The Vietnam Air War: From The Cockpit


Dennis M. Ridnouer - 2018
    Showcasing seventy-two true stories told by American servicemen who fought from the skies, this unique and historically significant collection is a stunning record of the air war in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and 1970s. There is no political agenda. There is no partisan opinion. There is no romanticizing. These are simply tales from the thick of an endlessly complex conflict, raw and uncut, told directly by the men who were foisted into its napalm- and sweat-soaked clutches. Occasionally funny, sometimes tragic, and often harrowing, these true accounts bring new and personal perspectives to one of the most studied and most maligned wars in America’s history, revealing with no Hollywood glamorizing what the war was really like for members of the US Air Force of all ranks and myriad functions who answered the call to fight. They saw no choice but to follow the orders they were given. And for better or for worse, by the time they returned, each of them would be changed forever.

Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America


Tom Stanton - 2004
    Many have altered the outcome of games, and some have decided pennants and become legend. But no dinger has had greater impact than Hank Aaron's 715th home run. His historic blast on April 8, 1974, lifted him above Babe Ruth on the all-time list, an achievement that shook not only baseball but our nation itself. Aaron's magnificent feat provoked bigotry and shattered prejudice, inspired a generation, emboldened a flagging civil rights movement, and called forth the demons that haunted Aaron's every step and turned what should have been a joyous pursuit into a hellish nightmare.In this powerful recollection, Tom Stanton penetrates the myth of Aaron's chase and uncovers the compelling story behind the most consequential athletic achievement of the past fifty years. Three decades after Hank Aaron reached the pinnacle of the national pastime, and now as Barry Bonds makes history of his own, Stanton unfolds a tale rich with drama, poignancy, and suspense to bring to life the elusive spirit of an American hero.

The Willie Lynch Letter And the Making of A Slave


Willie Lynch - 2011
    You see, survival of the colored race in America is at a difficult point where it has to be taught to our youth. The old practices of lynching and segregation which are thought to have been eradicated from our society lives on but in various other forms: police brutality, income inequality, unemployment and single motherhood… designs to keep our communities in perpetual turmoil and slavery.This book should be required reading for the youth and a lesson to any group that man’s inhumanity to man has not ended in America and is practiced around the world.

Famous Sheriffs and Western Outlaws: Incredible True Stories of Wild West Showdowns and Frontier Justice


William MacLeod Raine - 1929
    Get swept back to a time when sheriffs did their best to keep order in a lawless land. Read about the likes of Tom Horn, the “Apache Kid,” “Bucky” O’Neill, Tom Nickson, and many more!  Famous Sheriffs and Western Outlaws is a classic for everyone interested in history and what is was like in the Old West. The detail of every story grabs the attention of the reader and doesn't let go. Learn the early stories of famous foes like Billy the Kid and what he was like from both a personal and business standpoint. If you like stories of heroes and the people who tried to take them down, then you are in for a wild ride.  Novelist William MacLeod Raine recalls standoffs, shootouts, rowdy saloons, brave men who protected innocent townspeople, and villains who put the “wild” in Wild West. Famous Sheriffs and Western Outlaws is a sure shot for anyone interested in the history and romance of the Old West.

Looking Up: A Memoir of Sisters, Survivors and Skokie


Linda Pressman - 2011
    As the child of two Holocaust Survivors, Looking Up: A Memoir of Sisters, Survivors and Skokie tells the story of growing up with parents who have survived the unsurvivable, who land in Skokie, an idyllic northern suburb of Chicago, where they're suddenly free to live their lives, yet they find that their past has arrived with them. Through the pages of this book the author discovers that past, discovers why outside the house is the magic of her Skokie childhood but inside the Nazis are forever on the march, and ultimately finds that her parents' stories are her own.

The Improbable Wendell Willkie: The Businessman Who Saved the Republican Party and His Country, and Conceived a New World Order


David Levering Lewis - 2018
    Although Wendell Lewis Willkie would lose to FDR, acclaimed biographer David Levering Lewis demonstrates that the corporate chairman–turned–presidential candidate must be regarded as one of the most exciting, intellectually able, and authentically transformational figures to stride the twentieth-century American political landscape.Born in Elwood, Indiana, in 1892, Willkie was certainly one of the most unexpected, if not unlikely, candidates for the presidency, only somewhat less unlikely than Barack Hussein Obama. Although previously marginalized by journalists like Theodore H. White and David Halberstam as a political invention of rich newspaper publishers, the Willkie who emerges here is a man governed by principles who seldom allowed rigid categories to stand in his way. Even as a young man, he quickly distinguished himself as a reform-minded lawyer, whose farm-boy haircut, hayseed manners, and sartorial indifference bespoke common-man straightforwardness but concealed an ambition that propelled him at forty to chairman of Commonwealth and Southern, the country’s third-largest private utility holding company.It was Willkie’s vehement opposition to government regulation of the free-market economy and his success in wrenching a fabulous monetary settlement from the Tennessee Valley Authority that attracted the attention of Republican leaders, who, like Willkie, felt that FDR was turning the office into an imperial presidency. Successful at outwitting the isolationist wing of his own party, Willkie took on Roosevelt during one of the nation’s darkest periods, creating an unlikely alliance of supporters, including anti-big-government business leaders and black voters, who rightly felt excluded from New Deal benefits.Despite receiving the largest percentage of Republican votes in a generation, Willkie lost but, in the process, proposed sweeping civil rights reform a full generation before the civil rights era and a progressive “new conception of the world” that remains inspirational at a time when our own national belief system has become alarmingly immoral and rudderless. Rather than continue a political battle that could have weakened the nation during its darkest hour, a defeated Willkie reconciled with the president and embraced the war effort, while writing One World, a visionary credo that hoped to instigate an international movement for the betterment of the world’s people. In rejecting America’s penchant for exceptionalism, Willkie championed this internationalism more passionately than any American politician before him, creating a sovereign philosophy of liberalism that balanced free enterprise with social responsibility. His untimely death at fifty-two in 1944 left this prophetic vision tragically stillborn.

Milwaukee Massacre: Jeffery Dahmer and the Milwaukee Murders


Robert J. Dvorchak - 1991
    When he led officers back to his captor's lair, they made a gruesome discovery - torsos stuffed in a barrel, severed heads piled up in the fridge and skulls stacked neatly in the filing cabinet. Tacked to the freezer were photographs of the mutilated corpses and in the middle, 31-year-old Jeffery Dahmer, serial killer. This book tells the story of this case of true crime. This book tells the story of Jeffrey Dahmer - a deranged and savage sex killer- going beyond the grisly details to reconstruct events that led up to the murders of at least 17 young men.

Uppity: My Untold Story About The Games People Play


Bill White - 2011
    And even fewer who are as well respected as Bill White.Bill White, who's now in his mid 70s, was an All-Star first baseman for many years with the New York Giants, St.Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies before launching a stellar broadcasting career with the New York Yankees for 18 years. He left the broadcast booth to become the President of the National League for five years. A true pioneer as an African-American athlete, sportscaster, and top baseball executive, White has written his long-awaited autobiography in which he will be candid, open, and as always, most forthcoming about his life in baseball. Along the way, White shares never-before-told stories about his long working relationship with Phil Rizzutto, insights on George Steinbrenner, Barry Bonds, Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Bob Gibson, Bart Giamatti, Fay Vincent, and scores of other top baseball names and Hall of Famers. Best of all, White built his career on being outspoken, and the years fortunately have not mellowed him. UPPITY is a baseball memoir that baseball fans everywhere will be buzzing about.

Waterproof: A Novel of the Johnstown Flood


Judith Redline Coopey - 2012
    The flood wiped out Pam's fondest hopes: her brother and her fiance were killed. Her mother is locked in catatonic hysteria. Her father, torn apart by the flood's affect on his family, just walks away, leaving Pam poverty stricken and alone, to care for a mother who may never recover. Then Davy Hughes, Pam's dead fiance, reappears and, instead of being the answer to her prayers, further complicates her life. Someone is seeking revenge on the owners of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, the Pittsburgh millionaires who owned the failed dam, and Pam thinks Davy might have something to do with it. Waterproof, set in Johnstown two years after the flood, examines how people react to tragedy. Do they recover from physical injury only to succumb to the psychological affects? Or do they run away? Do they rise to the challenge and become better people or give in to their rage and seek revenge? For the people of Johnstown, survivors of the flood, it became the measure of their character. Determined to get past the tragedy and get on with her life, Pam spurns self-pity. She will not be defined by the flood. In this decades-deep story of loss and struggle against loss, we find a heroine to respect and a path to recovery.

The Long Hard Winter of 1880-81: What was it Really Like?


Dan L. White - 2011
    She wrote of three day blizzards, forty ton trains stuck in the snow, houses buried in snowdrifts and a town that nearly starved.Was Laura's story just fiction, or was that one winter stranger than fiction? Was that winter really that bad, or was it just a typical old time winter stretched a bit to make a good tale?Author Dan L. White examines the reality of the long, hard winter. White uses contemporary newspaper articles, autobiographies and historical accounts of those who lived through that time to weave a fascinating story of the incredible winter of 1880-81.

But He Was Good to His Mother: The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters


Robert A. Rockaway - 1993
    Gangsters dealt with in this book include Louis Lepke Buchalter, Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, Arthur Dutch Schultz Flegenheimer, Meyer The Little Man Lansky, Chalie King Solomon, Max Boo Boo Hoff and Abner Longy Zwillman.

Hugh Glass


Bruce Bradley - 2015
     BOOK EXCERPT: By the time Hugh Glass reached Fort Tilton it was well into November. A foot of snow lay across the countryside. Fort Tilton was a small fort that belonged to the Columbia Fur Company. It had been built by William P. Tilton and boasted a garrison of only five men. As it sat near the site of another Mandan village, the Mandans who escorted Hugh dropped him off, then immediately went to visit their cousins. Hugh went to see Tilton, where he learned right away that any hopes of finding a boat to continue his journey were in vain. “Mr. Glass,” Tilton told Hugh, “I’d like to help you but I can’t. I’ve got five men here, besides myself. I can’t spare any of them. We’re under danger of attack here night and day by the Arikaras. I need every man I have to keep them away. Even if I could spare anyone, I doubt they would go. We’re watched constantly. I had one man who left the fort for only a few minutes. From out of nowhere, that devil Stanapat rode up and killed him, practically on our doorstep. If you hadn’t had the Mandans escorting you, don’t think for a moment that you would have made it in here. Those damn Arikaras would have gotten you before you even came within sight of the fort.” Disappointed, Hugh exhaled heavily. “Stanapat,” he said ruefully. “—The Little Hawk With The Bloody Hand…” Tilton looked at him. “You speak Arikara?” he asked Hugh. “Pawnee,” Hugh said absently. “The two languages are almost identical.” Tilton continued to stare at him. Slowly, a look of dread came over his features. “Oh no,” Tilton said. “Oh, Christ, I should have known by your scars—you’re the one the Indians call White Bear.” Hugh gave him a puzzled look. “How did you know?” “Mister, you’re the talk of the plains. BIG medicine. Went one on one with a grizzly, left for dead by two white men and still managed to crawl to Fort Kiowa. The Arikaras have tried to kill you and can’t, that’s what they say. Oh, I know all about you. So does every tribe from here to the Rockies. As soon as Stanapat finds out you’re here—and he will—he’ll tear this place down to get to you. New travels real fast in these parts, mister, and the news here is that the Arikaras want you real bad!” PRAISE FOR "HUGH GLASS" by Bruce Bradley-- "--The kind of book you hate to put down!" Fraser Whitbread - Muzzle Blasts Magazine "This recent book by Bruce Bradley is a great read and should be added to the library of those who have interest in the (Fur Trade) period or are an over-all student of early American History." - On the Trail Magazine "A very readable telling of an amazing story!" —Bob Griffith-Amazon.com

Key West: History of an Island of Dreams


Maureen Ogle - 2006
    The city’s real story—told by Maureen Ogle in this lively and engaging illustrated account—is as fabulous as fiction. In the two centuries since the city’s pioneer founders battled Indians, pirates, and deadly disease, Key West has stood at the crossroads of American history. In 1861, Union troops seized control of strategically located Key West. In the early 1890s, Key West Cubans helped José Martí launch the Cuban revolution, and a few years later the battleship Maine steamed out of Key West harbor on its last, tragic voyage. At the turn of the century, a technological marvel—the overseas railroad—was built to connect mainland Florida to Key West, and in the 1920s and 1930s, painters, rumrunners, and writers (including Ernest Hemingway and Robert Frost) discovered Key West. During World War II, the federal government and the military war machine permanently altered the island’s landscape, and in the second half of the 20th century, bohemians, hippies, gays, and jet-setters began writing a new chapter in Key West’s social history.

Now You Know: A Novel


Susan Kelly - 2013
    It ends with a promise. On her deathbed Frances extracts it from her three daughters—the utterly capable homemaker Alice; the recalcitrant Allegra, a recovering alcoholic; and bohemian Edie, who shrinks in the face of any commitment: their promise to “look after Libba.” As if the formidable, tough-minded Libba Charles, author of ten books, a literary celebrity, needed looking after. Yet when they are summoned by Libba to Creek Cabin, their mother’s summer hideaway in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, they go. None of them is prepared, though, for what they will discover there—about their mother, about Libba, about themselves—in this poignant, adroit rendering of reunions and farewells.

Jamestown, the Buried Truth


William M. Kelso - 2006
    In Jamestown, the Buried Truth, William Kelso takes us literally to the soil where the Jamestown colony began, unearthing the James Fort and its contents to reveal fascinating evidence of the lives and deaths of the first settlers, of their endeavors and struggles, and of their relationships with the Virginia Indians. He offers up a lively but fact-based account, framed around a narrative of the archaeological team's exciting discoveries.Once thought to have been washed away by the James River, James Fort still retains much of its structure, including palisade walls, bulwarks, interior buildings, a well, a warehouse, and several pits, and more than 500,000 objects have been cataloged, half dating to the time of Queen Elizabeth and King James. Artifacts especially reflective of life at James Fort include an ivory compass, Cabasset helmets and breastplates, glass and copper beads and ornaments, ceramics, tools, religious icons, a pewter flagon, and personal items. Dr. Kelso and his team of archaeologists have discovered the lost burial of one of Jamestown's early leaders, presumed to be Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, and the remains of several other early settlers, including a young man who died of a musket ball wound. In addition, they've uncovered and analyzed the remains of the foundations of Jamestown's massive capitol building.Refuting the now decades-old stereotype that attributed the high mortality rate of the Jamestown settlers to their laziness and ineptitude, Jamestown, the Buried Truth produces a vivid picture of the settlement that is far more complex, incorporating the most recent archaeology to give Jamestown its rightful place in history and thus contributing to a broader understanding of the transatlantic world.