Lawrence Goldstone

Nancy Bazelon Goldstone

Looks at the life and times of Michael Servetus, a freethinking sixtenth-century scientist and theologian who authored a work of biblical scholarship that refuted orthodox Christianity, that led to his execution for heresy.

The Remarkable Story of a Fearless Scholar, a Fatal Heresy, and One of the Rarest Books in the World

Out of the Flames

Nancy Goldstone

The authors rrecount how they became interested in collecting books and describe the interesting people they have met in the course of their collecting

Travels in the Book World

Used and Rare

A remarkable new historical thriller by New York Times notable mystery author Lawrence Goldstone that evokes the New York City of 1899. In 1899, in Brooklyn, New York, Dr. Noah Whitestone is called urgently to his wealthy neighbor’s house to treat a five-year-old boy with a shocking set of symptoms. When the child dies suddenly later that night, Noah is accused by the boy’s regular physician—the powerful and politically connected Dr. Arnold Frias—of prescribing a lethal dose of laudanum. To prove his innocence, Noah must investigate the murder—for it must be murder—and confront the man whom he is convinced is the real killer. His investigation leads him to a reporter for a muckraking magazine and a beautiful radical editor who are convinced that a secret, experimental drug from Germany has caused the death of at least five local children, and possibly many more. Noah is drawn into a dangerous world of drugs, criminals, and politics, which threatens not just his career but also his life. Goldstone weaves a savvy tale of intrigue and stunning twists that incorporates real-life historical figures and events while richly recreating the closing days of the nineteenth century—a time when American might was on the march in the Pacific, medicine was poised to leap into a new era, radical politics threatened the status quo, and the role of women in American society was undergoing profound change.

Deadly Cure

Explores the life-risking rivalry between the Wright Brothers and machinist Glenn Hammond Curtiss, assessing how their patent war shaped early aviation and ultimately cost one of the men his life.

The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies

Birdmen

An award–winning constitutional law historian examines case–based evidence of the court's longstanding support for white supremacy (often under the guise of ""states rights"") to reveal how that bias has allowed the court to solidify its position as arguably the most powerful branch of the federal government. One promise of democracy is the right of every citizen to vote. And yet, from our founding, strong political forces were determined to limit that right. The Supreme Court, Alexander Hamilton wrote, would protect the weak against this very sort of tyranny. Still, as On Account of Race forcefully demonstrates, through the better part of American history the Court has instead been a protector of white rule. And complex threats against the right to vote persist even today. Beginning in 1876, the Supreme Court systematically dismantled both the equal protection guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment and what seemed to be the right to vote in the Fifteenth. And so a half million African Americans across the South who had risked their lives and property to be allowed to cast ballots were stricken from voting rolls by white supremacists. This vacuum allowed for the rise of Jim Crow. None of this was done in the shadows—those determined to wrest the vote from black Americans could not have been more boastful in either intent or execution. On Account of Race tells the story of an American tragedy, the only occasion in United States history in which a group of citizens who had been granted the right to vote then had it stripped away. It is a warning that the right to vote is fragile and must be carefully guarded and actively preserved lest American democracy perish.

The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravaging of African American Voting Rights

On Account of Race

Continuing the couple's love affair with book collecting that was first shared with readers in "Used and Rare, " the Goldstones get hooked on the correspondence and couplings of Bloomsbury, track down Bram Stoker's earliest notes for "Dracula, " and discover new places to buy rare tomes--meeting eccentric personalities along the way.

Footnotes in Booklore

Slightly Chipped

The controversial history of the attack submarine—and the story of its colorful creator, John Philip Holland—that reveals how this imaginative invention changed the face of modern warfare. From Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea to The Hunt for Red October, readers the world over have demonstrated an enduring fascination with travel under the sea. Yet the riveting story behind the invention of the submarine—an epic saga of genius, persistence, ruthlessness, and deceit—is almost completely unknown. Like Henry Ford and the Wright brothers, John Philip Holland was completely self-taught, a brilliant man raised in humble circumstances, earning his living as a schoolteacher and choirmaster. But all the while he was obsessed with creating a machine that could successfully cruise beneath the waves. His struggle to unlock the mystery behind controlled undersea navigation would take three decades, during which he endured skepticism, disappointment, and betrayal. But his indestructible belief in himself and his ideas led him to finally succeed where so many others had failed. Going Deep is a vivid chronicle of the fierce battles not only under the water, but also in the back rooms of Wall Street and the committee rooms of Congress. A rousing adventure—surrounded by an atmosphere of corruption and greed—at its heart this a story of bravery, passion, and the unbreakable determination to succeed against long odds.

Going Deep

Nineteenth-century Philadelphia physician Ephraim Carroll draws on the new techniques of forensic medicine to investigate the brutal murder of a beautiful young woman and the horror that led to her death, in a historical thriller populated by such real-life characters as pioneering physicians William Osler and William Stewart Halsted and painter Thomas Eakins. A first novel. 50,000 first printing.

The Anatomy of Deception

A thrilling and incisive examination of the post-Reconstruction era struggle for and suppression of African American voting rights in the United States.

Stolen Justice: The Struggle for African American Voting Rights (Scholastic Focus)

Lawrence Goldstone throws new light on the framing of the U. S. Constitution in this intriguing chronicle of the Constitutional debates, bringing to life the remarkable range of personalities and rivalries that forged the foundation of our country. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 is generally viewed as dominated by the likes of Madison, Mason, Gouverneur Morris, and a few others; in fact, as Goldstone shows, relative unknowns like Rutledge, Ellsworth, and Sherman took over the debate and forged its eventual outcome. He also reveals how the debate over slavery was not split along North-South lines.

Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution

Dark Bargain

"On Easter Sunday of 1873, just eight years after the Civil War ended, a band of white supremacists marched into Grant Parish, Louisiana, and massacred over one hundred unarmed African Americans. The court case that followed would reach the highest court in the land. Yet, following one of the most ghastly and barbaric incidents of mass murder in American history, not a single person was convicted. The opinion issued by the Supreme Court in US v. Cruikshank set in motion a process that would help create a society in which black Americans were oppressed and denied basic human rights -- legally, according to the courts. These injustices would last for almost a hundred years, and many continue to exist to this day. In this compelling and thoroughly researched volume for young readers, Lawrence Goldstone traces the history of the laws and the figures involved in the story of how the Supreme Court helped institutionalize racism in the US justice system"--

Massacre at Colfax and the Quest for Justice

Unpunished Murder

"When a Catholic Inquisition courier is murdered by extreme Lutherans in 16th-century France, Amaury de Faverges is hired to investigate a secret threat to François I, an assignment that leads to his discovery of Copernicus' manuscript about the sun's location at the center of the universe."

A Novel of Suspense

The Astronomer

Discover the daring aviation pioneers who made the dream of powered flight a reality, forever changing the course of history. Aviator Lincoln Beachey broke countless records: he looped-the-loop, flew upside down and in corkscrews, and was the first to pull his aircraft out of what was a typically fatal tailspin. As Beachey and other aviators took to the skies in death-defying acts in the early twentieth century, these innovative daredevils not only wowed crowds, but also redefined the frontiers of powered flight. Higher, Steeper, Faster takes readers inside the world of the brave men and women who popularized flying through their deadly stunts and paved the way for modern aviation. With heart-stopping accounts of the action-packed race to conquer the skies, plus photographs and fascinating archival documents, this book will exhilarate readers as they fly through the pages.

The Daredevils Who Conquered the Skies

Higher, Steeper, Faster

The leaders of a parent-child book group share their secrets for transforming children into dynamic and enthusiastic readers, offering suggestions on what books parents should read with their children and explaining how to talk to children about literature.

Parents, Kids, and the Bond of Reading

Deconstructing Penguins

An accessible study of the baffling mystery of the Voynich Manuscript, discovered in 1912, examines the theory that Roger Bacon, the noted thirteenth-century astronomer, was the author of the book, which is written in an indecipherable language and code that remains unsolved and contains odd illustrations of plants, astrological diagrams, and more. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

Roger Bacon and the Unsolved Mystery of the Most Unusual Manuscript in the World

The Friar and the Cipher

A Novel

When Fruitful Willis, after years of scraping out a meager living as a bum, discovers that he has been granted a more dignified status as a member of the ‘homeless,’ he stakes a claim on the sidewalk in front of Murray Plotkin’s delicatessen. Murray’s heavy-handed attempts to remove the newly-appointed Willis result in Fruitful engaging the services of an activist lawyer, Herbert Whiffet, to protect his rights. At roughly the same time, Lawanda de Bourbon, the stunning eighteen-year-old consort of a ruthless gang leader (and everyone else), is gunned down during a drug sweep wearing only a flimsy negligee. James Rodriguez, the rookie patrolman responsible for the shooting, claims she had a gun in her hand, however no gun was found at the scene. The very same Herbert Whiffet is then hired by the de Bourbon family to assure that Lawanda’s rights are protected, albeit post-mortem. Whiffet seizes upon each of these cases as a vehicle to further the cause, to say nothing of the enhancement of his own status as a champion of his people. Caught in the resulting whirlwind are Cornelia Pembroke, the beautiful star reporter for a local television station, Renee Lieberman-Smith, a crusading assistant district attorney, the Rev. Leotis Chestnut, a veteran of the civil rights movement, and, most importantly, Clarissa Taylor, a single working mother of three who discovers it is her rights and those of her children which are most desperately in need of protection. Rights is a scathing, hilarious send-up of big-city politics and current social mores which casts an equally unsparing eye on black activists, white liberals, media sensationalists, political opportunists, and various others responsible for creating a society where the wrong people inevitably become the victims.

Rights

The authors recount how they became interested in collecting books and describe the interesting people they have met in the course of their collecting

From acclaimed historian Lawrence Goldstone comes a thrilling narrative of courage, determination, and competition: the story of the intense rivalry that fueled the rise of American aviation. The feud between this nation’s great air pioneers, the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss, was a collision of unyielding and profoundly American personalities. On one side, a pair of tenacious siblings who together had solved the centuries-old riddle of powered, heavier-than-air flight. On the other, an audacious motorcycle racer whose innovative aircraft became synonymous in the public mind with death-defying stunts. For more than a decade, they battled each other in court, at air shows, and in the newspapers. The outcome of this contest of wills would shape the course of aviation history—and take a fearsome toll on the men involved. Birdmen sets the engrossing story of the Wrights’ war with Curtiss against the thrilling backdrop of the early years of manned flight, and is rich with period detail and larger-than-life personalities: Thomas Scott Baldwin, or “Cap’t Tom” as he styled himself, who invented the parachute and almost convinced the world that balloons were the future of aviation; John Moisant, the dapper daredevil who took to the skies after three failed attempts to overthrow the government of El Salvador, then quickly emerged as a celebrity flyer; and Harriet Quimby, the statuesque silent-film beauty who became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. And then there is Lincoln Beachey, perhaps the greatest aviator who ever lived, who dazzled crowds with an array of trademark twists and dives—and best embodied the romance with death that fueled so many of aviation’s earliest heroes. A dramatic story of unimaginable bravery in the air and brutal competition on the ground, Birdmen is at once a thrill ride through flight’s wild early years and a surprising look at the personal clash that fueled America’s race to the skies. Praise for Birdmen “A meticulously researched account of the first few hectic, tangled years of aviation and the curious characters who pursued it . . . a worthy companion to Richard Holmes’s marvelous history of ballooning, Falling Upwards.”—Time “The daredevil scientists and engineers who forged the field of aeronautics spring vividly to life in Lawrence Goldstone’s history.”—Nature “The history of the development of an integral part of the modern world and a fascinating portrayal of how a group of men and women achieved a dream that had captivated humanity for centuries.”—The Christian Science Monitor “Captivating and wonderfully presented . . . a fine book about these rival pioneers.”—The Wall Street Journal “[A] vivid story of invention, vendettas, derring-do, media hype and patent fights [with] modern resonance.”—Financial Times “A powerful story that contrasts soaring hopes with the anchors of ego and courtroom.”—Kirkus Reviews “A riveting narrative about the pioneering era of aeronautics in America and beyond . . . Goldstone raises questions of enduring importance regarding innovation and the indefinite exertion of control over ideas that go public.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Journey into the world of book collecting with the Goldstones-rediscover the joy of reading, laugh, and fall in love with books all over again. The idea that books had stories associated with them that had nothing to do with the stories inside them was new to us. We had always valued the history, the world of ideas contained between the covers of a book or, as in the case of The Night Visitor, some special personal significance. Now, for the first time, we began to appreciate that there was a history and a world of ideas embodied by the books themselves. Part travel story, part love story, and part memoir, Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone's Used and Rare provides a delightful love letter to book lovers everywhere.

Lawrence Goldstone

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