Books published by Basic Books

A provocative, compelling history and a passionate call to defend Israel's mission as the state of the Jewish people.

"Eminently readable... [a] powerful and rewarding study of U.S. foreign policy in modern times." --Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs

"More than a quarter century after Bob Woodward introduced his Scotch-drinking, cigarette-smoking, garage-skulking friend and source in All the President's Men, the public remains enduringly engrossed"

A National Book Award-winning historian narrates Henry Clay's heroic brokering of a bipartisan compromise that saved the nation

In this sweeping historical canvas, Thomas Fleming undertakes nothing less than a drastic revision of our experience in World War I. He reveals how the British and French duped Wilson into thinking the war was as good as won, and there would be no need to send an army overseas. He describes a harried president making speech after speech proclaiming America's ideals while supporting espionage and sedition acts that sent critics to federal prisons. And he gives a harrowing account of how the Allies did their utmost to turn the American Expeditionary Force into cannon fodder on the Western Front.Thoroughly researched and dramatically told, The Illusion of Victory offers compelling testimony to the power of a president's visionary ideals-as well as a starkly cautionary tale about the dangers of applying them in a war-maddened world.

How the noisy atomic cloud gives rise to the orderly world of the molecular machine-and to life itself

A team of researcher-clinicians from the Center for Family Learning offers a carefully articulated, clinically tested model for treating a broad range of family marital problems.

Fans of Hofstadter's Le Ton beau de Marot will be delighted to see his meticulous theories of translation put into practice in what seems destined to become the definitive English-language version of Eugene Onegin. It is sure to bring new and deserving readers to this neglected literary jewel.

Was there really a golden age of the family in the 1950s,or ever? This penetrating history of the American family mounts a withering criticism of the culture of nostalgia" that clouds current debate and offers a plan for reconstituting the American family dream.

This major new interpretive biography--by one of America's foremost public intellectuals--eloquently examines Jane Addams's cultural and political influence on her time and ours

An important examination of the new reality of race in American culture

Essays and interviews from one of the most insightful and thought-provoking black intellectuals to emerge since the heyday of the civil rights movement.

How should the courts decide custody cases that involve adoption, divorce, and single parenting? Drawing on a wealth of legal cases and research, Mary Ann Mason presents a bold programme for reform that aims to change the terms of debate about child custody cases.

According to Edward Pauly, education reformers have looked everywhere except the classroom, where education really takes place. Drawing on in-depth interviews, this brilliant book shows that, more than anything else, it is the give-and-take between students and teachers that determines what is actually taught and learned.

Vincent Cannato takes us back to the time when John Lindsay stunned New York with his liberal Republican agenda, WASP sensibility, and movie-star good looks. With peerless authority, Cannato explores how Lindsay Liberalism failed to save New York, and, in the opinion of many, left it worse off than it was in the mid-1960's.

Ranging across American culture of the middle 20th century this study depicts the shifting characterizations of teens from invisible young adults to young soldiers in training, to bobby soxers and zoot suiters, to rock'n'rollers and juvenile delinquents, from hippies to savvy consumers.

An inside look at how congressional deference to the presidency and State Department has led to such foreign policy failures as Somalia, Bosnia and Iraq.

This collection of RFKs 1968 presidential campaign speeches demonstrates his eloquence, passion, and humanity, while providing a beacon of justice and an example of integrity for politicians and citizens today

The rise and fall of the Old Dominion--the decline of Virginia and the splintering of the new republic

A distinguished legal scholar and civil rights activist employs a series of dramatic fables and dialogues to probe the foundations of America's racial attitudes and raise disturbing questions about the nature of our society.

The winner of the first Basic Prize in History of Science is a controversial study of the rise of medicine in Australia and its relation to racial thinking

The preeminent scholar Jonathan Sarna reflects on identity, family, and faith in this accessible introduction to the American Jewish experience.

Fifteen brilliantly potted biographies of the Renaissance era's most creative and vivid figures, fascinating individuals who embody the hopes, discoveries, and struggles of an age that gave birth to the modern world. Their stories make us see anew the profound transformations of an entire era that took for its name a word meaning "rebirth."

Award-winning western historian James L. Haley paints a vivid portrait of Jack London--adventurer, social reformer, and the most popular American writer of his generation

"Provocative... a clear-eyed, sharp-tongued assessment of this hinge moment in time, when the world's centre of gravity is shifting'from the West to the East.'"-Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

The perils of pathological technology as told through the story of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster