Joanne Freeman

Discover the intricate channels of information exchange in the early American South with Informed Power. Alejandra Dubcovsky uncovers how oral networks, spies, scouts, traders, and more played a crucial role in circulating news across a region without regular mail or printing presses until the 1730s. This fascinating study challenges the notion of early colonial America as an uninformed backwater and reveals the ingenious ways people acquired timely news. Learn how exchanging information was key in establishing and maintaining relationships, articulating values, and enforcing priorities, intertwined with the region's social and geopolitical realities.

Discover the incredible bond between psychologist Irene M. Pepperberg and Alex, an African Grey parrot, as they challenge the scientific community with his ability to communicate and understand complex ideas. More than just a scientific breakthrough, Alex & Me is also a heartwarming love story and tribute to a beloved friend.

This American masterpiece is a deeply moving narrative of one family and the traditions of our national past. The story follows Lyman Ward, a retired professor of history who is confined to a wheelchair by a crippling bone disease. Amidst the chaos of the 1970s counterculture, he retreats to his ancestral home in Grass Valley, California to write a biography of his grandmother, an elegant and headstrong artist and pioneer who made her own journey through the hardscrabble West nearly 100 years prior. As he discovers her story, he excavates his own, probing the shadows of his experience and the America that has come of age around him.

Horace Greeley, the founder and editor of the New-York Tribune, was the most significant and polarizing American journalist of the 19th century. Charting Greeley's rise and eventual fall, James M. Lundberg explores the struggles of realizing the American national consensus. This is a lively and engaging account of print, politics, and the failures of American nationalism in the 19th century.

Get transported to a world where English magicians once commanded forests and summoned fairy servants, but now only write about magic in lengthy papers. That is, until Mr Norrell emerges from his reclusive life at Hurtfew Abbey with a library of forgotten books and the powers of England's magicians. He even manages to raise a woman from the dead, and creates ghostly fleets to support the war against Napoleon. But when a rival magician, the extroverted Jonathan Strange, appears, their differing ideas of what magic should be lead to a dangerous conflict. This is a sophisticated and witty historical novel with an enchanting world that will leave you wanting more.