American history is full of strange paradoxes, and that's one of the things that make it so interesting. Here's one of the 37 stories you're going to read. Imagine what it would be like to wake up, flip on the morning news, and discover Bradley Cooper or Ashton Kutcher assassinated President Obama. That's what happened in 1865. People were shocked to learn John Wilkes Booth had killed President Lincoln. Booth was one of the most popular actors of his day. At just twenty-six years old, he was considered one of the most attractive men in America. Booth stood five feet, 8 inches tall, had a lean, athletic build, ivory skin, and curly, jet black hair. Women mobbed him on and off stage. At the time he killed Lincoln, Booth was pulling down $20,000 a year as an actor (roughly $300,000 in 2015 money). What was going on in the mind of John Wilkes Booth? What was it that turned this mild mannered actor into one of the most hated men of his generation?

In 1995, United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said of the Cable News Network, “CNN is the sixteenth member of the [15 member United Nations] Security Council.” Scholars as well as diplomats have recognized the existence of a link between communications and diplomacy, but up until now the implications of this relationship have been left unexplored. This work examines the historic interconnectedness between communications and diplomacy, how communications have historically determined the practice of diplomacy, and how global television in particular can determine diplomatic outcomes under certain conditions. This work also examines the ways in which today’s broadcasting will shape foreign policy processes in the future and the future impact of global television in world politics.

The most comprehensive account to date of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon and aftermath, this volume includes unprecedented details on the impact on the Pentagon building and personnel and the scope of the rescue, recovery, and caregiving effort. It features 32 pages of photographs and more than a dozen diagrams and illustrations not previously available.

From writer and political analyst Jared Yates Sexton comes an eye-opening journey through American history that unearths and debunks the myths we've always told ourselves. Recent years have brought a reckoning in America. As rampant political corruption, stark inequality, and violent bigotry have come to the fore, many have faced two vital questions: How did we get here? And how do we move forward? An honest look at the past—and how it’s been covered up—is the only way to find the answers. Americans in power have abused and subjugated others since the nation’s very beginning, and myths of America’s unique goodness have both enabled that injustice and buried the truth for generations. In American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton blends deep research with stunning storytelling, digging into each era of growth and change that led us here—and laying bare the foundational myths at the heart of the American imagination. Stirring, unequivocal, and impossible to put down, American Rule tells the truth about what this nation has always been—and challenges us to forge a new path.

To most people living in the West, the Louisiana Purchase made little difference: the United States was just another imperial overlord to be assessed and manipulated. This was not, as Empires, Nations, and Families makes clear, virgin wilderness discovered by virtuous Anglo entrepreneurs. Rather, the United States was a newcomer in a place already complicated by vying empires. This book documents the broad family associations that crossed national and ethnic lines and that, along with the river systems of the trans-Mississippi West, formed the basis for a global trade in furs that had operated for hundreds of years before the land became part of the United States. ø Empires, Nations, and Families shows how the world of river and maritime trade effectively shifted political power away from military and diplomatic circles into the hands of local people. Tracing family stories from the Canadian North to the Spanish and Mexican borderlands and from the Pacific Coast to the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, Anne F. Hyde?s narrative moves from the earliest years of the Indian trade to the Mexican War and the gold rush era. Her work reveals how, in the 1850s, immigrants to these newest regions of the United States violently wrested control from Native and other powers, and how conquest and competing demands for land and resources brought about a volatile frontier culture?not at all the peace and prosperity that the new power had promised.

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

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