Antonia Fraser, a popular historian, has delved into archives across Europe to unravel the true story of the plot by fanatical Roman Catholics to blow up the Houses of Parliament and King James I at the opening of Parliament in 1605. Views: 1 026
Celebrated for bringing a personal touch to history in her Pulitzer Prize–winning epic The Guns of August and other classic books, Barbara W. Tuchman reflects on world events and the historian’s craft in these perceptive, essential essays.
From thoughtful pieces on the historian’s role to striking insights into America’s past and present to trenchant observations on the international scene, Barbara W. Tuchman looks at history in a unique way and draws lessons from what she sees. Spanning more than four decades of writing in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Harper’s, The Nation, and The Saturday Evening Post, Tuchman weighs in on a range of eclectic topics, from Israel and Mao Tse-tung to a Freudian reading of Woodrow Wilson. This is a splendid body of work, the story of a lifetime spent “practicing history.”
Praise for Practicing History
“Persuades and enthralls . . . I can think of no better primer for the nonexpert who wishes to learn history.”—Chicago Sun-Times
“Provocative, consistent, and beautifully readable, an event not to be missed by history buffs.”—Baltimore Sun
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“A delight to read.” —The New York Times Book Review * Views: 1 025
After a devastating nuclear accident, all men on Earth are rendered sterile, even the unborn in the womb. Ten months later, a doctor delivers a perfectly healthy baby girl, and it's soon discovered that the child's father, who has the surname Adam, was miles under the surface of Earth inside an iron mine during the explosion. It would appear that this Mr. Adam just became a lot more popular.
Second Pocket Books printing, with cover and interior line drawings by Barye Phillips. Views: 1 024
Literary legend James A. Michener was “a Renaissance man, adventurous, inquisitive, unpretentious and unassuming, with an encyclopedic mind and a generous heart” (The New York Times Book Review). In this exceptional memoir, the man himself tells the story of his remarkable life and describes the people, events, and ideas that shaped it. Moving backward and forward across time, he writes about the many strands of his experience: his passion for travel; his lifelong infatuation with literature, music, and painting; his adventures in politics; and the hard work, headaches, and rewards of the writing life. Here at last is the real James Michener: plainspoken, wise, and enormously sympathetic, a man who could truly say, “The world is my home.”
BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from James A. Michener's Hawaii.
Praise for *The World Is My Home
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“Michener’s own life makes one of his most engaging tales—a classic American success story.”—Entertainment Weekly
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“The Michener saga is as full of twists as any of his monumental works. . . . His output, his political interests, his patriotic service, his diligence, and the breadth of his readership are matched only by the great nineteenth-century writers whose works he devoured as he grew up—Dickens, Balzac, Mark Twain.”—Chicago Tribune
“There are splendid yarns about [Michener’s] wartime doings in the South Pacific. There are hilarious cautionary tales about his service on government commissions. There are wonderful inside stories from the publishing business. And always there is Michener himself—analyzing his own character, assessing himself as a writer, chronicling his intellectual life, giving advice to young writers.”—The Plain Dealer
“A sweepingly interesting life . . . Whether he’s having an epiphany over a campout in New Guinea with head-hunting cannibals or getting politically charged by the melodrama of great opera, James A. Michener’s world is a place and a time worth reading about.”—The Christian Science Monitor*** Views: 1 023
Charlotte may have left the Floating City, but she’s not out of danger yet. On the run from the British Empire’s clutches, she leads her group of exiles west and south, plunging into a wild world of shady merchants and surly rivermen on the way to New Orleans.
But the more Charlotte learns about the revolution she has championed, the more questions she has. As she and her friends get to know the hidden tunnels that run below New Orleans, home to criminals, assassins, and pirates, and head deep into the mystical bayou surrounding the city, Charlotte must make a decision.
Do the revolution’s goals justify their means, or are some things too sacred to sacrifice? Views: 1 019
The classic account of the Allied invasion of Normandy.
The Longest Day is Cornelius Ryan's unsurpassed account of D-Day, a book that endures as a masterpiece of military history. In this compelling tale of courage and heroism, glory and tragedy, Ryan painstakingly recreates the fateful hours that preceded and followed the massive invasion of Normandy to retell the story of an epic battle that would turn the tide against world fascism and free Europe from the grip of Nazi Germany.
This book, first published in 1959, is a must for anyone who loves history, as well as for anyone who wants to better understand how free nations prevailed at a time when darkness enshrouded the earth. Views: 1 009
Tuchman uses the epic life of Vinegar Joe Stilwell, commander of United States forces and allied chief of staff to Chiang Kai-shek, to explore the history of China from the revolution of 1911 to the turmoil of World War II, when China's Nationalist government faced attack from Japanese invaders and Communist insurgents. Views: 1 008
**A haunting, beautiful first novel by the bestselling author of *A Long Way Gone *
When Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone was published in 2007, it soared to the top of bestseller lists, becoming an instant classic: a harrowing account of Sierra Leone’s civil war and the fate of child soldiers that “everyone in the world should read” (The Washington Post). Now Beah, whom Dave Eggers has called “arguably the most read African writer in contemporary literature,” has returned with his first novel, an affecting, tender parable about postwar life in Sierra Leone.
At the center of Radiance of Tomorrow are Benjamin and Bockarie, two longtime friends who return to their hometown, Imperi, after the civil war. The village is in ruins, the ground covered in bones. As more villagers begin to come back, Benjamin and Bockarie try to forge a new community by taking up their former posts as teachers, but they’re beset by obstacles: a scarcity of food; a rash of murders, thievery, rape, and retaliation; and the depredations of a foreign mining company intent on sullying the town’s water supply and blocking its paths with electric wires. As Benjamin and Bockarie search for a way to restore order, they’re forced to reckon with the uncertainty of their past and future alike.
With the gentle lyricism of a dream and the moral clarity of a fable, Radiance of Tomorrow is a powerful novel about preserving what means the most to us, even in uncertain times. Views: 1 007
A brilliant tale of love and war, SAYONARA tells the story of Major Lloyd Gruver, son of an army general stationed in Japan, dating a general's daughter, and happy with his life. He didn't understand the soldiers who fell in love with Japanese girls. Then he met Hana-ogi. After that nothing mattered anymore. Nothing but her.... Views: 1 006
The Paradise Mystery by J. S. Fletcher Views: 1 005
“The bard of biological weapons captures
the drama of the front lines.”
-Richard Danzig, former secretary of the navy
The first major bioterror event in the United States-the anthrax attacks in October 2001-was a clarion call for scientists who work with “hot” agents to find ways of protecting civilian populations against biological weapons. In The Demon in the Freezer, his first nonfiction book since The Hot Zone, a #1 New York Times bestseller, Richard Preston takes us into the heart of Usamriid, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, once the headquarters of the U.S. biological weapons program and now the epicenter of national biodefense.
Peter Jahrling, the top scientist at Usamriid, a wry virologist who cut his teeth on Ebola, one of the world’s most lethal emerging viruses, has ORCON security clearance that gives him access to top secret information on bioweapons. His most urgent priority is to develop a drug that will take on smallpox-and win. Eradicated from the planet in 1979 in one of the great triumphs of modern science, the smallpox virus now resides, officially, in only two high-security freezers-at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and in Siberia, at a Russian virology institute called Vector. But the demon in the freezer has been set loose. It is almost certain that illegal stocks are in the possession of hostile states, including Iraq and North Korea. Jahrling is haunted by the thought that biologists in secret labs are using genetic engineering to create a new superpox virus, a smallpox resistant to all vaccines.
Usamriid went into a state of Delta Alert on September 11 and activated its emergency response teams when the first anthrax letters were opened in New York and Washington, D.C. Preston reports, in unprecedented detail, on the government’s response to the attacks and takes us into the ongoing FBI investigation. His story is based on interviews with top-level FBI agents and with Dr. Steven Hatfill.
Jahrling is leading a team of scientists doing controversial experiments with live smallpox virus at CDC. Preston takes us into the lab where Jahrling is reawakening smallpox and explains, with cool and devastating precision, what may be at stake if his last bold experiment fails. Views: 1 004
In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. Heroic efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights movement of the twentieth century, in which everyone from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury participated. King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust. Adam Hochschild brings this largely untold story alive with the wit and skill of a Barbara Tuchman. Like her, he knows that history often provides a far richer cast of characters than any novelist could invent. Chief among them is Edmund Morel, a young British shipping agent who went on to lead the international crusade against Leopold. Another hero of this tale, the Irish patriot Roger Casement, ended his life on a London gallows. Two courageous black Americans, George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, risked much to bring evidence of the Congo atrocities to the outside world. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young Congo River steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming above them all, the duplicitous billionaire King Leopold II. With great power and compassion, King Leopold's Ghost will brand the tragedy of the Congo--too long forgotten--onto the conscience of the West Views: 1 003
The fear, brutality, and excitement of modern war captured with intricate detail. A story for those who are looking for a shot of excitement and those who love the details. The setting is based off of the novel "Red Storm Rising" by Tom Clancy.Of course, please leave a comment or review on the book, and what you did / didn't like about it!Cindy Adams makes the same dish every year for the hometown picnic. This year it's the same only she's divorced and starting over. She finds strength in the stability of family and friends. Sometimes when you're not looking for love, it finds you.Can forever be found over a time honored dish?Originally targeted for magazine publication at 1,000 words, this is a short story. Views: 1 002
Writing as Linda Brent, Harriet Jacobs's unflinching, powerful narrative of her life as a slave in North Carolina, and of her eventual escape and emancipation, is a damning account of the evils and brutality of slavery. This Enriched Classic Edition includes: •A concise introduction that gives the reader important background information•A chronology of the author's life and work•A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context•An outline of key themes and plot points to guide the reader's own interpretations•Detailed explanatory notes•Critical analysis and modern perspectives on the work•Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book•group interaction•A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experienceEnriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential. Views: 1 001
Before he conquered books, comics, and movies, Robert E. Howard's immortal character Conan the Cimmerian was born in the pages of the pulp magazine Weird Tales. Reprinted as they originally appeared in that legendary publication from 1934 to 1936, this ferocious anthology gathers many of the barbarian's most famous adventures.
Featured tales include "Red Nails," the tale of a lost city and its corrupt inhabitants; "The Hour of the Dragon," recounting an attempt to depose Conan as king of Aquilonia; and "Beyond the Black River," in which Conan battles the Hyborian Picts. Two additional stories include "The Devil in Iron" and "The People of the Black Circle." Views: 1 000
