The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space.
Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.
Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South’s segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II,
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Drawing on Queen Victoria’s diaries, which she first started reading when she was a student at Cambridge University, Daisy Goodwin—creator and writer of the new PBS/Masterpiece drama Victoria and author of the bestselling novels The American Heiress and The Fortune Hunter—brings the young nineteenth-century monarch, who would go on to reign for 63 years, richly to life in this magnificent novel.
Early one morning, less than a month after her eighteenth birthday, Alexandrina Victoria is roused from bed with the news that her uncle William IV has died and she is now Queen of England.
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A lush, dramatic biographical novel of one of the most glamorous and alluring legends of Hollywood’s golden age, Marlene Dietrich—from the gender-bending cabarets of Weimar Berlin to the lush film studios of Hollywood, a sweeping story of passion, glamour, ambition, art, and war from the author of Mademoiselle Chanel.
Raised in genteel poverty after the First World War, Maria Magdalena Dietrich dreams of a life on the stage. When a budding career as a violinist is cut short, the willful teenager vows to become a singer, trading her family’s proper, middle-class society for the free-spirited, louche world of Weimar Berlin’s cabarets and drag balls.
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New York Times Bestseller
Hailed by critics as “one of the best true-crime books . . . and also one of the best memoirs” (Seattle Times) in recent memory, Walter’s unbelievable “Hitchcockian psychological thriller” (Amy Tan) of his fifteen-year friendship with grifter-turned-murderer “Clark Rockefeller” is a one-of-a-kind study in criminal psychology, credulity, and the relationship between a writer and his subject. Both a memoir of being duped by a real-life Mr. Ripley and an investigation into the crimes of a true psychopath, Blood Will Out exposes the dance between con and mark that beats at the heart of the American dream.
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The author of the bestselling Ghost Soldiers returns with the epic chronicle of the real American West. Blood and Thunder brings the history of the American conquest of the West to vivid life through the interactions of the three main forces of the territory—American Indians, Mexicans, and Americans—and through the exploits of the legendary Kit Carson. An illiterate mountain man who mastered seven Indian dialects, Carson had more respect for the tribes than did any other American; yet he was also a cold-blooded killer who willingly followed orders tantamount to massacre. Grand in scope, immediate in detail,
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In Aphrodite in Jeans, Katherine Shirek Doughtie explores what happens when a woman stalemated in the middle of life dares to answer a call to live more fully. Whether discussing motherhood, working through relationships or taking care of an aging parent, these essays are in turn funny, poignant and challenging. With wicked insight and unflinching courage, Ms. Doughtie ruthlessly examines her experiences as she dares to tackle life head on.
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