Books

Biography

J. Randy Taraborrelli

JFK: Public, Private, Secret

The companion book to the bestselling “Jackie – Public, Private, Secret,” tells her husband, Jack Kennedy’s, side of the story. Breaking new ground with stunning research, the JFK presented in Taraborrelli’s definitive biography is a complex and endlessly fascinating historical figure despite - and maybe even because of - his many flaws. This book, which comes out in July, 2025, promises to be Taraborrelli’s twentieth New York Times best seller.

Jackie - Public, Private, Secret

Taraborrelli’s most successful book, debuting at Number Three on the New York Times best seller list in July 2023, portrays a Jackie never before seen or understood by her public. In a world where it’s difficult to imagine there’s more to say about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Taraborrelli does the seemingly impossible with this book by revealing new insights about one of the world’s most popular (and secretive!) figures.

Jackie, Janet & Lee: The Secret Lives of Janet Auchincloss and Her Daughters, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill

In yet another New York Times bestseller, Taraborrelli writes about Jackie’s mother, Janet, and sister, Lee. It’s a surprising family portrait in which mother and daughters come to life for the first time with all their many conflicts, animosities and reconciliations on full display. “Do you know what the secret to happily-ever-after is?” Janet once asked her daughters. “Money and Power,” she would answer. It was a lesson neither ever forgot.

Once Upon a Time: Behind the Fairytale of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier

In this New York Times bestseller, Taraborrelli writes about the complicated royal marriage of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco. It’s a love story like no other against a backdrop of royal intrigue and inner-family backstabbing that culminates with Grace banishing Rainier’s backstabbing sister, Princess Antoinette, from the kingdom.

The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty - OPTIONED

This never-before-told story of the Hilton hotel dynasty has an all-star cast that includes Elizabeth Taylor and Zsa Zsa Gabor. As the ambitious Conrad Hilton and his three troublesome sons – Nicky, Barron and Eric – make hotel history, their formidable wives conspire to get what they deserve from the family wealth.

Sinatra - Behind The Legend

The definitive biography of “Ol’ Blue Eyes,” is a gritty and sometimes grimy account of a man few knew and understood, but many idolized. It’s all here – the music, the controversies, the mob, the Kennedys… and all Frank’s many lovers…. in a wild and ride that never disappoints.

The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

In this New York Times bestseller, Taraborrelli explores the relationship between Marilyn and her mother, Gladys Baker, a paranoid schizophrenic, and Marilyn’s fears that she, too, suffers from the disease. While exploring her many demons, Marilyn’s unconventional psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, gets a little too close to the screen star for comfort.

Elizabeth

Yet another definitive, bestselling biography from Taraborrelli, this one is about one of the greatest movie stars of our time. All of Liz’s marriages and love affairs come into clear focus as Taraborrelli peels away many layers of insecurity and uncertainty to reveal a woman who was nothing if not a real survivor.

Michael Jackson - The Magic, The Madness, The Whole Story

Taraborrelli’s no-holds-barred biography of the enigmatic singer set the world on fire when it was first published back in 1998. Since that time, it has been republished dozens of times with comprehensive updates and remains a best seller in nearly every country. It’s the go-to book for anyone interested in the King of Pop and, making it all the more interesting, written by an author who was close friends with him since childhood.

Fantasy

Fiction

Jim DeFelice

Cyclops One

Cyclops One: America's most advanced airborne laser system. Capable of taking out a dozen missiles and warplanes from three hundred miles away, it will change the face of combat forever -- perhaps rendering war itself obsolete. Until the plane carrying it vanishes in a storm over the Canadian Rockies. With the specter of sabotage -- or something worse -- looming over the entire operation, America's top investigators are called onto the case. The best is Special Agent Andy Fisher, whose irreverent manner and unorthodox techniques have gained him the reputation as both a genius and a wild card within the FBI. As Fisher's investigation deepens, more questions emerge about the laser, the hypersecretive private agency that developed it, and the true motives of those involved in the Cyclops One project -- a conspiracy that may end with the beginning of World War III....

Leopards Kill

Former U.S. Army Special Forces soldier Jack Pilgrim has it all - big bucks, a successful security business with plush government contracts, a beautiful wife. Then Pilgrim's partner, Merc Conrad, goes missing in Afghanistan with a chunk of government cash and most of the company's assets. The CIA threatens to throw Pilgrim in jail if he doesn't find Merc and return the money. Pilgrim knows his business and his lifestyle are on the line, but Merc saved Jack's life three times while they served together in the army in Afghanistan, so Jack owes him. Determined to find Conrad, Pilgrim returns to Afghanistan. The country is in chaos as the United States prepares to pull out. Pilgrim follows Merc's trail to the border area of Pakistan; with every step he seems to descend deeper into hell. Rumor has it that Conrad has fielded a guerrilla army and is hot on the trail of Osama bin Laden. The farther into the uncharted border zone Jack Pilgrim goes, the larger the legend of Merc Conrad becomes. Pilgrim's odyssey into the Afghan badlands has him questioning his own reality, and the closer he seems to get to Conrad, the more peril he faces. If Jack Pilgrim wants to get out of Afghanistan alive, he may need Merc Conrad now more than ever.

The Helios Conspiracy

Rogue FBI agent Andy Fisher is visiting New York City for the first time after saving it from a terrorist attack when he discovers that the only woman he has ever loved has been murdered. Armed with a fresh cup of joe and his characteristic disdain for authority, Fisher disobeys orders and begins investigating. His former lover was a key employee of Icarus Sun Works. Her death threatens to delay plans to launch a satellite to harvest solar energy and beam it to earth as electricity. When perfected, the technology will power entire cities for literally pennies. When the rocket carrying the satellite into space mysteriously explodes, Fisher learns that the sabotage is only the start of a complicated Chinese government campaign to thwart the project and steal the technology. After falling in love with the woman who designed the rocket, the irascible and over-caffeinated FBI agent must find a way to save her from assassination―and protect the satellite system from a wide-ranging conspiracy that will stop at nothing to destroy it.

Threat Level Black

North Korean scientists have developed a new weapon -- the "E Bomb." It can render useless any electronic system within a ten-mile radius. Andy Fisher isn't sure such a device actually exists, but when a terrorist group claims to have acquired it -- along with a cache of deadly sarin gas -- he isn't going to take any chances.

The threat is more immediate than Fisher suspects: the terrorists are already proceeding toward their objective. With the lives of millions hanging in the balance, as well as the leadership of the free world, Fisher races against the clock to stop a nightmarish plague from being unleashed....

War Breaker

This is not your typical buddy comedy. James Greeley is an older black man, who was screwed by discrimination in the military and never got to pilot the B-50 and Michael O’Connell is a younger white man, who was screwed by the CIA but now needs him for a dangerous mission because he knows the location of the B –50, which contains a nuclear bomb. The retired Greeley is the only one who can fly it. The two men bicker, piss one another off but tolerate each other so they can survive.

Historical Fiction

The Bass Reeves Trilogy by Sidney Thompson (University of Nebraska Press)

Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves

Adapted for the Paramount+ series Lawmen: Bass Reeves, Executive Produced by Taylor Sheridan and starring David Oyelowo

Hell on the Border

Adapted for the Paramount+ series Lawmen: Bass Reeves, Executive Produced  by Taylor Sheridan and starring David Oyelowo

The Forsaken and the Dead

In 1884 Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves was arrested for murder and sent totheinfamous federal jail in Fort Smith, Arkansas. It was the single greatest setback of hisillustrious career, but it wouldn’t be his last mistake. In The Forsaken and the Dead we meet Reeves again. In the 1890s, past his prime, Reeves proceeds throughthe valleys and shadows of Indian and Oklahoma Territories. Despite his cautionandinnovations as a lawman and detective, his nation no longer seems a product of hisown making. While a modern world implodes around him and demons fromhis past haunt him, he remains resolute in his faith that he can be a steady rider on a palehorse.

Thriller Fiction

Non-Fiction

There’s a Boy in Here by Judy & Sean Barron

As a baby, Sean Barron seemed almost normal. But as he grew older, his behavior became increasingly strange and uncontrollable. Something was very, very wrong. When Judy Barron and her husband Ron sought professional help, they were told that their son suffered from an incurable condition that would only get worse. They had never heard of the word autism. For years, no conventional treatments worked. Sean rarely spoke and communicated through grunts and screams. They were determined to free him. Their love, rage and patience reached him at last. A new Sean Barron emerged to tell of the years stolen from him. His account is utterly fascinating. He remembers all of it – the fury, the isolation, the desperate desire to reach out and the terrifying fear that made it impossible - until his family’s courageous resolve finally released him. Told in the alternating voices of mother and son, There’s a Boy in Here is an astonishing chronicle of one family’s ordeal and the awakening that brought it to an end.

Presidents in Crisis by Mike Bohn

In riveting accounts of seventeen historic decisions, Michael Bohn calls on his own experience as the Director of the Situation Room as well as interviews with presidents and White House staffers to explain why national security crises are seldom as simple or straightforward as they seem from the outside. Everyone, from scholars to citizens, who wants to understand decision making at the highest levels will enjoy reading Bohn’s insights and analyses of presidential crisis management.

Jim DeFelice

American Wife

The widow of “American Sniper” Chris Kyle shares their private story: an unforgettable testament to the power of love and faith in the face of war and unimaginable loss, which is co-written with Jim DeFelice. In early 2013, Taya Kyle and her husband Chris were the happiest they ever had been. Their decade-long marriage had survived years of war that took Chris, a U.S. Navy SEAL, away from Taya and their two children for agonizingly long stretches while he put his life on the line in many major battles of the Iraq War. After struggling to readjust to life out of the military, Chris had found new purpose in redirecting his dedication to service to supporting veterans and their families. Their love had deepened, and, most special of all, their family was finally whole. Then, the unthinkable happened. On February 2, 2013, Chris and his friend Chad Littlefield were killed while attempting to help a troubled vet. The life Chris and Taya fought so hard to build together was shattered. In an instant, Taya became a single parent of two. A widow and young woman facing the rest of her life without the man she loved.

American Spirit

The "American Sniper" legacy continues: Taya Kyle celebrates the American Spirit in her inspiring new book. After losing her husband, Taya Kyle entered a period of deep grief. And yet the experience served as a catalyst for profound growth. Taya found her own reserve of strength with the help of the generous love and support of family and friends—and also many strangers across America, who selflessly shared their own stories of suffering, survival, and triumph. Inspired by her experience, Taya discovered her calling: spreading a message of how love, passion, and service can combine to help us persevere over personal pain and heal our communities. Working with trusted collaborator Jim DeFelice (co-author of American Sniper and American Wife), Taya tells her own story, as well as those of other Americans who have built extraordinary lives after traveling down life’s most difficult road. They embody the “American spirit” of resilience, faith, togetherness that has built the nation.

Code Name: Johnny Walker

In this unforgettable memoir by Johnny Walker and Jim DeFelice, the Navy SEALs’ most trusted translator—a man who is credited with saving countless American lives and became a legend in the special-ops community—tells his inspiring story. As the insurgency in Iraq intensified following the American invasion, U.S. Navy SEALs had to root terrorists from their lairs. Unsure of the local neighborhoods and unable to speak the local languages, they came to rely on one man to guide them and watch their backs. He was “terp” —an interpreter—with a job so dangerous they couldn’t use his real name. They named him Johnny Walker. Over the course of eight years, the Iraqi native traveled around the country with nearly every SEAL and special operations unit deployed there. He went on thousands of missions, saved dozens of SEAL and other American lives, and risked his own daily. Johnny Walker’s life is so remarkable that his tale reads like fiction. A “terp”; tells what it was like in Iraq during the American invasion and the brutal insurgency that followed. With inside details on SEAL operations and a humane understanding of the tragic price paid by ordinary Iraqis, Code Name: Johnny Walker reveals a side of the war that has never been told before.

Every Man a Hero: A Memoir of D-Day, the First Wave at Omaha Beach, and a World at War

The New York Times Bestseller | Winner of the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award 

Seventy-five years ago, he hit Omaha Beach with the first wave. Now D-Day legend Ray Lambert (1920- 2021) delivers one of the most remarkable memoirs of our time, a tour-de-force of remembrance evoking his role as a decorated World War II medic who risked his life to save the heroes of Normandy. At five a.m. on June 6, 1944, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Ray Lambert worked his way through a throng of nervous soldiers to a wind-swept deck on a troopship off the coast of Normandy, France. “Ray!” called his brother, Bill. Ray, head of a medical team for the First Division’s famed 16th Infantry Regiment, “This is going to be the worst yet,” Ray told his brother, who served alongside him throughout the war. The brothers parted. Their destinies lay ten miles away, on the bloodiest shore of Normandy. Less than five hours later, after saving dozens of lives and being wounded at least three separate times, Ray would lose consciousness in the shallow water of the beach under heavy fire. He would wake on the deck of a landing ship to find his battered brother clinging to life next to him. Every Man a Hero is the unforgettable story not only of what happened in the incredible and desperate hours on Omaha Beach, but of the bravery and courage that preceded them, throughout the Second World War—from the sands of Africa, through the treacherous mountain passes of Sicily, and beyond to the greatest military victory the world has ever known.

Fighting Blind - SCREENPLAY AVAILABLE

Fighting was a practiced routine for Lieutenant Ivan Castro. But when a mortar round struck the rooftop of his sniper’s post in Iraq, he found himself in a battle more difficult than he could have imagined. The direct hit killed two other soldiers and nearly claimed Castro’s life as well. Mangled by shrapnel and badly burned, Castro was medevac’d to Germany more dead than alive. His lungs were collapsed. He couldn’t hear. One eye had been blown out, the nerve to the other severed. In the weeks and months that followed, Castro would find that physical darkness was nothing compared to the emotional darkness of loss and despair. Desperate for a reason to live, he eventually fought his way back to health through exercise and a single-minded goal: running a marathon. Once he set his course, there was no stopping him. Stubborn to a point that at times bordered on insanity, he managed not only to recover but to return to active duty. Since 2007, he has run over two dozen marathons, including the Boston Marathon in 2013, where he was one of the runners diverted when the bombs exploded.

Kill Grandma For Me

In 1994, a thirteen-year-old honor student convinced her boyfriend to strangle her grandmother to prove his undying love, and then preceded to hold her little sister hostage, subjecting her to unimaginable horrors, in this disturbing true story of murder and depravity.

Omar Bradley: General at War

The first in depth biography of America’s Last Five-Star General. He was known as “the G.I. General”— humble, self-effacing, hard-working, reflecting the small-town virtues of the America whose uniform he wore. But those very virtues have led historians to neglect General Omar Bradley—until now. Bestselling author Jim DeFelice tells Bradley’s full story, and argues that the neglected G.I. General did more than any other to defeat Hitler in World War II.

Rangers at Dieppe

In the darkest days of 1942, an Allied force set out to capture the Nazi-occupied French port of Dieppe. More than two years had passed since the British had been humiliated at Dunkirk, and nearly nine months since the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The Germans held the continent in a death grip. Now, some six thousand British and Canadian troops were attempting to gain a foothold on Hitler's domain. Joining the crusaders were fifty hand-selected, specially-trained soldiers from a new commando unit. These were to be the first Americans to fight in Europe, and they would become known as the U.S. Army Rangers. The mission was doomed, but the bravery the Rangers displayed proved that Americans were every bit as tough as their allies and enemies. Drawn from firsthand accounts and historical documents, this is an unforgettable story of the forging of an American legacy that still endures today.

Swords of Lightning

They landed in a dust storm so thick the chopper pilot used dead reckoning and a guess to find the ground. Welcomed by a band of heavily armed militiamen, they climbed a mountain on horseback to meet the most ferocious warlord in Asia. They plotted a war of nineteenth-century maneuvers against a twenty-first-century foe. They trekked through minefields, sometimes past the mangled bodies of local tribesmen who’d shared food with them hours before. They saved babies and treated fractures, sewed up wounded who’d been transported from the battlefield by donkey. They found their enemy hiding in thick bunkers, dodged bullets from machine-gun-laden pickup trucks, and survived mass rocket attacks from vintage Soviet-era launchers. They battled the Taliban while mediating blood feuds between rival allies. They fought with everything they had, from smart bombs to AK-47s.The men they helped called them brothers. Hollywood called them the Horse Soldiers. They called themselves Green Berets—Special Forces ODA 595.

They Called Us “Lucky”

At first, they were “Lucky Lima.” Infantryman Ruben Gallego and his brothers in Lima Company—3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, young men drawn from blue-collar towns, immigrant households, Navajo reservations—returned unscathed on patrol after patrol through the increasingly violent al Anbar region of Iraq, looking for weapons caches and insurgents trying to destabilize the nascent Iraqi government. After two months in Iraq, Lima didn't have a casualty, not a single Purple Heart, no injury worse than a blister. Lucky Lima. Then, in May 2005, Lima’s fortunes flipped. Unknown to Ruben and his fellow grunts, al Anbar had recently become a haven for al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The bin Laden-sponsored group had recruited radicals from all over the world for jihad against the Americans. On one fateful day, the Americans were lured into a death house; the ambush cost the lives of two men, including a platoon sergeant. Two days later, Ruben’s best friend, Jonathon Grant, died in an IED attack, along with several others. Events worsened from there. A disastrous operation in Haditha in August claimed the lives of thirteen Marines when an IED destroyed their amphibious vehicle. It was the worst single-day loss for the Marines since the 1983 Beirut bombings. By the time 3/25 went home in November, it had lost more men than any other single unit in the war. Forty-six Marines and two Navy Corpsmen serving with the battalion in Iraq were killed in action during their roughly nine-month activation. They Called Us “Lucky” details Ruben Gallego’s journey and includes harrowing accounts of some of the war’s most costly battles. It details the struggles and the successes of Ruben—now a member of Congress—and the rest of Lima Company following Iraq, examining the complicated matter of PTSD.

Vera v. Trump - SCREENPLAY

Based on a true story

Long before he bullied his way to president, Donald Trump was pushing people and politicians around in Atlantic City, where he built a series of mega casinos and attempted to monopolize the city and its public boardwalk. One person stood in his way – Vera Coking, a feisty woman in her early 70s. This is the story of how Vera, with the help of Philly mob lawyer turned good guy crusader Glenn Zeitz, beat Trump, handing the narcissistic developer his first defeat in court as well as the public eye.

Whatever it Took

One of the few living members of the Greatest Generation shares his experiences at last in one of the most remarkable World War II stories ever told. As the Allied Invasion of Normandy launched in the predawn hours of June 6, 1944, Henry Langrehr, an American paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne, was among the thousands of Allies who parachuted into occupied France. Surviving heavy anti-aircraft fire, he crashed through the glass roof of a greenhouse in Sainte-Mère-Église. While many of the soldiers in his unit died, Henry and other surviving troops valiantly battled enemy tanks to a standstill. Then, on June 29, Henry was captured by the Nazis. The next phase of his incredible journey was beginning. He was kept for a week in the outer ring of a death camp, and witnessed the Nazis' unspeakable brutality - the so-called Final Solution, with people marched to their deaths, their bodies discarded like cords of wood. Transported to a work camp, he endured horrors of his own when he was forced to live in unbelievable squalor and labor in a coal mine with other POWs. Knowing they would be worked to death, he and a friend made a desperate escape. When a German soldier cornered them in a barn, the friend was fatally shot; Henry struggled with the soldier, killing him and taking his gun. Perilously traveling westward toward Allied controlled land on foot, Henry faced the great ethical and moral dilemmas of war firsthand, needing to do whatever it took to survive. Finally, after two weeks behind enemy lines, he found an American unit and was rescued.

West Like Lightning

On the eve of the Civil War, three American businessmen launched an audacious plan to create a financial empire by transforming communications across the hostile territory between the nation’s two coasts. In the process, they created one of the most enduring icons of the American West: the Pony Express. Daring young men with colorful names like “Bronco Charlie” and “Sawed-Off Jim” galloped at speed over a vast and unforgiving landscape, etching an irresistible tale that passed into myth almost instantly. Equally an improbable success and a business disaster, the Pony Express came and went in just eighteen months, but not before uniting and captivating a nation on the brink of being torn apart. Jim DeFelice’s brilliantly entertaining West Like Lightning is the first major history of the Pony Express to put its birth, life, and legacy into the full context of the American story.

Brian Garfield

The 1,000 Mile-War – OPTIONED

The Thousand-Mile War, a powerful story of the battles of the United States and Japan on the bitter rim of the North Pacific, has been acclaimed as one of the great accounts of World War II. Brian Garfield, a novelist and screenwriter whose works have sold some 20 million copies, was searching for a new subject when he came upon the story of this "forgotten war" in Alaska. He found the history of the brave men who had served in the Aleutians so compelling and so little known that he wrote the first full-length history of the Aleutian campaign, and the book remains a favorite among Alaskans.

The war in the Aleutians was fought in some of the worst climatic conditions on earth for men, ships, and airplanes. The sea was rough, the islands craggy and unwelcoming, and enemy number one was always the weather--the savage wind, fog, and rain of the Aleutian chain. The fog seemed to reach even into the minds of the military commanders on both sides, as they directed men into situations that so often had tragic results. Frustrating, befuddling, and still the subject of debate, the Aleutian campaign nevertheless marked an important turn of the war in favor of the United States.
Now, half a century after the war ended, more of the fog has been lifted. In the updated University of Alaska Press edition, Garfield supplements his original account, which was drawn from statistics, personal interviews, letters, and diaries, with more recently declassified photographs and many more illustrations.

The Meinertzhagen Mystery

Tall, handsome, charming Col. Richard Meinertzhagen (1878–1967) was an acclaimed British war hero, a secret agent, and a dean of international ornithology. His exploits inspired a square in Jerusalem is dedicated to his memory. Meinertzhagen was trusted by Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben Gurion, T. E. Lawrence, Elspeth Huxley, and a great many others. He bamboozled them all. Meinertzhagen was a fraud. Many of the adventures recorded in his celebrated diaries were imaginary, including a meeting with Hitler while he had a loaded pistol in his pocket, an attempt to rescue the Russian royal family in 1918, and a shoot-out with Arabs in Haifa when he was seventy years old. He was a key player in Middle Eastern events after World War I, and during the 1930s he represented Zionism's interests in negotiations with Germany. But he also set up Nazi front organizations in England, committed a half-century of major and costly scientific fraud, and -- oddly -- may have been innocent of many killings to which he confessed (e.g., the murder of his own polo groom -- a crime of which he cheerfully boasted, although the evidence suggests it never occurred at all). Further, he may have been guilty of at least one homicide of which he professed innocence. A compelling read about a flamboyant rogue, The Meinertzhagen Mystery shows how recorded history reflects not what happened, but what we believe happened.

Stephen L. Harris

Duty, Honor, Privilege

On September 29, 1918, a regiment of volunteers from New York State, many of them wealthy boys from Manhattan, attacked the famed Hindenburg Line, one of the strongest defensive systems ever devised. In the tradition of the Union Army’s heroic assaults on Confederate entrenchments during the closing battles of the Civil War, the doughboys hurled themselves at the center of a desperate but still powerful army. At a frightful cost, they broke the enemy and, just as their Union forebears had done, helped bring a terrible war to a close.

Interweaving extracts from letters, diaries, and previously published accounts, Duty, Honor, Privilege follows the patrician 7th New York Infantry Regiment from the spring of 1917 when war is declared, through its merger with the plebian 1st Regiment from upstate New York (forming the 107th), to training with the British in France and the heroic attack on the Hindenburg Line. Finally, we witness their triumphant welcome-home parade, still believed to be the biggest parade in New York City history.

Hitler’s Gold - TREATMENT

HITLER’S GOLD is a true, action-filled love story set against the one of the most spectacular and controversial Olympics of all-time—the 1936 Nazi Games in Berlin. Cinematographer Leni Riefenstahl had an affair with American athlete, Glenn Morris. Leni’s earlier documentary, Triumph of the Will, catapulted Adolph Hitler onto the international scene—allowing her to undertake Olympia, considered the best sports film ever made. Glenn Morris, the Olympic decathlon champion who, in 1936, is known as the “world’s greatest athlete.”

Looking for Miss America by Margot Mifflin

Looking for Miss America is a fast-paced narrative history of a contradictory institution. From its start in 1921, this ever-changing institution has been shaped by war, evangelism, the rise of television and reality TV, and, significantly, by contestants who confounded expectations. Spotlighting individuals, from Yolande Betbeze, whose refusal to pose in swimsuits led an angry sponsor to launch the rival Miss USA contest, to the first black winner, Vanessa Williams, who received death threats and was protected by sharpshooters in her hometown parade, Margot Mifflin shows how women made hard bargains even as they used the pageant for economic advancement. The pageant’s history includes, crucially, those it excluded; the notorious Rule Seven, which required contestants to be “of the white race,” was retired in the 1950s, but no women of color were crowned until the 1980s. In rigorously researched, vibrant chapters that unpack each decade of the pageant, Looking for Miss America examines the heady blend of capitalism, patriotism, class anxiety, and cultural mythology that has fueled this American ritual.

Prisoner of the Swiss: A World War II Airmen’s Story by Rob Morris & Daniel Culler

During World War II, 1,517 members of US aircrews were forced to seek asylum in Switzerland. Most neutral countries found reason to release US airmen from internment, but Switzerland took its obligations under the Hague Convention more seriously than most. The worst of these camps was Wauwilermoos, where at least 161 U.S. airmen were sent for the honorable offense of escaping. To this hellhole came Dan Culler, the author of this incredible account of suffering and survival. Not only did the prisoners sleep on lice-infested straw, but were malnourished and had virtually no hygiene facilities or access to medical care. Worse, the commandant of Wauwilermoos was a diehard Swiss Nazi. He allowed the criminal occupants of the camp to torture and rape Dan Culler with impunity. Dan Culler’s courage and determination kept him alive. Finally making it back home, he found he had been abandoned again. Political expediency meant there was no such place as Wauwilermoos. He has never been there, so he has never been a POW and didn't qualify for any POW benefits or medical or mental treatment for his many physical and emotional wounds. His struggle to make his peace with his past forms the final part of the story.

To Catch A Spy: The Art of Counterintelligence by James M. Olson

In To Catch a Spy: The Art of Counterintelligence, former Chief of CIA counterintelligence James M. Olson offers a wake-up call for the American public, showing how the US is losing the intelligence war and how our country can do a better job of protecting its national security and trade secrets.

Open Skies by Niloofar Rahmani & Adam Sikes

In 2010, for the first time since the Soviets, Afghanistan allowed women to join the armed forces, and Niloofar Rahmani entered Afghanistan’s military academy.

Rahmani had to break through social barriers (including harassment from Afghani soldiers and women who also wanted to be in the army) to demonstrate confidence, leadership, and decisiveness—essential qualities for a pilot. She performed the first solo flight of her class—ahead of all her male classmates—and in 2013 became Afghanistan’s first female fixed-wing air force pilot. When the Taliban heard about her success, they shot her brother and tried to assassinate her.The US State Department honored Rahmani with the International Women of Courage Award and brought her to the United States to meet Michelle Obama and fly with the US Navy’s Blue Angels. But when she returned to Kabul, the danger to her and her family had increased significantly.

University of Nebraska

Ancient Furies by Anastasia V. Saporito with Donald L. Saporito

Wealth and family privilege are no match for the brutal forward march of two armies intent on eliminating each other. As a teenager, Anastasia Saporito discovered that as she and her family found themselves exiled, vulnerable, and losing their social standing and accumulated riches as the Soviet and German armies converged during World War II. Saporito recounts in vivid detail the difficulties of her childhood as the daughter of White Russian aristocrats forced to flee their native Russia for refuge in Yugoslavia. In Ancient Furies Saporito skillfully depicts her family, her own struggles as a girl coming of age in war-torn central Europe, and the devastation incurred as a result of Nazi actions toward civilian populations of occupied countries. Personal recollections are the basis of this memoir, but the trials and tribulations faced by this young woman sheds light on the often-hidden experiences of the once-wealthy elite of central and eastern Europe as the Nazi war machine tore through Europe. Saporito brings a different civilian experience of World War II into the open.

Bitterroot by Susan Devan Harness

Susan Devan Harness traces her journey to understand the complexities and struggles of being an American Indian child adopted by a white couple and living in the rural American West. When Harness was fifteen years old, she questioned her adoptive father about her “real” parents. He replied that they had died in a car accident not long after she was born—except they hadn’t.

Harness’s search for answers revolved around her need to know why she was the target of racist remarks and why she seemed always to be on the outside looking in. New questions followed her through college and into her twenties when she started her own family. Meeting her biological family in her early thirties generated even more questions. In her forties Harness decided to get serious about finding answers. She talked with other transracial adoptees. In her fifties she realized that the concept of “home” she had attributed to the reservation existed only in her imagination.

Making sense of her family, the American Indian history of assimilation, and the concept of race helped Harness answer the questions of stereotypes, a sense of nonbelonging, the meaning of family, and the importance of forgiveness and self-acceptance. In the process Bitterroot also provides a deep and rich context in which to experience life.

The Black Bruins by James W. Johnson - OPTIONED

The Black Bruins chronicles the inspirational lives of five Black athletes who faced racial discrimination as teammates at UCLA in the late 1930s. Best known among them was Jackie Robinson, a four‑star athlete for the Bruins who went on to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball and become a leader in the civil rights movement after his retirement. Joining him were Kenny Washington, Woody Strode, Ray Bartlett, and Tom Bradley—the four played starring roles in an era when fewer than a dozen major colleges had black players on their rosters. Kenny Washington became the first African American player to sign with an NFL team in the post–World War II era and later became a Los Angeles police officer and actor. Woody Strode, a Bruins football and track star, broke into the NFL with Washington in 1946 as a Los Angeles Ram and went on to act in at least fifty‑seven full-length feature films. Ray Bartlett, a football, basketball, baseball, and track athlete, became the second African American to join the Pasadena Police Department. Tom Bradley, a runner for the Bruins’ track team, spent twenty years fighting racial discrimination in the Los Angeles Police Department before being elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.

Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment by Brian G. Shellum

An unheralded military hero, Charles Young (1864–1922) was the third black graduate of West Point, the first African American national park superintendent, the first black U.S. military attaché, the first African American officer to command a Regular Army regiment, and the highest-ranking black officer in the Regular Army until his death. Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment tells the story of the man who served as a standard-bearer for his race in the officer corps for nearly thirty years, and who, if not for racial prejudice, would have become the first African American general. Young was shuffled among the few assignments deemed suitable for a black officer in a white man’s army—the Buffalo Soldier regiments and diplomatic posts in black republics such as Liberia. Nonetheless, he used his experience to establish himself as an exceptional cavalry officer. He was a colonel on the eve of the United States’ entry into World War I, when serious medical problems and racial intolerance denied him command and ended his career.

The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman by Margot Mifflin - OPTIONED

In 1851 Olive Oatman was a thirteen-year-old traveling west toward Zion, with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her family was brutally killed by Yavapai Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohave, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own. She was fully assimilated and perfectly happy when, at nineteen, she was ransomed back to white society. She became an instant celebrity, but the price of fame was high and the pain of her ruptured childhood lasted a lifetime.   Based on historical records, including letters and diaries of Oatman’s, The Blue Tattoo is the first book to examine her life from her childhood in Illinois—including the massacre, her captivity, and her return to white society—to her later years as a wealthy banker’s wife in Texas.  .

Burning the Breeze by Lisa Hendrickson – OPTIONED

WILLA Literary Award Finalist in Creative Nonfiction 
Finalist, Evans Handcart Award

In the middle of the Great Depression, Montana native Julia Bennett arrived in New York City with no money and an audacious business plan: to identify and visit easterners who could afford to spend their summers at her new dude ranch near Ennis, Montana. Julia, a big-game hunter whom friends described as “a clever shot with both rifle and shotgun,” flouted gender conventions to build guest ranches in Montana and Arizona that attracted world-renowned entertainers and artists.

Burning the Breeze is the story of three generations of women and their intrepid efforts to succeed in the American West. Excerpts from diaries, letters, and scrapbooks, along with rare family photos, help bring their vibrant personalities to life.

Born Under an Assumed Name by Sara Mansfield Taber

From literary journalist Sara Mansfield Taber comes a deep and wondrous memoir of her exotic childhood as the daughter of a covert CIA operative. Born under an Assumed Name portrays the thrilling and confusing life of a girl growing up abroad in a world of secrecy and diplomacy—and the heavy toll it takes on her and her father. As Taber leads us on a tour through the alluring countries to which her father is assigned, we track two parallel stories—those of young Sara and her Cold War spy father. Sara struggles for normalcy as the family is relocated to cities in North America, Europe, and Asia, and the constant upheaval eventually exacts its price. Only after a psychiatric hospitalization at age sixteen in a U.S. Air Force hospital with shell-shocked Vietnam War veterans does she come to a clear sense of who she is. This is the question at the heart of this elegant and sophisticated work: what does it mean to be an American? In this fascinating, painful, and ultimately exhilarating coming-of-age story, young Sara confronts generosity, greatness, and tragedy—all that America heaps on the world.

Bullets, Bombs and Fast Talk by James Botting

A desperate gunman holds a planeload of innocent passengers hostage. A heavily armed cult leader refuses to leave his compound, threatening mass suicide by a hundred of his brainwashed followers. A neo-Nazi militant in a cabin hideout keeps federal agents at bay with gunfire. A baby disappears; his only trace is an ominous ransom call to his parents. Prisoners riot, threatening the lives of prison officers and hundreds of other inmates. How do you react? What do you do? What do you say? Your words, your actions can save lives—or lose them. James Botting faced these challenges and daily pressures during a fascinating and demanding twenty-five-year career as an FBI hostage negotiator. He found himself involved—sometimes peripherally, more often personally—in many of the FBI’s most famous events since the 1970s. From Ruby Ridge to Waco, Patty Hearst to Rodney King, and Wounded Knee to TWA 847, Botting was there and on the spot. He vividly describes these events and more as only a participant can. He reviews the successes and the times the FBI fell short. He chillingly recounts a number of times when death seemed inevitable, only to come through unscathed. Botting pulls no punches with this gritty, detailed, and often humorous insider’s account of life at the end of a gun as an FBI hostage negotiator.

Duffy’s War by Stephen L. Harris

The legendary “Fighting 69th” took part in five major engagements during World War I. This highly decorated unit was inspired by its chaplain, the famous Father Francis Duffy (whose statue stands in Times Square), and commanded by the future leader of the OSS (predecessor of the CIA), “Wild Bill” Donovan. Due in large part to the classic 1940 movie The Fighting 69th, starring James Cagney and Pat O’Brien (as Duffy), the unit still has strong name recognition. But until now, no one has recounted in detail the full story of this famous Irish outfit in World War I. The exciting Duffy’s War brings to life the men’s blue-collar neighborhoods―Irish mostly and Italian and overwhelmingly Catholic. These boys came from the East Side, the West Side, Hell’s Kitchen, the Gashouse, and Five Points; from Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island City, and Staten Island; and from Father Duffy’s own parish in the Bronx. They streamed out of the tenements and apartment houses, enlisting en masse. Duffy’s War also tells the fascinating history of New York City and the Irish experience in America. With this book, Stephen L. Harris completes his outstanding trilogy on New York National Guard regiments in World War I.

Harlem’s Hell Fighters by Stephen L. Harris

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, thousands of African-American men volunteered to fight for a country that granted them only limited civil rights. Many from New York City joined the 15th N.Y. Infantry, a National Guard regiment later designated the 369th U.S. Infantry. These men not only received little instruction at their training camp in South Carolina but were frequent victims of racial harassment from both civilians and their white comrades. Once in France, they initially served as laborers, all while chafing to prove their worth as American soldiers. Then they got their chance. The 369th became one of the few U.S. units that American commanding general John J. Pershing agreed to let serve under French command. Donning French uniforms and taking up French rifles, the men of the 369th fought valiantly alongside French Moroccans and held one of the widest sectors on the Western Front. The entire regiment was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the French government’s highest military honor. Stephen L. Harris’s accounts of the valor of a number of individual soldiers make for exciting reading, especially that of Henry Johnson, who defended himself against an entire German squad with a large knife. After reading this book, you will know why the Germans feared the black men of the 369th and why the French called them “hell fighters.”

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