History & Society

In his memoir, the four-star general (and former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan) describes a culture gap between the military and civilian worlds. The lack of understanding, he says, complicated the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan and bred distrust between the White House and the Pentagon.

Analyzes the relationship between Pius XI and the notorious Italian dictator, tracing how after coming into power in the same year they forged covert ties to one another to consolidate power and pursue political goals.

The author of Fordlandia documents an extraordinary early 19th-century event that inspired Herman Melville's Benito Cereno, tracing the cultural, economic and religious clashes that occurred aboard a distressed Spanish ship of West African pirates.

Drawing on a vast array of sources in history, sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy and anthropology, journalist Jennifer Senior challenges our culture's most basic beliefs about parenthood while revealing the profound ways children deepen and add purpose to our lives.

This humorous and informative examination of the billion-dollar-a-year self-help industry describes the author's experiences trying to cure herself of phobias, dating men by following "The Rules" and literally walking over hot coals.

Shereen El Feki spent five years traveling across the Arab world asking people about sex. She wanted to learn about the lives of young single people, married couples, gay people and sex workers, and how the sexual aspects of their lives reflect larger religious, cultural and political shifts. What she actually learned is that the Arab patriarchy is alive and well – and women are some of its staunchest supporters.

More than 30 years ago, Jeffrey MacDonald was convicted of murdering his family, despite his claim that his loved ones were slaughtered by four hippies. In A Wilderness Of Errors, writer, filmmaker and former private detective Errol Morris suggests that the infamous Army doctor might not be guilty after all.

In a layered narrative, Todd Purdum tells the story of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, recreating the legislative maneuvering and the larger-than-life characters who made its passage possible. From the Kennedy brothers to Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr. to Hubert Humphrey, Purdum shows how these all-too-human figures managed, in just over a year, to create a bill that prompted the longest filibuster in the history of the U.S. Senate, yet was ultimately adopted with overwhelming bipartisan support.

The professor of a popular class on the stages of dying, death and bereavement shows her students how to truly heal and live their lives through contemplating the end in this investigative report from an award-winning journalist.

David Cunningham looks at the rise of KKK activity during the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, focusing especially on the disproportionately large amount of Klan members in North Carolina.

Gabriel Sherman tells the story of Fox News, including its launch Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch, Ailes's campaign-like management style and the ways in which Fox has become a dominant and lucrative force in American politics.

Capturing the essence of the origin and evolution of the so-called "degeneracy debates," over whether the flora and fauna of America (including Native Americans) were naturally weaker and feebler than species elsewhere in the world, this book chronicles Thomas Jefferson's efforts to counter French conceptions of American degeneracy, culminating in his sending of a stuffed moose to Buffon.

The former State Department adviser for Afghanistan and Pakistan offers a reassessment of American foreign policy, offering his advice for directing our country away from failing relations in the Middle East and towards more productive partnerships with other foreign allies. He critiques the executive branch for looking to the military and intelligence agencies for approaches to problems in Afghanistan and elsewhere, rather than working with civilians to find political solutions.

Spurred by a complex web of motivations — shame, familial obligation and sometimes even greed — more than a million people attempted to flee the Irish famine. More than 100,000 of them would die aboard one of the 5,000 aptly named "coffin ships." But in the face of horrific losses, a small ship named the Jeanie Johnston never lost a passenger.