Evan Barker didn’t just support the Democratic Party—she built her career inside it. From Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign to progressive fundraising networks, congressional races, and national political organizations, Barker spent years believing she was helping build a movement for working Americans. Then, little by little, that belief began to crack. In Nothing Left, Barker takes […]
The Expedition You Don’t Know
The Lewis and Clark expedition is often remembered as a heroic journey across an untamed American West. But the real story was far larger—and far more complicated. In This Vast Enterprise, Craig Fehrman reexamines the famous expedition through the people whose contributions, ambitions, and conflicts shaped its outcome. Alongside Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were […]
How Systems Lose Their Balance
What happens when institutions weaken, accountability fades, and too much power becomes concentrated in too few hands? In The Fix, former US Attorney Barbara McQuade explores how corruption, institutional pressure, misinformation, and declining public trust can gradually weaken democratic systems. Drawing on legal history, public policy, and real-world examples, she examines how organizations and governments […]
When Biology Becomes the Weapon
What if the next global catastrophe began with something no one could see? In Biological War, Annie Jacobsen imagines a genetically engineered airborne plague escaping from a high-security laboratory—and shows how quickly a single accident could spiral into a worldwide disaster. Within days, hospitals are overwhelmed, governments scramble to contain the outbreak, military forces mobilize, […]
Liberty’s Darkest Contradiction
America was founded on a revolutionary promise: all men are created equal. Yet at the very moment the nation embraced liberty, millions remained enslaved—and Native Americans were being pushed from their lands. In The Great Contradiction, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis examines the uncomfortable paradox at the heart of America’s founding. Through figures such […]
What Comes After Trump?
What happens when the political crisis is over—but the institutions left behind are fundamentally changed? In The Day After, progressive commentator Brian Tyler Cohen looks beyond the Trump era and asks what America should do next. His answer is not simply to restore old norms or return to politics as usual. Cohen argues that Democrats […]
Shipwrecked Far From Home🚢
In 1832, the American whaleship Mentor slammed into a reef near Palau, leaving its surviving crew stranded thousands of miles from home. But the shipwreck was only the beginning. What followed was an extraordinary struggle for survival involving dangerous ocean crossings, shifting alliances, captivity, starvation, violence, and desperate attempts at rescue. Some island communities welcomed […]
Can America Keep It?
What keeps a revolution from destroying the very freedoms it was meant to create? In Rage and the Republic, constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley looks back at the American and French Revolutions to explore why one produced an enduring republic while the other descended into terror. Through the lives and ideas of Thomas Paine, James Madison, […]
A Killer Hiding in Plain Sight
For more than two decades, the murders of Yolanda Sapp, Nickie Lowe, and Kathy Brisbois haunted Spokane, Washington. The three women, all connected through the same close-knit community, were shot and left near the Spokane River in 1990. Despite hundreds of suspects and years of investigation, the trail went cold. In By the River’s Edge, […]
We the People, Explained
What does the Constitution actually say—and why does it still shape nearly every major debate in American life? In The U.S. Constitution, constitutional law scholar Melissa Murray makes America’s founding document clear, accessible, and relevant. She traces its creation from the failures of the Articles of Confederation through the compromises of the Constitutional Convention, then […]
