Looks at Roosevelt's career as a young lawyer, his marriage to Eleanor, and his efforts to return to politics after his bout with polio

Ferdinand Ward was the Bernie Madoff of his generation-a supposed genius at making big money fast on Wall Street, who turned out to have been running a giant pyramid scheme that ultimately collapsed in one of the greatest financial scandals in American history. The son of a Protestant missionary and small-town pastor with secrets of his own to keep, Ward came to New York at twenty-one and in less than a decade, armed only with charm, energy, and a total lack of conscience, made himself the business partner of a former president of the United States and was widely hailed as the "Young Napoleon of Finance." In truth, he turned out to be a complete fraud, his entire life marked by dishonesty, cowardice, and contempt for anything but his own interests.Drawing from thousands of never-before-examined family documents, Geoffrey C. Ward traces his great-grandfather's rapid rise to riches and fame, and his even more dizzying fall from grace. There are mistresses and mansions along the way; fast horses, crooked bankers, and corrupt New York officials; courtroom confrontations and six years in Sing Sing; and Ferdinand's desperate scheme to kidnap his own son to get his hands on the estate his late wife had left the boy. A Disposition to Be Rich is a great story about a classic American con artist, told with boundless charm and dry wit by one of our finest historians.

Product Description: The vivid voices that speak from these pages are not those of historians or scholars. They are the voices of ordinary men and women who experienced—and helped to win—the most devastating war in history, in which between 50 and 60 million lives were lost...read more

Product Description: The vivid voices that speak from these pages are not those of historians or scholars. They are the voices of ordinary men and women who experienced—and helped to win—the most devastating war in history, in which between 50 and 60 million lives were lost...read more

A history of baseball explores the ways in which the it both influenced, and was influenced by, politics, racism, literature, and more

The Pulitzer Prize-winning musician offers his own take on jazz music as he discusses the secrets of listening to jazz, the different styles of various jazz musicians, its improvisational principles, and its influence on modern life and on one's view of the world around. 50,000 first printing.

Product Description: Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Portrays the lives of politicians, soldiers, and slaves during the Civil War

Highlighted by more than four hundred maps, photographs, and illustrations, a companion volume to the fall 2007 PBS television series chronicles the American experience of World War II, both on the battlefields and on the home front, as chronicled in the voices and experiences of ordinary men and women from four towns across the country, from 1941 to 1945. Simultaneous.

Product Description: The companion volume to the ten-part PBS TV series by the team responsible forThe Civil War and Baseball.Continuing in the tradition of their critically acclaimed works, Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns vividly bring to life the story of the quintessential American music—jazz...read more

The American Civil War was the largest war of the 19th century - the bloodiest and the most prolonged - and it marked a crossroads in American history. Three million men fought in it and over 600,000 died. This book includes a narrative history of the war, essays on various aspects of the war and extracts from contemporary diaries, letters and newspapers which help to evoke the times, events and people of this period in history.

Portrays the lives of politicians, soldiers, and slaves during the Civil War (view table of contents)

Presents the life of the first black heavyweight boxing champion, whose flamboyant personality and defiance of racial stereotypes in the early twentieth century often made him the object of public outrage and a target of law enforcement officials.

Based on the popular PBS-television series, the narrative from the landmark chronicle of the American West is accompanied by essays from seven renowned writers and historians--including N. Scott Momaday, Richard White, and David G. Gutierez--on various aspects of western history, along with more than four hundred illustrations. Reprint. (A PBS series, airing October to December 2003) (History)

Product Description: The four books that comprise Tigers and Tiger-Wallahs constitute a chronicle of the struggle to save this endangered species, told largely in the words of some of the extraordinary men who helped to wage it: Jim Corbett, Billy Arjan Singh, Valmik Thapar, and Geoffrey Ward...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

For many years historian and screenwriter Geoffrey C. Ward has been visiting the Indian jungles, drawn by their beauty and the mystery and power of the great endangered predator that has always ruled them--the tiger. In this intensely personal book, he combines history, biography and first-hand reporting to evoke the special appeal of India's forests and describes encounters with some of the 'tiger-wallahs' who have struggled against overwhelming odds to save the species from extinction. The remarkable tiger-wallahs covered here are Jim Corbett, the great destroyer of maneaters, who became a still greater conservationist; Billy Arjan Singh, the Spartan farmer who despises hunters and hunting, tried to return a tigress to the wild, and, all alone, carved out a national park; Fateh Singh Rathore, the uninhibited Rajput who cheerfully risked his life defending the jungles in his charge; and Valmik Thapar, the son of New Delhi intellectuals, who began as Fateh's disciple, became an authority in his own right, and now champions a new kind of conservation that may provide the tiger's only hope. An epilogue especially written for this edition brings the story of the tiger and its champions up to date. This evocative and well-illustrated book about a magnificent animal and its ablest defenders, one of the first to document the conflicts that plague efforts to save the species, will interest conservationists, ecologists and wildlife enthusiasts and appeal to a wide general readership.

The authors of The Civil War focus on the lives of two of the pioneers in the women's rights movement, examining their diverse backgrounds, beliefs, activism, and lasting influence on American history. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

Integrating material from his literary works, diaries, and letters with 150 photographs, this illustrated portrait of one of America's greatest writers follows Mark Twain from his Hannibal, Missouri, childhood, through his travels throughout the world, to his career as a journalist and author, accompanied by essays on Twain by contemporary scholars and authors. 100,000 first printing. (view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

The companion volume to the fall 1999 PBS-television film focuses on the lives of two of the pioneers in the women's rights movement--Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton--examining their diverse backgrounds, beliefs, activism, and lasting influence on American history. TV tie-in. 75,000 first printing. (view table of contents)

Based on the popular PBS-television series, the complete text of the landmark chronicle of the American West is accompanied by essays from seven renowned writers and historians--including N. Scott Momaday, Richard White, and David G. Gutierez--on various aspects of western history. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

A companion volume to the international 'Save the Tiger' campaign celebrates the magnificent tigers of the wild in a series of stunning full-color photographs that also document the threats to their natural habitat. 15,000 first printing.