A Nine Volume Biography of Twentieth Century America

No one has ever accused Robert Vaughan of thinking small. His American Chronicles tell the story of Twentieth Century United States in nine volumes starting 1904 and ending in the 1960s. Though each novel stands on its own, they are related and intertwined in countless ways, making the Chronicles far closer to a tapestry than to a series. For instance, in Flower Children, the ninth book, the rebellious heiress who drops out and tunes into the San Francisco's 1960s Summer of Love is a descendant of the courageous Suffragist heroine of the first book, Dawn of the Century.

Vaughan's saga is a panorama of the explosive economic, political and social forces of the last century that continue to shape us in the current one. Nine wonderful reads for historians and fiction lovers alike.

- Richard Curtis

It was All Downhill from There

William Mulholland's vision of an aqueduct to carry water from distant mountains and across trackless desert to the dusty little town of Los Angeles rivaled the visions of Rome's engineers or the architects of China's Great Wall. Indeed, Mulholland's aqueduct was and to my knowledge still is the longest in the Western Hemisphere. Rivers in the Desert, the story of his inspiration and the execution of this amazing construction, is as stirring an adventure as any you will ever read, thanks to scholar Margaret Davis.

Amazon reviewer Michael Chadwick reminds us that "Fans of the movie Chinatown, Roman Polanski's classic detective melodrama, will love this true account of how desperately needed water was brought hundreds of miles to Los Angeles,where growth in the early 20th century was rapidly outracing the city's meager water supply. Like the 1974 movie with John Huston and Jack Nicholson, the real story has villains and heroes worthy of the big screen."

- Richard Curtis