An Eye for an Eye

Simone de Beauvoir explains why she refused to call for ...


View

Kindle Books

Now and Then Reader publishes short nonfiction Kindle books. With a selection of original nonfiction titles, excerpts from forthcoming nonfiction books and reprints of nonfiction work we feel deserves to be read again, Now and Then Kindle books are focused on material that is historically based but also has relevance for our world today. Now and Then Kindle books are quick reads, ranging in length from 5,000 to 25,000 words or approximately 15 to 60 book pages and are also available on the Barnes and Noble Nook, Apple iPad and other popular mobile devices. To learn more about Now and Then Kindle books, please browse the selection of titles highlighted 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. 

View
 
Artificial Epidemics

How Medical Activism Has Inflated the Diagnosis of Prostate Cancer and Depression

by Stewart Justman

United States History, U.S. History, Medical History

How the quest for early detection of prostate cancer and depression has led to mass screenings, which in turn have revealed an incidence of disease that is beyond common sense and cautious medical practice.  The entire process has led to patients who have been not helped but damaged. 

View
 
The Historian and His Day

by J.H. Hexter

Introduction by Gertrude Himmelfarb

Essays, Historiography

 Hexter's subject—the nature of the historical enterprise—raises the perennially vexing question of  past- and present-mindedness in the writing of  history.  It addresses that issue in a notably down-to-earth, commonsensible, personal manner.  

View
 
How Iran Got The Bomb

The Twisted Path to a Nuclear Weapon

by Jeremy Bernstein

United States History, Political Science, European History, Military History, American History, U.S. History, U.S. Government

Jeremy Bernstein traces the circuitous route by which Iran secured the expertise to develop a nuclear capability. Since Iran’s program appears to be aimed at weapons production, he concludes, the time of decision for action is fast approaching.

View
 
Why American Newspapers Gave Away the Future

by Richard J. Tofel

United States History, European History, Military History, American History, U.S. History, Essays

An insider’s assessment of the precipitous decline of large city papers in the United States, and the newspapers’ response to their problems, by an experienced newspaper executive. 

View
 
Firing the General

Harry Truman Tells How He'd Had Enough of MacArthur

by Merle Miller

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

No episode in the Truman years caused a greater uproar than his firing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War. MacArthur wanted to expand the war; Truman sought a limited conflict. The always candid former president explains what happened. 

View
 
Is a College Education Still Worth the Price?

A Dean's Sobering Perspective

by Richard B. Schwartz

United States History, Education

A former dean looks at American higher education and finds the value of a college education now highly problematic.  With an insider's knowledge, he describes the hidden costs behind exploding tuition costs that are creating a two-tiered society.  

View
 
High and Tight

Hank Greenberg Confronts Anti-Semitism in Baseball

by Ray Robinson

United States History, U.S. History, Sports History

When Hank Greenberg challenged Babe Ruth’s home run record he became a hero to American Jews.  On the 100th anniversary of his birth, Ray Robinson remembers the man, the player, and the prejudice he overcame.

View
 
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.

View
 
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.

View
 
Expanded Powers

The FBI, the NSA, and the Struggle Between National Security and Civil Liberties in the Wake of 9/11

by Athan G. Theoharis

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

Athan Theoharis considers the record of the past to assess today’s broadened powers for the FBI and the NSA after 9/11.  He concludes that Americans may feel marginally safer, but at a dangerous cost to their freedoms and to the tenor of our political dialogue.

View
 
Abstraction and Utopia

by Hilton Kramer

Art History, European History

Hilton Kramer explains abstract art's early ties to utopian politics, locating its initial development among the Russian avant-garde, the De Stijl movement in the Netherlands, and the German Bauhaus, and exploring the ideas of these pioneers.

View
 
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.

View
 
The Closing Rounds of the Civil War

by Ulysses S. Grant

Introduction by David Hardin

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

Ulysses S. Grant takes the reader onto the battlefield and behind the lines in his account of the final actions of the Civil War.  

View
 
Shaping the American Character

The Significance of the Frontier in American History

by Frederick Jackson Turner

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

Turner here lays out his “frontier thesis,” which remains one of the key interpretations of American history. He argued that the circumstances of life on the western frontier were a determining influence on American character and institutions. 

View