families who so notoriously dominated U.S. organized crime for a bloody half-century, there was the one-fingered, surpassingly cunning Giuseppe Morello and his murderous coterie of brothers. Born into a life of poverty in rural Sicily, Morello became an American nightmare, pioneering the bizarre initiation rituals, imaginative protection rackets, influential underworld reigns, and Mafia wars later popularized by countless books, television shows, and movies.

The inspiring true story of the first female pilots taking their rightful place in the exciting world of aviation. In 1929, 19 gutsy women blazed out of the darkness by setting out from California in propeller-driven planes, each competing to be the winner of the first female cross-country air race. The hazards were many, from disastrous weather to possible sabotage, but by facing the dangers with skill and determination, the racers thrilled the nation and pioneered a new future for female pilots and women's rights.

In 1938, a young German rocket enthusiast named Wernher von Braun had dreams of building a rocket that could fly him to the moon. In Ray, North Dakota, a young farm girl named Mary Sherman was attending high school. In an age when girls rarely dreamed of a career in science, Mary wanted to be a chemist. A decade later, the dreams of these two disparate individuals would coalesce in ways neither could have imagined.

Eager to celebrate its history, and display its athletic potential, the United States hosted the nation’s first Olympic games in 1904 St. Louis. But within a few years, the publication of Coubertin’s memoirs turned the praised Olympics into the failed Olympics. America’s First Olympics corrects common misconceptions that began with Coubertin’s memoirs, and presents a fresh view of the 1904 games, which featured first-time African American Olympians, an eccentric and controversial marathon, and documentation by pioneering photojournalist Jessie Tarbox Beals.

Built of titanium and a chrome-nickel alloy known as Inconel X, the X-15 was the fastest plane ever built, streaking through the lower reaches of outer space even before the first space capsules reached orbit. First tested in 1959, the X-15 proved to be a crucial testing ground for the astronauts and hardware in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and even the Space Shuttle programs. Celebrated reporter Richard Tregaskis spent time with the pilots, engineers, and other key personnel involved in the project.

Red Tails, George Lucas’s celebration of America’s first Black flying squadron, the Tuskegee Airmen, should have been a moment of victory for Doug Melville. He expected to see his great-uncle Benjamin O. Davis Jr.—the squadron’s commander—immortalized on-screen for his selfless contributions to America. But as the film rolled, Doug was shocked when he realized that Ben Jr.’s name had been omitted and replaced by the fictional Colonel A. J. Bullard. And Ben’s father, Benjamin O. Davis Sr., America’s first Black general who helped integrate the military, was left out completely.

Three small ships set out from London for the New World along a similar route as Christopher Columbus had done a little more than a century before. These brave or maybe foolish men were in search of gold and a sea passage to the riches of the Orient – they found neither. What they did find was a land filled with hardships, drought, famine, numerous deadly diseases, and a powerful Indian confederacy that controlled the region. The colony of Jamestown brought to North America, good or ill, the beginnings of slavery, a foothold in the New World for colonization, and the roots of a ...

In 1968, Bruce Tucker, a Black man, went into Virginia’s top research hospital with a head injury, only to have his heart taken out of his body and put into the chest of a White businessman. Now, in The Organ Thieves, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Chip Jones exposes the horrifying inequality surrounding Tucker’s death and how he was used as a human guinea pig without his family’s permission or knowledge.

In the tradition of The Boys in the Boat and Seabiscuit, a fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking but forgotten figure - the remarkable Major Taylor, the Black man who broke racial barriers by becoming the world’s fastest and most famous bicyclist at the height of the Jim Crow era.

When a “neutral” United States becomes a trading partner for the Allies early in World War I, the Germans implement a secret plan to strike back. A team of saboteurs - including an expert on germ warfare, a Harvard professor, and a brilliant, debonair spymaster - devise a series of “mysterious accidents” using explosives and biological weapons, to bring down vital targets such as ships, factories, livestock, and even captains of industry like J. P. Morgan. New York Police Inspector Tom Tunney, head of the department’s Bomb Squad, is assigned the difficult mission of stopping them.

Based on a viral article, 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act is the essential guide to understanding the Canadian legal document and its repercussion on generations of Indigenous peoples, written by a leading cultural sensitivity trainer. The Indian Act, after 141 years, continues to shape, control, and constrain the lives and opportunities of Indigenous peoples, and is at the root of many lasting stereotypes.

On April 12, 1862—one year to the day after Confederate guns opened on Fort Sumter and started the Civil War—a tall, mysterious smuggler and self-appointed Union spy named James J. Andrews and 19 infantry volunteers infiltrated Georgia and stole a steam engine called the General. Racing northward at speeds near 60 miles an hour, cutting telegraph lines, and destroying track along the way, Andrews planned to open East Tennessee to the Union army, cutting off men and materiel from the Confederate forces in Virginia.

The causes of the American Civil War, which lasted from April 1861 to May 1865, were many and complex. At the heart of the disagreement, however, was slavery. The Southern states of the newly formed but illegal Confederacy were prepared to fight the US federal government to the death to retain their right to keep slaves for their plantations. The election of President Abraham Lincoln in late 1860, whose open intention was to abolish slavery, created a military upheaval south of Washington, DC, and civil war ensued.

George Washington was famously unknowable, but Robert Middlekauff penetrates the mystique to reveal the fears, values, and passions that drove him. Rich in psychological details regarding Washington's temperament, idiosyncrasies, and experiences, this audiobook shows us a self-conscious Washington who grew in confidence and experience as a young soldier, businessman, and Virginian gentleman; and was transformed into an American patriot by the revolutionary ferment of the 1760s and 70s.

The name Allan Pinkerton was for decades synonymous with private detective; indeed, the work “Pinkerton” was generally used for any private detective whether or not they were associated with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. The all-seeing eye that served as the symbol of his company and the slogan - “We Never Sleep” - projected an image of a detective working tirelessly to pursue a desperate criminal and bring them to justice.

Over one million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past four years, but fewer than 500 from this group have earned a Silver Star, Navy Cross, Air Force Cross, Distinguished Service Cross, or the Medal of Honor. Those who have been awarded these distinguished honors all demonstrated an extraordinary courage under fire in the worst of circumstances.