"We live in unsettled times. What is America and who are we as a people? How do we understand the dreams and betrayals that have shaped the American experience? For poet and critic Edward Hirsch, poetry opens up new ways of answering these questions, of reconnecting with one another and with what's best in us. In this landmark new book from Library of America, Hirsch offers deeply personal readings of forty essential American poems we thought we knew--from...

"Time Traveler's Wife meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in a wondrous novel exploring the burdens of time, the endurance of love, and the timelessness of family. Just because life might be out of order, doesn't mean it's broken. It's new years eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics,...

"Many of us like to think of the United States as a nation of immigrants. We pride ourselves on our history of welcoming foreigners and believe this sets our nation apart from every other. But the phrase 'a nation of immigrants' only dates from the mid-twentieth century, and has served to paper over a much darker history of hatred of -- and violence against -- foreigners arriving on our shores. As the acclaimed historian Erika Lee shows in America...

"In White Fright, acclaimed historian Jane Dailey offers a radical reinterpretation of the fight for African American rights, showing how that fight has been closely bound, both in terms of law and in the white imagination, to the question of interracial sex and marriage. White fear of black sexuality not only fueled the systems of exclusion and oppression under Jim Crow, she contends it was also a central factor driving white resistance to the civil...

From the dust jacket. The riveting true story of the women who launched America into space. During World War II, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate jet velocities and plot missile trajectories, they recruited an elite group of young women -- known as human computers -- who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowress, transformed rocket design and helped bring about America's first...

"God Save Texas is a journey through the most controversial state in America. It is a red state in the heart of Trumpland that hasn't elected a Democrat to a statewide office in more than twenty years; but it is also a state in which minorities already form a majority (including the largest number of Muslim adherents). The cities are blue and among the most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king but Texas now leads California in technology exports....

"In the Mexican borderlands, a busload of student protesters is gunned down in broad daylight, a violent act blamed on the Nemesio cartel. But its aging leader, Fox Uno, sees the attack for what it is: another salvo in the long-running battle for control of Nemesio itself; perhaps by a rival cartel, or maybe someone closer to home. Across the Rio Grande, Sheriff Chris Cherry and his deputies America Reynosa and Danny Ford find themselves caught in...

Buckton, Indiana, 1956. As post-war America brims with new opportunities, a young woman discovers the courage to follow her dreams - and her heart. Gwendolyn Foster's life seems like a dream come true. A bright future in front of her, the successful, traditional man her parents wanted at her side. What more could a girl ask for? But Gwen has a different dream altogether - to be a writer - and she won't rest until it comes true. Strong arms to support...

Reflections from America's prominent writers on the seminal poem "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg, on the eve of its fiftieth anniversary.

"In John Manuel Arias's lush and lyrical debut, a Costa Rican family wrestles with the aftermath of neocolonialism, a deadly secret, and an all-consuming fire. Costa Rica, 1968. When a lethal fire erupts at the American Fruit Company's most lucrative banana plantation burning all evidence of a massive cover-up, the future of Teresa Cepeda Valverde's family is changed forever. Now, twenty-seven years later, Teresa and her daughter Lyra are still picking...