On February 22, 1862, two days after his death, Willie Lincoln was laid to rest in a marble crypt in a Georgetown cemetery. That very night, shattered by grief, Abraham Lincoln arrives at the cemetery under cover of darkness and visits the crypt, alone, to spend time with his son's body. On February 22, 1862, two days after his death, Willie Lincoln was laid to rest in a marble crypt in a Georgetown cemetery. That very night, shattered by grief,...

The year is 1517. The place is the Holy Roman Empire. Meet Dismas, former Swiss mercenary and monk, now a prosperous dealer in holy relics. His clients use the relics to help them sell indulgences, the notorious get-out-of-Purgatory passes. But now indulgence sales have become so controversial that Martin Luther is about to nail his famous Ninety-Five Theses to the cathedral door, triggering the Protestant Reformation. Dismas is a good and honest...

The received idea of Native American history--as promulgated by books like Dee Brown's mega-bestselling 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee--has been that American Indian history essentially ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Not only did one hundred fifty Sioux die at the hands of the U. S. Cavalry, the sense was, but Native civilization did as well. Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, training as an anthropologist, and researching...