Nonfiction Books and Essays
Featuring good writing for serious readers, Now and Then short-form nonfiction books and essays are available exclusively as Kindle books, Nook Books, iPad books or ebooks for other popular mobile devices.
Each week, we publish original titles, excerpts from forthcoming books, and reprints of work worthy of being read again. We focus on writing that is historically based but also has relevance for present day events.
Our latest titles can be found in the list below.
How Baseball Escaped Its Violent Past
by Peter Morris
U.S. History, Sports History, Essays, SportsBaseball was not always a game of quiet courage played by gentlemen, as Peter Morris shows in this fascinating historical profile of the rise and fall of violence as a part of our national pastime.
The Story of a Sexual Obsession
by Michael O'Brien
United States History, American History, U.S. HistoryLargely under the radar during Kennedy’s White House years was the president’s womanizing. O’Brien details Kennedy’s near-pathological approach to women and sex, then beyond the farthest reaches of the media’s imagination. Here is an astonishing piece of presidential history.
by William L. O'Neill
United States History, American History, U.S. HistoryAs William O’Neill makes us realize, the 1960s was a time like no other America has ever known. In this appraisal of its “new” culture, he conveys all that was inspired, phony, large-spirited, dreary, mad, magnificent, screwed-up, delightful, and confused about the period.
Reality Trumps the Myth
by William L. O'Neill
European History, Military HistoryA key moment in World War II was Britain’s gallant resistance to the German bombings of its homeland in 1940. With their backs to the wall, as the story goes, the British people staved off a Nazi invasion and thereby perhaps saved Western civilization. Here the distinguished historian William L. O’Neill challenges the commonly held view of the Battle of Britain as a victory against overwhelming odds, arguing that it should not have been unexpected. The British, he writes, were well positioned to repel their foes.
by Kenneth O'Reilly
United States History, Political ScienceThe contested election of 2000 that brought George W. Bush to the White House was filled with a strange sort of drama. But, as historian Kenneth O’Reilly shows in this fresh recounting, it was even stranger than we know.
The History of Concussions and the Future of the Sport
by Michael Oriard
Sports History, SportsConcern over head injuries in football now makes parents and educators fearful, and threatens the future of the game. Michael Oriard, who himself once played football at all levels, brings a unique perspective to this investigation of the physical and cultural aspects of the sport as they affect the role of the head.
The American West as It Once Was
by Francis Parkman
United States History, American HistoryIn 1846, Francis Parkman traveled some seventeen hundred miles through the unspoiled West, meeting trappers, gamblers, woodsmen, soldiers, emigrant pioneers, and Indians, and hunting buffalo with a band of Oglala Sioux. His account remains one of the great books ever produced by an American.
The Hooded Remedy for Social Misbehavior
by Thomas R. Pegram
United States History, American History, U.S. HistoryIn the social unease that followed World War I, some groups sought to preserve white Protestant morality in the face of new challenges to the old order. A reborn Ku Klux Klan focused not on racial matters but on social behavior, with a peculiar, not-so-subtle intervention in family affairs.