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The harrowing, true account from the brave men on the ground who fought back during the Battle of Benghazi.
13 HOURS presents, for the first time ever, the true account of the events of September 11, 2012, when terrorists attacked the US State Department Special Mission Compound and a nearby CIA station called the Annex in Benghazi, Libya. A team of six American security operators fought to repel the attackers and protect the Americans stationed there. Those men went beyond the call of duty, performing extraordinary acts of courage and heroism, to avert tragedy on a much larger scale. This is their personal account, never before told, of what happened during the thirteen hours of that now-infamous attack. 13 HOURS sets the record straight on what happened during a night that has been shrouded in mystery and controversy. Written by New York Times bestselling author Mitchell Zuckoff, this riveting book takes readers into the action-packed story of heroes who laid their lives on the line for one another, for their countrymen, and for their country. 13 HOURS is a stunning, eye-opening, and intense book--but most importantly, it is the truth. The story of what happened to these men--and what they accomplished--is unforgettable.
maiden voyage, and tragic sinking, to its high-tech discovery on the ocean floor. Special features include the making of the James Cameron movie, true-or-false
quizzes, and real-life stories of the young people who sailed on the fateful journey. Illustrated with dozens of paintings, diagrams, and rare photographs.
A rich narrative portrait of post-revolutionary America and the men who shaped its political future
Though the American Revolution is widely recognized as our nation's founding story, the years immediately following the war--when our government was a disaster and the country was in a terrible crisis--were in fact the most crucial in establishing the country's independence. The group of men who traveled to Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 had no idea what kind of history their meeting would make. But all their ideas, arguments, and compromises--from the creation of the Constitution itself, article by article, to the insistence that it remain a living, evolving document--laid the foundation for a government that has surpassed the founders' greatest hopes. Revisiting all the original historical documents of the period and drawing from her deep knowledge of eighteenth-century politics, Carol Berkin opens up the hearts and minds of America's founders, revealing the issues they faced, the times they lived in, and their humble expectations of success.
In his book, former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told experiences from some of the highest-stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, ethical leadership looks like, and how it drives sound decisions. His journey provides an unprecedented entry into the corridors of power, and a remarkable lesson in what makes an effective leader.
Mr. Comey served as director of the FBI from 2013 to 2017, appointed to the post by President Barack Obama. He previously served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the U.S. deputy attorney general in the administration of President George W. Bush. From prosecuting the Mafia and Martha Stewart to helping change the Bush administration's policies on torture and electronic surveillance, overseeing the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation as well as ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, Comey has been involved in some of the most consequential cases and policies of recent history.
This volume of Martin Gilberts three-volume narrative history of the century charts its first thirty-three years. Opening in the age of horse-drawn travel and colonial wars, Gilbert closes this volume with Roosevelt as the newly elected President of the United States, the inauguration of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, and the first of Stalins show trials in the Soviet Union. As well as chronicling the wars, revolutions, and political upheavals, Gilbert tells the story of ordinary men and women in every continent, making them an integral part of the events of which they were sometimes the beneficiaries and often the victims.
When a cowboy takes a look at life, his sense of purpose and meaning is shaped by God's creation and the rugged terrain of the landscape he covers on horseback. Alongside the rugged and breathtaking paintings of award-winning artist Chris Owen, author Armour Patterson, a child of the western landscape, explores the wisdom cowboys offer every man:
An every-occasion gift for fans of cowboy art and stories and anyone who longs to sit back in the saddle and take in the ideals and inspiration of the West.
By 1514, the reclusive cleric Nicolaus Copernicus had written and hand-copied an initial outline of his heliocentric theory-in which he defied common sense and received wisdom to place the sun, not the earth, at the center of our universe, and set the earth spinning among the other planets. Over the next two decades, Copernicus expanded his theory through hundreds of observations, while compiling in secret a book-length manuscript that tantalized mathematicians and scientists throughout Europe. For fear of ridicule, he refused to publish.
In 1539, a young German mathematician, Georg Joachim Rheticus, drawn by rumors of a revolution to rival the religious upheaval of Martin Luther's Reformation, traveled to Poland to seek out Copernicus. Two years later, the Protestant youth took leave of his aging Catholic mentor and arranged to have Copernicus's manuscript published, in 1543, as De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres)-the book that forever changed humankind's place in the universe.
In her elegant, compelling style, Dava Sobel chronicles, as nobody has, the conflicting personalities and extraordinary discoveries that shaped the Copernican Revolution. At the heart of the book is her play And the Sun Stood Still, imagining Rheticus's struggle to convince Copernicus to let his manuscript see the light of day. As she achieved with her bestsellers Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, Sobel expands the bounds of narration, giving us an unforgettable portrait of scientific achievement, and of the ever-present tensions between science and faith.
In wartime Japan's bid for conquest, humanity suffered through one of its darkest hours, as a hidden genocide took the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Cloaked in secrecy and protected under the banner of scientific study, the best and brightest of Japan's medical establishment volunteered for a major initiative in support of the military that involved the systematic murder of Chinese civilians. With the help of the United States government, they were allowed to get away with it. Based on important original research, this book reveals as never before the full extent of this crime, in a story that is as compelling as it is terrifying.
Beginning in 1931, the military of Imperial Japan came up with a new strategy to further the nation's drive for expansion: germ warfare. But they needed help to figure out how to do it. So they recruited thousands of doctors and research scientists, all of whom accepted willingly, in order to develop a massive program of biological warfare that was referred to as "the secret of secrets." This covert operation consisted of horrifying human experiments and germ weapon attacks against people whose lives were seen as expendable, including Chinese men, women, and children living in Manchuria and other areas of Japanese occupation. Even American POWs were targeted.
At the forefront of this disturbing enterprise wasan elite organization known as Unit 731, led by Japan's answer to Joseph Mengele, Dr. Shiro Ishii. Under Ishii'sorders, captives were subjected to deeds that strain the boundaries of imagination. Men and women were frozen alive to study the effects of frostbite. Others were dissected without anesthesia. Tied to posts, victims were infected with virulent strains of anthrax and other diseases. Entire cities were aerially sprayed with fleas carrying bubonic plague. All told, more than five hundred thousand people died. Yet after the war, U.S. occupation forces under General Douglas MacArthur struck a deal with the doctors of Unit 731 that shielded them from accountability for their atrocities.
In this meticulously documented work, Daniel Barenblatt has drawn upon startling new evidence of Japan's germ warfare program, including firsthand accounts from both perpetrators and survivors. Authoritative, alarming, and gripping from start to finish, A Plague upon Humanity is a powerful investigation that exposes one of the most shameful chapters in human history.
She was a ship of destiny. Sailing across the Pacific, the battle scarred heavy cruiser U.S.S. Indianapolis had just delivered a secret cargo that would trigger the end of World War II. As she was continuing westward, her captain asked for a destroyer escort. He was told it wasn't necessary. But it was. She was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine. In twelve minutes, some 300 men went down with her. More then 900 others spent four horrific days and five nights in the ocean with no water to drink, savaged by a pitless sun and swarms of sharks. Incredibly, nobody knew they were out until a Navy patrol plane accidentally discovered them. Miraculously, 316 crewmen still survived. How could this have happened -- and why? This updated edition of Abandon Ship!, with a new introduction and afterword by Peter Maas, supplies the chilling answer. Originally published in 1958, Abandon Ship!, was the first book to describe, in vivid detail, the unspeakable ordeal the survivors of the Indianapolis endured. It was also the first book to scrutinize the role of the U.S. Navy in the Indianapolis saga, especially in the cruel aftermath of the rescue when Captain Charles Butler McVay III was courtmartialed and convicted of "hazarding" his ship.
The bitter controversy over the Navy's handling of this case has raged for decades, with the survivors leading a campaign to set the record straight and exonerate Captain McVay. Peter Maas, the author of the New York Times bestseller The Terrible Hours, reveals facts previously unavailable to Richard Newcomb and chronicles the forty-year crusade to restore the captain's good name, a crusade that started with the publication of this book. He also pays tribute to its author, who dared, ahead of his time, to expose military malfeasance and cover-up, and to inspire a courageous battle to correct a grave miscarriage of justice.
"Fascinating...Gelles has provided a balanced portrait, and her mastery of the period's issues and history is evident on every page. Her treatment of the family... [is] written with understanding and sensitivity... But it is her strength as a feminist historian that makes her treatment of Abigail the most gripping... masterful and captivating."
-- Washington Times
"A landmark... Well-organized and expertly composed, the book is an impressive addition to the nation's written history."
-- Oklahoma City Oklahoman
Readers who enjoyed Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time, Cokie Roberts's Founding Mothers, and David McCullough's John Adams will love "this eminently readable... charming and sensitive, yet candid and unflinching joint biography" (Daniel Walker Howe, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848) of America's original "power couple" Abigail and John Adams.
The sixteenth president of the United States is regarded by many as the most courageous and diplomatic president during one of the most difficult times in American history. He was forced to deal with the secession of the southern states, the operations of the American Civil War and the antagonisms of political enemies in the North. Such a traumatic and momentous time called for a great leader, and Abraham Lincoln was the man to answer the challenge of a nation.
With less than a year of formal schooling, he rose above the hardscrabble childhood on the frontier through a debt-ridden early career as a circuit-riding country lawyer and minor politician, to national eminence and achievement. A sensitive man, prone to bouts of depression, Abraham Lincoln would provide crucial leadership to a country torn by Civil War. Although the price would be high, Lincoln saw that the United States must again become 'one nation indivisible.'
Over 125 rare photographs and prints supplement this riveting biography, revealing the life of this enigmatic fi gure. The Illustrated Biography of Abraham Lincoln is also a history of the United States during its most critical period, and a pictorial testament to the nation and the one man who held the nation together, a man described by Walt Whitman as 'the grandest fi gure on the crowded canvas of the drama of the nineteenth century.'
Thus began Mary Rowlandson's account of her arduous journey as a servant to her captors, the Narragansett Indians. The most celebrated such document in American history, her record of the three months she spent in captivity tells of hardship and suffering, but also includes invaluable observations on Native American life and customs. The text is notable, as well, for conveying an understanding of her captors as individuals who not only suffered and faced difficult decisions but were also, at times, sympathetic humans (one of her abductors gave her a Bible taken during an earlier raid).
An immediate bestseller when first published in 1682, Rowlandson's narrative is widely regarded today as a classic--the first in a series of "captivity narratives" in which women, seized by Indians, survived against overwhelming odds. Of special interest to historians and students of Native American culture, Rowlandson's astounding account -- accompanied by three other famous narratives of captivity -- will also thrill the most avid of adventure enthusiasts.
The story of the landmark case that put the "Supreme" in Supreme Court.
Among the many momentous decisions rendered by the Supreme Court, none has had a greater impact than that passed down in 1803 by Chief Justice John Marshall in the case of Marbury v. Madison. While the ruling itself was innocuous--denying the plea of a minor functionary named William Marbury on constitutionally technical grounds--its implications were enormous. For Marshall had, in essence, claimed for the Supreme Court the right to determine what the Constitution and our laws under it really mean, known formally as the principle of "judicial review." Yet, as Lawrence Goldstone shows in his compelling narrative, that right is nowhere expressed in the Constitution and was not even considered by the Framers or the Founding Fathers, who would never have granted such power in a checks-and-balances system to unelected officials serving for life.
The Activist underscores the drama that occurred in 1803 by examining the debates that took place during the Constitutional Convention of 1787--among the most dramatic moments in American history--over the formation and structure of our judicial system. In parallel, Goldstone introduces in brief the life and ambition of John Marshall, and the early, fragile years of the Supreme Court, which--until Marshall's ascension to Chief Justice--sat atop the weakest of the three branches of government. Marshall made the Court supreme, and while judicial review has been used sparingly, without it the Court would likely never have intervened in the 2000 presidential election. Indeed, the great irony Goldstone reveals is that judicial review is now so enfranchised that Justice Antonin Scalia could admit, as he has, that the Supreme Court "made it up" in the same breath as he insists that justices must adhere steadfastly to the exact words of the Constitution.
Nobody brings the debates of the Constitutional Convention to life as does Lawrence Goldstone, and in this election year, no more interesting book on the Supreme Court will appear than The Activist, which makes the past come alive in the present.
Dear Friends, Here I am on the sacred soil of the FFV within 8 miles of the rebel pickets, and expecting to move 6 miles further on every hour...
Sandra A. Turgeon and the East Providence Historical Society are proud to present this compilation of wartime correspondence from Lt. Peter Hunt. These intimate letters provide insight to the human cost of one of America's bloodiest conflicts. Peter is not merely another faceless Union soldier but an eager eighteen-year-old recruit-his story exemplifies the courage of the many men who went to war.
Not until after the catastrophic First Battle of Bull Run did Peter receive his mother's blessing to join the Union army. Peter's regular letters back to his mother, sister, and three brothers evidence the alternating boredom and brutality of the war, chronicling a frustrating winter spent waiting at Miner's Hill and the shock of seeing the carnage wreaked at the Battle of Hanover Court House. Peter's own horse was once shot out from under him as his comrades beside him fell.
Peter experienced the violence of the war firsthand, but through it all, he kept his faith in the cause. Turgeon's collection celebrates his bravery, honor, and humanity.
What is America becoming? Or, more importantly, what can she be if we reclaim a vision for the things that made her great in the first place?
In America the Beautiful, Dr. Ben Carson helps us learn from our past in order to chart a better course for our future.
From his personal ascent from inner-city poverty to international medical and humanitarian acclaim, Carson shares experiential insights that help us understand
... what is good about America
... where we have gone astray
... which fundamental beliefs have guided America from her founding into preeminence among nations
Written by a man who has experienced America's best and worst firsthand, America the Beautiful is at once alarming, convicting, and inspiring. You'll gain new perspectives on our nation's origins, our Judeo-Christian heritage, our educational system, capitalism versus socialism, our moral fabric, healthcare, and much more.
An incisive manifesto of the values that shaped America's past and must shape her future, America the Beautiful calls us all to use our God-given talents to improve our lives, our communities, our nation, and our world.
The book begins with an overview of the intellectual and ideological contributions of the French Enlightenment thinkers, called the philosophes, to the American and French revolutions. It then moves to cover the many forms of aid provided by France to support America during the Revolutionary War. This ranged from the covert aid France supplied America before her official entry into the war, to the French outfitters and merchants who provided much-needed military supplies to the Americans. When the war began, the colonists thought the French would welcome an opportunity to retaliate and regain their country. France also provided naval assistance, particularly to the American privateers who harassed British shipping and contributed to the increased shipping rates which added to Great Britain's economic hardships. France's military involvement in the war was equally as important.
America's First Ally looks at the contributions of individual French officers and troops, arguing that America could not have won without them. Desmarais explores the international nature of a war which some people have called the first world war. When France and Spain entered the conflict, they fought the Crown forces in their respective areas of economic interest. In addition to the engagements in the Atlantic Ocean, along the American and European coasts and in the West Indies, there are accounts of action in India and the East Indies, South America and Africa.
Also included are accounts drawn from ships' logs, court and auction records, newspapers, letters, diaries, journals, and pension applications.
With unprecedented access to declassified FBI and military intelligence files, Wallace reveals how the close friendship and ideological bond between automotive pioneer Ford and aviator Lindbergh culminated in an abuse of power that helped strengthen Hitler's regime and undermined the Allied war effort. Wallace traces Henry Ford's ties to Nazi Germany back as far as the 1920s, presenting compelling evidence of a financial paper trail proving that Ford subsidized the rise to power of Adolph Hitler, who described Ford as "my inspiration." For the first time, the genesis of Ford's notorious Anti-Semitism is uncovered: "The American Axis" proves that Ford's private secretary and life-long confidante was a German spy, who channeled his employer's Jew-baiting crusades to further the cause of the Third Reich.
Lindbergh's own anti-Semitism and white-Supremacist views captured the attention of the Nazis, who soon manipulated him in their clandestine Fifth Column efforts. As the first unauthorized biographer to gain access to the Lindbergh archives, Wallace paints a substantially more chilling portrait of Lindbergh's pre-war activities than any previous historian and produces new evidence that the Nazis secretly plotted to install Lindbergh as the leader of the movement to keep America out of World War Two.
The most controversial corporate investigation since IBM and the Holocaust, the book reveals that the Ford Motor Company's military and political complicity in the Third Reich war effort was considerably stronger than the company has acknowledged and that a US Army post-war investigation concluded that the company had become "an arsenal of Nazism." Wallace disputes a recent internal investigation into the use of slave labor at Ford's German plant during World War II - which company officials claimed as a vindication of its wartime activities - and reveals that corporate President Edsel Ford was about to be indicted by the US government for "Trading With the Enemy" at the time of his 1943 death.
"The American Axis" is not only a mesmerizing, cautionary tale, but a compelling historical expose.
Politico Magazine's chief political correspondent provides a rollicking insider's look at the making of the modern Republican Party--how a decade of cultural upheaval, populist outrage, and ideological warfare made the GOP vulnerable to a hostile takeover from the unlikeliest of insurgents: Donald J. Trump.
The 2016 election was a watershed for the United States. But, as Tim Alberta explains in American Carnage, to understand Trump's victory is to view him not as the creator of this era of polarization and bruising partisanship, but rather as its most manifest consequence.
American Carnage is the story of a president's rise based on a country's evolution and a party's collapse. As George W. Bush left office with record-low approval ratings and Barack Obama led a Democratic takeover of Washington, Republicans faced a moment of reckoning: They had no vision, no generation of new leaders, and no energy in the party's base. Yet Obama's forceful pursuit of his progressive agenda, coupled with the nation's rapidly changing societal and demographic identity, lit a fire under the right, returning Republicans to power and inviting a bloody struggle for the party's identity in the post-Bush era. The factions that emerged--one led by absolutists like Jim Jordan and Ted Cruz, the other led by pragmatists like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell--engaged in a series of devastating internecine clashes and attempted coups for control. With the GOP's internal fissures rendering it legislatively impotent, and that impotence fueling a growing resentment toward the political class and its institutions, the stage was set for an outsider to crash the party. When Trump descended a gilded escalator to announce his run in the summer of 2015, the candidate had met the moment.
Only by viewing Trump as the culmination of a decade-long civil war inside the GOP--and of the parallel sense of cultural, socioeconomic, and technological disruption during that period--can we appreciate how he won the White House and consider the fundamental questions at the center of America's current turmoil. How did a partyonce obsessed with national insolvency come to champion trillion-dollar deficits? How did the party of compassionate conservatism become the party of Muslim bans and family separation? How did the party of family values elect a thrice-married philanderer? And, most important, how long can such a party survive?
Loaded with explosive original reporting and based off hundreds of exclusive interviews--including with key players such as President Trump, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, and Reince Priebus, among many others--American Carnage takes us behind the scenes of this tumultuous period as we've never seen it before and establishes Tim Alberta as the premier chronicler of this political era.
The first few American volunteers flew Spitfires with the RAF during the Battle of Britain. Many more joined their ranks, often posing as "Canadians," eventually forming three Eagle squadrons who earned a fierce fighting reputation. When the United States entered the war the Eagle fighter sections were issued with Spitfires and eventually transferred to the Eighth Air Force. In just two years of service with the USAAF, 22 pilots claimed five or more victories flying the Spitfire, whilst a further two dozen aces claimed part of their total flying them, a testament to their skill and success at the controls of this legendary warbird.
Discover the experiences of a variety of American aces in their own words through first-hand accounts, interviews and combat reports, in a thrilling read that transports the reader from the Battle of Britain to the deserts of North Africa to Fortress Europe itself.
In his time, Ulysses S. Grant was routinely grouped with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the "Trinity of Great American Leaders." But the battlefield commander-turned-commander-in-chief fell out of favor in the twentieth century. In American Ulysses, Ronald C. White argues that we need to once more revise our estimates of him in the twenty-first. Based on seven years of research with primary documents--some of them never examined by previous Grant scholars--this is destined to become the Grant biography of our time. White, a biographer exceptionally skilled at writing momentous history from the inside out, shows Grant to be a generous, curious, introspective man and leader--a willing delegator with a natural gift for managing the rampaging egos of his fellow officers. His wife, Julia Dent Grant, long marginalized in the historic record, emerges in her own right as a spirited and influential partner. Grant was not only a brilliant general but also a passionate defender of equal rights in post-Civil War America. After winning election to the White House in 1868, he used the power of the federal government to battle the Ku Klux Klan. He was the first president to state that the government's policy toward American Indians was immoral, and the first ex-president to embark on a world tour, and he cemented his reputation for courage by racing against death to complete his Personal Memoirs. Published by Mark Twain, it is widely considered to be the greatest autobiography by an American leader, but its place in Grant's life story has never been fully explored--until now. One of those rare books that successfully recast our impression of an iconic historical figure, American Ulysses gives us a finely honed, three-dimensional portrait of Grant the man--husband, father, leader, writer--that should set the standard by which all future biographies of him will be measured. Praise for American Ulysses "[Ronald C. White] portrays a deeply introspective man of ideals, a man of measured thought and careful action who found himself in the crosshairs of American history at its most crucial moment."--USA Today "White delineates Grant's virtues better than any author before. . . . By the end, readers will see how fortunate the nation was that Grant went into the world--to save the Union, to lead it and, on his deathbed, to write one of the finest memoirs in all of American letters."--The New York Times Book Review "Ronald White has restored Ulysses S. Grant to his proper place in history with a biography whose breadth and tone suit the man perfectly. Like Grant himself, this book will have staying power."--The Wall Street Journal "Magisterial . . . Grant's esteem in the eyes of historians has increased significantly in the last generation. . . . [American Ulysses] is the newest heavyweight champion in this movement."--The Boston Globe "Superb . . . illuminating, inspiring and deeply moving."--Chicago Tribune "In this sympathetic, rigorously sourced biography, White . . . conveys the essence of Grant the man and Grant the warrior."--Newsday
Opening with the daring amphibious invasion in November 1942, "An Army at Dawn "follows the American and British armies as they fight the French in Morocco and Algiers, and then take on the Germans and Italians in Tunisia. Battle by battle, an inexperienced and often poorly led army gradually becomes a superb fighting force. Central to the tale are the extraordinary but flawed commanders who come to dominate the battlefield: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, and Rommel.
Brilliantly researched, rich with new material and fresh insights, Atkinson's vivid narrative provides the definitive history of the war in North Africa.
An Inconvenient Truth--Gore's groundbreaking, battle cry of a follow-up to the bestselling Earth in the Balance--is being published to tie in with a documentary film of the same name. Both the book and film were inspired by a series of multimedia presentations on global warming that Gore created and delivers to groups around the world. With this book, Gore, who is one of our environmental heroes--and a leading expert--brings together leading-edge research from top scientists around the world; photographs, charts, and other illustrations; and personal anecdotes and observations to document the fast pace and wide scope of global warming. He presents, with alarming clarity and conclusiveness--and with humor, too--that the fact of global warming is not in question and that its consequences for the world we live in will be disastrous if left unchecked. This riveting new book--written in an accessible, entertaining style--will open the eyes of even the most skeptical.
