This stimulating Very Short Introduction throws open the doors on a remarkably diverse musical genre, with a world-wide reach that goes far beyond America's shores to discuss folk music of every possible kind and in every corner of the globe.

Even as America asserts itself globally, it lacks a grand strategy to replace "containment of communism." This book outlines a strategy, directing America's powers to the achievement of its large purposes. Central to this strategy is the power of American ideals, what the author calls "the fourth power".

This edition adds an afterword to the Bancroft Prize-winning study of Franklin Roosevelt's diplomacy. It effectively answers recent criticism attacking Roosevelt for producing Pearl Harbor, for "giving away" Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta, and for abandoning European Jews during World War II.

The author offers a meticulously researched account of the Freedom Rides, one of the most compelling chapters in the history of civil rights. The book paints a harrowing picture of the outpouring of hatred and violence that greeted the Freedom Riders in Alabama and Mississippi.

A finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, this acclaimed history uses foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America's dramatic rise from 13 disparate colonies huddled along the Atlantic coast to the world's greatest superpower.

In The Global Pain Crisis: What Everyone Needs to Know (R), renowned health journalist Judy Foreman addresses the most important questions about chronic pain: what is it, who does it affect most, what works and what doesn't for pain relief in Western and alternative medicines, what are the risks and benefits for opioids and marijuana, and how can the chronic pain crisis be resolved for good?

Traces how the notions of gluttony have evolved along with the ideas about salvation and damnation, health and illness, life and death. This book shows that gluttony was in medieval times a deeply spiritual matter, but in contemporary times, we have transformed gluttony from a sin into an illness.