Gordon S Wood, photo credit John Abromowski Brown University

"More than almost any other nation in the world, the United States began as an idea."

In his new book, The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood reveals how the revolutionary generation believed itself to be the most enlightened people on earth and that their colonial rebellion and radical ideas had universal significance for oppressed peoples everywhere. Wood explores the ideological origins of the revolution - from ancient Rome to the European Enlightenment - and the founders' attempts to forge an American democracy.

Wood, the preeminent historian of the American Revolution, explains why it remains the most significant event in our history. Since American identity is so fluid and not based on any universally shared heritage, we have had to continually return to our nation's founding to understand who we are. In The Idea of America, Wood reflects on the birth of American nationhood and explains why the revolution remains so essential.

A Library Journal review calls the book, "Required reading for Revolutionary War enthusiasts on all levels."

Author Gordon S. Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and a professor of history at Brown University. His 1969 book, The Creation of the American Republic 1776- 1787, received the Bancroft and John H. Dunning prizes and was nominated for the National Book Award. His 1992 book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, won the Pulitzer Prize and the Emerson Prize. His most recent book, Empire of Liberty, won the 2010 New-York Historical Society Prize in American History. Wood contributes regularly to The New Republic and The New York Review of Books.

"Haigh deals with complex moral issues in subtle ways, and her narrative is beautifully, sometimes achingly poignant."

-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

It is the spring of 2002 and a perfect storm has hit Boston. Across the city's archdiocese, trusted priests have been accused of the worst possible betrayal of the souls in their care. In Faith, Jennifer Haigh explores the fallout for one devout family, the McGanns.

Estranged for years from her difficult and demanding relatives, Sheila McGann has remained close to her older brother Art, the popular, dynamic pastor of a large suburban parish. When Art finds himself at the center of the maelstrom, Sheila returns to Boston, ready to fight for him and his reputation. What she discovers is more complicated than she imagined. Her strict, lace-curtain-Irish mother is living in a state of angry denial. Sheila's younger brother Mike, to her horror, has already convicted his brother in his heart. But most disturbing of all is Art himself, who persistently dodges Sheila's questions and refuses to defend himself.

Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away is a beautiful paperback original which will appeal to readers of African and literary fiction.

When their mother catches their father with another woman, twelve year-old Blessing and her fourteen-year-old brother, Ezikiel, are forced to leave their comfortable home in Lagos for a village in the Niger Delta, to live with their mother's family. Without running water or electricity, Warri is at first a nightmare for Blessing. Her mother is gone all day and works suspiciously late into the night to pay the children's school fees. Her brother, once a promising student, seems to be falling increasingly under the influence of the local group of violent teenage boys calling themselves Freedom Fighters. Her grandfather, a kind if misguided man, is trying on Islam as his new religion of choice, and is even considering the possibility of bringing in a second wife.