"By bringing us the inspiring and sometimes unsettling tales of Ellis Island, Vincent Cannato's American Passage helps us understand who we are as a nation." - Walter Isaacson The remarkable saga of America's landmark port of entry, from immigration post to deportation center to mythical icon. For most of New York's early history, Ellis Island had been an obscure little island that barely held itself above high tide. Today the small island stands...

"A journey back in time that explores what happened -- and what could have happened -- from creator of the wildly-popular podcast Hardcore History and 2019 winner of the iHeartRadio Best History Podcast Award"--

Having run away with her younger brother to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, twelve-year-old Claudia strives to keep things in order in their new home and to become a changed person and a heroine to herself.

Now a Showtime limited series starring Ethan Hawke and Daveed Diggs

Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction

From the bestselling author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, Deacon King Kong (an Oprah Book Club pick) and The Color of Water comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade—and who...

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
Published in 1975, Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be. An extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century and the First World War.
The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous...

Combines elements of Jewish and Arab folk mythology in the story of two supernatural creatures--Chava, a golem brought to life by a disgraced rabbi, and Ahmad, a jinni made of fire--who form an unlikely friendship on the streets of turn-of-the-century New York.