A black woman recalls the anguish of her childhood in Arkansas and her adolescence in northern slums.

"More than two decades after teaching English during the early part of China's economic boom, an experience chronicled in his book River Town, Peter Hessler returned to Sichuan province to instruct students from the next generation. At the same time, Hessler and his wife enrolled their twin daughters in a local state-run elementary school, where they were the only Westerners. Over the years, Hessler had kept in close contact with many of the people...

Weaned on sentimental novels, Emma Bovary longs for a life of luxury and high romance. She is married to a kind but mediocre country doctor and is plagued by expectations of something more, some more intense experience, some wider horizon if she could only find it. She seeks to escape from boredom in extravagant shopping sprees and eventually, adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment and so begins her descent into ruin and despair.

Examines the intellectual deterioration of American politics, from Ronald Reagan to Dan Quayle, from George W. Bush to Sarah Palin, to its apotheosis in Donald J. Trump.

When Germany surrendered in May 1945 it was a nation reduced to rubble. Immediately, America, Britain, Soviet Russia, and France set about rebuilding in their zones of occupation. Most urgent were physical needs--food, water, and sanitation--but from the start the Allies were also anxious to indoctrinate the German people in the ideas of peace and civilization. Denazification and reeducation would be key to future peace, and the arts were crucial...

As the United States marks the 150th anniversary of our defining national drama, historian Adam Goodheart presents an original account of how the Civil War began. 1861 is an epic of courage and heroism beyond the battlefields. Early in that fateful year, a second American revolution unfolded, inspiring a new generation to reject their parents' faith in compromise and appeasement, to do the unthinkable in the name of an ideal. It set Abraham Lincoln...