Wounded Knee 1973: Still Bleeding

The 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee by American Indians, defying ...


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Nonfiction Books and Essays

Featuring good writing for serious readers, Now and Then short-form nonfiction books and essays are available exclusively as Kindle booksNook BooksiPad 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.

Don't Kill The Umpire

How Baseball Escaped Its Violent Past

by Peter Morris

U.S. History, Sports History, Essays, Sports

Baseball 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. 

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John F. Kennedy's Women

The Story of a Sexual Obsession

by Michael O'Brien

United States History, American History, U.S. History

Largely 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.

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Dawning of the Counter-culture: The 1960s

by William L. O'Neill

United States History, American History, U.S. History

As 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.

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The Battle of Britain

Reality Trumps the Myth

by William L. O'Neill

European History, Military History

A 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.

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Holy Cow 2000: The Strange Election of George W. Bush

by Kenneth O'Reilly

United States History, Political Science

The 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.

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The Head in Football

The History of Concussions and the Future of the Sport

by Michael Oriard

Sports History, Sports

Concern 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.

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The Oregon Trail

The American West as It Once Was

by Francis Parkman

United States History, American History

In 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.

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Family Intervention, Ku Klux Klan Style

The Hooded Remedy for Social Misbehavior

by Thomas R. Pegram

United States History, American History, U.S. History

In 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. 

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