"'It is impossible to understand China today without understanding the Cultural Revolution,' Tania Branigan writes. During this decade of Maoist fanaticism between 1966 and 1976, children turned on parents, students condemned teachers, and as many as two million people died for their supposed political sins, while tens of millions were hounded, ostracized, and imprisoned. Yet in China this brutal and turbulent period exists, for the most part, as...

"From former Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a gripping account of the January 6 committee, examining the forces that led to the attacks on the Capitol. On January 6, 2021, America watched in horror as a violent mob led by right-wing extremist groups stormed the U.S. Capitol in support of then-President Donald Trump. It was one of the darkest days in recent history, yet to former Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger it was also the culmination...

"Florida has long been viewed as a land of hope and endless possibilities. Visionaries seeking to establish new communities where they could escape the influences of society at large have turned to Florida to construct their utopias from the vast plantations of British philanthropists and entrepreneurs in the eighteenth century to the more exotic Koreshan Unity and its theory that humans live in the center of a Hollow Earth. Some came to the Sunshine...

A longtime LGBTQ and AIDS activist offers an account of his life from sexually liberated 1970s San Francisco, through the AIDS crisis, and up to his present-day involvement with the marriage equality battle. "Born in 1954, Cleve Jones was among the last generation of gay Americans who grew up wondering if there were others out there like himself. There were. Like thousands of other young people, Jones, nearly penniless, was drawn in the early 1970s...

"What the fight over whose image should appear on the $20 bill reveals about America's reckoning with racism, past and present. Black Movements Matter. So do the symbols that represent them. In a positive step toward greater diversity in official symbolism, on April 20, 2016, then Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that the image of Harriet Tubman would replace that of Andrew Jackson on the face of the US twenty-dollar bill. Reflecting on the year-long...

A remarkably illuminating biography of one of America's most fascinating political figures--including news-making revelations from Mitt Romney himself about dissension within today's Republican Party--written with his full cooperation by an award-winning writer at The Atlantic. Few figures in American politics have seen more and said less than Mitt Romney. An outspoken dissident in Donald Trump's GOP, he has made headlines in recent years for standing...

"For anyone who's ever picked an apple fresh from the tree or enjoyed a glass of cider, writer and orchardist Diane Flynt offers a new history of the apple and how it changed the South and the nation. Showing how southerners cultivated over 2,000 apple varieties from Virginia to Mississippi, Flynt shares surprising stories of a fruit that was central to the region for over 200 years. Colorful characters abound in this history, including aristocratic...

"When Nazis looked to flee Europe with stolen art, gems, and gold in tow, certain "neutral" countries were all too willing to assist them. By the end of January 1945, it was clear to Germany that the war was lost. The Third Reich was in freefall, and its leaders, apart from those clustered around Hitler in his Berlin bunker, sought to abscond before they were besieged. But they wanted to take their wealth with them. Their escape routes were diverse:...