Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history's most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived: first-century Palestine, an age awash in apocalyptic fervor. Scores of Jewish prophets, preachers, and would-be messiahs wandered through the Holy Land, bearing messages from God. This was the age of zealotry--a fervent nationalism that made resistance...

When Owen met Haatchi, the lives of one adorable little boy and one great, big dog were destined to change forever. Owen -- known to his family as "little buddy" or "Little B" -- has a rare genetic disorder, Schwartz-Jampel syndrome, that leaves him largely confined to a wheelchair. Before being united with Haatchi, Little B was anxious and found it difficult to make friends. Haatchi -- an adorable Anatolian Shepherd puppy -- was abused and left for...

In the wild, Billie would have been free to wander the jungles of Asia surrounded by family. Instead, she was captured as a baby and shipped to America. For decades Billie crisscrossed the country, dazzling audiences while suffering daily neglect and abuse. Told against the backdrop of a glittering but brutal circus world, this is the story of elephants in America, the Elephant Sanctuary, and one resilient elephant who defied the system.

Her image appeared in periodicals and advertisements roughly twenty times daily; she rivaled FDR and Edward VIII as the most photographed person in the world. Her portrait brightened the homes of countless admirers: from a black laborer's cabin in South Carolina to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's recreation room in Washington, DC. A few years later her smile cheered the secret bedchamber of Anne Frank in Amsterdam. For four consecutive years Shirley...

"One journalist's memoir of her personal friendship with Harper Lee and her sister, drawing on the extraordinary access they gave her to share the story of their lives. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is one of the best loved novels of the twentieth century. But for the last fifty years, the novel's celebrated author, Harper Lee, has said almost nothing on the record. Journalists have trekked to her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, where Harper...

Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty -- a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre -- took a job at a crematory, turning morbid curiosity into her life's work. Thrown into a profession of gallows humor and vivid characters (both living and very dead), Caitlin learned to navigate the secretive culture of those who care for the deceased. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes tells an unusual coming-of-age...

"I always knew that the rest of my story is gonna be a good one. I don't know how I knew that, but I always did. Ungow! I am Fester the cat. Welcome to my book, everyone! From when he first ambled into Paul Magrs's yard-skinny, covered in flea bites, and missing all but one and a half teeth-Fester knew he'd found his family. Paul and his partner, Jeremy, thought it was the ragged black-and-white stray, tired from a rough life on the streets, who...

A history of Americans at war, told through the personal accounts of thirteen remarkable soldiers who fought in major military conflicts, from the Revolutionary War of 1776 to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You'll meet Joseph Plumb Martin, who at the tender age of fifteen fought in the Revolutionary War; Charles Black, a freeborn African American sailor in the War of 1812; and Sam Chamberlain, of the Mexican American War, whose life inspired...

It was not inevitable that World War II would end as it did, or that it would even end well. 1944 was a year that could have stymied the Allies and cemented Hitler's waning power. Instead, it saved those democracies -- but with a fateful cost. 1944 witnessed a series of titanic events: FDR at the pinnacle of his wartime leadership as well as his reelection, the planning of Operation Overlord with Churchill and Stalin, the unprecedented D-Day invasion...

Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men -- bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can...