Born at the end of the 18th century, the son of a Staten Island ferryman, Cornelius Vanderbilt world go on to become the richest man in America with a fortune built in shipping and railroads. That fortune, fought over by his heirs, helped to create an American dynasty that redefined the meaning of excess in the 19th and 20th centuries. Now , Cornelius Vanderbilt's great-great-great grandson Anderson Cooper, joins with historian Katherine Howe to explore...

The firsthand account of the life of adventurer, scholar, war hero, and twenty-sixth president of the United States Theodore Roosevelt. There must be the keenest sense of duty, and with it must go the joy of living. Here, in his own words, Theodore Roosevelt recounts his remarkable journey from a childhood plagued with illnesses to the US presidency and beyond. With candor and vivid detail, this personal account describes a life guided by a restless...

Throughout his presidency, John F. Kennedy was passionate about the issue of immigration reform. He believed that America is a nation of people who value both tradition and the exploration of new frontiers, deserving the freedom to build better lives for themselves in their adopted homeland. This 60th anniversary edition of his posthumously published, timeless work--with a foreword by Jonathan Greenblatt, the National Director and CEO of the ADL,...

"The story of the Astors is a quintessentially American story--of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention. From 1783, when German immigrant John Jacob Astor first arrived in the United States, until 2009, when Brooke Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of defrauding his elderly mother, the Astor name occupied a unique place in American society. The family fortune, first made by a beaver trapping business that grew into an empire,...

Perhaps the most powerful and influential black American of his time, Frederick Douglass, embodied the tumultuous social changes that transformed the United States during the nineteenth century. In a career of unprecedented breadth, Douglass rose from the oppression of his slave's birth to fame as an abolitionist.

Grandmother Day approves of granddaughter's love for a Yankee.

One of the most important, and controversial, Confederate generals during the Civil War was Lieutenant General James Longstreet, Robert E. Lees old warhorse. Longstreet was Lee's principal subordinate for most of the war, ably managing a corps in the Army of Northern Virginia. Longstreet was instrumental in Confederate victories at Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chickamauga, while he was also effective at Antietam and the Battle of the Wilderness,...

Courage under Fire. Self-Sacrifice. Battles that Changed America. American history is full of men and women who have acted courageously when their families, communities and country needed them most. Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt discovered they both loved telling the stories of these outstanding individuals who helped make America. They pared down their favorite stories to 26 and gave them as a gift to the young people of America in 1895. The...

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth anniversary hardcover edition, Brown has contributed an incisive...

A celebration of the nineteenth-century saloon, written with sly humor during Prohibition. Described by Luc Sante as "a distant ancestor of Rocky and Bullwinkle," George Ade was an early twentieth-century humorist beloved by many, even earning praise from H.L. Mencken. During the waning years of Prohibition, he wrote The Old-Time Saloon-both a work of propaganda masquerading as "just history" and a hilarious exercise in nostalgia that let booze-deprived...