Jack Kerouac's ON THE ROAD endures as a benchmark in postwar American Letters and an eternal rite of passage for youth. But how many of these young readers actually "get" Kerouac's theme of individual redemption? How many, instead of encountering themselves in the novel as Kerouac intended, encounter only the ghosts of others: the "Beats" of Kerouac's era and imagination? In this penetrating consideration, Edward Renehan reveals Kerouac's main inspirations (and process) in creating ON THE ROAD, and considers the impact the book had on both the author and his times. Most importantly, he...

Henry James described John Burroughs as a "more humorous, more available, and more sociable Thoreau." Burroughs's close friend and mentor Walt Whitman called him an "Audubon of prose." Throughout his long writing career, the Catskills and Hudson Valley native infused his writing with images of nature as seen and experienced within his own home region. "Nature comes home to one most when he is at home," he wrote, "the stranger and traveler finds her a stranger and traveler also. One's own landscape comes in time to be a sort of outlying part of himself; he has sowed himself broadcast upon it,...

"Excellent, a truly enjoyable and informative read."
- STEVE BUSCEMI, actor/director
"Edward Renehan does a great job of shining a light into this dark episode of American history."
- BILLY BRAGG
"Fascinating, surprising, moving, inspiring."
- ARTHUR GOLDWAG, author of "THE NEW HATE: A HISTORY OF FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE POPULIST RIGHT"
Blacklists. Political witch-hunts. Congressional inquisitions. Loyalty oaths. And one brave banjo-wielding patriot willing to risk prison and professional ruin rather than acquiesce ...

"Pete was] blacklisted during the McCarthy...

A lifelong waterman, Jack London (1876-1916) left behind a rich store in bold and beautiful prose depicting life upon the sea, under sail, and in step with wild, often perilous, nature. In these selected essays, chapters, and short stories, London brings us the sound of the wind in the rigging, the rapture of solitary starry nights spent out of sight of land, and all the other scents, sounds, emotions, and feelings so familiar to sailors everywhere. Behind every utterance lies a deep and reverent love for the sea and its magnificent, dangerous grandeur. In these testaments, London reveals...

One of the most famous moments of the Sixties - and one which continues to this day to be grossly misconstrued, mistold, and loaded with undeserved meaning - is the night in July of 1965 when Bob Dylan played an electric set (or at least tried to play an electric set) at the Newport Folk Festival: an event after which, supposedly, the culture of the Sixties was never quite the same again.
Even Dylan's most pre-eminent chronicler Sean Wilentz has mischaracterized this evening as the night when " Alan] Lomax along with Pete Seeger led the old guard that objected to the blasts of white-boy...

Recruited to help find his notorious war criminal uncle, Jurgen Enkert confronts his family's dark past ... and an even more sinister present.

Excellent, fast-paced, and engaging.
- Charles Scribner III

A page-turning work of fiction that ... looks into the face of evil without blinking - and finds that it is anything but banal.
- Arthur Goldwag, author of The New Hate and Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies.

A fantastic book
- Rainer Hoess, human rights activist and grandson of notorious Auschwitz...

Windcheck Magazine (Nov/Dec 2016): Absorbing and insightful ... utterly unforgettable.

Practical Sailor (Jan 2017): Adds a new depth of storytelling to a tale of madness that many sailors are familiar with.

Points East Magazine (July 2017): Crowhurst made his own bed, and unfortunately he lay in it, too. He flew too close to the sun, and his story done right, as it is in Desperate Voyage, never grows old.

Praise from Steven Callahan, New York Times bestselling author of Adrift Desperate Voyage provides...