Born in 1908, in The Patch, Chicago, Giancana joined the Forty-Two gang of lawless juvenile punks in 1921 and quickly proved himself as a skilled 'wheel man' (or getaway driver), extortionist and vicious killer. Called up to the ranks of the Outfit, he reputedly held talks with the CIA about assassinating Fidel Castro, shared a girlfriend with John F. Kennedy and had friends in high places, including Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, Marilyn Monroe and, some say, the Kennedys, although he fell out with them.The story of Sam Giancana will overturn many of your beliefs about America during the Kennedy era. If you want to know Giancana's role in the brother's deaths, and more of the intrigue surrounding that of Marilyn Monroe, this book will fill you in on the murky lives of many shady characters who really ruled the day, both in Chicago and elsewhere.

    

    Having been a press officer for a US Senator for a number of years, I’ve had a front row seat to the inter workings of Capital Hill. To my mind, Powell has masterfully combined the timeliness of today’s political intrigue with a gripping detective story/who-done-it. By bringing the mind-boggling swirling mess that is Washington politics down to the level of one family’s pain he held me glued to the page."What I found particularly remarkable was how easily I found myself sympathizing with the ‘villain’, and how well-crafted and human was Powell’s plea that we need to finally bring common sense back to our government and its approaches to critical problems facing the country and the world."A deceptively easy read — given its thunderous message.  Term Limits should be require reading for every new politician heading to Washington."Murder – week after week, month after month, across the country. Pushed beyond his limits, one man takes on the establishment, the gun lobby, and corruption at the highest levels. To break the power of entrenched elites, he leads the nation on a grisly hunt. He’s hunting them. And they’re hunting him. One side will have to blink. In the meantime, people are dying. Term Limits is a thriller from the front pages of our newspapers. It couldn’t be more topical.

    Runaway introduces us to the only one of those enchained people to escape and tell her story. Ona Judge was the young personal attendant to Martha Washington. On a spring evening in 1796, she slipped out of the president's home, throwing her master and mistress into a consternation that lingered for years. Why had Ona fled, and where had she gone? Join Harper's and New York Times Magazine contributor Bill Donahue as he traces the flight of America's most intriguing fugitive slave.Journalist Bill Donahue has written for Wired, The New York Times Magazine, Playboy, The Atlantic, Runner’s World, The New Yorker, and Harper’s. In reporting stories from over 20 countries, he has searched for fallen meteorites in the Sahara Desert, biked the streets of Shanghai, snuck into Manuel Noriega’s abandoned beach house in Panama, and taste-tested moonshine in the snowy Caucasus mountains of Georgia. He is the author of The Secret World of Saints, an e-book about the Catholic Church and its saintmaking process, and his work has been reprinted in Best American Sports Writing, Best American Travel Writing, and many other anthologies. He lives in rural New Hampshire, where he runs the Scriven Arts Colony.Cover Design by Kerry Ellis.

    And their fans had ulcers. Now, veteran sports columnist Terry Pluto explains why everything kept going wrong. This detailed report on two decades of disappointment takes a behind-the-scenes look at upheaval in the front office, frustration on the field, and headaches and heartache in the stands. His earlier book False Start: How the New Browns Were Set Up to Fail told how the NFL hamstrung the new franchise. Who could have predicted the limping would last 19 years? This book picks up the story. Season after season began with hope in spring for the NFL draft (“the Browns’ version of the Super Bowl,” a fan called it) . . . often a new coach or GM or quarterback (or all three) . . . then the losses . . . and back to rebuilding. Pluto reviews all the major moves—draft choices and deals, hiring and firing and reshuffling—and the results. If you’re a Browns fan who wants to understand what went wrong with your team, this is the place to start. Includes heartfelt and humorous opinions contributed by fans.

    In America men and women wept openly in the streets for their dead leader. But events soon began to unpick the original version of what happened. It turned out that theaofficial report was little more than a crude government whitewash designed to hide the real truth. Even American Presidents admitted as much. President Nixon memorably confessed in private that the Warren Report was the biggest hoax ever perpetuated on the American public. It began to emerge that maybe Lee Harvey Oswald, the original one nut gunman, may not have acted on his own; others were involved, too. That meant no lone gunman, but a conspiracy. This book attempts to answer the big question: who really shot JFK? And, more important still, exactly why was he shot? John Hughes-Wilson argues that the murder of John Kennedy was, like the murder of Julius Caesar 2,000ayears before, nothing less than a bloody coup dOCO(r)tat by his political enemies, a conspiracy hell bent on removing a leader who was threatening the power and the money of the ruling establishment. Pointing the finger at Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, and the Mafia, John joins Jackie and Bobby Kennedy in their conclusion that the assassination of JFK was far more complex than a deranged attack by Lee Harvey Oswald, the 24-year-old ex-Marine."

    Refusing to cave in to society's rules, Eleanor's exuberant style, wavering voice and lack of Hollywood beauty are fodder for the media.First Lady for thirteen years, Eleanor redefines and exploits this role to a position ofpower. Using her influence she champions for Jews, African Americans and women. Living through two world wars Eleanor witnesses thousands of graves, broken bodies and grieving families. After visiting troops in the Pacific she says:"If we don't make this a more decent world to live in I don't see how we can look these boys in the eyes."She defies a post-war return to status quo and establishes the Universal Declarationof Human Rights within the U.N. She earns her way to being named "First Lady of the World." The audacity of this woman to live out her own destiny challenges us to do the same. After all, it's not about Eleanor. Her story is history.  It's about us.

    His success and good fortune at such a young age was a remarkable accomplishment for someone from a small Central California farm town. Everything was coming together for Axel until a devastating tragedy beset his hometown. Axel’s perfect life was thrown into turmoil, exposing the moral compromises that he had made to achieve success. In his struggle to put the pieces of his life back together, he discovered his true purpose. From the depths of tragedy, Axel embarked on a quest to revitalize his people and restore the American Nation.

    Many of these milestone events and watershed moments in MFA's history are known only to a handful of ministers and officials. There is a need to always remember the fundamentals of our key foreign policy interests. In Diplomacy: A Singapore Experience, Prof S Jayakumar records his reflections on selected episodes and events where he was involved as Minister or as Permanent Representative to the UN. They illustrate how Singapore created diplomatic and economic space for itself, and its proactive diplomacy in the UN and ASEAN. The author also recounts Singapore's responses to moves by other countries that were inimical to its national interests, resolving disputes in an amicable manner through third party settlement, now an important feature of Singapore's foreign policy. Included are episodes in bilateral relations with Malaysia, Indonesia and China which demonstrate that such relations must be on the basis of equals respecting each other's sovereign status, and also in compliance with international law and international agreements.

    Treasury. And Alva Vanderbilt squandered tens of thousands on one evening to crack the closed social circle of the Mrs. Astor. And when Jay Gould, of Black Friday fame, sent his card to one of the Rothschilds, it was returned with the comment, "Europe is not for sale." It was this climate of mid- and late-nineteenth-century excess that fostered the most rapid period of growth in the history of the United States, replacing the unyielding Puritanism of Cotton Mather with the flexible creed of Henry Ward Beecher. National Book Award nominee Milton Rugoff gives his uniquely revealing view of the Gilded Age in this collective biography of Americans from 1850 to 1890. Writing on the political spoilsmen, money kings, parvenus, forty-niners, lords of the press, sexual transgressors, and women's rights leaders, Rugoff focuses on thirty-six men and women from almost every walk of life. His exponents include U.S. Grant, John Charles Frémont, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jim Fisk, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Horatio Alger, free-love advocate Victoria Woodhull, first female surgeon Bethenia Owens-Adair, Brigham Young's rebellious nineteenth wife Anna Eliza Young, Boston Brahmin Charles Eliot Norton, Gold Rush pioneer Sarah Royce, black visionary Sojourner Truth, and to critique American society, Walt Whitman. In examining the Gilded Age, Milton Rugoff offers fresh glimpses into the lives of the celebrities of the era, as well as some lesser-known Americans, while at the same time revealing the roots of problems that still plague us today.

    In the centennial season of college football, both teams were undefeated; both featured devastating and innovative offenses; both boasted cerebral, stingy defenses; and both were coached by superior tacticians and stirring motivators, Texas's Darrell Royal and Arkansas's Frank Broyles. On that day in Fayetteville, the poll-leading Horns and second-ranked Hogs battled for the Southwest Conference title -- and President Nixon was coming to present his own national championship plaque to the winners. Even if it had been just a game, it would still have been memorable today. The bitter rivals played a game for the ages before a frenzied, hog-callin' crowd that included not only an enthralled President Nixon -- a noted football fan -- but also Texas congressman George Bush. And the game turned, improbably, on an outrageously daring fourth-down pass.But it "wasn't" just a game, because nothing was so simple in December 1969. In "Horns, Hogs, & Nixon Coming," Terry Frei deftly weaves the social, political, and athletic trends together for an unforgettable look at one of the landmark college sporting events of all time.The week leading up to the showdown saw black student groups at Arkansas, still marginalized and targets of virulent abuse, protesting and seeking to end the use of the song "Dixie" to celebrate Razorback touchdowns; students were determined to rush the field during the game if the band struck up the tune. As the United States remained mired in the Vietnam War, sign-wielding demonstrators (including war veterans) took up their positions outsidethe stadium -- in full view of the president. That same week, Rhodes Scholar Bill Clinton penned a letter to the head of the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas, thanking the colonel for shielding him from induction into the military earlier in the year.Finally, this game was the last major sporting event that featured two exclusively white teams. Slowly, inevitably, integration would come to the end zones and hash marks of the South, and though no one knew it at the time, the Texas vs. Arkansas clash truly was Dixie's Last Stand.Drawing from comprehensive research and interviews with coaches, players, protesters, professors, and politicians, Frei stitches together an intimate, electric narrative about two great teams -- including one player who, it would become clear only later, was displaying monumental courage just to make it onto the field -- facing off in the waning days of the era they defined. Gripping, nimble, and clear-eyed, "Horns, Hogs, & Nixon Coming" is the final word on the last of how it was.

    Driven from their home countries by famine and persecution, they arrived at Ellis Island full of fear and hope, determined to claim their share of the American Dream.Among the first to pass through Ellis Island was young Israel Baline, a Russian Jew who at the age of just five had seen his homeland overrun by anti-Semitic violence. Forced to flee their village deep within the Russian Empire, the Baline family used their meagre life savings to cross Europe and buy a one-way steerage-class ticket to America. They landed at Ellis Island in 1893, only to find that the streets of New York were not quite paved with gold; the riches they had risked everything for would not be easily won.Israel Baline may have traded a rural slum for an urban one, but he was an American now. He would not stay impoverished for long. Blessed with talent, spurred by the will to succeed, Israel Baline would grow up to become—under another name—his adopted country’s most famous songwriter.

    We conservatives have truth and rationality and logic on our side. We just need to remind ourselves why we are right, and we need that reminder delivered in a way that’s not a lecture, not a history lesson, and not a complicated political diatribe.” If you think all conservatives are old white dudes, think again. Meet the Chicks on the Right (if you haven’t already). Everyone loves to tell them they’re wrong. Everyone. Liberals say they’re wrong because, well, they’re conservative. Conservatives tell them they’re wrong because they are not conservative enough. Or because they’re too conservative. Or because they’re the wrong kind of conservative. With all the blame flying around, it’s easy to lose sight of one important thing: They think like you. And they are right. It’s right to revere the Constitution. It’s right to value personal responsibility, economic liberty, and free enterprise. It’s right to think that political correctness is crap, and it’s right to call out the mainstream media for bias. And it’s right to laugh at the so-called War on Women and to stand up for the unborn. As they do every day on their blog and radio show, Miriam Weaver and Amy Jo Clark offer a definitive response to critics on the right and the left, and a cheerfully snarky pep talk for likeminded conservatives. On the one hand, they are tired of the media’s portrayal of conservatives as repressed sticks-in-the-mud; on the other hand, they are sick of GOP leaders who play right into that stereotype. With humor and insight, Mock and Daisy, as the Chicks are known on their blog, explain why:Capitalism is a good thing—success and the money that comes with it are nothing to be ashamed of! First Amendment protections extend to all Americans, not just those with whom we agree. Americans have a constitutional right to things that go pew-pew-pew. Skin color is irrelevant. It makes sense to be pro-life and pro-Plan B. The Chicks offer suggestions for a conservative makeover that will realign the GOP with the regular folks who are frustrated with uptight and clueless politicians. But they also show why conservatism makes sense for everyone, especially those who love their country, their families, God, rock and roll, and a well-made cocktail (not necessarily in that order).

    Mumia Abu-Jamal was unanimously convicted of the crime by a racially mixed jury based on: the testimony of several eyewitnesses, his ownership of the murder weapon, matching ballistics, and Abu-Jamal’s own confession.After his conviction, however, a national anti-death penalty movement was started to “Free Mumia;” Mike Farrell, Ed Asner, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jesse Jackson rallied on his behalf, and led the charge.  For his part, while on death row, Abu-Jamal published several books, delivered radio commentaries, was a college commencement speaker, found himself named an Honorary Citizen of France, and had his defense coffers enhanced by ticket sales from a sold out (16,000-person) concert featuring Rage Against the Machine.Here, from Maureen Faulkner and acclaimed talk show host / journalist Michael Smerconish, is the first book to carefully and definitively lay out the case against Abu-Jamal, and those who’ve elevated him to the status of political prisoner. Smerconish, a lawyer, has provided pro bono legal counsel to Faulkner for over a decade and knows both the legal intricacies and personal subtleties of the case like no other person.  He’s personally acquainted himself with the more than five thousand pages of trial transcript.  “My reading starkly revealed that Abu-Jamal murdered Danny Faulkner in cold blood and that the case tried in Philadelphia in 1982 bore no resemblance to the one being home-cooked by the Abu-Jamal defense team.”As Abu-Jamal’s lawyers contemplate their final appeal, Faulkner and Smerconish weave a compelling, never-before-told account of one fateful night and the 25-year-long rewriting of history.

    There simply could not be a more important book at a more important juncture in American -- and world -- history.