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American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone by D.D. Guttenplan
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Barefoot in the Bindis
Angela Wales - 2019
What he lacked in experience and expertise, he made up for in enthusiasm. Or so he hoped.When the family arrived on a lonely hill in northern New South Wales, they had no electricity, no running water, no telephone and no choice but to make that tangle of bush their home. From Angela Wales, eldest of the five kids, comes this extraordinarily vivid and evocative account of the next ten years as they tried to tame six thousand acres and navigate the challenges of country life.Filled with drama and hilarity, joy and back-breaking toil, Barefoot in the Bindis portrays a childhood spent in the bush, and is a sensational picture of Australia past.
The Second Temple Period
Binyamin Lau - 2006
It offers fresh perspectives on the individual characters of the Jewish sages (Chazal), the historical contexts in which they lived, and the creativity they brought to the pursuit of Jewish wisdom. This first volume in a three-volume set examines the teachings of the Men of the Great Assembly, Yosi Ben Yoezer, Hillel, Shamai and others of the Second Temple Period.
Do I Stand Alone?: Going to the Mat Against Political Pawns and Media Jackals
Jesse Ventura - 2000
In his first controversial New York Times bestseller, I Ain't Got Time to Bleed, ex-Navy SEAL and professional wrestler Jesse Ventura told the remarkable story of his climb up the Reform Party ladder to the governorship of Minnesota. Now, with jackhammer force and candor, Governor Ventura issues an urgent wake-up call to America -- a resounding indictment of our creeping national cynicism, and how our political system rewards mediocrity while turning a blind eye to accountability. In Do I Stand Alone? Ventura sternly warns against the danger of expecting too little from our elected officials. He decries the ease with which most Americans surrender their freedoms and apathetically accept a system of governance driven more by pork and patronage than by the best interests of the constituency. He also denounces an irresponsible media, taking them to task for too often confusing fame with notoriety, and for driving the news instead of simply reporting it. And he unabashedly speaks out on today's hot-button issues, including welfare, racism, youth violence, immigration, abortion, campaign finance reform, and gay rights. Giving us fascinating insights into the future of independent parties, Governor Ventura ushers us deep into the polished corridors of power, exposing the best -- and worst -- of our current crop of political personalities. He offers straightforward, uncompromising profiles of the current presidential candidates, and lays out a workable strategy for bringing our political system -- and its politicians -- back togreatness. In a forthright, razor-sharp, and entertaining critique, Governor Jesse Ventura has once again thrown down the gauntlet -- challenging today's politicians as well as a disenchanted public to transcend the tired rhetoric and defiantly reclaim the freedom and opportunity that is our American birthright.
Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel
Matti Friedman - 2019
Intended to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage and assassinations, the unit consisted of Jews who were native to the Arab world and could thus easily assume Arab identities. In 1948, with Israel’s existence in the balance during the War of Independence, our spies went undercover in Beirut, where they spent the next two years operating out of a kiosk, collecting intelligence, and sending messages back to Israel via a radio whose antenna was disguised as a clothesline. While performing their dangerous work these men were often unsure to whom they were reporting, and sometimes even who they’d become. Of the dozen spies in the Arab Section at the war’s outbreak, five were caught and executed. But in the end the Arab Section would emerge, improbably, as the nucleus of the Mossad, Israel’s vaunted intelligence agency.Spies of No Country is about the slippery identities of these young spies, but it’s also about Israel’s own complicated and fascinating identity. Israel sees itself and presents itself as a Western nation, when in fact more than half the country has Middle Eastern roots and traditions, like the spies of this story. And, according to Friedman, that goes a long way toward explaining the life and politics of the country, and why it often baffles the West. For anyone interested in real-life spies and the paradoxes of the Middle East, Spies of No Country is an intimate story with global significance.
Wellington's Men
W.H. Fitchett - 1900
As a commentary on the texts, Fitchett inserts his own criticism and analysis of parts of four biographies.Each of these men were eyewitnesses to the major events of Wellington’s Peninsula Campaign, and write critically about their own experiences in vivid prose that takes us directly back to the battlefields of Europe.They are the “actual human documents, with the salt of truth, of sincerity, and of reality in every syllable,” as Fitchett writes.‘Wellington’s Men’ is a fascinating history of the Napoleonic Wars as told by the men who saw it.W.H. Fitchett (1841-1928) was a minister, educator and writer, who wrote a column for the Spectator magazine. He published works of fiction and non-fiction, including a four-volume collection How England Saved Europe in 1909.Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.
The Death of a President: November 1963
William Manchester - 1967
The Death of a President, November 20-November 25, 1963 [Hardcover]
Bad Boy: The Life And Politics Of Lee Atwater
John Joseph Brady - 1996
He helped to create a solid Republican south. And he became notorious for turning national politics back into a blood sport, not only using nasty attacks but reveling in his image as the bad boy of Washington. Then, at the age of 39, Atwater was struck by a brain tumor. In thirteen months, cancer ended the most controversial career in modern politics—the charismatic, colorful, and contradictory life of Lee Atwater.Even today Atwater is a fallen leader Republicans love and a rival Democrats love to hate. He was the first political handler as mediagenic as his candidates—certainly the first chairman of the Republican National Committee to record a blues album. His campaigns represent the high-water mark of the GOPs postwar dominance of the presidency, and his techniques set the tone for races across the country. Watching Washington since his death, politicians and pundits still wonder, What if Lee Atwater had lived? Bad Boy reveals how Lee Atwater began his career controlling crowds as jittery class clown, traumatized by the agonizing death of his little brother. In college he discovered the subtle intercourse of policy and public opinion and grew from party animal to party man. Bad Boy details Atwater's political strategies from the grass roots to the national level. Even more ruthless were the behind-the-scenes power games as he crossed paths, and occasionally crossed swords, with nearly every major Republican of the 1980s: Reagan, Bush, Baker, Ailes, Rollins, and many more.In Bad Boy, we also see the faces Atwater tried to spin away. He was a compulsive womanizer, climbing through windows to avoid reporters. He played radical politics but promoted ”big tent” Republicanism. Even his last public moment is controversial. Did Atwater's deathbed words really repudiate entire campaigns, or were they twisted by political enemies and second-hand reporting? Was his repentance sincere or simply one last gasp of press manipulation? Was he responsible for the infamous Willie Horton ads, or was he unfairly blamed by 1988s losers, trying for a moral victory? Is Lee Atwater, a master of spin, now being spun in his grave?In its sudden end, Atwater's remarkable life resembled the rise and fall of a fine political novel. With the probing insights of an expert interviewer and a rare stylistic verve, John Brady tells that whole frantic, fascinating story—the life of the baddest boy in D.C.
Kate Bush: The Biography
Rob Jovanovic - 2005
The author traces the story of Kate Bush's career, from her up-bringing in the Essex countryside through her first forays into music with a series of home recordings, to her number one debut album that propelled her to international stardom.
American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story
Cynthia True - 2002
Just emerging from underground cult status when he died at age thirty-two, Bill Hicks spent most of his life making audiences roar -- and censors cringe -- with biting social satire about everything from former president George Bush to rock stars who hawk diet Coke. His nervy talent redefined the boundaries of comedy in the '80s and won him a list of admirers that includes John Cleese, George Carlin, and Thom Yorke of Radiohead.This posthumous biography reveals for the first time what made Bill Hicks tick -- what made him laugh, what pissed him off, and what he saw as his ultimate mission: to release people from their prison of ignorance. From his first comedy gig at Bible camp to his infamous cancellation on The Late Show with David Letterman, Cynthia True portrays an artist whose outrage, drive, and compassion fueled a controversial body of work that still resonates today.
Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief
James M. McPherson - 2008
McPherson provides a rare, fresh take on one of the most enigmatic figures in American history. Tried by War offers a revelatory (and timely) portrait of leadership during the greatest crisis our nation has ever endured. Suspenseful and inspiring, this is the story of how Lincoln, with almost no previous military experience before entering the White House, assumed the powers associated with the role of commander in chief, and through his strategic insight and will to fight changed the course of the war and saved the Union.
Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Transformation of American Sports
Mark Ribowsky - 2011
His colorful bombast, fearless reporting, and courageous stance on civil rights soon captured the attention of listeners everywhere. No mere jock turned "pretty-boy" broadcaster, the Brooklyn-born Cosell began as a lawyer before becoming a radio commentator. "Telling it like it is," he covered nearly every major sports story for three decades, from the travails of Muhammad Ali to the tragedy at Munich. Featuring a sprawling cast of athletes such as Jackie Robinson, Sonny Liston, Don Meredith, and Joe Namath, Howard Cosell also re-creates the behind-the-scenes story of that American institution, Monday Night Football. With more than forty interviews, Mark Ribowsky presents Cosell's life as part of an American panorama, examining racism, anti-Semitism, and alcoholism, among other sensitive themes. Cosell's endless complexities are brilliantly explored in this haunting work that reveals as much about the explosive commercialization of sports as it does about a much-neglected media giant.
Endurance: Shackleton's Extraordinary Voyage
Daniel Bryce - 2015
Sir Ernest Shackleton had carefully picked crew and a stout, well-outfitted ship, the Endurance. But he had no radio, the world was at war, and at the edge of the Antarctic continent, the ship froze in the sea ice. After months of immobility, it was crushed. Then began an impossible journey. With three tiny boats, the crew worked their way across frozen the Antarctic Sea. This vivid book recounts the story of Shackleton's heroic voyage from South Georgia Island to Antarctica then back to South Georgia. It is a tribute to Shackleton and his crew's ability to fight for survival and one of the most harrowing adventures in history.
Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life
Vivian Gornick - 2011
Her politics, from beginning to end, was based on resistance to that which thwarted the free development of the inner self. The right to stay alive in one’s senses, to enjoy freedom of thought and speech, to reject the arbitrary use of power—these were key demands in the many public protest movements she helped mount.Anarchist par excellence, Goldman is one of the memorable political figures of our time, not because of her gift for theory or analysis or even strategy, but because some extraordinary force of life in her burned, without rest or respite, on behalf of human integrity—and she was able to make the thousands of people who, for decades on end, flocked to her lectures, feel intimately connected to the pain inherent in the abuse of that integrity. To hear Emma describe, in language as magnetic as it was illuminating, what the boot felt like on the neck, was to experience the mythic quality of organized oppression. As the women and men in her audience listened to her, the homeliness of their own small lives became invested with a sense of drama that acted as a catalyst for the wild, vagrant hope that things need not always be as they were. All you had to do, she promised, was resist. In time, she herself would become a world-famous symbol for the spirit of resistance to the power of institutional authority over the lone individual.In Emma Goldman, Vivian Gornick draws a surpassingly intimate and insightful portrait of a woman of heroic proportions whose performance on the stage of history did what Tolstoy said a work of art should do: it made people love life more.
Under This Roof: The White House and the Presidency--21 Presidents, 21 Rooms, 21 Inside Stories
Paul Brandus - 2015
Kennedy was murdered, was a blood-red carpet installed in the Oval Office? If Abraham Lincoln never slept in the Lincoln Bedroom, where did he sleep?Why was one president nearly killed in the White House on inauguration day—and another secretly sworn in? What really happened in the Situation Room on September 11, 2001?History leaps off the page in this “riveting,” “fast-moving” and “highly entertaining” book on the presidency and White House in Under This Roof, from award-winning White House-based journalist Paul Brandus. Reporting from the West Wing briefing room since 2008, Brandus—the most followed White House journalist on Twitter (@WestWingReport)—weaves together stories of the presidents, their families, the events of their time—and an oft-ignored major character, the White House itself.From George Washington—who selected the winning design for the White House—to the current occupant, Barack Obama—the story of the White House is the story of America itself, Brandus writes. You’ll walk with John Adams through the still-unfinished mansion, and watch Thomas Jefferson plot to buy the Louisiana Territory Feel the fear and panic as British invaders approach the mansion in 1814—and Dolley Madison frantically saves a painting of Washington Gaze out the window with Abraham Lincoln as Confederate flags flutter in the breeze on the other side of the Potomac Be in the room as one president is secretly sworn in, and another gambles away the White House china in a card gameStand by the presidential bed as one First Lady—covering up her husband’s illness from the nation—secretly makes decisions on his behalf Learn how telephones, movies, radio, TV changed the presidency—and the nation itselfThrough triumph and tragedy, boom and bust, secrets and scandals, Brandus takes you to the presidential bedroom, movie theater, Situation Room, Oval Office and more. Under This Roof is a “sensuous account of the history of both the home of the President, and the men and women who designed, inhabited, and decorated it. Paul Brandus captivates with surprising, gloriously raw observations.”
JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated
Douglas Horne - 2014
Kennedy, the response has been: Why would the U.S. national-security establishment — that is, the military and the CIA — kill Kennedy? As Douglas P. Horne details in this ebook, JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated, the answer is because Kennedy’s ideas about foreign-policy collided with those of the U.S. national-security establishment during the height of the Cold War. In the eyes of the military and the CIA, Kennedy’s policies posed a grave threat to national security.Horne served as Chief Analyst for Military Records for the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). This was the federal agency that Congress established to secure the disclosure and release of JFK-related records and documents after the public outcry generated by Oliver Stone’s movie JFK. Horne is the author of Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, a five-volume work that focuses primarily on the autopsy of Kennedy’s body that was conducted by the U.S. military.