Steve Roud was Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and served as Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society for over fifteen years. He has been researching British folklore for over thirty years and is the joint author of the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, plus other books on traditional drama and folk song, and the Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland, which won the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 2004. His publications include London Lore (2008) and The Lore of the Playground (2010). He also compiles the Folk Song Index and the Broadside Index, two internationally acclaimed computer databases of traditional folk and popular song. He lives in Sussex.

Steve Roud

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Henry Hampton

Steve Fayer

Sarah Flynn

In this monumental volume, Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer draw upon nearly one thousand interviews with civil rights activists, politicians, reporters, Justice Department officials, and hundreds of ordinary people who took part in the struggle, weaving a fascinating narrative of the civil rights movement told by the people who lived it.

Voices Of Freedom

An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement From the 1950s Through the 1980s

Steve Coll

The news-breaking book that has sent schockwaves through the White House, Ghost Wars is the most accurate and revealing account yet of the CIA's secret involvement in al-Qaeada's evolution. 
 
Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East, accessed previously classified government files and interviewed senior US officials and foreign spymasters. Here he gives the full inside story of the CIA's covert funding of an Islamic jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, explores how this sowed the seeds of bn Laden's rise, traces how he built his global network and brings to life the dramatic battles within the US government over national security. Above all, he lays bare American intelligence's continual failure to grasp the rising threat of terrrorism in the years leading to 9/11 - and its devastating consequences.

Ghost Wars

The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden

Rabia Chaudry

AFTER 23 YEARS IN PRISON, ADNAN'S CONVICTION HAS FINALLY BEEN OVERTURNED - BUT HAE MIN LEE'S REAL KILLER IS STILL OUT THERE. 
 
'This book provides a far stronger argument . . . than Syed's defence lawyer did in 1999' INDEPENDENT 
 
'The first letter I received after being arrested in 1999 was from Rabia. Since that time until now, she has believed in my innocence and been committed to my exoneration . . . There is no one better to help tell my story, and no one that I trust more to tell it, than Rabia.' ADNAN SYED 
_________________________________________________ 
THE CASE THAT INSPIRED THE PODCAST PHENOMENON SERIAL, AND THE HBO DOCUSERIES THE CASE AGAINST ADNAN SYED 
 
On February 28, 2000, Adnan Syed was convicted and sentenced to life plus thirty years for the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, a high school senior in Baltimore, Maryland. From the moment of his arrest, Syed has consistently maintained his innocence. Rabia Chaudry, a family friend, always believed him and has never given up the hope that he might someday be released. By 2013, however, after almost all appeals had been exhausted, things looked bleak. That's when Rabia contacted Sarah Koenig, a producer at This American Life, in the hopes of finding a journalist who would bring greater attention to Adnan's story and might shed new light on the case. Koenig's investigation turned into Serial, an international phenomenon and Peabody Award-winning podcast. 
 
In 2022, after 23 years in prison, Adnan's conviction was overturned, and he was finally freed. But Hae Min Lee's real killer is still out there. 
 
Adnan's Story re-examines the investigation that led to Adnan Syed's arrest, shares his life in prison, covers new evidence and possibilities that have since come to light, and reviews the recent court successes - including a ruling by a Maryland judge to reopen Syed's case. Woven with personal reflections from Adnan himself, including new never-before-seen letters he penned from prison, the story of his family, community, and public advocate Chaudry, the book gives brilliant insight into the story that captivated the attention of millions as his legal team and investigatory team, along with countless others who have crowd-sourced an investigation like never before, seek to exonerate him and find out the truth of what really happened on that day in 1999. 
 
But this is not only a personal story, but a testament to a thoroughly broken system that convicts tens of thousands of innocent people, and how the power of the media and public can move rigid institutions to bring about justice.

Adnan's Story

The Case That Inspired the Podcast Phenomenon Serial

Nelson Johnson

Through most of the 20th century, Atlantic City, New Jersey, was controlled by a powerful partnership of local politicians and racketeers. Funded by payoffs from gambling rooms, bars and brothels, this corrupt alliance reached full bloom during the reign of Enoch 'Nucky' Johnson - the second of the three bosses to head the Republican machine that dominated city politics and society. 
 
In Boardwalk Empire, Nucky Johnson, Louis 'the Commodore' Kuehnle, Frank 'Hap' Farley, and Atlantic City itself spring to life in all their garish splendour. Author Nelson Johnson traces 'AC' from its birth as a quiet seaside health resort, through the corruption, notorious backroom politics and power struggles, to the city's rebirth as an international entertainment and gambling mecca where anything goes. 
 
Boardwalk Empire is the true story that inspired the epic HBO series starring Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt and Kelly Macdonald. 
 
'As good, if not better, than the television series' Independent

Boardwalk Empire

The Birth, High Times and the Corruption of Atlantic City

Winner of the the National Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction 
 
'Spellbinding ... a magisterial account of the great tragedy of our age ... it is a classic' Evening Standard 
'In the finest traditions of American investigative journalism' The Times 
'Spectacular ... makes Bourne movies pale in comparison' Financial Times 
 
From the Pulitzer Prize winning of the acclaimed Ghost Wars, this is the full story of America's grim involvement in the affairs of Afghanistan from 2001 to 2016. In the wake of the terrible shock of 9/11, the C.I.A. scrambled to work out how to destroy Bin Laden and his associates. The C.I.A. had long familiarity with Afghanistan and had worked closely with the Taliban to defeat the Soviet Union there. A tangle of assumptions, old contacts, favours and animosities were now reactivated. Superficially the invasion was quick and efficient, but Bin Laden's successful escape, together with that of much of the Taliban leadership, and a catastrophic failure to define the limits of NATO's mission in a tough, impoverished country the size of Texas, created a quagmire which lasted many years. 
 
At the heart of the problem lay 'Directorate S', a highly secretive arm of the Pakistan state which had its own views on the Taliban and Afghanistan's place in a wider competition for influence between Pakistan, India and China, and which assumed that the U.S.A. and its allies would soon be leaving. 
 
Steve Coll's remarkable new book tells a powerful, bitter story of just how badly foreign policy decisions can go wrong and of many lives lost.

Directorate S

The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001–2016

The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles the people, ploys of power and geopolitics that led to America's disastrous war with Iraq and, for the first time, details America's fundamental miscalculations during its ruinous, decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein. 
 
Beginning with Saddam's rise to power in 1979 and the birth of Iraq's secret nuclear weapons programme, Steve Coll traces Saddam's motives through understanding his inner circle. He brings to life the diplomats, scientists, family members and generals who had no choice but to defer to their leader - a leader directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as the torture or imprisonment of many more. This was a man whose reasoning was impossible to reduce to a simple explanation, and the CIA and successive presidential administrations failed to grasp critical nuances in his paranoia, resentments and inconsistencies - even when the stakes were incredibly high. 
 
Using unpublished and underreported sources, interviews with surviving participants, and Saddam's own transcripts and audio files, The Achilles Trap is a remarkable picture of a dictator who was convinced the world was out to get him and acted accordingly. A work of great historical significance, it is the definitive account of how corruptions of power, lies of diplomacy and vanity - on both sides - led to avoidable errors of statecraft: ones that would enact immeasurable human suffering and forever change our political landscape.

The Achilles Trap

Saddam Hussein, the United States and the Middle East, 1979-2003

Ernesto Che Guevara

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-modern-classics/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Linked_text&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_Modern_Classics_Series_26_06">Choose 3 timeless classics for only £21 over on the Penguin Shop</a>

'All we could see was the dust on the road ahead and ourselves on the bike, devouring kilometers in our flight northward' 
 
'In late 1951, Guevara and Alberto Granado set off on the 500cc Norton they nicknamed La Poderosa ('The Powerful One') with no other agenda than a lust for life and a desire to see it all. The Motorcycle Diaries offer a unique perspective on what led this would-be doctor from relatively affluent Argentina to become one of the 20th century's most important political figures ... genuinely exhilarating' Guardian 
 
'For every comic escapade of the carefree roustabout there is an equally eye-opening moment in the development of the future revolutionary leader. By the end of the journey, a politicized Guevara has emerged to predict his own legendary future' Time

The Motorcycle Diaries

Rosita Boland

'My dictionary's first two definitions of 'comrade' are: 
 
A close companion. 
An intimate associate or friend. 
 
The third one is: 
A fellow soldier. 
 
My friends have been all those things to me.' 
 
In this stunning essay collection, award-winning journalist Rosita Boland explores the many friendships that have shaped her life. Surprising and beautiful, she writes about the imaginary friends of early childhood, books that have provided companionship and joy, kindred spirits met while travelling, the friend she hoped might become something more, and also the friendships that become lost over time. 
 
Life-affirming, affecting and wise, Comrades is a powerful exploration of what it is to live, to connect, and to be human in this world.

Comrades

A Lifetime of Friendships

Mário de Andrade

'My life's done a somersault,' wrote acclaimed modernist writer Mário de Andrade. After years of dreaming about Amazonia, he finally embarked on a three-month odyssey up the great river and into the wild heart of his native Brazil with a group of avant-garde luminaries. All abandoned ship but a socialite, her two nieces, and, of course, the author himself. And so begins the humorous account of Andrade's steamboat adventure into one of the most dangerous and breathtakingly beautiful corners of the world. 
 
Rife with shrewd observations and sparkling wit, his sarcastic, down-to-earth diary entries not only offer comedic and awe-inspiring details of life and the landscape but also trace his internal metamorphosis: his travels challenge what he thought he knew about the Amazon, and drastically alter his understanding of his motherland.

The Apprentice Tourist

Mike Thompson

The BBC Radio 4 historical series that uses documentary evidence to shed new light on the past 
 
In this Sony Award-winning investigative history series, BBC international correspondent Mike Thomson and guest presenters pore over private papers, public records and primary sources, uncovering the hidden truth about historical events. 
 
As they follow the documentary trail, they talk to key participants, contemporary commentators and academic experts, and explore shocking stories of cover-ups, covert operations and collusion. Here are the extraordinary tales of the 1956 French offer to merge the UK and France; the Wall Street plot to overthrow Franklin D Roosevelt; and the journalist's notebook that came perilously close to revealing one of Britain's greatest Cold War secrets. 
 
Plus, Gordon Corera travels to Stockholm to investigate the assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, David Loyn investigates how a lost document is helping Afghanistan come to terms with its painful past, Heather Jones asks why an intelligence warning given seven weeks before Germany's 1939 invasion of Poland was ignored, and Sanchia Berg traces the career of an MI5 agent left out in the cold... 
 
From the clandestine Nazi radio station in Scotland to an MI6 chief's secret slush fund, the diaries of a Chinese ambassador to the Soviet Union and the CIA's attempts to subvert Albania, Documents That Changed The World will challenge your assumptions and make you question everything you thought you knew about history. 
 
Copyright © 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. ? 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd 
Presented by Mike Thomson, Jeremy Duns, Nick Rankin, Sarah Richardson, Gordon Corera, David Loyn, Heather Jones, Sanchia Berg, Dominic Streatfeild, Anne McElvoy, Dr Yee Wah Foo, Robert Bickers, Arne Westad, Jonny Foo, Andy Cheung, Jo Fox 
Produced by Tom Alban, Kate Borde, Mark Burman, Marya Burgess, James Cook, Isobel Eaton, Neil George, Patrick Gregory, Laurence Grissell, Roger Hermiston, Julia Johnson, Robert Ketteridge, Hannah Loy, Neil McCarthy, Paula McGinley, John Murphy, Sarah Shebbeare, Phil Tinline 
Executive producer: Philip Sellars 
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 5 September 2005-4 December 2017

Documents That Changed The World

A BBC Radio 4 History

Ben Mezrich

Thad Roberts, a fellow in a prestigious NASA programme had an idea - a romantic, albeit crazy, idea. He wanted to give his girlfriend the moon. Literally. 
 
Thad convinced his girlfriend and another female accomplice, both NASA interns, to break into an impenetrable laboratory at NASA's headquarters - past security checkpoints, and electronically locked door with cipher security codes and camera-lined hallways - and help him steal the most precious objects in the world: Apollo moon rocks from every moon landing in history. 
 
Was Thad Roberts - undeniably gifted, picked for one of the most competitive scientific posts imaginable - really what he seemed? 
 
And what does one do with an item so valuable that it's illegal even to own? 
 
Based on meticulous research into thousands of pages of court records, FBI transcripts and documents, and scores of interviews with the people involved, Mezrich - with his signature high-velocity swagger - has reconstructed the madcap story of genius, love, and duplicity all centred on a heist that reads like a Hollywood thrill ride.

Sex on the Moon

Barack Obama

Bruce Springsteen

Two long-time friends share an intimate and urgent conversation about life, music and their enduring love of America, with all its challenges and contradictions, in this stunningly-produced expansion of their ground-breaking Higher Ground podcast, featuring more than 350 photographs, exclusive bonus content, and never-before-seen archival material. 
 
Renegades: Born in the USA is a candid, revealing, and entertaining dialogue between President Barack Obama and legendary musician Bruce Springsteen that explores everything from their origin stories and career-defining moments to the growing distance between the American Dream and the American reality. Filled with full-colour photographs and rare archival material, it is a compelling and beautifully illustrated portrait of two outsiders-one Black and one white-looking for a way to connect their unconventional searches for meaning, identity, and community with the American story itself. 
 
It includes: 
· Original introductions by President Obama and Bruce Springsteen 
· Exclusive new material from the Renegades podcast recording sessions 
· Obama's never-before-seen annotated speeches 
· Springsteen's handwritten lyrics for songs spanning his 50-year-long career 
· Rare and exclusive photographs from the authors' personal archives

Renegades

Born in the USA

Thomas Frank

Economic meltdown usually brings calls for change. Or it’s supposed to. 
 
But when Thomas Frank set out to find them in America today, all he heard were loud demands that the losers be hit harder and that the winners get more. 
 
Using first-hand reporting, a deep political understanding and a wicked sense of humour, Frank examines the weird double-think that has enlisted the powerless in a fan club for the prosperous. Pity the Billionaire takes us on a wild road-trip through the strange landscape of the American Right, the Tea Party and Glenn Beck, makes sense of a topsy-turvy world and shows how instead of complying with the new speed limit, conservative America has stamped hard on the accelerator. It is essential reading for understanding how we all got to where we are, and how we might get out.

Pity the Billionaire

The Unlikely Comeback of the American Right

Vincent Bugliosi

Part Seven: Murder in the Wind 
 
Three female members of the Manson family attempt to testify that they committed the murder without the aid of Charles Manson, prompting Manson himself to speak, martyring himself as the leader of what he calls 'wayward men'. 
 
Manson’s attorney, Ronald Hughes, fails to appear at court. Had he been killed by the Family?

Helter Skelter: Part Seven of the Shocking Manson Murders

Nicholas Pileggi

The Stardust… The Fremont… The Marina. 
They ran them all. 
And they lost. 
Big time. 
 
No one knew more about casinos than Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal, the gambling mastermind who, along with his best friend and partner, Anthony 'the Ant' Spilotro, virtually ran Las Vegas for the mob. For years it was the perfect arrangement – Lefty provided the smarts, while Tony kept the bosses happy with weekly suitcases filled with millions in skimmed cash. It should have lasted forever but Lefty’s obsessions with running the town – and Tony’s obsession with Lefty’s beautiful showgirl wife, Geri – eventually led to betrayals and investigations that exploded into one of the greatest scandals in mob history. 
 
Casino is the shattering inside account of how the mob finally lost its stranglehold on Las Vegas, the neon money-making machine it had created.

Casino

The Rise and Fall of the Mob in Las Vegas

Nik Cohn

What lunacy would cause a 55-year-old white male to embroil himself in the world of New Orleans rap - as ideas man, talent-spotter, lyricist, and would-be producer? Nik Cohn has loved (and hated) hip-hop since its birth and loved (and hated) New Orleans for even longer - an addiction he's never wanted to kick. But nothing prepared him for the experience of being pitched, more or less by accident, into the role of Triksta, rap impresario. 
 
A white alien in a black world, with no funding or qualifications, and not a clue what he was doing, he had to rethink himself from scratch. Surrounded by a cast that included such names as Choppa and Soulja Slim, Big Ramp and Lil T, Bass Heavy, Fifth Ward Weebie, and Shorty Brown Hustle, he entered a world of tiny backstreet studios, broken-down slums and gun turfs. 
 
Triksta is the story of a three-year odyssey to the heart of rap, and New Orleans, and self-knowledge.

Triksta

Life and Death and New Orleans Rap

Mark Levine

It was April 3, 1974 and the United States was in turmoil. Crime was soaring, unemployment and inflation were out of control, the Vietnam War had just come to a demoralising end and the soon-to-be-disgraced President Nixon was on his way out of office. Then, over a sixteen-hour period, nature stepped forward with its own display of mayhem, as an unprecedented outbreak of 148 tornadoes descended on the country. The destruction wrought was horrifying - hundreds killed, thousands of homes demolished, a billion dollars in losses sustained. 
 
Amidst this chaos, acclaimed journalist Mark Levine follows the devastating path of a twin set of F5s - the rarest, and most deadly, category of tornado, and their impact on a rich cast of intertwined characters. Ordinary lives are transformed in one bewildering, terrifying instant: a pair of teenage lovers caught while driving on a dark country road; a Vietnam veteran trapped at home with a newborn baby; a sheriff caught in the line of fire twice in rapid succession; a black preacher with a past of dire hardship struggling to protect his family. Other figures enter the story from the broader cultural scene: Hank Aaron, on his way to challenging baseball's home run record amid racist death threats; Patty Hearst, whose image as kidnapping victim is undergoing a radical shift; Richard Nixon, intent on using the storms for his political advantage; and a memorably eccentric scientist, known as Mr Tornado, who regards the 'Superoutbreak' as the apotheosis of his scholarly life. 
 
Monster Tornado provides a vivid and remarkable portrait of a unique point in American history - a time of incredible and unsettling convergence, where weather and people collided, and the fortunes of a series of characters, obscure and famous, would change forever.

Monster Tornado

The Incredible True Story of America's Most Devastating Twister

Eric Schlosser

Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a missile silo in rural Arkansas, where a single crew struggled to prevent the explosion of the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States, with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort to ensure that nuclear weapons can't be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with men who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons, Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view.

Command and Control

Part Two: Meet the Killers. 
 
Twenty-four members of a hippie cult known as the Manson family, led by ex-con Charles Manson, are arrested in connection with the murder of a music teacher Gary Hinman, killed on the same night in Hollywood. 
 
Susan Atkins aka Crazy Sadie, is one of the imprisoned. Seemingly high and excited, she tells everyone in gruesome detail how they did it, and how they were going to unleash hell. 
 
She reveals that the Manson family were also involved in the Cielo Drive murders, the horrifying place Sharon Tate Polanski and her friends were bludgeoned to death.

Helter Skelter: Part Two of the Shocking Manson Murders

Part Five: "Now is the time for Helter Skelter" - Charles Manson 
 
Manson family member Linda Kasabian becomes a key witness for the case, recalling the night the murders were committed in detail. Charles Manson’s positioning as a Christ like figure for his followers is revealed in its full extent, as his followers treat the violence as a game. 
 
This terrifying new part will delve into the case built around Charles Manson and the kind of man he truly was.

Helter Skelter: Part Five of the Shocking Manson Murders

Jon Hotten

Los Angeles, 1988. In a summer of hedonism, everyone wants their share. 
 
On Sunset Strip, undiscovered bands dream of emulating their heroes: Mötley Crüe, Van Halen, Poison and all the other chancers who got lucky... Above them in the canyons, the city’s privileged youth already live like rock stars. Drifting between these separate worlds is a journalist on the trail of stories that grow darker by the day: a rock star wannabe who may or may not be who he says he is, a guitar player who will do anything to succeed, crossing the line between reality and fantasy. 
 
Then comes beautiful Iris, distant Brenna, ambivalent Blair, Lana the singer - taking their chances, losing their way, doing whatever it takes… 
 
Set in the glory days when the music business was a vast and amoral empire where stardom seemed arbitrary and sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll were the lifestyle of choice, My Life and the Beautiful Music blurs memoir, myth and reality to recreate the last, lost era of a now-vanished world.

My Life And The Beautiful Music

Stanley Weiss

A skinny Jewish kid from Philadelphia training to fight and likely die in the U.S. invasion of Japan in 1945, Stanley Weiss came home to the death of his loving but weak father, who left his mother penniless. Vowing on the spot not to let his insecurities limit him as they had his father, Weiss pledged that his mother would never have to worry. Later, a humiliation suffered at the hands of his wealthy girlfriend’s famous father ignited in him a determination to better himself in every way and live life to the fullest. 
Inspired by a Humphrey Bogart movie, Weiss moved to a foreign country to hunt for treasure—where Rule Number One was ‘’Don’t Die.’’ Along the way, his zest for living has taken him from the company of legendary artists and poets in Mexico, to writers and beatniks in 1960s San Francisco and Hollywood; from drunken nights with a notorious spy to friendships with three of the men who played James Bond; from glamorous parties in Gstaad and Phuket to power politics in London and Washington, DC. A story of growth, tenacious focus, and good humor, it stretches from the days of ‘’Don’t Die’’ to Weiss’s response when asked why business executives were interested in preventing nuclear war: ‘’Being dead is bad for business.’’ 
For those who believe the world is shaped by ordinary people who push themselves to do extraordinary things, Stanley Weiss’s story will inspire and surprise while reminding us all that being dead is bad for business—and being boring is bad for life. 
Stanley

Being Dead is Bad for Business

James Bradley

Ron Powers

In this remarkably powerful book, James Bradley takes as his starting point one of the most famous photographs of all time. In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima and into a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire from 22,000 Japanese. After climbing through a hellish landscape and on to the island's highest peak, six men were photographed raising the stars and stripes. One of those soldiers was the author's father, John Bradley. He never spoke to his family about the photograph or about the war, but after his death in 1994, they discovered closed boxes of letters and photos which James Bradley draws on to retrace the lives of his father and his five companions. 
 
Following these men's paths to Iwo Jima, Bradley has written a classic story of the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island - an island riddled with sixteen miles of tunnels and defended by Japanese soldiers determined to fight to the death. In the thirty-six days of fighting, almost fifty-thousand men lost their lives. 
 
Above all a human - and personal - story, few books have captured so brilliantly or so movingly the complexity of war and its aftermath and the true meaning of heroism.

Flags Of Our Fathers

Laurence Grissell

From Hollywood to Silicon Valley, California wants to dazzle you with its sunshine and its vision of the future - but that's just a mirage. I know the whole, sordid truth. 
 
Hello. I'm Stanley Tucci. I'll be playing a hard-boiled screenwriter - you know the type: he's met 'em all, he's gotten drunk with 'em all. My screenplays will tell the stories of ten men and women who built modern California, warts and all. I'll show you where all the bodies are buried. 
 
I'll tell the story of the very first movie-maker, shot dead on his studio lot; and the men who lied and lied and lied again to bring water to L.A. Without the water, there would be no L.A. We'll also hear the story of the revivalist preacher who was as big as Chaplin before she disappeared without a trace; and the man who brought silicon to Silicon Valley, right before he became a white supremacist. That's the Valley's dirty little secret. We'll tell the story of the original gangster rapper Ice-T, the man behind 'Cop Killer'; and we'll finish off with California's longest-serving governor, Jerry Brown - the man they called 'Governor Moonbeam'. 
 
The Californian Century is the dramatic story of the west coast: if you make it here, you're on top of the world. If you don't, there's a long, long way to fall. And you never know when your luck's about to run out. 
 
It's a story littered with dead bodies, disaster and duplicity. It'll be one hell of a ride. 
 
Come with me, and bring your shades. 
 
 
Written and produced by Laurence Grissell

The Californian Century

Stanley Tucci tells the dramatic story of modern California

Odd Arne Westad

As Germany and then Japan surrendered in 1945 there was a tremendous hope that a new and much better world could be created from the moral and physical ruins of the conflict. Instead, the combination of the huge power of the USA and USSR and the near-total collapse of most of their rivals created a unique, grim new environment: the Cold War. 
 
For over forty years the demands of the Cold War shaped the life of almost all of us. Europe was seemingly split in two indefinitely. This is a book of extraordinary scope and daring. It is conventional to see the first half of the 20th century as a nightmare and the second half as a reprieve. Westad shows that for much of the world the second half was by most measures even worse.

The Cold War

A World History

J. C. H. King

'A history of resilience ... sweeping, comprehensive ... it's a story that has been waiting to be told' Guardian 
 
'An account sorely needed ... a kaleidoscopic view of Native American history, refreshing and rollicking, and not unlike its fractured reality' Standpoint 
 
Blood and Land is a dazzling, panoramic account of the history and achievements of Native North Americans, and why they matter today. It is about why no understanding of the wider world is possible without comprehending the original inhabitants of the United States and Canada: Native Americans, First Nations and Arctic peoples. 
 
This highly personal book, based on years of travel and first-hand research in North America, introduces a deeply complex story, of myriad identities and determined ethnicities - from the desert Southwest to the high Arctic, from first contact between Europeans and Native Americans to the challenges of Native leadership today. Instead of writing a chronological history, King confronts the reader with the paradoxes, diversity and successes of Native North Americans. Their astonishing ingenuity and supple intelligence enabled, after centuries of suffering both violence and dispossession, a striking level of recovery, optimism and autonomy in the twenty-first century. 
 
Beautifully illustrated and filled with arresting and surprising stories, Blood and Land looks well beyond the 'feathers-and-failure' narratives beloved by historians to show us Native North America as it was and is.

Blood and Land

The Story of Native North America

Geert Mak

In 1960 John Steinbeck and his dog Charley set out in their green pickup truck to rediscover the soul of America, visiting small towns and cities from New York to New Orleans.The trip became Travels With Charley, one of his best-loved books. 
 
Half a century on, Geert Mak sets off from Steinbeck’s home. Mile after mile, as he retraces Steinbeck’s footsteps through the potato fields of Maine to the endless prairies of the Midwest and stumbles across glistening suburbs and boarded-up stores, Mak searches for the roots of America and what remains of the world Steinbeck describes. How has America changed in the last fifty years; what remains of the American dream; and what do Europe and America now have in common?

In America

Travels with John Steinbeck

Gerard DeGroot

For a very brief moment during the 1960s, America was moonstruck. Every boy dreamed of being an astronaut; every girl dreamed of marrying one. But despite the best efforts of a generation of scientists, the almost foolhardy heroics of the astronauts, and 35 billion dollars, the moon turned out to be a place of 'magnificent desolation', to use Buzz Aldrin's words. 
 
In Dark Side of the Moon, Gerard DeGroot reveals how NASA cashed in on the Americans' thirst for heroes in an age of discontent and became obsessed with putting a man on the moon, in the process limiting what could be acheived in space. Drawing on meticulous archival research, DeGroot cuts through the propaganda peddled by the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations - not to mention the NASA spin doctors - and exposes the truth behind one of the most revered myths of American history.

Dark Side of the Moon

The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest

Kristen Iversen

It is the early 1950s. Kristen Iversen is enjoying a carefree childhood surrounded by desert and mountains. But just a few miles down the road, the US government decides to build a secret nuclear weapons facility at Rocky Flats. 
 
Kirsten and her siblings jump streams, ride horses, live a happy outdoors life. But beneath this veneer her family is quietly falling apart. Her father drinks, her mother copes. 
 
And in a series of fires, accidents and other catastrophic leaks, Rocky Flats nuclear plant is spewing an invisible cocktail of the most dangerous substances on earth into this pristine landscape. The ground, the air and the water are all alive with radiation. 
 
The years that follow will bring protests, investigations, denials, cover-ups, threats and lies. And then, one after another, people start to fall ill.

Full Body Burden

Growing Up in the Shadow of a Secret Nuclear Facility

Part Six: The Official Trial Begins 
 
The prosecution decides to pursue ‘vicarious liability’ via conspiracy, meaning that all who were involved in the conspiracy to commit murder can be charged. On trial, Manson proves to be surprisingly honest, though his ego and tendency to play word games with his own testimony is called into question. 
 
Prosecution hints they will reveal a 'surprise motive'. 
 
Key witness Linda Kasabian is called to testify.

Showing results for: ‘Steve Roud’

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter