Immigration, wars, industrial growth, the availability of electricity, the popularity of orchestral music, and the invention of the phonograph and of the player piano all had a part in determining the course of American organ history.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks meets Get Out in this “startling…powerful” (Kirkus Reviews) investigation of racial inequality at the core of the heart transplant race. In 1968, Bruce Tucker, a black man, went into Virginia’s top research hospital with a head injury, only to have his heart taken out of his body and put into the chest of a white businessman. Now, in The Organ Thieves, Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist Chip Jones exposes the horrifying inequality surrounding Tucker’s death and how he was used as a human guinea pig without his family’s permission or knowledge. The circumstances surrounding his death reflect the long legacy of mistreating African Americans that began more than a century before with cadaver harvesting and worse. It culminated in efforts to win the heart transplant race in the late 1960s. Featuring years of research and fresh reporting, along with a foreword from social justice activist Ben Jealous, “this powerful book weaves together a medical mystery, a legal drama, and a sweeping history, its characters confronting unprecedented issues of life and death under the shadows of centuries of racial injustice” (Edward L. Ayers, author of The Promise of the New South).

The Organ Broker, named one of five finalists for the 2015 Hammett Prize for literary excellence in the field of crime writing (winner TBA in October of 2016), is the thrilling story of an underground black market organ dealer known as “New York Jack.” For eighteen years Jack has been a “transplant tourism director,” sending wealthy Americans and Europeans in need of kidneys and other organs to third world countries where they would buy them from transplant centers on the take. The death of a client and a newfound relationship lead to a crisis of conscience as he is forced to choose between a two million dollar commission—and participating in a murder. Jack races to South Africa, Brazil, and beyond, just one step ahead of his adversary and the FBI, in search of one small act of redemption. As a disaffected youth in the late eighties, Jack Trayner entered the criminal world, selling coke when he needed money to pay his way through college. Although he later graduated from law school, an opportunity to earn easy money eventually seduced him into the bizarre and illegal black market for organs—a business that some consider horrendous and a small number of others deem to be heroic. The dual nature of this business assuaged Jack’s guilt and allowed him to flourish, yet the death of a client makes what he is doing all too real. The Organ Broker represents Jack’s confession. The international black market sale of organs is very real and operates at this very moment behind closed hospital doors in many cities all around the world. It is a world that most people are only vaguely aware exists, and few of us know much, if anything, about, until now—in the pages of the confession of New York Jack. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Aristide Cavaill -Coll (1811-1899) is often referred to as the greatest organ builder of all time. The pipe-organ, being the most complicated musical instrument mechanically and tonally, as well as the most expensive, adds significantly to that world's greatest designation. The talents required to be such a person range far from music-making to advanced physics, architecture, and engineering. That, plus the obvious knack to raise vast sums of money. Cavaill -Coll's Monumental Organ Project for Saint Peter's, Rome: Bigger Than Them All, by Ronald Ebrecht, is the story of the quest to build the largest-ever mechanical-action organ in the biggest church at the time. Cavaill -Coll's model for that organ and the book he wrote outlining his proposal are the core of Ebrecht's discussion. Cavaill -Coll bestrode a century as well as an art-form. His century complicated the project with the most intricate, intractable problems. Saint-Peter's Square, now a part of the Vatican City State, was then part of the newly-united Italy, which had just deposed the pope as ruler of the center of Italy and taken the papal lands. The east end of the basilica facing the square and the Tiber became a much disputed boundary. It was a part of the Italian state so hotly contested that the Italian Republicans would not accept the concept of an organ hanged from the basilica wall, lest it shift. Before, or since, has the music sphere ever provoked such a question that could bring nations to swords?

This 1996 book describes the history of organs built in England from AD 900 to the present day.

This second edition of Gellerman's classic reference work is a must for collectors and aficionados of reed organs. Its aim is to present a complete listing and brief history of every manufacturer of reed organs in the world as an aid to the collector. In the 13 years since publication of the first edition, hundreds of new names and historical facts have come to light and are included in this revised edition. 89 illustrations. 104 photos.