National Network for Equitable Library Service

The author of "Our Crowd" takes readers inside the gossip-tinged world of the 1970s Black elite, one obsessed with history, standing and appearance.

From the bestselling author of Guadalcanal Diary: The thrilling true story of the future president's astonishing act of heroism during World War II. In the early morning hours of August 2, 1943, US Navy motor torpedo boat PT-109 patrolled the still, black waters of Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands. Suddenly, the Japanese destroyer Amagiri loomed out of the darkness, bearing directly down on the smaller ship.

The riveting true story of the world's fastest plane and the first manned flights into outer space. First tested in 1959, the X-15 rocket plane was at the forefront of the space race. Developed by the US Air Force and the National aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in collaboration with North American Aviation, the X-15 was sleek, black, and powerful'a missile with stubby wings and a cockpit on the nose. By 1961 it could reach speeds over three thousand miles per hour and fly at an altitude of thirty-one miles above the earth's surface'the lower reaches of outer space.

A dramatic and richly detailed chronicle of the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy from one of America's greatest war correspondents. Following the defeat of Axis forces in North Africa, Allied military strategists turned their attention to southern Italy. Winston Churchill famously described the region as the "soft underbelly of Europe," and claimed that an invasion would pull German troops from the Eastern Front and help bring a swift end to the war. On July 10, 1943, American and British forces invaded Sicily.

#1 New York Times Bestseller: The definitive eyewitness account of one of the bloodiest and most pivotal battles of World War II. On August 7, 1942, eleven thousand US Marines landed on Tulagi and Guadalcanal Islands in the South Pacific. It was the first major Allied offensive against Japanese forces; the first time in history that a combined air, land, and sea assault had ever been attempted; and, after six months of vicious fighting, a crushing defeat for the Empire of Japan and a major turning point in the Pacific War.

The dramatic biography of one of the most notorious families in American history. Junius Booth and his sons, Edwin and John Wilkes, were nineteenth-century America's most famous theatrical family. Yet the Booth name is forever etched in the history books for one terrible reason: the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. In American Gothic, bestselling historian Gene Smith vividly chronicles the triumphs, scandals, and tragedies of this infamous family.

The poignant true story of an American president struck by tragedy at the height of his glory. This New York Times bestseller vividly chronicles the stunning decline in Woodrow Wilson's fortunes after World War I and draws back the curtain on one of the strangest episodes in the history of the American presidency. Author Gene Smith brilliantly captures the drama and excitement of Wilson's efforts at the Paris Peace Conference to forge a lasting concord between enemies, and his remarkable coast-to-coast tour to sway national opinion in favor of the League of Nations.

Ragtime, the jaunty, toe-tapping music that captivated American society from the 1890s through World War I, forms the roots of America's popular musical expression. But the understanding of ragtime and its era has been clouded by a history of murky impressions, half-truths, and inventive fictions. Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History cuts through the murkiness. A methodical survey of thousands of rags along with an examination of then-contemporary opinions in magazines and newspapers demonstrate how the music evolved, and how America responded to it.

A visionary survey of urbanism from the Middle Ages to the late 1930s, with a new introduction by Thomas Fisher Considered among the greatest works of Lewis Mumford-a prolific historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and longtime architecture critic for the New Yorker-The Culture of Cities is a call for communal action to "rebuild the urban world on a sounder human foundation." First published in 1938, this radical investigation into the human environment is based on firsthand surveys of North American and European locales, as well as extensive historical and technologic

For most of human history, the garments women wore under their clothes were hidden. The earliest underwear provided warmth and protection. But eventually, women's undergarments became complex structures designed to shape their bodies to fit the fashion ideals of the time. In the modern era, undergarments are out in the open, from the designer corsets Madonna wore on stage to BeyoncE's pregnancy announcement on Instagram.