The Supreme Court: Landmark Decisions: 20 Cases that Changed America


Anthony Mauro - 2016
    Hodges   In the United States of America, the legislative branch is responsible for creating legislation, while the executive branch is responsible for signing that legislation and enforcing it. But how do senators, representatives, and presidents make sure that these laws don’t run afoul of the Constitution that guides the running of the country?   The nine justices of the Supreme Court of the United States serve as the final arbiters of which laws are and aren’t constitutional. Every year, thousands of contentious cases are submitted to the court for that reason; only about eighty of them are heard. Out of those cases, many are remembered only by the people directly involved. But over the years, many cases heard by the Supreme Court have gone on to affect the lives of many or even all American citizens.   In The Supreme Court: Landmark Decisions, veteran court reporter Tony Mauro picks out the twenty most momentous Supreme Court cases in United States history. In his reviews of Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 case that first affirmed the Supreme Court’s status as the country’s final legal arbiter, to Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case that legalized same-sex marriage, Mauro summarizes each case and includes cogent summaries of the justices’ decisions, as well as notable dissents.    With Mauro’s crisp language and sharp insights, The Supreme Court: Landmark Decisions serves as your quick, concise, and informative guide to one of the most important, and sometimes least-understood, institutions in the nation.

A Concise History of the Arabs


John McHugo - 2009
    Going beyond the headlines, he describes in vivid detail a series of key turning points in Arab history – from the mission of the Prophet Muhammad and the expansion of Islam to the region’s interaction with Western ideas and the rise of Islamism.Now fully updated to cover the tumultuous years since the Arab Spring, this lucidly told history reveals how the Arab world came to have its present form and illuminates the choices that lie ahead.John McHugo is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Syrian Studies at St Andrews University. A board member of the Council for Arab British Understanding and the British Egyptian Society, he is also an advisor to Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats, on peace in the Middle East. McHugo’s writing has featured in History Today, The World Today, Jewish Quarterly and on the BBC News and Al Jazeera websites. His other publications include Syria: A Recent History. He lives in London.

Conduct Under Fire


John A. Glusman - 2005
    In Conduct Under Fire, Glusman chronicles these events through the eyes of his father and three fellow Navy doctors captured on Corregidor in May 1942. Abridged. 5 CDs.

The Blizzard of 88


Mary Cable - 1988
    Award-winning author Mary Cable recreates - in all its human and natural drama - the three-day debacle that began on the night of Sunday, March 11, 1888. We meet the heroes and villains alike as they struggle through the mounting snow and icy winds to keep the wheels of civilization from grinding to a halt. The Blizzard of 88 is a moving and dramatic history in the tradition of David McCullough's classic The Johnstown Flood.

V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II


John Morton Blum - 1976
    He focuses on the home front: how our culture and politics affected the course of the war and how the war in turn affected us. Index.

Dream It! Do It! (The People, The Places, The Projects): My Half-Century Creating Disney's Magic Kingdoms


Martin Sklar - 2013
    He spent his first decade at Disney as "the kid," the very youngest of the creative team Walt had assembled at WED Enterprises. But despite his youth, his talents propelled him forward into substantial responsibility: he became Walt's speech writer, penned Walt's and Roy's messages in the company's annual report, composed most of the publicity and marketing materials for Disneyland, conceived presentations for the U.S. government, devised initiatives to obtain sponsors to enable new Disneyland developments, and wrote a twenty-four-minute film expressing Walt's philosophy for the Walt Disney World project and Epcot. He was Walt's literary right-hand man.Over the next forty years, Marty Sklar rose to become president and principal creative executive of Walt Disney Imagineering, and he devoted his entire career to creating, enhancing, and expanding Walt's magical empire. This beautifully written and enlightening book is Marty's own retelling of his epic Disney journey, a grand adventure that lasted over half a century.

King's Counsellor Abdication and War: The Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles


Alan Lascelles - 2006
    In between lies an enormous range of events, including World War II as seen from Lascelles' point of view as private secretary to the Royal Family, the Princess Margaret-Peter Townsend affair, and the fascinating relationship between Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the King. These detailed journals are a delight to read as well as being invaluable historic record.

Seeing Jesus in the Old Testament


Lysa TerKeurst - 2021
    A study showing how Jesus appeared in the old testament to many.

On Royalty: A Very Polite Inquiry into Some Strangely Related Families


Jeremy Paxman - 2006
    He scrutinizes every aspect of the monarchy and how it has related to politics, religion, the military and the law. He takes us inside Buckingham Palace and illuminates the lives of the monarchs, at once mundane, absurd and magical. What Desmond Morris did for apes, Paxman has done for the royal families. Gilded history, weird anthropology and surreal reportage of the royals up close combine to show how an ancient institution struggles for meaning in a modern country.

Samurai: The Code of the Warrior


Thomas Louis - 2006
    Their name means "one who serves." Years of training, discipline, and self-sacrifice combined with advanced weaponry and unprecedented tactical acumen created a force unmatched over centuries of Japanese history.Samurai explores the essence, truth, and wisdom of these remarkable warriors. It features renowned samurai warriors, their weapons, armor, and military strategies and illuminates their unwavering Bushido philosophy—the strict code of honor requiring absolute loyalty to their master above all else, and ritual suicide in preference to dying a dishonorable death.This book explores the spirit, body, and minds of these sublime paladins who long ago passed into legend, but still live on today.

Battlefield America: The War On the American People


John W. Whitehead - 2015
    Police forces across the United States have been transformed into extensions of the military. Our towns and cities have become battlefields, and we the American people are now the enemy combatants to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, and denied due process. For those who resist, the consequences can be a one-way trip to jail, or even death.Hands up!, the police state has arrived. Battlefield America: The War on the American People is constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead's terrifying portrait of a nation at war with itself. In exchange for safe schools and lower crime rates, we have opened the doors to militarized police, zero tolerance policies in schools, and SWAT team raids. The insidious shift was so subtle that most of us had no idea it was happening. Yet this police state did not come about overnight. As Whitehead notes, this shift into totalitarianism cannot be traced back to a single individual or event. Rather, the evolution has been so subtle that most American citizens were hardly even aware of it taking place. Yet little by little, police authority expanded, one weapon after another was added to the police arsenal, and one exception after another was made to the standards that have historically restrained police authority. Add to this mix the merger of Internet megacorporations with government intelligence agencies, and you have the making of an electronic concentration camp that not only sees the citizenry as databits but will attempt to control every aspect of their lives. And if someone dares to step out of line, they will most likely find an armed SWAT team at their door. This follow-up to Whitehead's award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, is a brutal critique of an America on the verge of destroying the very freedoms that define it.

That's My Color: Discover Your 5 Signature Colors And Transform Your Life


Jennifer Thoden - 2018
     Jen Thoden describes the five colors that will become your signature go-to always-know-these-colors-look-amazing-on-me colors, which include: - 2 colors that will bring you immediate confidence in yourself - 1 color that will pull your wardrobe together - 2 colors that will have you digging deep on who you really are Jen Thoden discovered her five signature colors when she was struggling with her own identity. She was depressed, divorced, 40 and seemed to have no purpose. She managed to transform her life into one of success and happiness using the steps she’s outlined in this book. Discovering her five signature colors helped her get to know her true self, gain confidence in owning her strengths and flaws and the creativity to design a life that truly brings her happiness. Jen Thoden believes that you can live a happy fulfilled life when you are being your authentic self. Being yourself is so much easier than trying to be someone else. Join Jen on this personal journey and start transforming your life with your signature colors.

On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change


Ada Louise Huxtable - 2008
    Her keen eye and vivid writing have reinforced to readers how important architecture is and why it continues to be both controversial and fascinating.In her new book--which gathers together the best of her writing, from one of her first pieces in the New York Times in 1962 on le Corbusier's Carpenter Center at Harvard, to essays in the New York Review of Books, to more recent writing in the Wall Street Journal--Huxtable bears witness to some of the twentieth century's best--and worst--architectural masters and projects.With a perspective of more than four decades, Huxtable examines the century's modernist beginnings and then turns her critic's eye to the seismic shift in style, function, and fashion that occurred midcentury--all leading to a dramatic new architecture of the twenty-first century. Much of the writing in On Architecture has never appeared in book form before, and Huxtable's many admirers will be delighted to once again have access to her elegant, impassioned opinions, insights, and wisdom."Looking back, I realize that my career covered an extraordinary period of change, that I was writing at a time in which architecture was changing slowly but radically--a time when everything about modernism was being incrementally questioned and rejected as we moved into a new kind of thinking and building." And while it was a quiet, nearly stealth revolution, it was a absolutely a revolution in which the past was reaccepted and reincorporated, periods and styles ignored by modernism were reexamined and reevaluated. History and theory, once considered irrelevant, became central to the practice of architecture again."

Unsolved Mysteries of American History: An Eye-Opening Journey Through 500 Years of Discoveries, Disappearances, and Baffling Events


Paul Aron - 1997
    Gross, author of The Minutemen and Their World Did Leif Ericsson beat Columbus to America? What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke? Did Pocahontas really save John Smith? Did Davy Crockett die at the Alamo? What really happened to Amelia Earhart, and was she a spy? Who killed JFK? Unsolved Mysteries of American History re-creates the most mystifying events of our past, following some of our greatest historians as they search for the elusive answers. Spanning more than five centuries--from Leif Ericsson and Columbus through Watergate and Iran-Contra--Aron makes sense of all the latest discoveries and speculations. Here is everything you could ever want from a detective story: dramatic twists and turns, intellectual challenges, frustrating dead-ends, murderous mayhem, and thrilling espionage. "Stimulating and pleasurable, fair and objective . . . recommended for both the history buff and the fan of true-life mysteries."--Kirkus Reviews "Everyone loves a mystery and a history mystery best of all. Aron has assembled an impressive array of 'whodunits.'" --Ivor Noel Hume, former director, Department of Archaeology, Colonial Williamsburg author of The Virginia Adventure "A welcome gateway for historical exploration." --Booklist "Aron performs something of a minor miracle: He zeroes in on the very core of historical mysteries and provides new insights for reconsidering mystifying events." --Allan W. Eckert, author of Sorrow in Our Heart

The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, the Real Forensics Behind the Great Detective's Greatest Cases


E.J. Wagner - 2006
    The book explores the emergence of science from superstition, how forensic autopsies evolved from anatomical dissection, the huge advances in blood chemistry and poison detection, and the early use of fingerprints, photography and trace evidence. It also provides new insights into landmark criminal cases that influenced the forensic world, such as Jack the Ripper and Lizzie Borden, and includes rare period illustrations.