Noted historian Thaddeus Russell tells a new and surprising story about the origins of American freedom. Rather than crediting the standard textbook icons, Russell demonstrates that it was those on the fringes of society whose subversive lifestyles helped legitimize the taboo and made America the land of the free in A Renegade History of the United States.

Did the Tea Party movement have any effect on Tuesday’s  primaries? Kate Zernike, a national correspondent for The New York Times and was a member of the team that shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting takes a surprising and revealing look inside the Tea Party movement—where it came from, what it stands for, and what it means for the future of American politics in Boiling Mad.

Award-winning sociologist and historian James W. Loewen with co-editor, Edward H. Sebesta,  put in perspective the mythology of the Old South in The Confederate and The Neo-Confederate Reader.

David Wessel is the economics editor of the Wall Street Journal. His bestselling book In Fed We Trust has been updated. Two years since the recession began, we explore what, if any, Federal Reserve policies have worked-but why it didn’t see disaster coming.

John Atlas is a longtime public-interest lawyer, activist, writer, and founder and president of the New Jersey-based National Housing Institute. His book, Seeds of Change, describes what really happened in ACORN‘s massive voter registration drives and why the community organizing group triggered a conservative assault by Fox News and the Republican Party.