Raiders and Rebels
A History of the Golden Age of Piracy
By Frank Sherry
The most authoritative history of piracy, Frank Sherry's rich and colorful account reveals the rise and fall of the real "raiders and rebels" who terrorized the seas. From 1692 to 1725 pirates sailed the oceans of the world, plundering ships laden with the riches of India, Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. Often portrayed as larger-than-life characters, these outlaw figures and their bloodthirsty exploits have long been immortalized in fiction and film. But beneath the legends is the true story of these brigands—often common men and women escaping the social and economic restrictions of 18th-century Europe and America. Their activities threatened the beginnings of world trade and jeopardized the security of empires. And together, the author argues, they fashioned a surprisingly democratic society powerful enough to defy the world.
Frank Sherry is a former journalist whose non-fiction work includes Pacific Passions: The European Struggle for Power in the Great Ocean in the Age of Exploration. He lives in Missouri.
Critical Praise for Raiders and Rebels
"An excellent book"
— WASHINGTON POST
ISBN: 9780061572845; ISBN10: 0061572845; Imprint: Harper Perennial ; On Sale: 7/1/2008; Format: Trade PB; Trimsize: 6 x 9; Pages: 400; $15.95; Ages: 18 and Up
A City Upon a Hill
How Sermons Changed the Course of American History
By Larry Witham
Pivotal moments in U.S. history are indelibly marked by the sermons of the nation's greatest orators. America's Puritan founder John Winthrop preached about "a city upon a hill", a phrase echoed more than three centuries later by President Ronald Reagan in his farewell address to the nation; Abraham Lincoln's two greatest speeches have been called "sermons on the mount"; and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" oration influenced a generation and changed history. From colonial times to the present, the sermon has motivated Americans to fight wars as well as fight for peace. Mighty speeches have called for the abolition of slavery and for the prohibition of alcohol. They have stirred conscientious objectors and demonstrators for the rights of the unborn. Sermons have provoked the mob mentality of witch hunts and blacklists, but they have also stirred activists in the women's and civil rights movements. The sermon has defined America at every step of its history, inspiring great acts of courage and comforting us in times of terror. A City Upon a Hill tells the story of these powerful words and how they shaped the destiny of a nation.
A City Upon a Hill includes the story of Robert Hunt, the first preacher to brave the dangerous sea voyage to Jamestown; Jonathan Mayhew's "most seditious sermon ever delivered," which incited Boston's Stamp Act riots in 1765; early calls for abolition and "Captain-Preacher Nat" Turner's bloody slave revolt of 1831; Henry Ward Beecher's sermon at Fort Sumter on the day of Lincoln's assassination; tent revivalist/prohibitionist Billy Sunday's "booze sermon"; the challenging words of Martin Luther King Jr., which inspired the civil rights movement; Billy Graham's moving speeches as "America's pastor" and spiritual advisor to multiple U.S. presidents; and Jerry Falwell's legacy of changing the way America does politics.
A City Upon a Hill provides a history of the United States as seen through the lens of the preached words—Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish—that inspired independence, constitutional amendments, and mili-tary victories, and also stirred our worst prejudices, selfish materialism, and stubborn divisiveness—all in the name of God.
Larry Witham is the author of The Measure of God, Where Darwin Meets the Bible, and By Design: Science and the Search for God. As a journalist, he has won the Religion Communicators Council's Wilbur Award three times and has received several prizes from the Religion Newswriters Association as well as a Templeton Foundation award for his articles on science and religion.
Critical Praise for A City Upon a Hill
Journalist Witham narrates the history of preaching in America with good pacing and delicious detail.
— PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
ISBN: 9780060854270; ISBN10: 0060854278; Imprint: HarperOne ; On Sale: 8/7/2007; Format: Hardcover; Trimsize: 6 x 9; Pages: 336; $24.95; Ages: 18 and Up
The Star-Spangled Banner
The Making of an American Icon
By Lonn Taylor, Jeffrey Brodie, Kathleen Kendrick
More than just the tale of one flag and one song, The Star-Spangled Banner is the story of how Americans—often in times of crisis—have expressed their patriotism and defined their identity through the "broad stripes and bright stars" of our preeminent national symbol, a tradition that still thrives today. The original flag that inspired Francis Scott Key "by the dawn's early light" has been cared for by the Smithsonian since 1907. The dramatic story of this flag—and of the Smithsonian's effort to save it for posterity—are told here in this lavishly illustrated book that also explores the broader meaning of the flag in American life.
Formerly a curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, Lonn Taylor served as historian for the Star-Spangled Banner Preservation Project. Kathleen M. Kendrick and Jeffery L. Brodie are co-curators of a new exhibition about the reinstalled Star-Spangled Banner at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
ISBN: 9780060885625; ISBN10: 0060885629; Imprint: Collins ; On Sale: 6/24/2008; Format: Hardcover; Trimsize: 9 x 11; Pages: 192; $29.95; Ages: 18 and Up
Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall
By Eve LaPlante
In 1692 Puritan Samuel Sewall sent twenty people to their deaths on trumped-up witchcraft charges. The nefarious witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts represent a low point of American history, made famous in works by Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne (himself a descendant of one of the judges), and Arthur Miller. The trials might have doomed Sewall to infamy except for a courageous act of contrition now commemorated in a mural that hangs beneath the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House picturing Sewall's public repentance. He was the only Salem witch judge to make amends.
But, remarkably, the judge's story didn't end there. Once he realized his error, Sewall turned his attention to other pressing social issues. Struck by the injustice of the New England slave trade, a commerce in which his own relatives and neighbors were engaged, he authored "The Selling of Joseph," America's first antislavery tract. While his peers viewed Native Americans as savages, Sewall advocated for their essential rights and encouraged their education, even paying for several Indian youths to attend Harvard College. Finally, at a time when women were universally considered inferior to men, Sewall published an essay affirming the fundamental equality of the sexes. The text of that essay, composed at the deathbed of his daughter Hannah, is republished here for the first time.
In Salem Witch Judge, acclaimed biographer Eve LaPlante, Sewall's great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, draws on family lore, her ancestor's personal diaries, and archival documents to open a window onto life in colonial America, painting a portrait of a man traditionally vilified, but who was in fact an innovator and forefather who came to represent the best of the American spirit.
Eve LaPlante, a sixth great-granddaughter of Samuel Sewall, is the author of two previous critically acclaimed books: American Jezebel , a biography of her ancestor Anne Hutchinson, and Seized , a narrative portrait of temporal lobe epilepsy. LaPlante has degrees from Princeton and Harvard and has written for The Atlantic , the New York Times , Ladies' Home Journal , and Boston magazine. She lives with her family in New England on land once owned by Judge Sewall.
Critical Praise for Salem Witch Judge
"LaPlante’s splendid biography brings a personal touch to Sewall’s story and his efforts to take the difficult but righteous path."
— PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
ISBN: 9780060786618; ISBN10: 0060786612; Imprint: HarperOne ; On Sale: 10/2/2007; Format: Hardcover; Trimsize: 6 x 9; Pages: 368; $25.95; Ages: 18 and Up
Ladies of Liberty
The Women Who Shaped Our Nation
By Cokie Roberts
In Founding Mothers, Cokie Roberts paid homage to the heroic women whose patriotism and sacrifice helped create a new nation. Now the number one New York Times bestselling author and renowned political commentator—praised in USA Today as a "custodian of time-honored values"—continues the story of early America's influential women with Ladies of Liberty. In her "delightfully intimate and confiding" style (Publishers Weekly), Roberts presents a colorful blend of biographical portraits and behind-the-scenes vignettes chronicling women's public roles and private responsibilities.
Recounted with the insight and humor of an expert storyteller and drawing on personal correspondence, private journals, and other primary sources—many of them previously unpublished—Roberts brings to life the extraordinary accomplishments of women who laid the groundwork for a better society. Almost every quotation here is written by a woman, to a woman, or about a woman. From first ladies to freethinkers, educators to explorers, this exceptional group includes Abigail Adams, Margaret Bayard Smith, Martha Jefferson, Dolley Madison, Elizabeth Monroe, Louisa Catherine Adams, Eliza Hamilton, Theodosia Burr, Rebecca Gratz, Louisa Livingston, Rosalie Calvert, Sacajawea, and others. In a much-needed addition to the shelves of Founding Father literature, Roberts sheds new light on the generation of heroines, reformers, and visionaries who helped shape our nation, giving these ladies of liberty the recognition they so greatly deserve.
Cokie Roberts is a political commentator for ABC News and a senior news analyst for National Public Radio. From 1996 to 2002, she and Sam Donaldson coanchored the weekly ABC interview program, This Week.
In addition to broadcasting, Roberts, along with her husband, Steven V. Roberts, writes a weekly column syndicated in newspapers around the country by United Media. Both are also contributing editors to USA Weekend, and together they wrote From This Day Forward, an account of their now more than forty-year marriage and other marriages in American history. The book immediately went onto the New York Times bestseller list, following a six-month...
ISBN: 9780060782344; ISBN10: 006078234X;
Imprint: William Morrow ; On Sale: 4/8/2008; Format: Hardcover; Trimsize: 6 x 9; Pages: 512; $26.95; Ages: 18 and Up
Judge Sewall's Apology
The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience
By Richard Francis
The Salem witch hunt has entered our vocabulary as the very essence of injustice. Judge Samuel Sewall presided at these trials, passing harsh judgment on the condemned. But five years later, he publicly recanted his guilty verdicts and begged for forgiveness. This extraordinary act was a turning point not only for Sewall but also for America's nascent values and mores.
In Judge Sewall's Apology, Richard Francis draws on the judge's own diaries, which enables us to see the early colonists not as grim ideologues, but as flesh-and-blood idealists, striving for a new society while coming to terms with the desires and imperfections of ordinary life. Through this unsung hero of the American conscience -- a Puritan, an antislavery agitator, a defender of Native American rights, and a Utopian theorist -- we are granted a fresh perspective on a familiar drama.
Richard Francis is a biographer, historian of American culture, and novelist. He was an American Studies Research Fellow at Harvard, and taught American literature at the universities of Missouri and Manchester. He is now Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University in England.Critical Praise for Judge Sewall's Apology
"Before the Founding Fathers came the New England Puritans...in this superb study, Francis brings them back to life."
— JAMES GRANT, AUTHOR OF JOHN ADAMS: PARTY OF ONE
ISBN: 9780007163632; ISBN10: 0007163630; Imprint: Harper Perennial ; On Sale: 8/1/2006; Format: Trade PB; Trimsize: 5 5/16 x 8; Pages: 432; $15.95; Ages: 18 and Up
The Birth of America
From Before Columbus to the Revolution
By William R. Polk
In this provocative account of colonial America, William R. Polk explores the key events, individuals, and themes of this critical period. With vivid descriptions of the societies that people from Europe came from and with an emphasis on what they believed they were going to, Polk introduces the native Indians encountered in the New World and the black Africans who were brought across the Atlantic.
With insightful analysis, he also discusses the dual truths of colonial societies' "growing up" and "growing apart." As John Adams would point out to Thomas Jefferson, the long years that witnessed the formation of our national character and the growth of our spirit of independence were indeed the real revolution. That story forms the basis of The Birth of America. In addition to its discussion of the influence the British had on the colonies, The Birth of America covers the pivotal roles played by the Spanish, French, and Dutch in early America.
From the fearful crossing of the stormy Atlantic to the growth of the early settlements, to the French and Indian War and the unrest of the 1760s, William Polk brilliantly traces the progress of the colonies to the point where it was no longer possible to recapture the past and the break with England was inevitable. America
William R. Polk is the author of Understanding Iraq, The United States and the Arab World, and The Elusive Peace, among other books. He studied at Harvard and read Arabic and Turkish at Oxford.
ISBN: 9780060750930; ISBN10: 0060750936; Imprint: Harper Perennial ; On Sale: 4/24/2007; Format: Trade PB; Trimsize: 5 5/16 x 8; Pages: 416; $15.95; Ages: 18 and UpAugust 13, 2008