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Rumspringa, To Be Or Not To Be Amish

February 1, 2013

“Shachtman is like a maestro, masterfully conducting an orchestra of history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and journalism together in a harmonious and evocative symphony of all things Amish.” – Christian Science Monitor. Now in paperback. A favored title of book discussion groups, for dialogues on faith, morals, and the difficulty of raising teenagers. Some additional excerpted […]

The Most Beautiful Villages of New England

February 1, 2013

“This is one of the few ‘coffee table’ books I own. But it covers all the gems and must-see villages … and provides plenty of information on the history and architecture of each …. In the depth of a New England winter this is a book I take to bed with me and dream of […]

The Inarticulate Society

January 31, 2013

“A perceptive and disturbing book …. Our inability to use language articulately has consequences beyond aesthetics, says Shachtman. It threatens the survival of democracy ….. Loss of analytic capacity makes us easy prey for Big Brother and his Orwellian gang.” — Washington Post Book World Originally published in 1995, THE INARTICULATE SOCIETY: ELOQUENCE AND […]

The Forty Years War

January 29, 2013

THE FORTY YEARS WAR, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE NEOCONS FROM NIXON TO OBAMA, by Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman. Now in paperback. “An eye-opening, provocative history of the neoconservative movement from its little-known role in Richard Nixon’s downfall through its ultimate expression in the preemptive war in Iraq.” — History Book Club News […]

Publication of ECHOES, OR THE INSISTENCE OF MEMORY, August 2023. Pre-orders available on Amazon and Madville Publishing

Manuscript evaluation and editing for individual students based on my extensive publication history and many years teaching at major university writing programs.

Fees and schedules available upon request. Payment by Paypal or check…

Published in 2020: THE MEMOIR OF THE MINOTAUR, a novel, from Madville Publishing; and THE FOUNDING FORTUNES: HOW THE WEALTHY PAID FOR AND PROFITED FROM AMERICA’S REVOLUTION, from St. Martin’s Press.

Podcast about THE FOUNDING FORTUNES with Walter Woodward, State Historian for Connecticut

Digital-Only Publications

The first volumes in my historical novel series, The Eagle’s Claw, about a secret, private organization that undertakes tasks for the President – some illegal, some scandalous, and all extraordinary — that the government cannot do but that need doing.

“The Pirate of Lake Erie,”

and
“The Perilous Letter of the Apalachicola.”

… and the non-fiction tale, The Commies, the Jewish Mob, the Union and My Grandfather: The Fur-Worker Wars of the 1920s.

Photo (c) by Anne Day
Hi, I’m Tom Shachtman, author, filmmaker and educator. I’ve written forty books, mostly for mainstream publishers, as well as television documentaries seen on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and other channels, and lectured at universities from Harvard to Georgia Tech to Stanford, and at libraries from the New York Public to the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the Newberry in Chicago, and the Hoover Institution.

My trilogy of books providing new perspectives on the American Revolution are now all in print. THE FOUNDING FORTUNES (2020); HOW THE FRENCH SAVED AMERICA (2017); and GENTLEMEN SCIENTISTS AND REVOLUTIONARIES (2014).

Earlier books continue to attract attention.

ABSOLUTE ZERO was recently reviewed as an important classic in the
Feb. 1, 2022 issue of Forbes

WHOEVER FIGHTS MONSTERS, written with Robert K. Ressler, an international bestseller, is now a must-have audio book for those interested in serial killers. AMERICAN ICONOCLAST, my biography of Eric Hoffer, the “longshoreman philosopher,” was occasion for a recent interview with Canadian Broadcasting. In December 2019, SKYSCRAPER DREAMS, my history of the builders of New York City, was the top recommendation for holiday reading of the real-estate industry magazine The Real Deal. ABSOLUTE ZERO AND THE CONQUEST OF COLD was featured on several recent must-read lists of popular science.

More details about these and other books are in the following pages of this website. Read on!