Jeannette Walls

Presents a novel based on the life of the author's grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who learned to break horses in childhood, journeyed five hundred miles as a teen to become a teacher, and ran a vast ranch in Arizona with her husband while raising two children.

Journalist Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary and their four children lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing...

From Jeannette Walls, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle, now a major motion picture, comes an incisive study of our obsession with gossip. "A fascinating, dishy story." -Booklist Gossip. It's more than just hearsay, society columns, and supermarket tabloids. It has, like it or not, become a mainstay of American pop culture. In Dish, industry insider Jeannette Walls gives this provocative subject its due, offering a...

The Civil War rages. The formidable Confederate army cannot match the Union's mastery of technology; railroads, supply lines and the telegram become new weapons in a modern war.

Boom turns to bust when the stock market crashes. The Great Depression and the dust bowl blanket the nation in darkness. Roosevelt's New Deal signals recovery.

Americans conquer a new frontier: the modern city, with Carnegie's empire of steel as its backbone. Skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty are symbols of the American Dream for millions of immigrants.

America becomes a global superpower; the economy and population boom. In the jet age and the space age, pioneers conquer new frontiers and run headlong into Cold War.

Commerce and industry thrive across the new nation, now one of the wealthiest on Earth. The Erie Canal brings big risk and bigger reward. In the South, cotton is king but slavery fuels a growing divide.

From Jamestown to Plymouth, early settlers fight for survival. Tobacco sows the seeds of opportunity; the north becomes a powerhouse of trade. Tension, taxation and resistance explode into war as the rebels take on the might of the British Empire.