



























Books Featured at Princeton Club Events
By Empire State Center for Book

An ongoing list of fun and interesting books about New York City and New York State.

Empire's Eagles: The Fate of the Napoleonic Elite in America
Thomas E. Crocker
$29.95 $27.85The never-before told story of how Napoleon's top brass escaped to America after Waterloo. Empire's Eagles is colorful, new, and an effectively unknown chapter in American history. In its center is the mystery of whether Napoleon's "Bravest of the brave," Marshal Ney, cheated a firing squad to escape under an alias and reinvent himself in America

Undercover Reporting: The Truth about Deception
Brooke Kroeger
$35.94In this provocative book, Brooke Kroeger argues for a reconsideration of the place of oft-maligned journalistic practices. While it may seem paradoxical, much of the valuable journalism of the past century and a half has emerged from undercover investigations or those that employ various forms of subterfuge and deception to expose wrong. Kroeger asserts that undercover work is not a separate world but rather it embodies a central discipline of good reporting–the ability to extract significant information or to create indelible, real-time descriptions of hard-to-penetrate institutions or social situations that deserve the public’s attention.

Suffragents Tpb: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote
Brooke Kroeger
$33.95 $31.57The Suffragents is the untold story of how some of New York’s most powerful men formed the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage, which grew between 1909 and 1917 from 150 founding members into a force of thousands across thirty-five states. Brooke Kroeger explores the formation of the League and the men who instigated it to involve themselves with the suffrage campaign, what they did at the behest of the movement’s female leadership, and why. She details the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s strategic decision to accept their organized help and then to deploy these influential new allies as suffrage foot soldiers, a role they accepted with uncommon grace. Led by such luminaries as Oswald Garrison Villard, John Dewey, Max Eastman, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and George Foster Peabody, members of the League worked the streets, the stage, the press, and the legislative and executive branches of government. In the process, they helped convince waffling politicians, a dismissive public, and a largely hostile press to support the women’s demand. Together, they swayed the course of history.

Lady Clementine
Marie Benedict
$16.99 $15.80In 1909, Clementine steps off a train with her new husband, Winston. An angry woman emerges from the crowd to attack, shoving him in the direction of an oncoming train. Just before he stumbles, Clementine grabs him by his suit jacket. This will not be the last time Clementine Churchill will save her husband. Lady Clementine is the ferocious story of the ambitious woman beside Winston Churchill, the story of a partner who did not flinch through the sweeping darkness of war, and who would not surrender either to expectations or to enemies.

The Only Woman in the Room
Marie Benedict
$16.99 $15.80Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich's plans while at her husband's side and understood more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, and the whirlwind escape landed her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star. But she kept a secret more shocking than her heritage or her marriage: she was a scientist. And she had an idea that might help the country fight the Nazis and revolutionize modern communication...if anyone would listen to her.

Mystery of Mrs. Christie
Marie Benedict
$26.99 $25.10In December 1926, Agatha Christie goes missing. Investigators find her empty car on the edge of a deep, gloomy pond, the only clues some tire tracks nearby and a fur coat left in the car—strange for a frigid night. Her World War I veteran husband and her daughter have no knowledge of her whereabouts, and England unleashes an unprecedented manhunt to find the up-and-coming mystery author. Eleven days later, she reappears, just as mysteriously as she disappeared, claiming amnesia and providing no explanations for her time away.

The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change
Adam Braun
$17.99 $16.73The Promise of a Pencil chronicles Braun’s journey to find his calling, as each chapter explains one clear step that every person can take to turn their biggest ambitions into reality. If you feel restless and ready for transition, if you are seeking direction and purpose, this critically acclaimed bestseller is for you. Driven by inspiring stories and shareable insights, this is the book that will give you the tools to make your own life a story worth telling.

Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend
Meryl Gordon
$18.99 $17.66A biography of Bunny Mellon, the style icon and American aristocrat who designed the White House Rose Garden for her friend JFK and served as a living witness to 20th Century American history, operating in the high-level arenas of politics, diplomacy, art and fashion.

When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry
$47.94
This collection of 23 new essays focuses on the lives of female screenwriters of Golden Age Hollywood, whose work helped create those unforgettable stories and characters beloved by audiences--but whose names have been left out of most film histories. The contributors trace the careers of such writers as Anita Loos, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Lillian Hellman, Gene Gauntier, Eve Unsell and Ida May Park, and explore themes of their writing in classics like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Ben Hur, and It's a Wonderful Life.

The Little Engine That Could: 90th Anniversary Edition
Watty Piper and Dan Santat
$18.99 $17.66The kindness and determination of the Little Blue Engine have inspired millions of children around the world since the story was first published in 1930. Cherished by readers for ninety years, The Little Engine That Could is a classic tale of a little engine that, despite her size, triumphantly pulls a train full of wonderful things to the children waiting on the other side of a mountain. This anniversary edition features the original text, all-new reimagined artwork and an introduction from Caldecott Medal-winner Dan Santat, and a special letter from Dolly Parton, award-winning singer-songwriter and founder of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.

Bookish Broads: Women Who Wrote Themselves Into History
Lauren Marino and Alexandra Kilburn
$19.99 $18.59A boldly illustrated celebration of literary history’s most revolutionary, talented women writers Women have written some of our most extraordinary literary works while living in societies and cultures that tried to silence them. These women dared to put pen to paper to express the multifaceted female experience. In Bookish Broads, Lauren Marino celebrates fierce, trailblazing female writers, reworking the literary canon that has long failed to recognize the immense contributions of women. Featuring more than 50 brilliant bookish broads, Marino cleverly illuminates the lives of the greats as well as the literary talents history has wrongfully overlooked. Each intimate portrait delves into one woman’s works and is accompanied by vibrant illustrations depicting each literary legend in her element and time.

What Would Dolly Do?: How to Be a Diamond in a Rhinestone World
Lauren Marino
$23.00 $21.39A spirited homage to Dolly Parton that captures the unique humor, no-nonsense wisdom, flash, and sass of one of America's most iconic stars.

Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway
Michael Riedel
$19.99 $18.59In the mid-1970s Times Square was the seedy symbol of New York's economic decline. Its once shining star, the renowned Shubert Organization, was losing theaters to make way for parking lots and losing money. Bernard Jacobs and Jerry Schoenfeld, two ambitious board members, saw the crumbling company was ripe for takeover and staged a coup and staved off corporate intrigue, personal betrayals and criminal investigations. Once Jacobs and Schoenfeld solidified their power, they turned a collapsed theater-owning holding company into one of the most successful entertainment empires in the world, spearheading the revitalization of Broadway and the renewal of Times Square. "For those interested in the business behind the greasepaint, at a riveting time in Broadway's and New York's history, this is the ticket" (USA TODAY). Michael Riedel tells the stories of the Shubert Organization and the shows that re-built a city in grand style--including Cats, A Chorus Line, and Mamma Mia --revealing the backstage drama that often rivaled what transpired onstage, exposing bitter rivalries, unlikely alliances, and inside gossip. "The trouble with Razzle Dazzle is...you can't put the damn thing down" (Huffington Post).

Wild City: A Brief History of New York City in 40 Animals
Thomas Hynes
$24.99 $23.24An illustrated guide to 40 of the most well-known, surprising, notorious, mythical, and sublime non-human citizens of New York City, and love letter to its surprising ecological diversity. From refugee parrots and prodigal beavers to gorgeous Fifth Avenue hawks and vengeful groundhogs, Wild City tells the funny, quirky, and memorable stories of forty of New York City's most surprising nonhuman citizens. This unconventional wildlife guide and concise environ-mental history of the Big Apple includes tales of the well-known, notorious, and legendary creatures who are as much New Yorkers as their human counterparts. A celebration of some of the city's most surpris-ing residents and a love letter to this always evolv-ing metropolis, Wild City is an enchanting illustrated volume that is a must-have for every Big Apple devotee and animal lover.

The Best Presidential Writing: From 1789 to the Present
$30.00 $27.90
A sweeping, groundbreaking, and comprehensive treasury of the most essential presidential writings, featuring a richly varied mix of the beloved and the little-known, from stirring speeches and shrewd remarks to behind-the-scenes drafts and unpublished autobiographies.

Singular Sensation: The Triumph of Broadway
Michael Riedel
$28.00 $26.04The extraordinary story of a transformative decade on Broadway, featuring gripping behind-the-scenes accounts of shows such as Rent, Angels in America, Chicago, The Lion King, and The Producers—shows that changed the history of the American theater.

Purpose, Passion, and Pajamas: How to Transform Your Life, Embrace the Human Connection, and Lead with Meaning
Genevieve M. Piturro
$16.95 $15.76Purpose, Passion, and Pajamas: How to Transform Your Life, Embrace the Human Connection, and Lead with Meaning Genevieve M. Piturro (Author) FORMAT Paperback $16.95 $15.59 ADD TO CART ADD TO WISHLIST AVAILABLE Description Purpose, Passion, and Pajamas is the story of Genevieve Piturro's triumphant leap off the corporate ladder to find her life's true calling. What started with a simple question from a little girl led Genevieve to conceive of and build the nonprofit Pajama Program in 2001, resulting in a featured appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show and an awe-inspiring display of compassion throughout the US and beyond. Today, Pajama Program has distributed over seven million pairs of pajamas, opened 63 chapters across the US, and established reading centers for children.

Cobble Hill
Cecily Von Ziegesar
$27.00 $25.11Welcome to Cobble Hill. In this eclectic Brooklyn neighborhood, private storms brew amongst four married couples and their children. There’s ex-groupie Mandy, so underwhelmed by motherhood and her current physical state that she fakes a debilitating disease to get the attention of her skateboarding, ex-boyband member husband Stuart. There’s the unconventional new school nurse, Peaches, on whom Stuart has an unrequited crush, and her disappointing husband Greg, who wears noise-cancelling headphones—everywhere. A few blocks away, Roy, a well-known, newly transplanted British novelist, has lost the thread of his next novel and his marriage to capable, indefatigable Wendy. Around the corner, Tupper, the nervous, introverted industrial designer with a warehose full of prosthetic limbs struggles to pin down his elusive artist wife Elizabeth. She remains…elusive. Throw in two hormonal teenagers, a ten-year-old pyromaniac, a drug dealer pretending to be a doctor, and a lot of hidden cameras, and you’ve got a combustible mix of egos, desires, and secrets bubbling in brownstone Brooklyn. Smart, sophisticated, yet surprisingly tender, Cobble Hill is highly entertaining portrait of contemporary family life and the colorful characters who call Brooklyn home.

Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote
Craig Fehrman
$30.00 $27.90Most Americans are familiar with Abraham Lincoln’s famous words in the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation. Yet few can name the work that helped him win the presidency: his published collection of speeches entitled Political Debates between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln labored in secret to get his book ready for the 1860 election, tracking down newspaper transcripts, editing them carefully for fairness, and hunting for a printer who would meet his specifications. Political Debates sold fifty thousand copies—the rough equivalent of half a million books in today’s market—and it reveals something about Lincoln’s presidential ambitions. But it also reveals something about his heart and mind. When voters asked about his beliefs, Lincoln liked to point them to his book. In Craig Fehrman’s groundbreaking work of history, Author in Chief, the story of America’s presidents and their books opens a rich new window into presidential biography. From volumes lost to history—Calvin Coolidge’s Autobiography, which was one of the most widely discussed titles of 1929—to ones we know and love—Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, which was very nearly never published—Fehrman unearths countless insights about the presidents through their literary works. Presidential books have made an enormous impact on American history, catapulting their authors to the national stage and even turning key elections. Beginning with Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, the first presidential book to influence a campaign, and John Adams’s Autobiography, the first score-settling presidential memoir, Author in Chief draws on newly uncovered information—including never-before-published letters from Andrew Jackson, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan—to cast fresh light on the private drives and self-doubts that fueled our nation’s leaders. We see Teddy Roosevelt as a vulnerable first-time author, struggling to write the book that would become a classic of American history. We see Reagan painstakingly revising Where’s the Rest of Me?, a forgotten memoir in which he sharpened his sunny political image. We see Donald Trump negotiating the deal for The Art of the Deal, the volume that made him synonymous with business savvy. Alongside each of these authors, we also glimpse the everyday Americans who read them. Combining the narrative felicity of a journalist with the rigorous scholarship of a historian, Fehrman delivers a feast for history lovers, book lovers, and everybody curious about a behind-the-scenes look at our presidents.

Dinner with Edward: A Story of an Unexpected Friendship
Isabel Vincent
$15.95 $14.83When Isabel meets Edward, both are at a crossroads: he wants to follow his late wife to the grave, and she is ready to give up on love. Thinking she is merely helping Edward’s daughter--who lives far away and has asked her to check in on her nonagenarian dad in New York--Isabel has no idea that the man in the kitchen baking the sublime roast chicken and light-as-air apricot soufflé will end up changing her life. As Edward and Isabel meet weekly for the glorious dinners that Edward prepares, he shares so much more than his recipes for apple galette or the perfect martini, or even his tips for deboning poultry. Edward is teaching Isabel the luxury of slowing down and taking the time to think through everything she does, to deconstruct her own life, cutting it back to the bone and examining the guts, no matter how messy that proves to be.
These books & authors have/will be featured at events sponsored by the Princeton Club of New York & the Empire State Center for the Book