Triangle: The Fire That Changed America


David von Drehle - 2003
    On March 25, 1911, as workers were getting ready to leave for the day, a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York’s Greenwich Village. Within minutes it spread to consume the building’s upper three stories. Firemen who arrived at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped inside: their ladders simply weren’t tall enough. People on the street watched in horror as desperate workers jumped to their deaths. The final toll was 146 people—123 of them women. It was the worst disaster in New York City history.

Columbus: The Four Voyages


Laurence Bergreen - 2011
    Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a trading route to China, and his unexpected landfall in the Americas, is a watershed event in world history. Yet Columbus made three more voyages within the span of only a decade, each designed to demonstrate that he could sail to China within a matter of weeks and convert those he found there to Christianity. These later voyages were even more adventurous, violent, and ambiguous, but they revealed Columbus's uncanny sense of the sea, his mingled brilliance and delusion, and his superb navigational skills. In all these exploits he almost never lost a sailor. By their conclusion, however, Columbus was broken in body and spirit. If the first voyage illustrates the rewards of exploration, the latter voyages illustrate the tragic costs- political, moral, and economic.In rich detail Laurence Bergreen re-creates each of these adventures as well as the historical background of Columbus's celebrated, controversial career. Written from the participants' vivid perspectives, this breathtakingly dramatic account will be embraced by readers of Bergreen's previous biographies of Marco Polo and Magellan and by fans of Nathaniel Philbrick, Simon Winchester, and Tony Horwitz.

Titanic - A Survivor's Story


Archibald Gracie - 1913
    The information contained in Gracie's account is available from no other source. He provides details of those final moments, including names of passengers pulled from the ocean and of those men who, in a panic, jumped into lifeboats as they were being lowered, causing injury and further danger to life. Walter Lord, author of 'A Night to Remember', comments that Gracie's book - written shortly before he died from the exposure he suffered on the night - is "invaluable for chasing down who went in what boat", and calls Gracie "an indefatigable detective".

Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938


R.A. Scotti - 2003
    In this narrative, readers experience The Great Hurricane of 1938, the most financially destructive storm on record.

The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America 1932-72


William Manchester - 1974
    It encompasses politics, military history, economics, the arts, science, fashion, fads, social change, sexual mores, communications, graffiti - everything and anything indigenous that can be captured in print.Masterfully compressing four crowded decades of our history, The Glory and the Dream relives the epic, significant, or just memorable events that befell the generation of Americans whose lives pivoted between the America before and the America after the Second World War. From the Great Depression through the second inauguration of Richard M. Nixon, Manchester breathes life into this great period of America's growth.

A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World


Tony Horwitz - 2008
    Did nothing happen in between? Determined to find out, he embarks on a journey of rediscovery, following in the footsteps of the many Europeans who preceded the Pilgrims to America.An irresistible blend of history, myth, and misadventure, A Voyage Long and Strange captures the wonder and drama of first contact. Vikings, conquistadors, French voyageurs — these and many others roamed an unknown continent in quest of grapes, gold, converts, even a cure for syphilis. Though most failed, their remarkable exploits left an enduring mark on the land and people encountered by late-arriving English settlers.Tracing this legacy with his own epic trek — from Florida's Fountain of Youth to Plymouth's sacred Rock, from desert pueblos to subarctic sweat lodges, Tony Horwitz explores the revealing gap between what we enshrine and what we forget. Displaying his trademark talent for humor, narrative, and historical insight, A Voyage Long and Strange allows us to rediscover the New World for ourselves.

When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain: History's Unknown Chapters


Giles Milton - 2016
    There's the man who survived the atomic bomb in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And there's many, many more.Covering everything from adventure, war, murder and slavery to espionage, including the stories of the female Robinson Crusoe, Hitler's final hours, Japan's deadly balloon bomb and the emperor of the United States, these tales deserve to be told.

The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard's Most Daring Sea Rescue


Michael J. Tougias - 2007
    As the weather wreaked havoc on land, the freezing Atlantic became a wind-whipped zone of peril.In the early hours of Monday, February 18, while the storm raged, two oil tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer, found themselves in the same horrifying predicament. Built with "dirty steel," and not prepared to withstand such ferocious seas, both tankers split in two, leaving the dozens of men on board utterly at the Atlantic's mercy.The Finest Hours is the gripping, true story of the valiant attempt to rescue the souls huddling inside the broken halves of the two ships. Coast Guard cutters raced to the aid of those on the Fort Mercer, and when it became apparent that the halves of the Pendleton were in danger of capsizing, the Guard sent out two thirty-six-foot lifeboats as well. These wooden boats, manned by only four seamen, were dwarfed by the enormous seventy-foot seas. As the tiny rescue vessels set out from the coast of Cape Cod, the men aboard were all fully aware that they were embarking on what could easily become a suicide mission.The spellbinding tale is overflowing with breathtaking scenes that sear themselves into the mind's eye, as boats capsize, bows and sterns crash into one another, and men hurl themselves into the raging sea in their terrifying battle for survival.Not all of the eighty-four men caught at sea in the midst of that brutal storm survived, but considering the odds, it's a miracle--and a testament to their bravery--that any came home to tell their tales at all.

Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13


Jim Lovell - 1994
    The glory days of the Apollo space program. NASA send Commander Jim Lovell and two other astronauts on America's fifth mission to the moon.Only fifty-five hours into the flight, disaster strikes. A mysterious explosion rocks the ship. Its oxygen and power begin draining away. Lovell and his crew watch as the cockpit grows darker, the air grows thinner, and the instruments wink out one by one.In this tale of astonishing courage, brilliant improvisation and thrilling adventure, the reader is transported right into the capsule during one of the worst disasters in the history of space exploration.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History


John M. Barry - 2004
    It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research and now revised to reflect the growing danger of the avian flu, The Great Influenza is ultimately a tale of triumph amid tragedy, which provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. John M. Barry has written a new afterword for this edition that brings us up to speed on the terrible threat of the avian flu and suggest ways in which we might head off another flu pandemic.

Saved!: The Story of the Andrea Doria, the Greatest Sea Rescue in History


William Hoffer - 1979
    11.00pm. Dense fog blankets the North Atlantic as two liners, the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm, surge blindly towards each other in the overture to a night of devastation and horror.Here is the true story of that momentous collision - the people on board, the courage and the cowardice, the panic that spread amongst the ravaged Andrea Doria's 1706 passengers and crew .... the terrifying scenes as the life boats drew near ... and the final death throes of the great liner as she plunged beneath the swirling waves.The harrowing reconstruction from eyewitness accounts of the catastrophe and the enthralling rescue operation - an explosive account of humanity pitched headlong into a nightmare.

So Terrible a Storm: A Tale of Fury on Lake Superior


Curt Brown - 2008
    What none of the sailors knew until it was far too late was that they would soon face the worst storm ever to hit the Great Lake, a storm that nearly half of their number would not survive.This is the story of that fateful storm, and of one of the worst shipping disasters in the nation's history. As the storm strikes without warning, readers are taken aboard the SS Mataafa as it crashes into Duluth's piers, half of the crew freezing to death overnight as the other half survives by dancing through the dark around bathtubs set ablaze with scuttled pieces of the ship--all while 10,000 Duluthians set bonfires on shore to guide ships to safety. Next we find ourselves aboard the SS Ira H. Owen, crashing into the cliff where Split Rock Lighthouse would later be built, too late for these men. And here too are the many ships, from Canadian shores to Michigan, where all hands were lost. It is a story drawn from the accounts of witnesses and survivors. It is a tale of people pitted against the elements, of a disaster so extreme that, in its wake, weather forecasting, shipbuilding, and compass-reading in light of the Iron Range's magnetism were forever changed.

The Johnstown Flood


David McCullough - 1968
    In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earth dam had been hastily rebuilt to create a lake for an exclusive summer resort patronized by the tycoons of that same industrial prosperity, among them Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon. Despite repeated warnings of possible danger, nothing was done about the dam. Then came May 31, 1889, when the dam burst, sending a wall of water thundering down the mountain, smashing through Johnstown, and killing more than 2,000 people. It was a tragedy that became a national scandal. Graced by David McCullough's remarkable gift for writing richly textured, sympathetic social history, The Johnstown Flood is an absorbing, classic portrait of life in nineteenth-century America, of overweening confidence, of energy, and of tragedy. It also offers a powerful historical lesson for our century and all times: the danger of assuming that because people are in positions of responsibility they are necessarily behaving responsibly.

The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy


Stewart O'Nan - 2000
    The tent had been waterproofed with a mixture of paraffin and gasoline; in seconds it was burning out of control, and more than 8,000 people were trapped inside. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of survivors, O'Nan skillfully re-creates the horrific events and illuminates the psychological oddities of human behavior under stress: the mad scramble for the exits; the hero who tossed dozens of children to safety before being trampled to death. Brilliantly constructed and exceptionally moving, The Circus Fire is history at its most compelling.

A History of the American People


Paul Johnson - 1997
    "No other national story holds such tremendous lessons, for the American people themselves and for the rest of mankind."In his prize-winning classic, Johnson presents an in-depth portrait of American history from the first colonial settlements to the Clinton administration. This is the story of the men and women who shaped and led the nation and the ordinary people who collectively created its unique character. Littered with letters, diaries, and recorded conversations, it details the origins of their struggles for independence and nationhood, their heroic efforts and sacrifices to deal with the 'organic sin’ of slavery and the preservation of the Union to its explosive economic growth and emergence as a world power. Johnson discusses contemporary topics such as the politics of racism, education, the power of the press, political correctness, the growth of litigation, and the influence of women throughout history. He sees Americans as a problem-solving people and the story of their country as "essentially one of difficulties being overcome by intelligence and skill, by faith and strength of purpose, by courage and persistence... Looking back on its past, and forward to its future, the auguries are that it will not disappoint humanity."Sometimes controversial and always provocative, A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE is one author’s challenging and unique interpretation of American history. Johnson’s views of individuals, events, themes, and issues are original, critical, and in the end admiring, for he is, above all, a strong believer in the history and the destiny of the American people.