Most Popular Books by Robert Sullivan

Winner of the American Library Association’s Newbery Medal “Remains a marvel: a sparkling, erudite, idiosyncratic tour through the human experience.... What a pageant this charming narrator continues to offer us!” —Wall Street Journal Winner of the first John Newberry Medal, Hendrik Willem van Loon’s The Story of Mankind, originally written for the author’s grandchildren, has charmed generations with its warmth and wisdom. Beginning with the origins of human life and sweeping forward to illuminate all of history, van Loon’s incomparable prose and illustrations presented a lively rendering of the people and events that have shaped world history. This new edition, updated by best-selling historian Robert Sullivan, continues van Loon’s personable style and incorporates the most important developments of the early twenty-first century, including the war on terrorism, global warming, and the explosion of social media. The result remains extremely “valid in broad outline if not detail and, as ever, a grand and thought-provoking read” (Kirkus Reviews).

New York Public Library Book for the Teenager New York Public Library Book to Remember PSLA Young Adult Top 40 Nonfiction Titles of the Year "Engaging...a lively, informative compendium of facts, theories, and musings."-Michiko Kakutani, New York Times Behold the rat, dirty and disgusting! Robert Sullivan turns the lowly rat into the star of this most perversely intriguing, remarkable, and unexpectedly elegant New York Times bestseller. Love them or loathe them, rats are here to stay-they are city dwellers as much as (or more than) we are, surviving on the effluvia of our society. In Rats, the critically acclaimed bestseller, Robert Sullivan spends a year investigating a rat-infested alley just a few blocks away from Wall Street. Sullivan gets to know not just the beast but its friends and foes: the exterminators, the sanitation workers, the agitators and activists who have played their part in the centuries-old war between human city dweller and wild city rat. Sullivan looks deep into the largely unrecorded history of the city and its masses-its herds-of-rats-like mob. Funny, wise, sometimes disgusting but always compulsively readable, Rats earns its unlikely place alongside the great classics of nature writing. With an all-new Afterword by the author

One of The New Yorker''s best books of the year so far | A Kirkus Reviews Best Nature Book of 2024 “Singular . . . Virtuosic . . . Double Exposure is the best book I’ve read about America . . . in many, many years.” —Corey Seymour, Vogue (a best book of 2024) “Extraordinary . . . A transformative experience for the reader.” —Lucy Sante “A large-hearted, wide-angled book . . . I couldn''t put it down.” —Ian Frazier A personal exploration of the American West and the work of one of America’s greatest photographers. Timothy O’Sullivan is America’s most famous war photographer. You know his work even if you don’t know his name: A Harvest of Death, taken at Gettysburg, is an icon of the Civil War. He was also among the first photographers to elevate what was then a trade to the status of fine art. The images of the American West he made after the war, while traveling with the surveys led by Clarence King and George Wheeler, display a prescient awareness of what photography would become; years later, Ansel Adams would declare his work “surrealistic and disturbing.” At the same time, we know very little about O’Sullivan himself. Nor do we know—really know—much more about the landscapes he captured. Robert Sullivan’s Double Exposure sets off in pursuit of these two enigmas. This book documents the author’s own road trip across the West in search of the places, many long forgotten or paved over, that O’Sullivan pictured. It also stages a reckoning with how the changes wrought on the land were already under way in the 1860s and ’70s, and how these changes were a continuation of the Civil War by other means. Sullivan, known for his probing investigations of place in the pages of The New Yorker and books like Rats and My American Revolution, has produced a work that, like O’Sullivan’s magisterial photos of geysers and hot springs, exposes a fissure in the American landscape itself.

The legendary singer reflects on his career, the recurring themes in his life, and the inspiration that shapes his music and his art, in a musical memoir enhanced by reproductions of his own artwork and a CD containing some of the author''s favorite songs.

Imagine a grungy north Jersey version of John McPhee''s classic The Pine Barrens and you''ll get some idea of the idiosyncratic, fact-filled, and highly original work that is Robert Sullivan''s The Meadowlands. Just five miles west of New York City, this vilified, half-developed, half-untamed, much dumped-on, and sometimes odiferous tract of swampland is home to rare birds and missing bodies, tranquil marshes and a major sports arena, burning garbage dumps and corporate headquarters, the remains of the original Penn Station--and maybe, just ,maybe, of the late Jimmy Hoffa. Robert Sullivan proves himself to be this fragile yet amazingly resilient region''s perfect expolorer, historian, archaeologist, and comic bard.

Sullivan delves into the Middle America of the American Revolution, digging for a glorious, heroic part of the past in the urban, suburban, and sometimes even rural landscape of today. In this often hilarious journey, Sullivan shows how alive history is.

Robert Sullivan, who has driven cross-country more than two dozen times, recounts one of his family''s many journeys from Oregon to New York. His story of moving his family back and forth from the East Coast to the West Coast (along with various other migrations), is replete with all the minor disasters, humor, and wonderful coincidences that characterize life on the road, not to mention life. As he drives, Sullivan ponders his Lewis and Clark and other fellow nation-crossers, meets Beat poets who are devotees of cross-country icon Jack Kerouac, and plays golf on an abandoned coal mine. And, in his trademark celebration of the mundane, Sullivan investigates everything from the history of the gas pump to the origins of fast food and rest stops. Cross Country tells the tales that come from fifteen years of driving across the country (and all around it) with two kids and everything that two kids and two parents take when driving in a car from one coast to another, over and over, driving to see the way the road made America and America made the road.

With the gray whale off the endangered list, the Makah Indians decide to resurrect the skills of their ancestors and return to the hunt amidst tribal infighting and animal rights activists.

Some people are just naturally good at not getting rich. They didn''t buy Microsoft when a friend mentioned that he was helping start up a new software company. They sold their apartment in Manhattan for a song in the seventies, instinctively believing the real estate market would never, ever come back. These people have built-in wealth prevention systems that steer them safely away from big money even in the most wealth-rich intersections of their lives. In this book, Robert Sullivan, an expert in the art of not getting rich and staying that way, shows us some simple, non-time consuming ways to cultivate a basic day-to-day attitude that will lead to not getting rich, as well as a few long-term strategies that will help you stay that way. For instance, a good well-rounded education is a must if you are planning on working your entire life and ending up with little or nothing. Choose a field of study that will be personally rewarding but has no apparent application in the real world, such as medieval literature or traditional music. And by all means choose an investment strategy that will definitely not get you rich, such as following the herd. Along the way, spend your money unwisely, read novels and books (a habit that will greatly aid you in your pursuit to not be rich), marry for love, and waste otherwise money-making hours throwing a Frisbee in the park or even playing with your kids, becoming the kind of role model that will never be featured on Forbes''s list of the wealthiest people in the world. Sharp, funny, and ultimately comforting, How Not to Get Rich is a guide to happiness without wealth, not that the author wouldn''t mind a little wealth with his happiness. How Not to Get Rich is probably not worth the price, but what is?

"“The People’s Victory is a mirror for each of us to see our own power to fight for justice and create the change we want to see in our world.” – Gavin Newsom, Lieutenant Governor of California In 1996, a small group of Americans from all walks of life banded together to create one of the most miraculous political victories in modern American history. Opponents attacked the issue of marriage equality as amoral and a direct threat to families. Allies warned that it was a generation away from being practicable and a selfish drain of precious political capital. A stirring oral history told by those who almost inexplicably found themselves fighting on the front lines, The People''s Victory recounts the successes – and the setbacks – that only served to strengthen everyone’s resolve to resist, fight, and bring equal marriage rights to an entire nation. Through it all, these love warriors found their voice and home in Marriage Equality USA, the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots organization of its kind. While high profile books, articles and documentaries have covered the judicial and legislative machinations, this book puts a human face on the people who made the everyday personal sacrifices to keep the movement alive. The People’s Victory shares deeply moving personal testimonies of over sixty people, from Marvin Burrows, who was forced out of his home and lost many treasured possessions after losing his lost his partner of fifty years; to Kate Burns, who risked arrest for the first time when she stood up for her relationship; to Mike Goettemoeller, who pushed his mother in a wheelchair with Marriage Equality USA to fulfill her dream of marching in a Pride parade. Edie Windsor, the triumphant lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case United States vs. Windsor recounts shouting down a major LGBTQ organization with “I’m 77 years old and I can’t wait!!” when they attempted to belittle marriage as a critical issue. Writer and producer Del Shores shares the touching moment his young teenage daughter used tears and laughter to console him after the passage of Proposition 8 in California dealt a blow to the cause. The People’s Victory is an inspirational roadmap for anyone who has felt passionately about an issue, but has questioned whether one person’s contribution can make a difference. These candid accounts once again prove that every movement for important social change must be built on the acts of everyday. In fact, that is the only way the people have ever been victorious. In his introduction, California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom writes: “I hope these stories inspire you to resist, to fight, to win and in the end write the next stories in our continuing push for a more just and perfect union.”