Hardcover Nonfiction

by The Beatles · Chronicle Books

by Bill O'Reilly · Broadway

by Wendy Northcutt · Dutton

The hilarious New York Times bestselling phenomenon and the perfect funny gift! Honoring those who improve our gene pool by inadvertently removing themselves fromit, The Darwin Awards III includes more than one hundred brand new, hilariously macabre mishaps and misadventures. From a sheriff who inadvertently shot himself twice, to the insurance defrauder who amputated his leg with a chainsaw; from a farmer who avoided bee stings by sealing his head in a plastic bag to the man crushed by the branch he just trimmed, The Darwin Awards III proves again that when it comes to stupidity, no species does it like we do. Featuring scientific and safety discussions and filled with illustrations depicting inspiring examples of evolution in action, The Darwin Awards III shows once more how uncommon common sense still is.

by Stephen E. Ambrose · Simon & Schuster

NOTHING LIKE IT IN THE WORLD is the story of the men who built the transcontinental railroad – the investors who risked their businesses and money; the enlightened politicians who understood its importance; the engineers and surveyors who risked, and sometimes lost, their lives; and the Irish and Chinese immigrants, the defeated Confederate soldiers, and the other labourers who did the backbreaking and dangerous work on the tracks. The US government pitted two companies – the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads – against each other in a race for funding, encouraging speed over caution. Locomotives, rails and spikes were shipped from the East through Panama or around South America to the West, or lugged across the country to the Plains. In Ambrose's hands, this enterprise, with its huge expenditure of brainpower, muscle and sweat, comes vibrantly to life.

by Mitch Albom · Doubleday

by Bob Woodward · Simon & Schuster

Who is responsible? From the President to the Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan to Wall Street to the role of the emerging technologies, Woodward uses his exhaustive investigative technique to reveal the ideas and politics that have changed the lives of millions of people and established the United States as the world's preeminent power. He shows why America has found itself in this exalted position. How it might have been different and when and why it might end.

by James Bradley with Ron Powers · Bantam

Chronicles one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, focusing on the men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima.

by Hillary Rodham Clinton · Simon & Schuster

The First Lady celebrates the history, culture, and food of the White House, in an illustrated volume that captures the significance of this great house in American life.

by Richard Ben Cramer · Simon & Schuster

by Tom Brokaw · Random House

In this superb book, Tom Brokaw goes out into America, to tell through the stories of individual men and women the story of a generation - America's citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America. This was a generation united by common values - by duty, honour, courage, service and love of family and country. Here you'll meet people like Charles Van Gorder, who set up during D-Day a MASH-like medical facility in the middle of the fighting, and then came home to create a clinic and hospital in his hometown. You'll hear ex-President George Bush talk about how, as a Navy Air Corps combat pilot, one of his assignments was to read the mail of the enlisted men under him, to be sure no sensitive military information would be compromised. You'll meet Trudy Elion, winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, one of the many women in this book who found fulfilling careers in the changed society as a result of the war. And you'll meet Martha Putney, one of the first black women to serve in the newly formed WACs. In the spirit of Band of Brothers, The Greatest Generation tells the stories of ordinary men and women caught up in extraordinary events - individuals united by a common purpose - working, living and dying in the service of their country.

by Stephen King · Scribner

ON WRITING is a delightful Pandora's Box - Find out what books and films influenced the young writer, his first idea for a story, the true life tale that inspired CARRIE. For the first time, here's an intimate autobiographical portrait of his home life, his family and his traumatic recent accident. Citing examples of his work and those of his contemporaries such as John Grisham and Raymond Chandler, King gives excellent tips for writers on how to avoid pitfalls and how to use the tools of the trade from building characters to pace and plotting, the importance of dialogue and description - as well as practical advice on presentation and representation. Discover the symbolism, themes and the three deep interests that power all his work. This is a unique insight in the wildly imaginative works and the mind of the master.

by Andy Rooney · PublicAffairs

The author recounts his experiences as a young reporter to "Stars and Stripes," the American forces daily in Europe, during World War II

by Lance Armstrong with Sally Jenkins · Putnam

The #1 New York Times bestseller from the cancer survivor who became a four-time Tour de France champ. In 1996, young cycling phenom Armstrong discovered he had testicular cancer. In 1999, he won the Tour de France. Now he's a new father and a memoirist: with pluck, humility and verve, this volume covers his early life, his rise through the endurance sport world and his medical difficulties.

by Joseph J. Ellis · Knopf

An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic--John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. During the 1790s, which Ellis calls the most decisive decade in our nation's history, the greatest statesmen of their generation--and perhaps any--came together to define the new republic and direct its course for the coming centuries. Ellis focuses on six discrete moments that exemplify the most crucial issues facing the fragile new nation: Burr and Hamilton's deadly duel, and what may have really happened; Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison's secret dinner, during which the seat of the permanent capital was determined in exchange for passage of Hamilton's financial plan; Franklin's petition to end the "peculiar institution" of slavery--his last public act--and Madison's efforts to quash it; Washington's precedent-setting Farewell Address, announcing his retirement from public office and offering his country some final advice; Adams's difficult term as Washington's successor and his alleged scheme to pass the presidency on to his son; and finally, Adams and Jefferson's renewed correspondence at the end of their lives, in which they compared their different views of the Revolution and its legacy. In a lively and engaging narrative, Ellis recounts the sometimes collaborative, sometimes archly antagonistic interactions between these men, and shows us the private characters behind the public personas: Adams, the ever-combative iconoclast, whose closest political collaborator was his wife, Abigail; Burr, crafty, smooth, and one of the most despised public figures of his time; Hamilton, whose audacious manner and deep economic savvy masked his humble origins; Jefferson, renowned for his eloquence, but so reclusive and taciturn that he rarely spoke more than a few sentences in public; Madison, small, sickly, and paralyzingly shy, yet one of the most effective debaters of his generation; and the stiffly formal Washington, the ultimate realist, larger-than-life, and America's only truly indispensable figure. Ellis argues that the checks and balances that permitted the infant American republic to endure were not primarily legal, constitutional, or institutional, but intensely personal, rooted in the dynamic interaction of leaders with quite different visions and values. Revisiting the old-fashioned idea that character matters, Founding Brothers informs our understanding of American politics--then and now--and gives us a new perspective on the unpredictable forces that shape history.

by Nathaniel Philbrick · Viking Press

Winner of the 2000 National Book Award for Non-Fiction! The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with twenty crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than ninety days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival. Nathaniel Philbrick uses little-known documents-including a long-lost account written by the ship's cabin boy-and penetrating details about whaling and the Nantucket community to reveal the chilling events surrounding this epic maritime disaster. An intense and mesmerizing read, In the Heart of the Sea is a monumental work of history forever placing the Essex tragedy in the American historical canon.

by Adam Gopnik · Random House