Most Popular Books by Paul Collins

The remarkable true story of a turn-of-the-19th century murder and the trial that ensued—a showdown in which iconic political rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr joined forces to make sure justice was served—from bestselling author of the Edgar finalist, Murder of the Century. In the closing days of 1799, the United States was still a young republic. Waging a fierce battle for its uncertain future were two political parties: the well-moneyed Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the populist Republicans, led by Aaron Burr. The two finest lawyers in New York, Burr and Hamilton were bitter rivals both in and out of the courtroom, and as the next election approached, their animosity reached a crescendo. But everything changed when a young Quaker woman, Elma Sands, was found dead in Burr''s newly constructed Manhattan Well. The horrific crime quickly gripped the nation, and before long accusations settled on one of Elma’s suitors: a handsome young carpenter named Levi Weeks. As the enraged city demanded a noose be draped around his neck, Week''s only hope was to hire a legal dream team. And thus it was that New York’s most bitter political rivals and greatest attorneys did the unthinkable—they teamed up. Our nation’s longest running cold case, Duel with the Devil delivers the first substantial break in the case in over 200 years. At once an absorbing legal thriller and an expertly crafted portrait of the United States in the time of the Founding Fathers, Duel with the Devil is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction.

The tenth century dawned in violence and disorder. Charlemagne''s empire was in ruins, most of Spain had been claimed by Moorish invaders, and even the papacy in Rome was embroiled in petty, provincial conflicts. To many historians, it was a prime example of the ignorance and uncertainty of the Dark Ages. Yet according to historian Paul Collins, the story of the tenth century is the story of our culture''s birth, of the emergence of our civilization into the light of day. The Birth of the West tells the story of a transformation from chaos to order, exploring the alien landscape of Europe in transition. It is a fascinating narrative that thoroughly renovates older conceptions of feudalism and what medieval life was actually like. The result is a wholly new vision of how civilization sprang from the unlikeliest of origins, and proof that our tenth-century ancestors are not as remote as we might think.

A view into the tumultuous and creative life of Edgar Allan Poe.

"Hearteningly strange . . . Collins exhumes little-known figures [and] recounts their perversely inspiring battles against the more logical ways of the world." — The Onion Here are thirteen unforgettable portraits of forgotten people: men and women who might have claimed their share of renown but who, whether from ill timing, skullduggery, monomania, the tinge of madness, or plain bad luck—or perhaps some combination of them all—leapt straight from life into thankless obscurity. Collins brings them back to glorious life. John Banvard was an artist whose colossal panoramic canvasses (one behemoth depiction of the entire eastern shore of the Mississippi River was simply known as "The Three Mile Painting") made him the richest and most famous artist of his day . . . before he decided to go head to head with P. T. Barnum. René Blondot was a distinguished French physicist whose celebrated discovery of a new form of radiation, called the N-Ray, went terribly awry. At the tender age of seventeen, William Henry Ireland signed "William Shakespeare" to a book and launched a short but meteoric career as a forger of undiscovered works by the Bard—until he pushed his luck too far. Collins'' love for what he calls the "forgotten ephemera of genius" give his portraits of these figures and the other ten men and women in Banvard''s Folly sympathetic depth and poignant relevance. Their effect is not to make us sneer or revel in schadenfreude; here are no cautionary tales. Rather, here are brief introductions—acts of excavation and reclamation—to people whom history may have forgotten, but whom now we cannot.

The “enormously entertaining” (The Wall Street Journal) account of a shocking 1897 murder mystery that “artfully re-create[s] the era, the crime, and the newspaper wars it touched off” (The New York Times) AN EDGAR NOMINEE FOR BEST FACT CRIME • “Fascinating . . . won’t disappoint readers in search of a book like Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City.”—The Washington Post On Long Island, a farmer finds a duck pond turned red with blood. On the Lower East Side, two boys discover a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumble upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. The police are baffled: There are no witnesses, no motives, no suspects. The grisly finds that began on the afternoon of June 26, 1897, plunged detectives headlong into the era’s most perplexing murder mystery. Seized upon by battling media moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, the case became a publicity circus, as their rival newspapers the World and the Journal raced to solve the crime. What emerged was a sensational love triangle and an even more sensational trial. The Murder of the Century is a rollicking tale—a rich evocation of America during the Gilded Age and a colorful re-creation of the tabloid wars that forever changed newspaper journalism.

The dramatic events leading up to the appearance of white smoke over the Vatican and the public declaration from the balcony of St Peters- Habemus Papam- has been the most remarkable yet in the election of any Pontiff. The demise of Pope John Paul II was anticipated ever since he was rushed to Gemelli hospital on February 1st. Now he has died the legacy of this outstanding Pontiff is already the matter of fierce debate. A number of his closest advisers like Cardinals Ratzinger and Sodano are already fairly powerless as the Conclave has chosen a Pontiff more interested in the North South axis than that of East West. The final part of this important new book is an in-depth profile of the new Pope, His Holines Pope XXX. The middle part of the book is an account of the Conclave, the poiliticing and the jockeying for position. But it also contains character sketches of those who have been serious contenders for the See of Peter- Cardinal Walter Kasper, Cardinal Tettramanga of Florence, Cardinal Christoph von Schonborn of Vienna, Cardinal Arinze of Nigeria , Cardinal Claudio Hummes of Sao Paolo and Cardinal Rodriguez Madariaga of Honduras. There is also a sketch of some of the complete outsiders. Nobody could be more suited that Paul Collins to werite this incisive and informative account. he has already published books on the History of the Papacy.

The Sumerians are widely believed to have created the world’s earliest civilization on the fertile floodplains of southern Iraq from about 3500 to 2000 BCE. They have been credited with the invention of nothing less than cities, writing, and the wheel, and therefore hold an ancient mirror to our own urban, literate world. But is this picture correct? Paul Collins reveals how the idea of a Sumerian people was assembled from the archaeological and textual evidence uncovered in Iraq and Syria over the last one hundred fifty years. Reconstructed through the biases of those who unearthed them, the Sumerians were never simply lost and found, but reinvented a number of times, both in antiquity and in the more recent past.

Collins elucidates, with great compassion, what it means to be ''normal'' and what it means to be human.-Los Angeles Times

You have probably felt it. Life speeding up while your plans slow down or stall. Doing the work, putting in the time — but with the nagging sense that you might be focused on the wrong things for where you actually are right now. It is not a you problem. It is a missing-map problem. Most people move through life without a clear picture of what this particular stretch is actually asking of them. Not life in general. This stretch. The young professional trying to figure out what to build first. The new parent recalibrating everything they thought they knew about their time and priorities. The person at midlife who has built something solid — and is now asking whether it is the right thing. The older adult looking back at what they have made and deciding what they want it to mean. You do not fall behind because you stopped trying. You fall behind because no one gave you a map. Life Journey: From Apprenticeship to Mastery and Beyond is that map. Where Are You Right Now? This book is organized around four seasons of life — natural stages, or phases of the craft of life, that most people recognize the moment they are named, because they are already living them. Apprenticeship — Starting Out. You are building the foundation: learning who you are, what you can do, and what kind of life you want to construct. This is where core skills, habits, and values take root. Journeywork — Building Your Life. Career, relationships, finances, family — the real weight of life lands here. This is where you put everything you learned to work and build something that lasts. Masterworks — Doing Your Best Work. You know what you are good at. Now the question is how to direct that strength toward the contribution you are most capable of making. Mentorship — Passing It On. The focus shifts from building to sharing. The richest work of this season is ensuring that what you have learned and created outlives the effort it took to create it. What You Will Walk Away With Skill grows into confidence. Confidence grows into contribution. Contribution grows into something that lasts. That is what this framework gives you. Working through Life Journey, you will: Know exactly where you are right now — and what to focus on, what to set aside, and what this season is asking you to build See what is still available from earlier seasons and how to address it on your own terms Replace scattered self-improvement with a clear, season-specific path Understand how what you already carry grows into the contribution and legacy you are capable of leaving Part of the Life Craft Collection Life Journey is Volume II in the Life Craft Collection by Charles Collins. Life Curriculum (Vol. I) is your personal body of knowledge and skill. Life Journey (Vol. II) is where you are in life and what this season is asking of you. The next question is the one Life Masterpiece (Vol. III, Autumn 2026) answers: what standard are you holding your work to, and what do you want it to produce? Start anywhere. Each book works on its own. Visit the Life Craft link at the top of this page for the complete picture. Who This Book Is For Anyone at a turning point — starting out, raising a family, changing direction, approaching retirement, or asking what comes next People who want a practical guide, not another round of motivation Anyone who suspects they are focused on the wrong things for where they are right now Readers who want something they can return to as life changes Anyone ready to be more intentional about the life they are building Life Journey helps you see what you are building — and shows you how to build it well.

“Well-researched and beautifully written.…Collins knows how to build suspense.” —San Francisco Chronicle On November 23rd of 1849, in the heart of Boston, one of the city’s richest men simply vanished. Dr. George Parkman, a Brahmin who owned much of Boston’s West End, was last seen that afternoon visiting his alma mater, Harvard Medical School. Police scoured city tenements and the harbor, and leads put the elusive Dr. Parkman at sea or hiding in Manhattan. But one Harvard janitor held a much darker suspicion: that their ruthless benefactor had never left the Medical School building alive. His shocking discoveries in a chemistry professor’s laboratory engulfed America in one of its most infamous trials: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. John White Webster. A baffling case of red herrings, grave robbery, and dismemberment, it became a landmark case in the use of medical forensics and the meaning of reasonable doubt. Paul Collins brings nineteenth-century Boston back to life in vivid detail, weaving together newspaper accounts, letters, journals, court transcripts, and memoirs from this groundbreaking case. Rich in characters and evocative in atmosphere, Blood & Ivy explores the fatal entanglement of new science and old money in one of America’s greatest murder mysteries.

The national bestseller, now in paperback.

When the spaceship Colony crash lands on Earth, the Skyborn elders aboard decide to exterminate the Earthborn, whom they believe to be no better than animals, before recolonizing the planet. On a reconnaisance mission, however, fourteen-year-old Welkin Quinn discovers that the "barbarians" possess skills essential to the space travelers'' survival. Includes Reader''s guide.

"Savor this peculiar history of the way Thomas Paine''s ideas--and his corpse--traveled after he died."-People

Ted moves to a new town and tries to be friendly with the bully next door, but mean Jim Green has a big surprise coming his way.

Tehran was well known to American businessman Jack Devlin until the day everything changed. When radical Islamic students stormed the US embassy on November 4, 1979, Jack narrowly escaped the revolutionary chaos, leaving behind 80 percent of his business and 100 percent of his heart. To get his beautiful girlfriend, Farideh, out of Iran, Jack accepts a devil’s bargain with the CIA and MI6. He must slip back into Tehran, where the militant students are holding dozens of Americans hostage in their own embassy. His part of the bargain is to steal the coveted client ledger of the world’s most powerful arms dealer, Mustafa Khaki, Farideh’s father. Surprised by an additional assignment, Jack is also ordered to strip a KGB defector of details on Russian collusion with Iran and their plan to eliminate the American hostages while infiltrating the highest levels of Ayatollah Khomeini’s government. From the damp cellars of KGB headquarters to the cold chill of British espionage to the blistering heat of the Kuwaiti desert, readers will learn, in an erroneous twist, that not all the turncoats are Russians.