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Even Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick himself describes the story of his life — from growing up on welfare in Chicago to thriving in business and politics — as "improbable."That's why the word is part of the title of his new memoir, A Reason to Believe: Lessons from an Improbable Life.

Historian Michael Willrich was planning to write a book about civil liberties in the aftermath of Sept. 11 when he stumbled across an article from The New York Times archives.

When journalist Peter Godwin snuck into his native Zimbabwe after President Robert Mugabe lost a 2008 election, he writes that he expected "to dance on Robert Mugabe's political grave."But that was before Mugabe — the then 84-year-old leader of Zimbabwe — refused to give up power.

Fifty years ago one of the world's most notorious war criminals sat in a courtroom for a trial that would be among the first in history to be completely televised.That man was Adolf Eichmann — and he had been in charge of transporting millions of European Jews to death camps.A year before the 1961 t

In most medical schools, students recite the Hippocratic Oath together to mark the start of their professional careers.

When Frank Calabrese Jr. was a teenager, his father came home one night and took him into the bathroom for a chat."He used to like to talk in the bathroom with the fan going and the water running in case there was any kind of bugs in the house," says Frank Jr.