The completion of the transcontinental railroad in May 1869 is usually told as a story of national triumph and a key moment for American Manifest Destiny. The railroad made it possible to cross the country in a matter of days instead of months, paved the way for new settlers to come out West, and helped speed America's entry onto the world stage as a modern nation that spanned a full continent. It also created vast wealth for its four owners, including...

"For decades now, America's national security state has grown ever bigger, ever more secretive and powerful, and ever more abusive. Only once did someone manage to put a stop to any of it. Senator Frank Church of Idaho was an unlikely hero. He led congressional opposition to the Vietnam War and had become a scathing, radical critic of what he saw as American imperialism around the world. But he was still politically ambitious, privately yearning for...

"As the production and consumption of commodities like grain, coal, lumber, coil steel, cement, and more have evolved over the years, so have the railroad cars that haul them. Commodities by Freight Car shows you which cars carried which cargoes in the era you model. In this book, you'll learn: how all-purpose boxcars, gondolas, and flats gave way to a dizzying variety of specialized freight cars for coil steel, lumber, flour, sugar, auto parts, and...

"Revisiting soothing network dramedies like Parenthood, Gilmore Girls, This is Us, and their late-80s precursor, thirtysomething, with a detour into True Blood (the funhouse mirror to these normy worlds), Normporn mines the nuanced pleasures, and attraction-repulsion queer TV viewers experience through liberal family shows-the outlets for our "spontaneous overflow of basic feelings.""--

"The first comprehensive examination of the nineteenth-century Ku-Klux Klan since the 1970s, Ku-Klux pinpoints the group's rise with startling acuity. Historians have traced the origins of the Klan to Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866, but the details behind the group's emergence have long remained shadowy. By parsing the earliest descriptions of the Klan, Elaine Frantz Parsons reveals that it was only as reports of the Tennessee Klan's mysterious and menacing...

"Hubert Humphrey, a fallen hero and a dying man, rose on rickety legs to approach the podium of the Philadelphia Convention Hall, his pulpit for the commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania. He clutched a sheaf of paper with his speech for the occasion, typed and double-spaced by an assistant from his extemporaneous dictation, and then marked up in pencil by Humphrey himself. A note on the first page, circled to draw particular attention,...

"The battle over the constitutionality of Roe v. Wade may be over, but now a bigger fight lies ahead. For over half a century, pro-life advocates have fought to protect the sanctity of human life. Now that the decision the pro-life community has been waiting and praying for has finally become a reality, a question remains: Now what? How do we continue to fight for justice-for the preborn, yes, but also for the poor, the vulnerable, and everyone who...

"A former police officer tells the story of how his eyes were opened to the hard truth that dehumanization, systemic racism, and brutality are endemic to the policing culture of the U.S. He then offers a hopeful new model not based in dominance and control with concrete suggestions for procedural justice and community policing"--

"In How We Give Now, Lucy Bernholz shows that philanthropy is more than writing a check and claiming a tax deduction. For most of us–the non-wealthy givers–philanthropy can be a way of living our values and fully participating in society. We give in all kinds of ways–shopping at certain businesses, canvassing for candidates, donating money, and making conscious choices with our retirement funds. We give our cash, our time, and...