Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton

Jarhead: A Marines Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other BattlesBy Anthony Swofford Baghdad Express And so it is with a degree of cynicism—or marketing savvy—that we consider the phenomenon of two Gulf War memoirs released in the early days … Read More

Tony Soprano’s America: The Criminal Side of the American Dream David R. Simon thinks Tony Soprano’s “greatest fear is the all-American tragedy: the fear of intimacy.” When I read this I wondered if we were thinking of the same Tony … Read More

by Richard Godbeer Every generation thinks it invented sex, and Americans may be particularly loath to see their parents and grandparents as sexual beings. Richard Godbeer’s new book pulls back the chamber curtains on the sexual lives of our cultural … Read More

Madame Millie: Bordellos from Silver City to Ketchikan Max Evans’ enthusiastic biography, Madame Millie: Bordellos from Silver City to Ketchikan, is a good-hearted whore story about Mildred Clark Cusey, who built and managed a cartel of whorehouses in the west, … Read More

The history of American intelligence is a history of malfeasance, scandal, hyperbole, and self-promotion. It’s been that way for 150 years, argues Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, a professor of American history at the University of Edinburgh. The author of numerous books, including … Read More

MIT Press Some 50 miles south of Fort Worth, near the town of Glen Rose, there is a fossil record of side-by-side human and dinosaur prints–or so claim certain creationists. To them, the prints are evidence that the world is … Read More

American Voudou: Journey Into a Hidden World Swaggart: The Unauthorized Biography of an American Evangelist Rod Davis and Ann Rowe Seaman, both former Austin residents, each spent a decade researching their new books by traveling some of the back-est of … Read More

by Rachel P. Maines You may already know that electrification of household products began in 1889. You may also know that the first product to go electric was the sewing machine, and that the next decade brought juice to the … Read More