"Lies, murder, and a legendary courtroom battle threaten to tear apart the Territory of Hawaii. In September of 1931, Thalia Massie, a young naval lieutenant's wife, claims to have been raped by five Hawaiian men in Honolulu. Following a hung jury in the rape trial, Thalia's mother, socialite Grace Fortescue, and husband, along with two sailors, kidnap one of the accused in an attempt to coerce a confession. When they are caught after killing him...

"Palila v Hawaii. New Zealand's Te Urewera Act. Sierra Club v Disney. These legal phrases hardly sound like the makings of a revolution, but beyond the headlines portending environmental catastrophes, a movement of immense import has been building--in courtrooms, legislatures, and communities across the globe. Cultures and laws are transforming to provide a powerful new approach to protecting the planet and the species with whom we share it. Lawyers...

Award-winning reporter Scott uncovers the full breadth of Stanley Ann Dunham's inspiring and untraditional life. "To describe Dunham as a white woman from Kansas is about as illumination as describing her son as a politician who likes golf. Intentionally or not, the label obscures an extraordinary story of a girl with a boy's name who grew up in the years before the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the Vietnam war and the Pill; who married...

"On December 7, 1941 -- "a date which will live in infamy" -- the Japanese navy launched an attack on the American military bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt declared war on Japan, and the US Army officially entered the Second World War. Three years later, on December 18, 1944, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which enabled the Secretary of War to enforce a mass deportation of more than 100,000...

"Same-sex marriage, a politically and culturally untenable idea only a quarter century ago, has become one of the most controversial issues in American life. Social conservatives are adamantly opposed to it and vote-conscious liberal politicians tiptoe around it, but an emerging majority's support for it makes it seem all but inevitable. While most observers seem to think that the legalization of gay marriage across the nation will occur at some point...

"A biography of gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny. From a young Harvard- and Cambridge-trained historian, the secret history of the fight for gay rights that began a generation before Stonewall. In 1957, Frank Kameny, a rising astronomer working for the U.S. Defense Department in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny,...

The right of same-sex couples to marry provoked decades of intense conflict before it was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015. Yet some of the most divisive contests shaping the quest for marriage equality occurred not on the culture-war front lines but within the ranks of LGBTQ advocates. Nathaniel Frank tells the dramatic story of how an idea that once seemed unfathomable--and for many gays and lesbians undesirable--became a legal and moral...

"There must be places like Hawaii where the idea of noir would be difficult to accommodate. Sunshine, drinks in a coconut, warm beaches, and leis do not generate the fear, darkness, and despair on which noir thrives. Alabama also has plenty of sunshine, some lovely beaches, and only a few foggy waterfronts where miscreants lurk, but it has been a famously dark place. Americans of a certain age read in their daily papers about the burning of the Freedom...