"Touring the United States in 1925, the Russian Futurist poet and propagandist Vladimir Mayakovsky observed at first hand what he considered to be the model for Soviet technological development. Writing in his typical declamatory style, he found much to celebrate in the modernised, industrialised America of the 1920s - creativity and advancement, a primitive futurism. But he also decried the social injustices of uncaring capitalism, losing no opportunity to propound his own political beliefs." "Presented here in full for the first time in the English language, My Discovery of America forms an inspired series of humorous sketches, thoughts, jottings and poems, the significance of which resounds from the early twentieth century through to our own times."--BOOK JACKET.

In 1985, when Mowat tried to enter the United States for a book promotion tour, he was barred by the McCarran Act, a 1952 law enacted during the McCarthy era. This book, told with outraged but good humour, describes Mowat's fight against the ban.

"The Maestros do a real service here in presenting the more familiar explorers in the context of all the migrations that have populated the Western Hemisphere....An outstanding introduction."--Kirkus Reviews. "The dazzlingly clean and accurate prose and the exhilarating beauty of the pictures combine for an extraordinary achievement in both history and art."--School Library Journal.

Alexis de Tocqueville is more quoted than read; commentators across the political spectrum invoke him as an oracle who defined America and its democracy for all times. But in fact his masterpiece, Democracy in America, was the product of a young man's open-minded experience of America at a time of rapid change. In Tocqueville's Discovery of America, the prizewinning biographer Leo Damrosch retraces Tocqueville's nine-month journey through the young nation in 1831–1832, illuminating how his enduring ideas were born of imaginative interchange with America and Americans, and painting a vivid picture of Jacksonian America. Damrosch shows that Tocqueville found much to admire in the dynamism of American society and in its egalitarian ideals. But he was offended by the ethos of grasping materialism and was convinced that the institution of slavery was bound to give rise to a tragic civil war. Drawing on documents and letters that have never before appeared in English, as well as on a wide range of scholarship, Tocqueville's Discovery of America brings the man, his ideas, and his world to startling life.

Criticizes the way history is presented in current textbooks, and suggests a more accurate approach to teaching American history.

A couple of summers ago, armed with three baseball mitts (one lefty) and a tape recorder, Hartshorn traveled throughout every region of the country, looking for people who'd like to play a game of catch and talk about their lives. He traveled seven highways and spoke with scores of people, including a grandmother, a junk collector, even Spike Lee and Bob Costas. Woven together, the twenty-nine featured conversations reveal the many voices and values that make up the nation. In Catch we discover who we really are.