A simple introduction to African-American history, from Revolutionary-era slavery up to the election of President Obama.

Essays about 1990s popular culture, politics, sports, literature, music.

"In Between two worlds, historian Malcolm Gaskill tells the sweeping story of the English experience in America during the first century of colonization. Following a large and varied cast of visionaries and heretics, merchants and warriors, and slaves and rebels, Gaskill illuminates the often traumatic challenges the settlers faced. The first waves sought to re-create the English way of life, even to recover a society that was vanishing at home. But...

Contains essays in which journalist Joan Didion writes about people, places, and events of the 1960s and 70s, including the Manson family, the John Paul Getty museum, and others

Documents the efforts of three scientists to observe the rare total solar eclipse of 1878, citing how the ambitions of James Craig Watson, Maria Mitchell, and Thomas Edison helped America's early pursuits as a scientific superpower.

"After a decade abroad, the National Book Award--and Pulitzer Prize--winning writer Evan Osnos returns to three places he has lived in the United States-Greenwich, CT; Clarksburg, WV; and Chicago, IL--to illuminate the origins of America's political fury"--