Across the Wide Missouri tells the compelling story of the climax and decline of the Rocky Mountain fur trade during the 1830s. More than a history, it portrays the mountain fur trade as a way of business and a way of life, vividly illustrating how it shaped the expansion of the American West.

    For many Americans, 9/11/2001, is the darkest date in the nation's history. What exactly happened? Could it have been prevented? How & why did so much acrimony & bad information arise from the ashes of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon & a Pennsylvania field? What remains unresolved? What is certain: Discord & dissent continue to this day. Beginning with the 1st brutal actions of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11, The Eleventh Day tracks the sequence of events & introduces the players: pilots, terrorists, passengers & those who died on the ground. Drawing on previously classified records & raw transcripts, Summers & Swan investigate the response of President Bush & the military that day, & the failure to intercept the hijacked airliners. They document the untruths told afterward by US officials &, as counterpoint, consider the contentions of the 9/11 Truth movement. With meticulous research, they examine the personalities of those behind the onslaught, analyze their motives & expose the US intelligence blunders preceding the attacks. They note how afterward--without good evidence--the Bush administration tried to link 9/11 to Iraq. Finally, they confront the question the 9/11 Commission's report blurred: Were the terrorists backed by powerful figures in a foreign nation long viewed as a friend? Riveting, revelatory, thoroughly sourced & complete with extensive endnotes, The Eleventh Day is the essential one-volume work on a pivotal event.

    

    Making use of the observational techniques of the cultural anthropologist, Isaac vividly recreates and painstakingly dissects a society in the turmoil of profound inner change.

    Puller, Jr.'s memoir is a moving story of a man born into a proud military legacy who struggles to rebuild his world after the Vietnam War has shattered his body and his ideals. Raised in the shadow of his father, Marine General Lewis B. Chesty Puller, a hero of five wars, young Lewis went to Southeast Asia at the height of the Vietnam War and served with distinction as an officer in his father's beloved Corps. But when he tripped a booby-trapped howitzer round, triggering an explosion that would cost him his legs, his career as a soldier ended, and the battle to reclaim his life began.

    We know of them mostly because Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1804-1805 with them, but why don't we know more? Who were they really? In this extraordinary book, Elizabeth A. Fenn retrieves their history by piecing together important new discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, geology, climatology, epidemiology, and nutritional science. Her boldly original interpretation of these diverse research findings offers us a new perspective on early American history, a new interpretation of the American past. By 1500, more than twelve thousand Mandans were established on the northern Plains, and their commercial prowess, agricultural skills, and reputation for hospitality became famous. Recent archaeological discoveries show how these Native American people thrived, and then how they collapsed. The damage wrought by imported diseases like smallpox and the havoc caused by the arrival of horses and steamboats were tragic for the Mandans, yet, as Fenn makes clear, their sense of themselves as a people with distinctive traditions endured. A riveting account of Mandan history, landscapes, and people, Fenn's narrative is enriched and enlivened not only by science and research but by her own encounters at the heart of the world.

    According to some, he was partially to blame for the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg; according to others, if Lee had followed Longstreet's advice, they would have won that battle. He has been called stubborn and vain; and he has been lauded as one of the greatest tacticians of the Civil War. All agree, however, that Longstreet was not only a dependable fighter but completely devoted to Robert E. Lee, who relied on him the most out of all his officers. He acquitted himself bravely in many of the war's bloodiest battles, including those at Antietam, Chickamauga, and the Wilderness. And his staunchest defenders were always the men who served under him. Longstreet's memoirs reflect the combative style of the old soldier. Their tremendous historical interest lies not only in his personal account of the progress of the Civil War, and in the many fascinating anecdotes about Lee and his officers, but in the insight they afford into the mind and character of one of the bravest and most loyal of southern generals.

    A field adviser to the army when US involvement was just beginning, he quickly became appalled at the corruption of the S. Vietnamese regime, their incompetence in fighting the Communists & their brutal alienation of their own people. Finding his superiors too blinded by political lies to understand the war was being thrown away, he secretly briefed reporters on what was really happening. One of those reporters was Neil Sheehan.--Amazon (edited) Neil Sheehan was a Vietnam War correspondent for United Press International & the NY Times & won a number of awards for reporting. In 1971 he obtained the Pentagon Papers, which brought the Times the Pulitzer gold medal for meritorious public service. A Bright Shining Lie won the National Book Award & the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction. He lives in Washington DC.MapsThe funeral Going to war Antecedents to a confrontation The Battle of Ap Bac Taking on the system Antecedents to the man A second time aroundJohn Vann staysAcknowledgmentsInterviewsDocumentsSource NotesBibliographyIndexAbout the Author

    Grant (1822-1885) was one of the most esteemed individuals of the nineteenth century. His two-volume memoirs, sold door-to-door by former Union soldiers, have never gone out of print and were once as ubiquitous in American households as the Bible. Mark Twain, Gertrude Stein, Matthew Arnold, Henry James, and Edmund Wilson hailed these works as great literature, and Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both credit Grant with influencing their own writing. Yet a judiciously annotated clarifying edition of these memoirs has never been produced until now.The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant is the first comprehensively annotated edition of Grant's memoirs, fully representing the great military leader's thoughts on his life and times through the end of the Civil War and his invaluable perspective on battlefield decision making. An introduction contextualizes Grant's life and significance, and lucid editorial commentary allows the president's voice and narrative to shine through. With annotations compiled by the editors of the Ulysses S. Grant Association's Presidential Library, this definitive edition enriches our understanding of the antebellum era, the Mexican War, and the Civil War. Grant provides insight into how rigorously these events tested America's democratic institutions and the cohesion of its social order.The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant preserves and extends a work of profound political, historical, and literary significance and serves as the gateway for modern readers of all backgrounds to an American classic.

     Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world. Manning Marable's new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Reaching into Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination. Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of the most singular forces for social change, capturing with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.

    It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005.Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East, accessed previously classified government files and interviewed senior US officials and foreign spymasters. Here he gives the full inside story of the CIA's covert funding of an Islamic jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, explores how this sowed the seeds of Bin Laden's rise, traces how he built his global network and brings to life the dramatic battles within the US government over national security. Above all, he lays bare American intelligence's continual failure to grasp the rising threat of terrorism in the years leading to 9/11 - and its devastating consequences.

    From Chancellorsville, where General Robert E. Lee launched his high-risk campaign into the North, to the Confederates' last daring and ultimately-doomed act, forever known as Pickett's Charge, the battle of Gettysburg gave the Union army a victory that turned back the boldest and perhaps greatest chance for a Southern nation.Now acclaimed historian Noah Andre Trudeau brings the most up-to-date research available to a brilliant, sweeping, and comprehensive history of the battle of Gettysburg that sheds fresh light on virtually every aspect of it. Deftly balancing his own narrative style with revealing firsthand accounts, Trudeau brings this engrossing human tale to life as never before.

    W. Brands, a masterful biography of the Civil War general and two-term president who saved the Union twice, on the battlefield and in the White House, holding the country together at two critical turning points in our history.Ulysses Grant rose from obscurity to discover he had a genius for battle, and he propelled the Union to victory in the Civil War. After Abraham Lincoln's assassination and the disastrous brief presidency of Andrew Johnson, America turned to Grant again to unite the country, this time as president. In Brands's sweeping, majestic full biography, Grant emerges as a heroic figure who was fearlessly on the side of right. He was a beloved commander in the field but willing to make the troop sacrifices necessary to win the war, even in the face of storms of criticism. He worked valiantly to protect the rights of freedmen in the South; Brands calls him the last presidential defender of black civil rights for nearly a century. He played it straight with the American Indians, allowing them to shape their own fate even as the realities of Manifest Destiny meant the end of their way of life.  He was an enormously popular president whose memoirs were a huge bestseller; yet within decades of his death his reputation was in tatters, the victim of Southerners who resented his policies on Reconstruction. In this page-turning biography, Brands now reconsiders Grant's legacy and provides a compelling and intimate portrait of a man who saved the Union on the battlefield and consolidated that victory as a resolute and principled political leader.

    His memoirs, however, has earned him the most fame, and is one of the most cited accounts of the Civil War.

    Early in that fateful year, a second American revolution unfolded, inspiring a new generation to reject their parents’ faith in compromise and appeasement, to do the unthinkable in the name of an ideal. It set Abraham Lincoln on the path to greatness and millions of slaves on the road to freedom.The book introduces us to a heretofore little-known cast of Civil War heroes—among them an acrobatic militia colonel, an explorer’s wife, an idealistic band of German immigrants, a regiment of New York City firemen, a community of Virginia slaves, and a young college professor who would one day become president. Adam Goodheart takes us from the corridors of the White House to the slums of Manhattan, from the mouth of the Chesapeake to the deserts of Nevada, from Boston Common to Alcatraz Island, vividly evoking the Union at this moment of ultimate crisis and decision.