Witty, incisive, at times prophetic, and always original, this collection offers the best of Peggy Noonan's writing. The book travels the path of her remarkable career, showing how she became one of the most influential voices in America. It begins with an essay about Noonan's motivations as a writer and thinker, followed by a personal talk on the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded and the drafting of the speech Ronald Reagan would soon deliver....

"How cool diary! My cousin Wendy is getting married! We're going to have a big party in the skies, with lots of family, dancing and yummy food. The best part? Claudia's coming too! We're about to have an icy blast at the royal wedding of the year! Granddad has even given us jobs as Royal Communications Officers. That's a fancy way of saying that we're going to help everything run as smooth as ice, Diary. I may have accidentally frozen the ballroom...

"A powerful, timely, dazzling collection of sonnets from one of America's most acclaimed poets, Terrance Hayes, the National Book Award winning author of Lighthead In seventy poems bearing the same title, Terrance Hayes explores the meanings of American, of assassin, and of love in the sonnet form. Written during the first two hundred days of the Trump presidency, these poems are haunted by the country's past and future eras and errors, its dreams...

" From an award-winning legal scholar, a stirring argument about the central role of citizen activists in shaping our nation's constitutional law Who determines whether gay Americans can marry? Who says whether citizens can own guns? And who decides on the fate of prisoners taken in the War on Terror? Most Americans would answer: the Supreme Court. While the rest of us stand by waiting for their decisions, the nine justices decide the fate of our...

It is 1851 and Mrs Rodd has received an unusual commission: wealthy businessman Jacob Welland is dying of consumption and implores our redoubtable detective to find his beloved brother, whom he has not seen for fifteen years. Joshua Welland was an Oxford scholar; brilliant, eccentric and desperately poor. Nobody can say exactly when he disappeared from his college, but he had taken to wandering the countryside and one day simply failed to return....

Dogs are getting lawyers. Cats are getting kidney transplants. Could they one day be fellow citizens? Cats and dogs were once wild animals. Today, they are family members and surrogate children. A little over a century ago, pets didn't warrant the meager legal status of property. Now, they have more rights and protections than any other animal in the country. Some say they're even on the verge of becoming legal persons. How did we get here, and what...

"A new collection of poetry by Douglas Kearney"--

"Most of us have said "If only I had more time" as a way of explaining why we don't pursue a dream goal. Marney Makridakis has found that when we say this kind of thing it's because our sense of time needs to be adjusted. What we need aren't more hours in the day but to change the way we experience them. Makridakis doesn't pretend that our time is infinite but is convincing that our "losing" or "lacking" it is a matter of perception. Each of her chapters...

Which pirate incubated chickens in camel-dung? What would Blackbeard do if you didn't hand over your jewellery (it wasn't nice)? Which pirate was called 'The Exterminator'? Where's the treasure buried? Why were two women dressed as men on the same pirate ship? Who made the Jolly Roger famous? And who was the greatest pirate ever? This history answers all these questions and many more; it is the ideal introduction to the facts behind the great legends...

"The George Floyd protests that have occasioned great changes throughout American society were not spontaneous events. Americans did not suddenly rise up in righteous anger, take to the streets, and demand not just that police departments be defunded, but that all structures, institutions, and systems, all our supposedly racist, be overhauled. The 12,000 or so demonstrations and 675 related riots took organizational muscle. The ideological grip on...