Book picks similar to
Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era by Arthur Pierce Middleton
history
history-american
history-maryland
pirates
Ben
Kerry Needham - 2013
On July 24th she was at work when her mum Christine arrived crying uncontrollably. Ben had been playing outside, and then disappeared. Someone had taken Ben. In her heartbreaking memoir, Kerry describes the agony of being initially suspected by the police, which meant the closure of airport and ferry terminals were delayed, the early sightings that raised their hopes, and the hoaxes which dashed them completely. And the unbearable pain of knowing her baby boy was alone somewhere without his mum. Back in the UK, the long years of waiting and hoping have been difficult on the whole family. Kerry has raised her daughter, Leighanna, while following up more than 300 leads. In 2011 they had a breakthrough when South Yorkshire Police agreed to work with the Greek authorities to reopen the case. The chance that Ben will read about himself and come home becomes more real every day. All of Kerry's royalties from the sale of this book will go toward the Help Find Ben campaign.
A Murder in Music City: Corruption, Scandal, and the Framing of an Innocent Man
Michael Bishop - 2017
Eighteen-year-old babysitter Paula Herring is murdered in her home while her six-year-old brother apparently sleeps through the grisly event. A few months later a judge's son is convicted of the crime. Decades after the slaying, the author stumbles upon a secret file related to the case and with the help of some of the world's top forensic experts--including forensic psychologist Richard Walter (aka -the living Sherlock Holmes-)--he uncovers the truth. What really happened is completely different from what the public was led to believe. In this true-crime page-turner, the author lays out compelling evidence that a circle of powerful citizens were key participants in the crime and the subsequent cover-up. The ne'er-do-well judge's son, who was falsely accused and sent to prison, proved to be the perfect setup man. The perpetrators used his checkered history to conceal the real facts for over half a century. Now, for the first time, the author reveals the true story. Including interviews with the original defense attorney and a murder confession elicited from a nursing-home resident, the information presented here will change Nashville history forever.
Elvis in the Morning
William F. Buckley Jr. - 2001
Army base in Germany in the 1950s. There, he becomes a fan of a G.I. stationed at the base, one Elvis Presley, whose music is played over and over on the radio. When Orson is caught stealing recordings of Elvis's tunes from the PX, the attendant publicity catches the star's attention, and he comes to visit his young fan. Thus begins a lifelong friendship. As Elvis's career rockets ever higher and his behavior becomes ever more erratic, the two share many adventures. The sixties explode, and Elvis becomes the icon of the nation, while Orson, a college demonstrator, drifts away from regular life while looking for something of substance to believe in. Each man is an emblem of his time, as social conventions crumble, barriers fall, and the cultural landscape changes forever.A panorama of change and dissent, of the ability of friends to stay true despite distance and time, Elvis in the Morning portrays a nation in change and the effects of celebrity on innocence.
Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler
Bruce Henderson - 2017
Army to play a key role in the Allied victory.In 1942, the U.S. Army unleashed one of its greatest secret weapons in the battle to defeat Adolf Hitler: training nearly 2,000 German-born Jews in special interrogation techniques and making use of their mastery of the German language, history, and customs. Known as the Ritchie Boys, they were sent in small, elite teams to join every major combat unit in Europe, where they interrogated German POWs and gathered crucial intelligence that saved American lives and helped win the war.Though they knew what the Nazis would do to them if they were captured, the Ritchie Boys eagerly joined the fight to defeat Hitler. As they did, many of them did not know the fates of their own families left behind in occupied Europe. Taking part in every major campaign in Europe, they collected key tactical intelligence on enemy strength, troop and armored movements, and defensive positions. A postwar Army report found that more than sixty percent of the credible intelligence gathered in Europe came from the Ritchie Boys.Bruce Henderson draws on personal interviews with many surviving veterans and extensive archival research to bring this never-before-told chapter of the Second World War to light. Sons and Soldiers traces their stories from childhood and their escapes from Nazi Germany, through their feats and sacrifices during the war, to their desperate attempts to find their missing loved ones in war-torn Europe. Sons and Soldiers is an epic story of heroism, courage, and patriotism that will not soon be forgotten.
Matagorda/The First Fast Draw (Bantam Books Western)
Louis L'Amour - 2008
Now he’s settled on the Texas coast, working a ranch as the partner of his old friend Tom Kittery—and finding himself in the middle of a feud between Kittery and a neighboring family. But the danger from outside is nothing compared to the threat within, as Duvarney suspects Kittery’s woman isn’t all she appears to be. Tap may have to go to war again. But this time will it be with his closest friend?The First Fast DrawEast Texas wasn’t much of a home for Cullen Baker. Few liked him, and some even tried to kill him. Yet after three years of wandering, he’s back to farm the land that is rightfully his. But Cullen’s neighbors have long memories, and his worst adversary has teamed up with a vicious outlaw. With enemies closing in on all sides and threatening the woman he loves, Cullen will have to be faster than lightning—and twice as deadly—just to survive.From the Paperback edition.
Drifting South
Charles Davis - 2007
Neither does Benjamin Purdue. In a single day he lost his family, his love, his freedom and even his name for reasons he's never known. Now after spending twenty-one years in prison for crimes he didn't commit, the young man he used to be is dead. And the man he's become is no one he--or anyone else--would ever want to know.With only fifty dollars of state money in his pocket, Henry Cole, aka Benjamin Purdue, journeys back to the dangerous outlaw settlement hidden deep in the Allegheny Mountains of Virginia where it all began. The only place he's called home.Instead of answers, he finds only old sunken graves. Now as he drifts southward, he gets closer to the beautiful woman he will never forget--whose untimely visit to Shady that fateful Sunday afternoon ended in a killing. A woman who holds the keys to his past...and his future.
In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
Doug Stanton - 2001
Interweaving the stories of survivors, Doug Stanton has brought this astonishing human drama to life in a narrative that is at once immediate and timeless. The definitive account of a little-known chapter in World War II history, In Harm's Way is destined to become a classic tale of war, survival, and extraordinary courage.On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed in the South Pacific by a Japanese submarine. An estimated 300 men were killed upon impact; close to 900 sailors were cast into the Pacific Ocean, where they remained undetected by the navy for nearly four days and nights. Battered by a savage sea, they struggled to stay alive, fighting off sharks, hypothermia, and dementia. The captain's subsequent court-martial left many questions unanswered: How did the navy fail to realize the Indianapolis was missing? And perhaps most amazing of all, how did these 317 men manage to survive?
The Saints of Lost Things
C.H. Lawler - 2014
Now, as a powerful September hurricane bears down on the Louisiana coast, those worlds will come face to face.The choices they make will send them on an odyssey north and into the fall of 1965, as the brutal and envious sheriff Percy Parris pursues them. Along the way they meet an unusual and eclectic series of people who help them become more than what they were.As fall turns to winter, their lives will change forever in the wake of a storm named Betsy.The Saints of Lost Things is a story of love, hope, and perseverance, and envy and bitterness. And the remarkable power of kindness.
Lady on the Hill: How Biltmore Estate Became an American Icon
Howard E. Covington Jr. - 2006
A National Historic Landmark, George Vanderbilt's dream home welcomes visitors to experience its glorious past as well as its exciting future. Once described by David Rockefeller as a "white elephant," what makes Biltmore Estate as popular a destination as Monticello, Mount Vernon, and Colonial Williamsburg?Lady on the Hill tells the inspiring story of the thirty-five-year effort to restore this fading beauty to her former glory - all without a penny of government funding or outside foundation grants. Central to this true-life tale of rebirth against the odds is George Vanderbilt's grandson William A. V. Cecil, a well-mannered, highly educated man who, when caught up in an idea, becomes a whirling dervish, generating enough energy and enthusiasm to motivate everyone around him. And, according to author Howard Covington Jr., Cecil gets a week's worth of ideas before he's done with his Monday morning shave.In the late 1950s, attorneys, financial managers, and tax accountants were united in advising Cecil and his brother, George, to sell off the estate's 12,000 acres in order to create a suburban subdivision. Cecil quietly ignored this advice and came up with a better idea: over the next four decades, he would turn this down-at-the-heels mansion that was a drain on the family business into the most successful, privately preserved historic site in the United States, perhaps even the worldCecil succeeded beyond even his wildest dreams. Not only did he raise the money needed to begin and continue a painstaking, decades-long restoration of the house itself, but he also achieved a goal that even his grandfather had found elusive. He made Biltmore Estate a self-sustaining, working enterprise that included a vibrant tourist destination, a working winery and vineyard, and a farming operation; employed hundreds of people; and attracted hundreds of millions of dollars to the local economy every year.
Wild Swimming: 150 Hidden Dips In The Rivers, Lakes And Waterfalls Of Britain
Daniel Start - 2008
Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America
Les Standiford - 2005
Set against the backdrop of the Gilded Age, Meet You in Hell captures the majesty and danger of steel manufacturing, the rough-and-tumble of the business world, and the fraught relationship between “the world’s richest man” and the ruthless coke magnate to whom he entrusted his companies. The result is an extraordinary work of popular history.Also available as a Random House AudioBook and an eBook
The Mysteries of Taal: A Philippine Volcano and Lake, Her Sea Life and Lost Towns
Thomas R. Hargrove - 1991
The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril
Eugene Jarecki - 2008
This is a story not of simple corruption but of the unexpected origins of a more subtle and, in many ways, more worrisome disfiguring of our political system and society.While in no way absolving George W. Bush and his inner circle of their accountability for misguiding the country into a disastrous war -- in fact, Jarecki sheds new light on the deepest underpinnings of how and why they did so -- he reveals that the forty-third president's predisposition toward war and Congress's acquiescence to his wishes must be understood as part of a longer story. This corrupting of our system was predicted by some of America's leading military and political minds.In his now legendary 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of "the disastrous rise of misplaced power" that could result from the increasing influence of what he called the "military industrial complex." Nearly two centuries earlier, another general turned president, George Washington, had warned that "overgrown military establishments" were antithetical to republican liberties. Today, with an exploding defense budget, millions of Americans employed in the defense sector, and more than eight hundred U.S. military bases in 130 countries, the worst fears of Washington and Eisenhower have come to pass.Surveying a scorched landscape of America's military adventures and misadventures, Jarecki's groundbreaking account includes interviews with a who's who of leading figures in the Bush administration, Congress, the military, academia, and the defense industry, including Republican presidential nominee John McCain, Colin Powell's former chief of staff Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, and longtime Pentagon reformer Franklin "Chuck" Spinney. Their insights expose the deepest roots of American war making, revealing how the "Arsenal of Democracy" that crucially secured American victory in WWII also unleashed the tangled web of corruption America now faces. From the republic's earliest episodes of war to the use of the atom bomb against Japan to the passage of the 1947 National Security Act to the Cold War's creation of an elaborate system of military-industrial-congressional collusion, American democracy has drifted perilously from the intent of its founders. As Jarecki powerfully argues, only concerted action by the American people can, and must, compel the nation back on course."The American Way of War" is a deeply thoughtprovoking study of how America reached a historic crossroads and of how recent excesses of militarism and executive power may provide an opening for the redirection of national priorities.
Dear Stranger, Dearest Friend
Laney Katz Becker - 2000
In search of answers, comfort, and advice, she goes on-line. And that's where she, "meets" Susan, a strong and steady, no-frills Midwesterner. No two women could be less alike. Yet from the moment they connect, it is clear that they share something deep and important, something that's nestled in the warmest corner of the heart.What begins as a chance encounter on the Internet quickly blossoms into a very special relationship. As their e-mail messages fly back and forth, Susan and Lara forge a powerful bond of trust, honesty, and understanding. And soon they are sharing their lives in full -- talking of husbands and children, dreams and desires, the daily cycle of success and setback -- and together learning to laugh uproariously over the small and large absurdities of the world. When a devastating crisis arises, they are there for each other, providing the life-affirming strength and the lightness that is needed to cope with tragedy ... and to triumph.Lara and Susan originally go on-line looking for kind words and good advice. But they find in each other the greatest gift of all: a true and forever friend.Vivid, funny, original, and profoundly moving, Laney Katz Becker's magnificent debut novel is sure to be a classic, read and reread by women everywhere, an intimate portrait of two completestrangers who become soul mates across hundreds of miles, and who discover the strength and the will to reach out and take hold of the wondrous stuff of life.