The Battle of Panchavati and Other Stories from Indian Scriptures


Divya Narain Upadhyaya - 2019
    These are the stories most of us have grown up with. The book is an attempt to revisit these timeless stories in a new rendition to make them more acceptable and interesting to the modern reader. This collection of seven timeless classics is an ideal companion of the traveller, the vacationer or even the casual reader. About Author : Divya Narain Upadhyaya is a medical doctor and a Plastic Surgeon by profession. He works in the Department of Plastic Surgery, at King Georges' Medical University, Lucknow, as an Associate Professor. His fields of interest in medicine are cleft and craniofacial surgery and treating brachial plexus injuries. He is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and has trained extensively in craniofacial and maxillofacial surgery from the United States and Switzerland. He is an International Fellow of the American Society of Maxillofacial Surgeon and also an AO-CMF Fellow. His primary literary interests lie in Indian scriptures, religion and Indian history. He has a blog on dnu1blog.com where he writes about a variety of topics. This is his first book.

The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart


Bill Bishop - 2008
    This social transformation didn't happen by accident. We’ve built a country where we can all choose the neighborhood -- and religion and news show -- most compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this way-of-life segregation. Our country has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred, that people don’t know and can’t understand those who live just a few miles away. The reason for this situation, and the dire implications for our country, is the subject of this groundbreaking work.In 2004, the journalist Bill Bishop, armed with original and startling demographic data, made national news in a series of articles showing how Americans have been sorting themselves over the past three decades into alarmingly homogeneous communities -- not by region or by red state or blue state, but by city and even neighborhood. In The Big Sort, Bishop deepens his analysis in a brilliantly reported book that makes its case from the ground up, starting with stories about how we live today and then drawing on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.The Big Sort will draw comparisons to Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone and Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class and will redefine the way Americans think about themselves for decades to come.

Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing


John Boughton - 2018
    This history begins in the slum clearances of the late nineteenth century and the aspirations of those who would build anew. John Boughton looks at how and why the state's duty to house its people decently became central to our politics. Traversing the UK, Boughton offers an architectural tour of some of the best and most remarkable of our housing estates, as well as many accounted ordinary; he asks us to understand better their complex story and to rethink our prejudices. His accounts include extraordinary planners and architects who wished to elevate working men and women through design and the politicians, high and low, who shaped their work, the competing ideologies which have promoted state housing and condemned it, the economics which has always constrained our housing ideals, the crisis wrought by Right to Buy, and the evolving controversies around regeneration. He shows how the loss of the dream of good housing for all is a danger for the whole of society - as was seen in the fire in Grenfell Tower.

Brooklyn: The Once and Future City


Thomas Campanella - 2019
    In Brooklyn: The Once and Future City, Thomas J. Campanella unearths long-lost threads of the urban past, telling the rich history of the rise, fall, and reinvention of one of the world's most resurgent cities.Spanning centuries and neighborhoods, Brooklyn-born Campanella recounts the creation of places familiar and long forgotten, both built and never realized, bringing to life the individuals whose dreams, visions, rackets, and schemes forged the city we know today. He takes us through Brooklyn's history as homeland of the Leni Lenape and its transformation by Dutch colonists into a dense slaveholding region. We learn about English �migr� Deborah Moody, whose town of Gravesend was the first founded by a woman in America. We see how wanderlusting Yale dropout Frederick Law Olmsted used Prospect Park to anchor an open space system that was to reach back to Manhattan. And we witness Brooklyn's emergence as a playland of racetracks and amusement parks celebrated around the world.Campanella also describes Brooklyn's outsized failures, from Samuel Friede's bid to erect the world's tallest building to the long struggle to make Jamaica Bay the world's largest deepwater seaport, and the star-crossed urban renewal, public housing, and highway projects that battered the borough in the postwar era. Campanella reveals how this immigrant Promised Land drew millions, fell victim to its own social anxieties, and yet proved resilient enough to reawaken as a multicultural powerhouse and global symbol of urban vitality.

Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America


Sam Roberts - 2013
    In the winter of 1913, Grand Central Station was officially opened and immediately became one of the most beautiful and recognizable Manhattan landmarks. In this celebration of the one hundred year old terminal, Sam Roberts of The New York Times looks back at Grand Central's conception, amazing history, and the far-reaching cultural effects of the station that continues to amaze tourists and shuttle busy commuters. Along the way, Roberts will explore how the Manhattan transit hub truly foreshadowed the evolution of suburban expansion in the country, and fostered the nation's westward expansion and growth via the railroad. Featuring quirky anecdotes and behind-the-scenes information, this book will allow readers to peek into the secret and unseen areas of Grand Central -- from the tunnels, to the command center, to the hidden passageways. With stories about everything from the famous movies that have used Grand Central as a location to the celestial ceiling in the main lobby (including its stunning mistake) to the homeless denizens who reside in the building's catacombs, this is a fascinating and, exciting look at a true American institution.

Mission of Honor: A moral compass for a moral dilemma


Jim Crigler - 2017
    As a Uh-1 Helicopter pilot flying in the jungle highlands of South Vietnam, Warrant Officer Jim Crigler and the men he flew with were tested daily. Coming of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s was challenging for most young men of that era. Throw in drugs, free love, draft notices, the Vietnam War and a country deeply divided, and you have one of the most important books of this genre. This true story is a raw, bold, introspective autobiography where the author openly wrestles with his personal moral dilemma to find meaning and purpose in his life. He calls it his “Mission of Honor.”

Legacy of Lies: Over the Fence in Laos


Henry G. Gole - 2019
    Operating from camps in places like Kontum and Dak To, Special Forces recon men risked their lives behind enemy lines on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia, conducting missions whose detection often meant death or something worse. Officially, they did not exist. Their government denied that they were operating in “neutral” countries; Hanoi denied the very existence of the Trail. If killed or captured in Laos or Cambodia, the Green Berets would be reported MIA or KIA—in Vietnam. They fought for each other and for their honor as soldiers. It is 1970. The United States Government is seeking a way out of the war “with honor” via a face-saving program called “Vietnamization.” This is the story of the fate of the recon men and the missions they conducted while highly skilled and motivated NVA hunter-killer teams pursued them on the enemy’s home turf. A recon team discovers a choke point on the enemy’s line of communication. For every day the Trail is blocked, enemy support of forces in the south is set back a month, giving South Vietnam a leg up. The special operators in Kontum are given the mission to do just that. There is a rub; the American president and his government must have “plausible deniability.” Therein lies the legacy of lies. “Very few authors have captured the action, intrigue and backstory of the secret missions as well as Colonel Gole does in ‘Legacy of Lies.’ A must read for those seeking the precursor to today’s military support to sensitive activities.” —Michael S. Repass, Major General, US Army (Retired) Special Forces “Gole’s novel is Fantastic! The best part, the top to bottom approach—from the White House, JCS, CINCPAC, MACV, down through SOG, right to the One-Zero firing tracers to mark his position for Covey.” —Colonel, USAF, (Ret) Tom Yarborough, author and decorated Covey pilot for SOG

The End of Russia’s War in Ukraine (The Russian Agents Book 4)


Ted Halstead - 2020
    

Life and adventures of "Billy" Dixon, of Adobe Walls, Texas panhandle (1914)


Billy Dixon - 1914
    Life and adventures of "Billy" Dixon, of Adobe Walls, Texas panhandle: a narrative in which is described many things relating to the early Southwest, with an account of the fights between Indians and buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls and the desperate engagement at Buffalo Wallow, for which Congress voted the medal of honor to the survivors.

The Wright Brothers: by David McCullough | Summary & Analysis


aBookaDay - 2015
    The Wright Brothers is an historical narrative that draws on extensive archival materials, personal journals, and public records to tell the story of the Wright brothers as men of incredible character and determination along the road towards their significant contributions to aviation history. The summary parallels the structure of the book which is divided into three parts. The first part explores the period of the boys’ childhood through their work on flight testing various models of gliders. The second part picks up with the addition of the engine to the Wright planes and traces the brother’s work through the early stages of powered flight, roughly 1903 to 1908. Part three follows the brothers, now globally famous, through the years when they captured the most attention for their accomplishments. A central aspect of this historical account is the development of Orville and Wilbur Wright as individuals who showed fierce determination in the face of relentless setbacks. It also sheds light on their private nature and their deep bond as brothers. McCullough is a two time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for other historical works, Truman and John Adams. He also won the National Book Award twice and is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His educational background includes a degree in English Literature from Yale University. He is also a well-known narrator, as well as previous host of American Experience. Read more....

Notorious Nazi Women (The Eclectic Collection Book 1)


Stewart Anděl - 2017
    The fact that there were ruthless, vicious and vindictive female Nazi guards is one of them. This new title from author Stewart Andel hopes to address that issue and open up the stories behind the evil Nazi plague that were the "Notorious Nazi Women." Hear the stories of "The Bitch of Buchenwald," or the "Beautiful Beast" inside this first chapter of; The Eclectic Collection.

Women Prisoners Of Auschwitz: Strengths and Steadfastness


David Budman - 2020
    

The Montana Column: March to the Little Bighorn


James H. Bradley - 2015
    Bradley was the chief of scouts of the 7th Infantry under General John Gibbon. After George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry headed up Rosebud Creek to the Little Bighorn, Gibbon's Montana Column was to approach the Little Bighorn Valley from the west and trap the Sioux and Cheyenne between the two forces. Custer attacked early and Lt. Bradley and his scouts were the first to find the bodies of five companies that perished under the boy general. In this remarkable journal, kept during the 1876 campaign up to the discovery of the disaster at the Little Bighorn, soldier-scholar and historian Bradley observed and recorded some of the most important events of the entire summer. Reading betwen the lines, you get Bradley's opinion of Custer and others he served alongside. Intending to publish the journal, Bradley began rewriting it from his notes in 1877. Sadly, he was killed at the Battle of Big Hole. Fortunately for history, his widow donated his papers to the Montana Historical Society and here for the first time is the journal in an annotated, well-formatted edition for e-readers, tablets, and smartphones. Every memoir of the American Indian Wars provides us with another view of the movement that changed the country forever. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE by clicking the cover above or download a sample.

The Murder of Dr Muldoon: A Suspect Priest, A Widow's Fight for Justice


Ken Boyle - 2019
    Three local women notice the couple's suspicious behaviour and apprehend them. The two are handed over to the police, charged and sent for trial. A month later, a young doctor is shot dead on the streets of Mohill, Co. Leitrim. The two incidents are connected, but how? In the days following the shooting of Dr Paddy Muldoon, the name of a local priest was linked to the killing and  rumours abounded of a connection to the events in Dublin a month earlier and also that an IRA gang had been recruited to carry out the murder. However, despite an investigation at the time, the murder remained unsolved for almost 100 years. Now, newly discovered archive material from a range of sources, including the Muldoon family, has made it possible to piece together the circumstances surrounding the doctor's death, and reveals how far senior figures in the Church, State and IRA were willing to go to cover up a scandal.

Ghosts and Shadows: A Marine in Vietnam, 1968-1969


Phil Ball - 1998
    At the time, he would have done anything to escape; only upon reflection years later did he realize that the self-confidence instilled in him by his drill instructors had probably saved his life in Vietnam. A few months after boot camp, Private Ball was shipped out to Vietnam, joining F Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines, near Khe Sanh. As a grunt, in the vernacular of the Corps, Ball, like the other youths of F Company, did a difficult and deadly job in such places as the A Shau Valley, Leatherneck Square, the DMZ and other obscure but critical I Corps locales. His--their--fear of death mingled with homesickness. Little did they realize that the horrors of the Vietnam War--horrors that while in-country they often claimed did not even exist--would haunt them for the rest of their lives.