Michelle Ferrari

When Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was published in 1962, the book became a phenomenon. A passionate and eloquent warning about the long-term dangers of pesticides, the book unleashed an extraordinary national debate and was greeted by vigorous attacks from the chemical industry. But it would also inspire President John F. Kennedy to launch the first-ever investigation into the public health effects of pesticides - an investigation that would eventually...

For 191 years the U.S. Supreme Court was populated only by men. When Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor as the first female justice in 1981, the announcement dominated the news. A pioneer who both reflected and shaped an era, in her 25 years as justice she was the swing vote in cases about some of the 20th century's most controversial issues-including race, gender and reproductive rights.

The Vote tells the dramatic story of the hard-fought campaign waged by American women for the right to vote, a transformative cultural and political movement that resulted in the largest expansion of voting rights in U.S. history.

Recounts the case of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy college students who, in 1924, kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks for, as they would confess, for the thrill of it.

Presents the story of the eugenics movement in the U.S., tracing its evolution from a force for human progress through the study of genetics to an anti-humanistic campaign for state-sponsored sterilization and the closing of the country's borders to peoples believed by some to be genetically inferior.