Book picks similar to
Documents of American History by Henry Steele Commager
history
non-fiction
reference
history-us
The Citizen's Constitution: An Annotated Guide
Seth Lipsky - 2009
But what if you want a delightfully quick, witty, and readable reference that, in one compact volume, places the document and its clauses into context? You're out of luck--until now. Written by Seth Lipsky, described in the Boston Globe as "a legendary figure in contemporary journalism," The Citizen's Constitution draws on the writings of the Founders, case law from our greatest judges, and current events in more than 300 illuminating annotations. Lipsky provides a no-nonsense, entertaining, and learned guide to the fundamental questions surrounding the document that governs how we govern our country. Every American should know the Constitution. Rarely has it glinted so brightly.
The Million Word Crossword Dictionary
Stanley Newman - 2004
Meticulously compiled by two crossword professionals with a combined fifty years in the field and based on a massive analysis of current crosswords, there has never been a crossword dictionary with the breadth, depth, and currency of this one. From Jim Carrey to Sister Carrie, Homer Simpson to Homer’s Iliad, the wide-ranging entries include 500,000+ synonyms, 3,000+ literary works, 3,000+ films, 20,000+ famous people from all fields, and more than 50,000 fill-in-the-blank clues so popular in today’s crosswords.Featuring an introduction by New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz, The Million Word Crossword Dictionary makes every other crossword dictionary obsolete.This updated edition offers thousands of new entries, including slang terms; brand names; celebrity names; and the latest films, novelists’ works, sports Hall of Famers, automobile models, and more. The new, larger type size makes finding the answers easier than ever.
24 Hours Inside the President's Bunker: 9-11-01: The White House
Robert J. Darling - 2010
Robert J. Darling organizes President Bush's trip to Florida on Sept. 10, 2001, he believes the next couple of days will be quiet. He has no idea that a war is about to begin. The next day, after terrorists crash airliners into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, Maj. Darling rushes to the president's underground chamber at the White House. There, he takes on the task of liaison between the vice president, national security advisor and the Pentagon. He works directly with the National Command Authority, and he's in the room when Vice President Cheney orders two fighter jets to get airborne in order to shoot down United Flight 93. Throughout the attacks, Maj. Darling witnesses the unprecedented actions that leaders are taking to defend America. As Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and others make decisions at a lightning pace with little or no deliberation, he's there to lend his support. Follow Darling's story as he becomes a Marine Corps aviator and rises through the ranks to play an incredible role in responding to a crisis that changed the world in 9-11-01: The White House: Twenty-Four Hours inside the President's Bunker.
Becoming Human: Our Past, Present and Future
Scientific American - 2013
Why They Fought: The Real Reason for the Civil War
David von Drehle - 2011
What followed is the American epic, written in blue and gray and gore. So how is that 150 years later, we are still fighting over why the war was fought? Few historical questions stir up as much passionate confusion as that one—even though scholars consider it a settled question. In this ebook, veteran TIME writer, David Von Drehle explores process of forgetting, denying, and rediscovering the meaning of the Civil War.
100 Lost Rock Albums From The 1970s
Matthew Ingram - 2012
From The Wire: "Matthew Ingram, aka Woebot, has published a book titled 100 Lost Rock Albums From The 1970s. The book takes in strands of metal, glam rock, French artists, punk and pub rock, and is released digitally as a self-published eBook via Amazon. Ingram says: 'Last year I started writing an article on the 100 Lost Rock Albums From The 1970s but it ballooned out of all proportions and I decided to turn it into an eBook.''Over time we have lost touch with the original character of the 70s. Using 'lost' records I've attempted to re-examinine the decade and redress what I see as imbalance. Beyond small reviews of a meticulously-selected 100 albums there's quite a lot of contemporary history, much theorising and lots of gags.'"
The Paranoid's Pocket Guide: Hundreds of Things You Never Knew You Had to Worry About
Cameron Tuttle - 1997
Because a pair of drawstring sweatpants could bring about your most embarrassing moment. And a toothpick in your sandwich can be the deadliest of weapons. Including hundreds of bizarre-but-true things that can get you, this compact volume will induce nervous page flipping and make even the most snug and secure folks bonafide paranoiacs. Chilling black and white photographs document the everyday items that menace your safety. But whether it's archibutyrophobia (the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth) or phobophobia (the fear of fear itself) that eventually gets you, don't be afraid to buy this book. You never know what might happen to you if you don't.
Fruit Infused Water: 98 Delicious Recipes for Your Fruit Infuser Water Pitcher
Susan Marque - 2015
Packed with mouth-watering recipes and easy-to-follow instructions, Fruit Infused Water preps you for including fruit infused water in your diet—whether you own a fruit infuser water pitcher or a simple glass jar. Build from the basics then advance to endless mix-and-match flavors and inventive fruit infused water recipes. Squeeze the most out of every drop, with: * 98 flavorful fruit infused water recipes, like Basil Mint Infusion * 10 must-have tips for making foolproof fruit infused water * On-the-go guidelines for bringing your fruit infused water wherever your day takes you * 10 tasty snack ideas for your leftover fruit (fruit sushi rolls, anyone?) From one-step infusions to creative combinations, there’s something for everyone in Fruit Infused Water, your best resource for enjoying your H20 to the fullest.
Marriages & Families: Changes, Choices, and Constraints
Nijole V. Benokraitis - 1993
The text's major theme "Changes, Choices, and Constraints" explores: Contemporary "changes "in families and their structure Impacts on the "choices "that are available to family members ""Constraints ""that often limit our choices Through this approach, students are better able to understand what the research and statistics mean "for themselves"! Marriages and Families balances theoretical and empirical discussions with practical examples and applications. It highlights important contemporary changes in society and the family. This text is written from a sociological perspective and incorporates material from other disciplines: history, economics, social work, psychology, law, biology, medicine, family studies, women's studies, and anthropology. "More about the themes: " "Changes"Examines how recent profound structural and attitudinal changes affect family forms, interpersonal relationships, and raising children. It reaches beyond the traditional discussions to explore racial-ethnic families, single-parent families and gay families as well as the recent scholarship by and about men, fathers, and grandfathers. Contemporary American marriages and families vary greatly in structure, dynamics, and cultural heritage. Thus, discussions of gender roles, social class, race, ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation are integrated throughout this book. To further strengthen students understanding of the growing diversity among today's families, the author included a series of boxes that focus on families from many cultures. "Choices"On the individual level, family members have many more choices today than ever before. People feel freer to postpone marriage, to cohabit, or to raise children as single parents. As a result, household forms vary greatly, ranging from commuter marriages to those in which several generations live together under the same roof. "Constraints"Although family members choices are more varied today, we also face greater macro- level constraints. Our options are increasingly limited, for example, by government policies. Economic changes often shape family life and not vice versa. Political and legal institutions also have a major impact on most families in tax laws, welfare reform, and even in defining what a family is. Because laws, public policies, and religious groups affect our everyday lives, the author has framed many discussions of individual choices within the larger picture of the institutional constraints that limit our choices.To learn more about the new edition, click here to visit the showcase site.
The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89
Edmund S. Morgan - 1956
Edmund S. Morgan's classic account of the Revolutionary period shows how the challenge of British taxation started the Americans on a search for constitutional principles to protect their freedom and eventually led to the Revolution.Morgan demonstrates that these principles were not abstract doctrines of political theory but grew instead out of the immediate needs and experiences of the colonists. They were held with passionate conviction, and incorporated, finally, into the constitutions of the new American states and of the United States.Though the basic theme of the book and his assessment of what the Revolution achieved remain the same, Morgan has updated the revised edition of The Birth of the Republic (1977) to include some textual and stylistic changes as well as a substantial revision of the Bibliographic Note.
Gladesmen: Gator Hunters, Moonshiners, and Skiffers
Glen Simmons - 1998
. . should have strong, immediate interest for the ecologists engaged in efforts to restore the Everglades."--William B. Robertson, research biologist for Everglades National ParkFrom the book--Pa built our house out of rough lumber that they got from Frazier’s sawmill . . . a one-room house about 16 to 18 feet long and 12 feet wide. We all slept on cots and sat on boxes or a trunk. The kitchen was in the corner, and Ma cooked on a four-hole stove, which cost six dollars. Me and my middle brother, Alvin, sat on a trunk to eat at the table. That trunk had some long cracks in it. My brother knew just how to move so the crack would pinch . . . .Years before the Park was established, when all the land and marsh seemed to belong to me, we would help ourselves to whatever we could see or trade for survival. Mostly we would sell gator and otter hides. . . . On this particular trip, after grunting awhile at the gator hole, I gave up and made tracks to the camp since I wanted to return by dark. . . . I was lying under my skeeter bar with a small tarp stretched between two cabbage palms. About midnight, I heard the dried cabbage fronds breaking in the path toward my camp. The night was pitch black . . .Few people today can claim a living memory of Florida's frontier Everglades. Glen Simmons, who has hunted alligators, camped on hammock-covered islands, and poled his skiff through the mangrove swamps of the glades since the 1920s, is one who can. Together with Laura Ogden, he tells the story of backcountry life in the southern Everglades from his youth until the establishment of the Everglades National Park in 1947. During the economic bust of the late ‘20s, when many natives turned to the land to survive, Simmons began accompanying older local men into Everglades backcountry, the inhospitable prairie of soft muck and mosquitoes, of outlaws and moonshiners, that rings the southern part of the state. As Simmons recalls life in this community with humor and nostalgia, he also documents the forgotten lifestyles of south Florida gladesmen. By necessity, they understood the natural features of the Everglades ecosystem. They observed the seasonal fluctuations of wildlife, fire, and water levels. Their knowledge of the mostly unmapped labyrinth of grassy water enabled them to serve as guides for visiting naturalists and scientists. Simmons reconstructs this world, providing not only fascinating stories of individual personalities, places, and events, but an account that is accurate, both scientifically and historically, of one of the least known and longest surviving portions of the American frontier.Glen Simmons has lived in the south Florida Everglades since his birth in 1916 in Homestead. In 1995 he was awarded a State of Florida Heritage Award for his unique contribution to Florida's history and folk culture. He has demonstrated and taught glades skiff building for the Florida Department of State, Bureau of Folklife, and the South Florida Historical Society; his boats are on permanent display at the Florida Folklife Museum in White Springs, Florida, and at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, Miami.Laura Ogden, also born in Homestead and a life-long friend of Glen Simmons, is assistant professor of anthropology at Florida International University.
Zelda Fitzgerald: The Biography
University Press Biographies - 2017
The chafing restrictions of a typical upbringing in upper-class, small town Alabama simply did not apply to Zelda, who was described as an unusual child and permitted to roam the streets with little supervision. Zelda refused to blossom into a typical 'Southern belle' on anyone's terms but her own and while still in high school enjoyed the status of a local celebrity for her shocking behavior. Everybody in town knew the name Zelda Sayre. Queen of the Montgomery social scene, Zelda had a different beau ready and willing to show her a good time for every day of the week. Before meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda's life was a constant pursuit of pleasure. With little thought for the future and no responsibilities to speak of, Zelda committed herself fully to the mantra that accompanied her photo in her high school graduation book: "Why should all life be work, when we all can borrow. Let's think only of today, and not worry about tomorrow." But for now Zelda was still in rehearsal for her real life to begin, a life she was sure would be absolutely extraordinary. Zelda Sayre married F. Scott Fitzgerald on the 3rd of April 1920 and left sleepy Montgomery behind in order to dive headfirst into the shimmering, glamourous life of a New York socialite. With the publication of Scott's first novel, This Side of Paradise, Zelda found herself thrust into the limelight as the very epitome of the Flapper lifestyle. Concerned chiefly with fashion, wild parties and flouting social expectations, Zelda and Scott became icons of the Jazz Age, the personification of beauty and success. What Zelda and Scott shared was a romantic sense of self-importance that assured them that their life of carefree leisure and excess was the only life really worth living. Deeply in love, the Fitzgeralds were like to sides of the same coin, each reflecting the very best and worst of each other. While the world fell in love with the image of the Fitzgeralds they saw on the cover of magazines, behind the scenes the Fitzgerald's marriage could not withstand the tension of their creative arrangement. Zelda was Scott's muse and he mercilessly mined the events of their life for material for his books. Scott claimed Zelda's memories, things she said, experiences she had and even passages from her diary as his possessions and used them to form the basis of his fictional works. Zelda had a child but the domestic sphere offered no comfort or purpose for her. The Flapper lifestyle was not simply a phase she lived through, it formed the very basis of her character and once the parties grew dull, the Fitzgeralds' drinking became destructive and Zelda's beauty began to fade, the world held little allure for her. Zelda sought reprieve in work and tried to build a career as a ballet dancer. When that didn't work out she turned to writing but was forbidden by Scott from using her own life as material. Convinced that she would never leave her mark on the world as deeply or expressively as Scott had, Zelda retreated into herself and withdrew from the people she knew in happier times. The later years of Zelda's life were marred by her detachment from reality as, diagnosed with schizophrenia, Zelda spent the last eighteen years of her life living in and out of psychiatric hospitals. As Scott's life unraveled due to alcohol abuse, Zelda looked back on the years they had spent together, young and wild and beautiful, as the best of her life. She may have been right but she was wrong about one thing, Zelda did leave her mark on the world and it was a deep and expressive mark that no one could have left but her. Zelda Fitzgerald: The Biography
The Best American Sports Writing 2007
David Maraniss - 2007
Guest editor David Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, has assembled a fresh crop of the people and stories that dominated the sports world in 2006.Michael Lewis gives a behind-the-scenes look at the legendary football coach Bill Parcells. Bob Hohler delves in the murky waters of modern amateur basketball, where teams blatantly dole out cash to players and shoe companies set their sights on prospects as young as twelve. William Rhoden traces the fate of an unknown filly injured on the racetrack. Jeff MacGregor describes the unforgettable Friars Club roast of boxing's provocative promoter Don King. Daniel Coyle follows a forty-year-old Slovene soldier who might be the world’s best ultra-endurance athlete. L. Jon Wertheim tells of a young pro-basketball player who found himself wrestling the shoe bomber Richard Reid to the ground during a transatlantic flight. And Derek Zumsteg provides a hilarious and utterly original in-depth account of the baseball career of Bugs Bunny, “the greatest banned player ever.”These pieces and many more go beyond the spotlight, revealing the people and issues that make sports so relevant and important to all of us.The white coon / Larry Brown --Bugs Bunny, greatest banned player ever / Derek Zumsteg --Ready for some fútbol? / Oscar Casares --The game of the year / Chris Ballard --Filling in the pieces of Jake Scott / Dave Hyde --Fading away / Wright Thompson --Deal of the century / John Klima --An unknown filly dies, and the crowd just shrugs / William C. Rhoden --Let us now raze famous men / Jeff MacGregor --Only medal for Bode is fool's gold / Sally Jenkins --That which does not kill me makes me stranger / Daniel Coyle --Polite when in neutral / Mimi Swartz --Snook / Ian Frazier --Blank Monday / William Finnegan --What keeps Bill Parcells awake at night / Michael Lewis --The madness of John Chaney / Robert Huber --The real deal in so many ways / Michael Wilbon --$neaker war / Bob Hohler --Baseball for life / Sara Corbett --A new game plan / Eli Saslow --The Saturday game / Eric Neel --Playing 4 keeps / Bryan Smith --The ultimate assist / L. Jon Wertheim --In Iraq, soccer field is no longer a refuge / Bruce Wallace --A moment of silence / Steve Friedman --Team Hoyt starts again / John Brant --The big show by little people / Paul Cullum --Talking turkey / Bill Buford
Brave Companions: Portraits in History
David McCullough - 1991
Here are Alexander von Humboldt, whose epic explorations of South America surpassed the Lewis and Clark expedition; Harriet Beecher Stowe, “the little woman who made the big war”; Frederic Remington; the extraordinary Louis Agassiz of Harvard; Charles and Anne Lindbergh, and their fellow long-distance pilots Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Beryl Markham; Harry Caudill, the Kentucky lawyer who awakened the nation to the tragedy of Appalachia; and David Plowden, a present-day photographer of vanishing America. Different as they are from each other, McCullough’s subjects have in common a rare vitality and sense of purpose. These are brave companions: to each other, to David McCullough, and to the reader, for with rare storytelling ability McCullough brings us into the times they knew and their very uncommon lives.
Who's Who And Where's Where in The Bible
Stephen M. Miller - 2005
Not a dry textbook, it's written in magazine style by critically acclaimed Christian journalist and Bible history author Stephen M. Miller. Color maps, photos, and paintings transport readers to sacred lands. There, they'll meet fascinating people: lovers and liars, healers and hoodlums, warriors and wimps. This captivating book will appeal to Bible newcomers as well as long-time Christians.