For 191 years the U.S. Supreme Court was populated only by men. When Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female justice in 1981, the announcement dominated the news. A pioneer who both reflected and shaped an era, in her 25 years as justice she was the swing vote in cases about some of the 20th century’s most controversial issues—including race, gender and reproductive rights.

LeRoy Robert Ripley rose to fame during the Great Depression, transforming himself into an entertainer who mesmerized the nation with his razzle-dazzle blend of homespun Americana and freakish oddities. Over three decades, his franchise grew into an entertainment empire. This is the story of the man who popularized the iconic phrase, and proof of why we still can't resist his challenge to 'Believe it, or not!'

For generations, Monopoly has been America's favorite board game, a love letter to unbridled capitalism and, for better or worse, the impulses that make our free-market society tick. An exhilarating game of no-holds-barred competition and brutal domination of opponents, it's a celebration of greed and accumulation of wealth with only one player standing at the end.

Explore the story of the March 1928 St. Francis Dam collapse, the second deadliest dasters in California history. The flood killed more than 400 people.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1950, US Army troops pushed north through the Korean peninsula to drive North Korea's Communist army out of democratically held South Korea. Within days, they were surrounded by more than 85,000 Chinese soldiers in the mountains by the Chosin Reservoir. View the intense battle in intimate detail in this vivid narrative of combat and survival in the first major military clash of the Cold War.

Chronicles the rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator who would test the limits of American decency and democracy.

Examine the origin, history and impact of the 1882 law that made it illegal for Chinese workers to come to America and for Chinese nationals already here ever to become U.S. citizens. The first in a long line of acts targeting the Chinese for exclusion, it remained in force for more than 60 years.

Smoking pipes are among the most commonly found artifacts at North American archaeological sites, affirming the prevalence and longevity of smoking as a cultural practice. Yet surprisingly this is the first study in historical archaeology to broadly interpret tobacco and smoking-related activities along with the clues they give about past societies. In The Archaeology of Smoking and Tobacco, Georgia Fox analyzes the archaeological record to survey...

From the early colonial period to the close of World War II, life in North America was predominantly agrarian and rural. Archaeological exploration of farmsteads unveils a surprising quantity of data about rural life, consumption patterns, and migrations across the continent. Mark Groover offers both case studies and an overview of current trends in farmstead archaeology in this exciting new work. He also proposes a research design and makes numerous...