Books
Non-fiction
Cork Wars tells what happened when a 1940 Baltimore factory fire set off events that caught three families up perilously in World War II. The massive fire brought attention to U.S. reliance on cork imported from Europe and its importance for defense. (Before our age of plastics, industry used cork as a crucial sealant.) Rumors of Nazi sabotage put the cork industry and its people in a national security searchlight. The book reads like a thriller as the three family dramas intersect….
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Named an Amazon Best of the Month pick and one of the Best Books of 2009, Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America tells about a handful of people in the 1930s, a glimpse of America at a turning point. They were caught up in an effort to describe America in a series of travel guides. Through striking images and firsthand accounts, Soul of a People reveals their experiences, along with the most vivid excerpts from selected guides and interviews: Harlem schoolchildren, truckers, Chicago fishmongers, Cuban cigar makers, a Florida midwife, and Nebraskan…
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Ginseng, The Divine Root uncovers an epic tale of herbal medicine and the plant prized for centuries by emperors, healers, and smugglers. Collected by Daniel Boone, ginseng was one of North America’s first major exports to Asia. The book tracks the plant through one season, following its wild ride from remote forests in Appalachia to markets in China, a journey laced with crime, myths, gourmet cuisine, pop culture, and continental drift. Learn more at Algonquin Books. Hear David on Good Food and A Chef’s Table. Also hear NPR interviews on the Kojo Nnamdi Show, and Wisconsin…
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Discover the epic naval story of the war that threatened to undo our nation in 1812. Riveting firsthand accounts enliven this official sea-level view of the conflict that proved American naval prowess a force to be reckoned with. Explore historic documents, letters, ephemera, and artifacts, including fascinating finds from the Navy’s most recent underwater excavation of the war’s lost ships. Featuring a colorful, diverse cast of characters–from sailors, spies, and ship’s surgeons to commodores, Navy wives, and privateers–and incorporating hundreds of photographs,…
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Tall Ship Odysseys is the story of Operation Sail, launched in the early 1960s and endorsed by President John F. Kennedy as an antidote to the Cold War. This beautifully illustrated volume containts the stories of scores of sailing vessels, their crews, and the people dedicated to making each OpSail occasion more spectacular than the last. Hundreds of historical and full-color photographs capture magnificent windjammers, from America’s training ship, the USCGC Eagle, to her counterparts from Britain, the Soviet Union, Ecuador, Japan, Indonesia, and other seafaring nations across the…
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Fiction
Success: Stories received the 2008 Washington Writers’ Publishing House fiction prize. This collection invites you into a dozen strange worlds, inside the lives of people caught in an increasingly intertwined world, close to home and abroad…
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Innovation and Business
Transformation of an Icon: ATCC and the New Business Model for Science, produced with bioscience innovator ATCC and The History Factory, received the 2017 Gold Stevie Award for Best Business Book.
