Our Blog

Stuff Every American Should Know

A pocket-sized gift book packed with patriotic facts for ordinary Americans and history buffs alike.
 
This handbook is the perfect patriotic present for any engaged United States citizen. Who played the first game of baseball? What’s a bicameral congress? Where did Mount Rushmore come from? Who is Geronimo and why do we yell his name when we jump? Plus:

•  All about the Declaration of Independence
•  Ten Books Every American Should Read
•  Assassination Attempts on U.S. Presidents
•  The History of the Statue of Liberty
•  How to Bake the Perfect Apple Pie

Posted by impart

Fill in the Blank

With more than 100 different spreads to envision, design, and draw, Fill in the Blank invites you to create new houses, cars, skyscrapers, cereal boxes, wine labels, roller coasters, topiary, and much, much more!

Part doodling book, part sketchbook, and part design-inspiration workbook, Fill in the Blank offers everything you need to jump-start your imagination. Want to design a tattoo? Here’s a body. Want to build a new castle on a cliffside? Here’s the landscape. These exercises are guaranteed to make you think outside the box. Inspirational and fun for all ages, Fill in the Blank makes a wonderful gift for creative thinkers of all colors and stripes.

Vahram Muratyan and Elodie Chaillous are founders of ViiiZ, an art direction and graphic design studio created in 2005 in Paris. They graduated from the acclaimed Parisian design school ESAG-Penninghen

Posted by impart

The Last Policeman

As Seen on Today with Hoda & Jenna

“A genre-defying blend of crime writing and science fiction.” –Alexandra Alter, The New York Times

Winner of the 2013 Edgar® Award for Best Paperback Original!

What’s the point in solving murders if we’re all going to die soon, anyway?

Detective Hank Palace has faced this question ever since asteroid 2011GV1 hovered into view. There’s no chance left. No hope. Just six precious months until impact.

The economy spirals downward while crops rot in the fields. Churches and synagogues are packed. People all over the world are walking off the job—but not Hank Palace. He’s investigating a death by hanging in a city that sees a dozen suicides every week—except this one feels suspicious, and Palace is the only cop who cares.

The first in a trilogy, The Last Policeman offers a mystery set on the brink of an apocalypse. As Palace’s investigation plays out under the shadow of 2011GV1, we’re confronted by hard questions way beyond “whodunit.” What basis does civilization rest upon? What is life worth? What would any of us do, what would we really do, if our days were numbered?

Posted by impart

Insults Every Man Should Know

Hard-Hitting Insults for Every Occasion

Including

     •  Insulting Someone’s Intelligence
     •  Insulting Someone’s Sexual Prowess
     •  Insults for the Office
     •  Insults on Game Day
     •  Insults throughout History
     •  Insults from around the World

Plus insulting gestures, backhanded compliments, comebacks, all the things you should never say about someone's mama, and much more!

 
Nick Mamatas is the author of a few novels, including Sensation and The Damned Highway, and more than a few insults. A native New Yorker, he now lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

Posted by impart

Presidential Campaign Posters

Here are 100 ready-to-frame political campaign posters from the annals of American history! The candidates range from Andrew Jackson (“Defender of Beauty and Booty”) and William Henry Harrison (“Have Some Hard Cider!”) to Richard Nixon (“He’s the One!”), Barack Obama (“Hope”), and many, many more. The posters are backed with colorful historical commentary and additional artwork; best of all, they’re bound with clean microperforated edges so they can be removed, framed, and displayed.

Presidential Campaign Posters is the perfect gift for political junkies of all ages!

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS has been the guardian of the nation’s memory for more than two centuries. The writers and editors in its publishing office collaborate with curators, reference librarians, and subject specialists to produce books and other materials that open its ever-growing collections and activities to the nation and the world.

Posted by impart

Ten Tea Parties

Everyone knows the story of the Boston Tea Party—in which colonists stormed three British ships and dumped 92,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor. But do you know the history of the Philadelphia Tea Party (December 1773)? How about the York, Maine, Tea Party (September 1774) or the Wilmington, North Carolina, Tea Party (March 1775)?

Ten Tea Parties is the first book to chronicle all these uniquely American protests. Author and historian Joseph Cummins begins with the history of the East India Company (the biggest global corporation in the eighteenth century) and their staggering financial losses during the Boston Tea Party (more than a million dollars in today’s money).

From there we travel to Philadelphia, where Captain Samuel Ayres was nearly tarred and feathered by a mob of 8,000 angry patriots. Then we set sail for New York City, where the Sons of Liberty raided the London and heaved 18 chests of tea into the Hudson River. Still later, in Annapolis, Maryland, a brigantine carrying 2,320 pounds of the “wretched weed” was burned to ashes.

Together, the stories in Ten Tea Parties illuminate the power of Americans banding together as Americans—for the very first time in the fledgling nation’s history. It’s no wonder these patriots remain an inspiration to so many people today.

Posted by impart