From the acclaimed bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers and Blood and Thunder, a taut, intense narrative about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the largest manhunt in American history. 

On April 23, 1967, Prisoner #416J, an inmate at the notorious Missouri State Penitentiary, escaped in a breadbox. Fashioning himself Eric Galt, this nondescript thief and con man—whose real name was James Earl Ray—drifted through the South, into Mexico, and then Los Angeles, where he was galvanized by George Wallace’s racist presidential campaign.

On February 1, 1968, two Memphis garbage men were crushed to death in their hydraulic truck, provoking the exclusively African American workforce to go on strike. Hoping to resuscitate his faltering crusade, King joined the sanitation workers’ cause, but their march down Beale Street, the historic avenue of the blues, turned violent. Humiliated, King fatefully vowed to return to Memphis in April.

With relentless storytelling drive, Sides follows Galt and King as they crisscross the country, one stalking the other, until the crushing moment at the Lorraine Motel when the drifter catches up with his prey. Against the backdrop of the resulting nationwide riots and the pathos of King’s funeral, Sides gives us a riveting cross-cut narrative of the assassin’s flight and the sixty-five-day search that led investigators to Canada, Portugal, and England—a massive manhunt ironically led by Hoover’s FBI.

Magnificent in scope, drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished material, this nonfiction thriller illuminates one of the darkest hours in American life—an example of how history is so often a matter of the petty bringing down the great.

To read an excerpt from Chapter One of Hellhound on His Trail, click HERE.

Hampton Sides (born 1962) is an American historian and magazine journalist. He is the author of Hellhound on His Trail, Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, and other bestselling works of narrative history and literary non-fiction. Sides is editor-at-large for Outside magazine and has written for such periodicals as National Geographic, The New Yorker, Esquire, Preservation, Men's Journal, Men's Vogue, and The Washington Post. His magazine work, collected in numerous published anthologies, has been twice nominated for National Magazine Awards for feature writing. Ghost Soldiers , a World War II narrative about the rescue of Bataan Death March survivors, has sold slightly over a million copies worldwide and has been translated into a dozen foreign languages. The book was the subject of documentaries on PBS and the The History Channel, and was the basis for the 2005 Miramax film, "The Great Raid." Ghost Soldiers won the 2002 PEN USA Award for non-fiction and the Discover Award from Barnes & Noble. The book's success led Sides to create The Ghost Soldiers Endowment Fund, a non-profit foundation dedicated to preserving the memory of the sacrifices made by Bataan and Corregidor veterans by funding relevant archives, museums, and memorials. Sides' Blood and Thunder  focuses on the life and times of controversial frontiersman Kit Carson, and his role in the conquest of the American West. Blood and Thunder was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2006 by Time magazine, and was selected as that year's best history title by both the History Book Club and the Western Writers of America. Blood and Thunder was the subject of a major documentary on the PBS program "The American Experience" and is currently under development for the screen. A native of Memphis with a BA in history from Yale, Sides lives in Santa Fe with his wife Anne and their three boys, all soccer players. He is a past fellow of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Japan Society, and a media fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. He is an adviser and board member of the Mayborn Journalism School's annual conference on Literary Non-fiction. Hampton has guest-lectured at Columbia University, Yale, Stanford, Colorado College, SMU, the Autry Museum of the American West, and the National World War II Museum, among other institutions. He has appeared as a guest on such national broadcasts as The American Experience, the Today Show, Book TV, the History Channel, Fresh Air, CNN, CBS Sunday Morning, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and NPR's "All Things Considered."

Would you like to read this book? You can buy it on Amazon by clicking HERE. 

 

Drawing on thousands of pages of recently discovered government documents, wiretap transcripts, and Al Capone’s handwritten personal letters, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Eig tells the dramatic story of the rise and fall of the nation’s most notorious criminal in rich new detail.

 

From the moment he arrived in Chicago in 1920, Capone found himself in a world of limitless opportunity. He was an impetuous, affable young man of average intelligence, ill prepared for fame and fortune, whose most notable characteristic was his scarred left cheek. Yet within a few years, Capone controlled an illegal bootlegging business with annual revenue rivaling that of some of the nation’s largest corporations. Along the way he corrupted the Chicago police force and local courts while becoming one of the world’s first international celebrities.

A furious President Herbert Hoover insisted that Capone be brought to justice because the criminal was making a mockery of federal law. Legend credits Eliot Ness and his “Untouchables” with apprehending Capone. But it was the U.S. attorney in Chicago and little-known agents working on direct orders from the White House who compromised their ethics—and risked their lives—to get their man.

The most infamous crime attributed to Capone was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, a crime that Capone insisted he didn’t commit. Using newly discovered FBI records, Eig offers a surprising explanation for the murders.

Get Capone explores every aspect of the man called “Scarface,” paying particular attention to the myths that have for so long surrounded and obscured him. Capone emerges as a worldly, emotionally complex man, doomed as much by his ego as by his vicious criminality. This is the real Al Capone. 

The author, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, brings his uncompromising standards for research and his superb knack for storytelling to one of the most thrilling stories in American history. This eye-opening biography reveals that Capone was the target of one of the most intense criminal investigations in American history — with orders coming directly from the White House. And, despite his many misdeeds, Capone may have been the victim of a rigged trial.

Jonathan Eig (born April 26, 1964) is a best-selling American author. His first newspaper job was with the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Eig is a former staff writer for The Wall Street Journal, and he remains a contributing writer there. Eig has published magazine stories in Esquire, The New Republic, Men's Health, and other publications. He is the author of "Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig". His new book, "Get Capone", is based on newly released IRS records and thousands of pages of never-before-released Justice Department files on the investigation of Al Capone. On January 12, 2010, the Chicago Police Department reopened the 1939 murder case of Edward O'Hare to set the record straight about the role O’Hare played in Capone’s conviction based on documents uncovered by Eig and detailed in "Get Capone."

Would you like to read this book? You can buy it on Amazon by clicking HERE.

In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, Susannah Charleson clipped a photo from the newspaper: an exhausted canine handler, face buried in the fur of his search-and-rescue dog. A dog lover and pilot with search experience herself, Susannah was so moved by the image that she decided to volunteer with a local canine team and soon discovered firsthand the long hours, nonexistent pay, and often heart-wrenching results they face. 

Still she felt the call, and once she qualified to train a dog of her own, she adopted Puzzle, a strong, bright Golden Retriever puppy who exhibited unique aptitudes as a working dog but who was less interested in the role of compliant house pet. Puzzle's willfulness and high drive, both assets in the field, challenged even Susannah, who had raised dogs for years.

Scent of the Missing is the story of Susannah and Puzzle's adventures together and of the close relationship they forge as they search for the lost--a teen gone missing, an Alzheimer's patient wandering in the cold, signs of the crew amid the debris of the space shuttle Columbia disaster. From the earliest air-scent lessons to her final mastery of whole-body dialog, Puzzle emerges as a fully collaborative partner in a noble enterprise that unfolds across the forests, plains, and cityscapes of the Southwest. Along the way Susannah and Puzzle learn to read the clues in the field, and in each other, to accomplish together the critical work neither could do alone and to unravel the mystery of the human/canine bond.

To listen to an audio excerpt, click HERE.

Susannah Charleson was first published under her given name in 1981. A content provider before the term became an idiom, she has written magazine and newsletter articles, multimedia productions, PSAs, news stories, commercials, features and movie reviews for commercial radio, Web content for publisher Thomson/Wadsworth, radio theatre and parody for public radio, catalogue copy for a vintage jewelry store, and serial fiction on AOL. She is a flight instructor and canine search-and-rescue team member in the United States. Her search partner Puzzle is a Golden Retriever certified for the rescue/recovery of missing persons in urban, wilderness, disaster and scent discrimination searches. Susannah and Puzzle share their home with a rabble of Pomeranians, cats and a fish named Sound Bite. This is her first book.

Kristin van Ogtrop knows she's lucky—fulfilling career, great husband, three healthy kids, and, depending on the hamster count, an impressive roster of pets. She also knows she is tired. Always.

Using stories and insights from her own life, she provides a lexicon for the half-insane working mom. Anyone who has left a meeting to race to the Halloween parade immediately understands van Ogtrop's definition of "Kill the messenger" as The action you must take in order to forget about the office for a time—that is, to remove your Blackberry/Treo/iPhone/whatever from your person and store it as far away as your neurotic self will allow." 

Filled with essays, lists, and resonant observations, JUST LET ME LIE DOWN establishes van Ogtrop as the Erma Bombeck of the new millennium.

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Kristin van Ogtrop is the editor of Real Simple magazine and has held positions at Glamour,Vogue, Travel & Leisure, and Premiere. She lives outside New York City with her family.

The roots of the mortgage bubble and the story of the Wall Street collapse-and the government's unprecedented response-from our most trusted business journalist.

The End of Wall Street is a blow-by-blow account of America's biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression. Drawing on 180 interviews, including sit-downs with top government officials and Wall Street CEOs, Lowenstein tells, with grace, wit, and razor-sharp understanding, the full story of the end of Wall Street as we knew it. Displaying the qualities that made When Genius Failed a timeless classic of Wall Street-his sixth sense for narrative drama and his unmatched ability to tell complicated financial stories in ways that resonate with the ordinary reader-Roger Lowenstein weaves a financial, economic, and sociological thriller that indicts America for succumbing to the siren song of easy debt and speculative mortgages.

The End of Wall Street is rife with historical lessons and bursting with fast-paced action. Lowenstein introduces his story with precisely etched, laserlike profiles of Angelo Mozilo, the Johnny Appleseed of subprime mortgages who spreads toxic loans across the landscape like wild crabapples, and moves to a damning explication of how rating agencies helped gift wrap faulty loans in the guise of triple-A paper and a takedown of the academic formulas that-once again- proved the ruin of investors and banks. Lowenstein excels with a series of searing profiles of banking CEOs, such as the ferretlike Dick Fuld of Lehman and the bloodless Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, and of government officials from the restless, deal-obsessed Hank Paulson and the overmatched Tim Geithner to the cerebral academic Ben Bernanke, who sought to avoid a repeat of the one crisis he spent a lifetime trying to understand-the Great Depression.

Finally, we come to understand the majesty of Lowenstein's theme of liquidity and capital, which explains the origins of the crisis and that positions the collapse of 2008 as the greatest ever of Wall Street's unlearned lessons. The End of Wall Street will be essential reading as we work to identify the lessons of the market failure and start to rebuild. 

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Roger Lowenstein, an American financial journalist, reported for the Wall Street Journal for more than a decade, including two years writing its "Heard on the Street" column, 1989 to 1991. Before becoming a full time journalist, Lowenstein was an attorney with various New Jersey law firms. Lowenstein has published three books and co-authored one. In addition, he has written for many publications, including Smart Money and The New York Times. Lowenstein is a regular book reviewer for The New York Times and has written a number of major articles and cover stories for the The New York Times Magazine. He is also a director of Sequoia Fund. His father, Louis Lowenstein, was an attorney and Columbia University law professor who wrote books and articles critical of the American financial industry.

College golf is the breeding ground for the PGA, and the sport’s overlooked chapter. And in 1995 college golf saw its ultimate showdown. At the NCAA championship, a freshman who would become the sport’s biggest icon stood on the green in a sudden-death playoff that would settle the score in a tense and heated rivalry. Would Tiger Woods sink the putt?

Based on exhaustive reporting and interviews, The Last Putt tells the story of an epic rivalry that encapsulated the changing face of the game. On one side was Oklahoma State, a true golfing dynasty featuring the young bloods of a privileged golf family and a coach whose winning record and reputation for toughness made him a mythical figure. On the other side was Stanford, born of the creative recruiting of an unforgettable group of players: Notah Begay (golf ’s first prominent Native American), Casey Martin (who broke down barriers by playing with a severe disability), and Tiger Woods.

A stirring ensemble tale of young men carving out their futures on and off the course, The Last Putt makes for compelling, stroke-for-stroke reading down to the last putt. 

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

BRIAN MURPHY is a golf columnist for Yahoo! Sports and the host of the popular Murph and Mac morning radio show in San Francisco. From 2001 to 2004 he was the national golf writer at the San Francisco Chronicle.

NEIL HAYES is an award-winning columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and the author of the acclaimed When the Game Stands Tall.

Seized throws open the hatch on the shadowy world of maritime shipping, where third-world governments place exorbitant liens against ships, pirates seize commercial vessels with impunity, crooks and con artists reign supreme on the docks and in the shipyards—and hapless owners have to rely on sea captain Max Hardberger to recapture their ships and win justice on the high seas.

A ship captain, airplane pilot, lawyer, teacher, writer, adventurer, and raconteur, Max Hardberger recovers stolen freighters for a living.  In Seized, he takes us on a real-life journey into the mysterious world of freighters and shipping, where fortunes are made and lost by the whims of the waves.  Desperate owners hire Max Hardberger to “extract” or steal back ships that have been illegitimately seized by putting together a mission-impossible team to sail them into international waters under cover of darkness.  It’s a high stakes assignment—if Max or his crew are caught, they risk imprisonment or death.

Seized takes readers behind the scenes of the multibillion dollar maritime industry, as he recounts his efforts to retrieve freighters and other vessels from New Orleans to the Caribbean, from East Germany to Vladivostak, Russia, and from Greece to Guatemala.  He resorts to everything from disco dancing to women of the night to distract the shipyard guards, from bribes to voodoo doctors to divert attention and buy the time he needs to sail a ship out of a foreign port without clearance.  Seized is adventure nonfiction at its best. 

To read an excerpt from Chapter One, click HERE.

MAX HARDBERGER has been an airplane pilot, a lawyer, a high school teacher, a writer, an adventurer, and a ship captain on commercial freighters. Unique in his area of expertise, he has been repossessing illegitimately seized freighters for the last eighteen years.  His adventures have been featured by NPR, the Learning Channel, and the L.A. Times, among other publications.  When not on the high seas, he lives in Louisiana.

A brilliant account—character-rich and darkly humorous—of how the U.S. economy was driven over the cliff.

The crucial question is this: Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages? Michael Lewis turns the inquiry on its head to create a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 best-selling Liar’s Poker. Who got it right? he asks. Who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception? And what qualities of character made those few persist when their peers and colleagues dismissed them as Chicken Littles? Out of this handful of unlikely—really unlikely—heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times.

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Michael Lewis (born October 15, 1960) is an American contemporary non-fiction author and financial journalist. His bestselling books include The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Liar's Poker, The New New Thing, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, Panic and Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood. He is currently a contributing editor to Vanity Fair.

Mayes’s affectionate and warm memoir vividly celebrates the lush abundance and charm of daily life in the Italian countryside.  

In this sequel to her New York Times bestsellers Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany, the celebrated “bard of Tuscany” (New York Times) lyrically chronicles her continuing, two-decades-long love affair with Tuscany’s people, art, cuisine, and lifestyle.

Frances Mayes offers her readers a deeply personal memoir of her present-day life in Tuscany, encompassing both the changes she has experienced since Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany appeared, and sensuous, evocative reflections on the timeless beauty and vivid pleasures of Italian life. Among the themes Mayes explores are how her experience of Tuscany dramatically expanded when she renovated and became a part-time resident of a thirteenth-century house with a stone roof in the mountains above Cortona, how life in the mountains introduced her to a “wilder” side of Tuscany–and with it a lively engagement with Tuscany’s mountain people. Throughout, she reveals the concrete joys of life in her adopted hill town, with particular attention to life in the piazza, the art of Luca Signorelli (Renaissance painter from Cortona), and the pastoral pleasures of feasting from her garden. Moving always toward a deeper engagement, Mayes writes of Tuscan icons that have become for her storehouses of memory, of crucible moments from which bigger ideas emerged, and of the writing life she has enjoyed in the room where Under the Tuscan Sun began.

With more on the pleasures of life at Bramasole, the delights and challenges of living in Italy day-to-day, and favorite recipes, Every Day in Tuscany is a passionate and inviting account of the richness and complexity of Italian life.

To read an excerpt from this book, click HERE.

FRANCES MAYES is the author of four books about Tuscany. The now-classic Under the Tuscan Sun–which was a New York Times bestseller for more than two and a half years and became a Touchstone movie starring Diane Lane. It was followed by Bella Tuscany and two illustrated books, In Tuscany and Bringing Tuscany Home. She is also the author of the novel, Swan, six books of poetry, and The Discovery of Poetry. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages.

"In this pleasant memoir about learning to live and eat "à la française," an American journalist married to a Frenchman inspires lessons in culinary détente.... [Bard's] memoir is really a celebration of the culinary season as it unfolded in their young lives together.... both sensuous and informative." (Publishers Weekly )

In Paris for a weekend visit, Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman—and never went home again.

Was it love at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slid effortlessly through her pavé au poivre, the steak'spink juices puddling into the buttery pepper sauce? LUNCH IN PARIS is a memoir about a young American woman caught up in two passionate love affairs—one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with French cuisine. Packing her bags for a new life in the world's most romantic city, Elizabeth is plunged into a world of bustling open-air markets, hipster bistros, and size 2 femmes fatales. She learns to gut her first fish (with a little help from Jane Austen), soothe pangs of homesickness (with the rise of a chocolate soufflé) and develops a crush on her local butcher (who bears a striking resemblance to Matt Dillon). Elizabeth finds that the deeper she immerses herself in the world of French cuisine, the more Paris itself begins to translate. French culture, she discovers, is not unlike a well-ripened cheese-there may be a crusty exterior, until you cut through to the melting, piquant heart.

Peppered with mouth-watering recipes for summer ratatouille, swordfish tartare and molten chocolate cakes, Lunch in Paris is a story of falling in love, redefining success and discovering what it truly means to be at home. In the delicious tradition of memoirs like A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun, this book is the perfect treat for anyone who has dreamed that lunch in Paris could change their life. 

Elizabeth Bard is an American journalist and art historian based in Paris. She has written about art, travel, fashion, design, and digital culture for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, Contemporary (Media Editor since 2002), Wired, ARTnews, Time Out and Fodor’s, among others. This is her first book.