American Century

A prospector leaves family, friends and love behind to satisfy a burning need, risking life and limb on the 1800s frontier in search of gold. After giving up so much, the final reward is just beyond his reach as his most feared enemy now threatens to prevent him from attaining it.

A war hero on the run. A girl behind barbed wire. A love letter to hope in the darkest times. In 1944 California, Aiko Takeda writes letters to her childhood friend, Takeshi "Taki" Nakamura, a Nisei soldier serving with the famed 442nd Infantry Regiment in Europe. Through their letters, their bond deepens across oceans and gunfire. But when her letters suddenly stop, Taki fears the worst. Learning of the U.S. government's internment of Japanese Americans, Taki makes a life-altering decision: he deserts his unit and sets out on a perilous journey across continents and borders to find Aiko. ...

Pirates were the bane of her existence. Marcel, Stone Eyes as he was known in the pirate world, had stolen her childhood. After two years as his pirate’s bride, Sylvie had escaped. She should have been married. Guy, the love of her life was back in France. Waiting. Waiting for what? Sylvie would not be coming home. But the New World was no place for the timid and the young woman realized survival was not an ultimate objective. She was destined to serve a higher purpose. Her path would take her many places, place her in the lives of so many people. And what was she to do? Give them ...

In the world of the wealthy, things are never quite as they appear. Ellie Hastings is tired of playing social gatekeeper—and poor-relation companion—to her Gibson Girl of a cousin. But her aunt insists Ellie lift her nose out of her detective novel long enough to help gauge the eligibility of bachelors during the winter social season at Florida’s Hotel Belleview. She finds plenty that’s mysterious about the suave, aloof Philadelphia inventor, Lewis Thornton. Why does he keep sneaking around the hotel? Does he have a secret sweetheart? And what is his connection to the evasive Mr. ...

In the 19th century, the world was Europeanized. In the 20th century, it was Americanized. Now, in the 21st century, the world is being Asianized. The “Asian Century” is even bigger than you think. Far greater than just China, the new Asian system taking shape is a multicivilizational order spanning Saudi Arabia to Japan, Russia to Australia, Turkey to Indonesia - linking five billion people through trade, finance, infrastructure, and diplomatic networks that together represent 40 percent of global GDP.

In this final magisterial volume, fifteen years in the research and writing, David Levering Lewis stunningly recreates the second half of W.E.B. Du Bois’s charged and brilliant career.

For five hundred years, Latina/o culture and identity have been shaped by their challenges to the religious, socio-economic, and political status quo, whether in opposition to Spanish colonialism, Latin American dictatorships, US imperialism in Central America, the oppression of farmworkers, or the current exploitation of undocumented immigrants. Christianity has played a significant role in that movement at every stage. Robert Chao Romero, the son of a Mexican father and a Chinese immigrant mother, explores the history and theology of what he terms the "Brown Church."

At the age of twelve, under the Wind moon, Will is given a horse, a key, and a map, and sent alone into the Indian Nation to run a trading post as a bound boy. It is during this time that he grows into a man, learning, as he does, of the raw power it takes to create a life, to find a home. In a card game with a white Indian named Featherstone, Will wins–for a brief moment–a mysterious girl named Claire, and his passion and desire for her spans this novel.

In its first four months of operation, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture surpassed one million visits and quickly became a cherished, vital monument to the African American experience. And yet this accomplishment was never assured. In A Fool's Errand, founding director Lonnie Bunch tells his story of bringing his clear vision and leadership to realize this shared dream of many generations of Americans.

Death in the United States is undergoing a quiet revolution. You can have your body frozen, dissected, composted, dissolved, or tanned. Your family can incorporate your remains into jewelry, shotgun shells, paperweights, and artwork. Cremations have more than doubled, and DIY home funerals and green burials are on the rise. American Afterlives is Shannon Lee Dawdy’s lyrical and compassionate account of changing death practices in America as people face their own mortality and search for a different kind of afterlife.

During the turbulent months following the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, 21-year-old Emi Kato, the daughter of a Japanese diplomat, is locked behind barbed wire in a Texas internment camp. She feels hopeless until she meets handsome young Christian Lange, whose German-born parents were wrongfully arrested for un-American activities. Together they live as prisoners with thousands of other German and Japanese families but discover that love can bloom in even the bleakest circumstances.

Victor Chin’s life is turned upside down at the tender age of 15. Diagnosed with Hansen’s disease, otherwise known as leprosy, he’s forced to leave the familiar confines of his father’s laundry business in the Bronx–the only home he’s known since emigrating from China with his older brother—to quarantine alongside patients from all over the country at a federal institution in Carville. At first, Victor is scared not only of the disease, but of the confinement, and wants nothing more than to flee.

In the early spring morning light, shortly after seven o’clock, the body looked like a pile of debris covered by brown and black leaves left over from the previous autumn. A decorated war hero with severe amnesia sustained twelve years before, Clifford Dumont has remained lost in the middle of his life until unexpected events challenge him to confront his suppressed fears and the black wall of his past. When he finds the dead body of his co-worker, Jean-Paul, at a national historical battlefield, Clifford is jarred out of his day-to-day routines. His complacency is further challenged by ...

In Let Me Be Frank with You, Ford returns with four deftly linked stories narrated by the iconic Bascombe. Now 68, and again ensconced in the well-defended New Jersey suburb of Haddam, Bascombe has thrived - seemingly if not utterly - in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy's devastation. With a flawless comedic sensibility and unblinking intelligence, these stories range over the full complement of American subjects: aging, race, loss, faith, marriage, redemption, the real-estate crash - the tumult of the world we live in.

For the first time, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island unearths the incredible true story of the Igorrotes, a group of "headhunting, dog eating" tribespeople brought to America from the Philippines by the opportunistic showman Truman K. Hunt. At Luna Park, the g-string-clad Filipinos performed native dances and rituals before a wide-eyed public in a mocked-up tribal village. Millions of Americans flocked to see the tribespeople slaughter live dogs for their daily canine feasts and to hear thrilling tales of headhunting.

In 14th Century Africa, Amri Sefu was born to be a leader. Not even a lion could stop him from leading his people out of a terrible fight with a rival tribe. Eventually, the champion of Africa would become the champion of the Harkstead Kindom in medieval England. King Phillip Miles has no idea that the best defense against his nemesis, John Carpenter is a slave and his family. Amri Sefu is an expert in dealing death in his home land. However, by giving him a sword death comes much more swiftly for everyone in the path of the massive African warrior. Order or download your copy of Slaves to ...

Gregory Weeks's Embracing Autonomy departs from other general treatments of Latin American-US relations not by putting US policy aside but by bringing in the Latin American and global contexts more closely and thus avoiding the incomplete picture provided by a narrow focus solely on the policies of the United States. The core of autonomy for Latin America from the United States is seen in new, deeper, and more numerous relationships that do not include the United States.

The story of how English became American—and how it became Southern, Bostonian, Californian, African American, Chicano, elite, working-class, urban, rural, and everything in between.

We are a nation of immigrants, never more than now. In recent decades, the numbers have skyrocketed, thanks to people coming from many continents—especially Asia, Africa, and South America. Just like their predecessors, they face countless obstacles, including political hatred. And yet, just like their predecessors, they work hard. They persist. And they become us. Veteran journalist, broadcaster, and interviewer Ray Suarez has crisscrossed the country to speak to new Americans from all corners of the globe, and to record their stories.

It's the dawn of the twentieth century, post-Reconstruction, in the Commonwealth of Virginia. From the ancestral blood and sweat of its settlers - the immigrants, the slaves, the Cherokee - a new generation strives for prosperity in the united township of Grafton. Across the unfolding decades, childhood friends, mothers and daughters, wives and lovers will have their bonds tested. New hopes and dreams lie beyond the river, and as allegiances are challenged, a harmonious community finds itself grappling with inevitable cultural change.