The name Hershey evokes many things: chocolate bars, the company town in Pennsylvania, one of America's most recognizable brands. But who was the man behind the name? In this compelling biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael D'Antonio gives us the real-life rags-to-riches story of Milton S. Hershey, a largely uneducated businessman whose idealistic sense of purpose created an immense financial empire, a town, and a legacy that lasts to this day.

Hershey, the son of a minister's daughter and an irresponsible father who deserted the family, began his career inauspiciously when the two candy shops he opened both went bankrupt. Undeterred, he started the Lancaster Caramel Company, which brought him success at last. Eventually he sold his caramel operation and went on to perfect the production process of chocolate to create a stable, consistent bar with a long shelf life...and an American icon was born.

Hershey was more than a successful businessman -- he was a progressive thinker who believed in capitalism as a means to higher goals. He built the world's largest chocolate factory and a utopian village for his workers on a large tract of land in rural Pennsylvania, and used his own fortune to keep his workers employed during the Great Depression. In addition, he secretly willed his fortune to a boys' school and orphanage, both of which now control a vast endowment.

Extensively researched and vividly written, "Hershey" is the fascinating story of this uniquely American visionary.

Bruce McNall became obsessed with coin collecting at the age of 10. At 16, his collection was worth $60,000. During college, he traveled the world buying coins stolen from ancient sites and tombs. McNall's first major sale was to Sy Weintraub, the head of Panavision, who bought $500,000 worth of coins in one sitting. Soon, McNall branched out into horse racing, movie making (The Fabulous Baker Boys), and owning the L.A. Kings hockey team.

Once a most unlikely candidate, Barack Obama's successful campaign for the White House made him a worldwide sensation and a transformative figure even before he was inaugurated. Elected as the Iraq War and Great Recession discouraged millions of Americans, Obama's promise of hope revived the national spirit. Had he only saved the economy, Obama would be considered a truly successful president. However he has achieved so much more, against ferocious opposition, that he can be counted as one of the most consequential presidents in history. With health care reform, he ended a crisis of escalating costs and inadequate access that threatened 50 million people. His energy policies drove down the cost of power generated by the sun, wind, and even fossil fuels. His climate change efforts produced the first treaty to address global warming in a meaningful way, and his diplomacy produced a dramatic reduction in the nuclear threat posed by Iran. Add the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, the normalisation of relations with Cuba, and the "pivot" toward Asia, and his successes abroad match those at home. In A Consequential President, Michael D'Antonio tallies Obama's long record of achievement, both his major successes and less-noticed ones that nevertheless contribute to his legacy. Obama's greatest achievement came as he restored dignity and ethics to the office of the president, proof that he delivered the hope and change he promised.

'Consider the most common mosquito on Earth. This soft, little, dusty-brown insect is Culex Pipiens. You've seen her land on your arm. You have caught her just at the end of her feeding, her translucent belly swelling red with your very own blood. At such a moment, you can be forgiven for failing to notice what an elegant and hardy thing she is. But she is . . . ' No creature has touched directly the lives of more human beings than the mosquito. She has been a nuisance, a pollinator of plants and an angel of death all over the globe. And throughout history, much of our trouble with the mosquito has been caused by man himself. Professor Andrew Spielman has dedicated his life to understanding this insect. In Mosquito he tells the story of man's struggle to live with the mosquito, from the defeat of Sir Francis Drake's fleet, to the death of thousands of Frenchmen working on the Panama Canal and to the recent panic over the West Nile Virus in New York. And he shows us how we have accelerated the spread of disease, describing the catastrophic failures of mosquito control which have ensured that - even now - one person dies of malaria every twelve seconds.

Two award-winning journalists offer the most comprehensive inside story behind our most significant modern political drama: the House impeachment of Donald Trump. Having spent a year essentially embedded inside several House committees, Michael D'Antonio and Peter Eisner draw on many sources, including key House leaders, to expose the politicking, playcalling, and strategies debated backstage and to explain the Democrats' successes and apparent public failures during the show itself. High Crimes opens with Nancy Pelosi deciding the House should take up impeachment, then, in part one, leaps back to explain what Ukraine was really all about: not just Joe Biden and election interference, but a money grab and oil. In the second part, the authors recount key meetings throughout the run up to the impeachment hearings, including many of the heated confrontations between the Trump administration and House Democrats. And the third part takes readers behind the scenes of those hearings, showing why certain things happened the way they did for reasons that never came up in public. In the end, having illuminated every step of impeachment, from the schemes that led Giuliani to the Ukraine in 2016 to Fiona Hill's rebuking the Republicans' conspiracy theories, High Crimes promises to be Trump's Final Days.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist tells the amazing story of how a group of imprisoned boys won their freedom, found justice, and survived one of the darkest and least-known episodes of American history.
In the early twentieth century, United States health officials used IQ tests to single out "feebleminded" children and force them into institutions where they were denied education, sterilized, drugged, and abused. Under programs that ran into the 1970s, more than 250,000 children were separated from their families, although many of them were merely unwanted orphans, truants, or delinquents.
"The State Boys Rebellion" conveys the shocking truth about America's eugenic era through the experiences of a group of boys held at the Fernald State School in Massachusetts starting in the late 1940s. In the tradition of "Erin Brockovich, " it recounts the boys' dramatic struggle to demand their rights and secure their freedom. It also covers their horrifying discovery many years later that they had been fed radioactive oatmeal in Cold War experiments -- and the subsequent legal battle that ultimately won them a multimillion-dollar settlement.
Meticulously researched through school archives, previously sealed papers, and interviews with the surviving State Boys, this deft expose is a powerful reminder of the terrifying consequences of unchecked power as well as an inspiring testament to the strength of the human spirit.

Now available in paperback, Tin Cup Dreams is the remarkable odyssey of self-taught golfer Esteban Toledo, a former boxer who overcame poverty and the wrong side of the tracks to make it through Q School and a make-or-break season on the PGA Tour. With uncommon grit and determination, Toledo finally triumphs after a 12 year quest that took him to the depths of despair.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael D'Antonio gives a rare behind-the-scenes look at the PGA Tour while keeping readers on the edge of their seats with his chronicle of Toledo's struggles. Traditionally, golf was a dreamer's path to glory. Tin Cup Dreams shows that it still is.

Now in paperback--a fascinating work of popular science from a world-renowned expert on mosquitoes and a prize-winning reporter.
In this lively and comprehensive portrait of the mosquito, its role in history, and its threat to mankind, Spielman and D'Antonio take a mosquito's-eye view of nature and man. They show us how mosquitoes breed, live, mate, and die, and introduce us to their enemies, both natural and man-made. The authors present tragic and often grotesque examples of how the mosquito has insinuated itself into human history, from the malaria that devastated invaders of ancient Rome to the current widespread West Nile fever panic. Filled with little-known facts and remarkable anecdotes that bring this tiny being into larger focus, Mosquito offers fascinating, alarming, and convincing evidence that the sooner we get to know this pesky insect, the better off we'll be.

A "Publishers Weekly" Best Nonfiction Book of 2013 A "Kirkus Reviews "Best Book of 2013 An Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Nominee An explosive, sweeping account of the scandal that has sent the Catholic Church into a tailspin -- and the brave few who fought for justice

In the mid-1980s a dynamic young monsignor assigned to the Vatican's embassy in Washington set out to investigate the problem of sexually abusive priests. He found a scandal in the making, confirmed by secret files revealing complaints that had been hidden from police and covered up by the Church hierarchy. He also understood that the United States judicial system was eager to punish offenders and those who aided them. He presented all of this to the American bishops, warning that the Church could be devastated by negative publicity and bankrupted by its legal liability. They ignored him.
Meanwhile, a young lawyer listened to a new client describe an abusive sexual history with a priest that began when he was ten years old. His parents' complaints were downplayed by Church officials who offered them money to go away. The lawyer saw a claim that any defendant would want to settle. Then he began to suspect he was onto something bigger, involving thousands of priests who had abused countless children while the Church had done almost nothing about it. The lawsuit he filed would touch off a legal war of historic and global proportions.
Part history, part journalism, and part true-crime thriller, Michael D'Antonio's "Mortal Sins" brings to mind landmark books such as "All the President's Men, And the Band Played On, " and "The Informant," as it reveals a long and ferocious battle for the soul of the largest and oldest organization in the world.

"A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey" tells the remarkable story of America's first efforts to succeed in space, a time of exploding rockets, national space mania, Florida boomtowns, and interservice rivalries so fierce that President Dwight Eisenhower had to referee them.
When the Soviet Union launched the first orbital satellite, "Sputnik I, " Americans panicked. The Soviets had nuclear weapons, the Cold War was underway, and now the USSR had taken the lead in the space race. Members of Congress and the press called for an all-out effort to launch a satellite into orbit. With dire warnings about national security in the news almost every day, the armed services saw space as the new military frontier. But President Eisenhower insisted that the space effort, which relied on military technology, be supervised by civilians so that the space race would be peaceful. The Navy's Vanguard program flopped, and the Army, led by ex-Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and a martinet general named J. Bruce Medaris (whom Eisenhower disliked), took over. Meanwhile, the Soviets put a dog inside the next Sputnik, and Americans grew more worried as the first animal in space whirled around the Earth.
Throughout 1958 America went space crazy. UFO sightings spiked. Boys from Brooklyn to Burbank shot model rockets into the air. Space-themed beauty pageants became a national phenomenon. The news media flocked to the launchpads on the swampy Florida coast, and reporters reinvented themselves as space correspondents. And finally the Army's rocket program succeeded. Determined not to be outdone by the Russians, America's space scientists launched the first primate into space, a small monkey they nicknamed Old Reliable for his calm demeanor. And then at Christmastime, Eisenhower authorized the launch of a secret satellite with a surprise aboard.
"A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey" memorably recalls the infancy of the space race, a time when new technologies brought ominous danger but also gave us the ability to realize our dreams and reach for the stars.

Obama's campaign for the White House made the senator from Chicago a worldwide sensation and a transformative figure of hope. Elected after the Iraq War and the Great Recession had driven millions of Americans to despair, he quickly passed an economic recovery act and a program to save the U.S. auto industry. Together, they powered a recovery that once again made America's economy the most vibrant in the world. That alone would have made him a truly successful president, but President Obama achieved so much more and against ferocious opposition. With healthcare reform, President Obama ended a long-running crisis of escalating costs and inadequate access to treatment for tens of millions of citizens. His Paris Agreement became the first treaty to address global warming in a meaningful way. His successes abroad matched those at home. He oversaw the mission to kill Osama bin Laden at last. His measured diplomacy reduced the nuclear threat posed by Iran, normalised relations with Cuba, and left the world a safer place. Most of all, D'Antonio shows that President Obama restored dignity and ethics to the office of the president while running an administration almost entirely untainted by scandal and criminality - which few others can claim.

Today Lipton means tea. However, in his time Sir Thomas Lipton was known for much more than the Lipton tea empire. Raised in desperate poverty, he would build a global empire of markets, factories, plantations, and stockyards. But his epic pursuit of the America's Cup--a yachting trophy and the ultimate in international sport--made him a beloved figure on both sides of the Atlantic.
More than a story of innovation and achievement, "A Full Cup "also explores Lipton's most intriguing creation: his public persona, formed by a burgeoning mass media and a shameless self-promotion that made him one of the most recognizable figures of his time. Michael D'Antonio brings to life the surprising careers of this intrepid sailor, gregarious showman, and ingenious self-made millionaire--the world's very first celebrity CEO.