S. Marine long range reconnaissance teams during the Vietnam War, Andrew Finlayson recounts his team's experiences in the year leading up to the Tet Offensive of 1968. Using primary sources, such as Marine Corps unit histories and his own weekly letters home, he presents a highly personal account of the dangerous missions conducted by this team of young Marines as they searched for North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong units in such dangerous locales as Elephant Valley, the Enchanted Forest, Charlie Ridge, Happy Valley and the Que Son Mountains. In numerous close contacts with the enemy, the team (code-name Killer Kane) fights for its survival against desperate odds, narrowly escaping death time and again. The book gives vivid descriptions of the life of recon Marines when they are not on patrol, the beauty of the landscape they traverse, and several of the author's Vietnamese friends.

    The truth is: politics and innuendo clouded that story from the very beginning, with the result that few people really understand who The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were and what forces propelled them to their infamous fate. The Royal W.E. examines the individual and intertwined lives of Wallis and Edward – or “W.E.” as they referred to themselves – and provides readers with unique glimpses of the real people, as opposed to the sensationalized characters, that were The Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Through careful study of more than 75 years of rhetoric and scholarship, Victoria Martínez takes on the most controversial charges lodged against the couple (Was Wallis a hermaphrodite? Were the Duke and Duchess Nazi sympathizers?) with candor and evenhandedness. In analyzing the early lives of Wallis and the ex-king and their later relationships with other members of the Royal Family, her approach is to deal with all parties as human beings, whose true faults – though significant – were far less sinister than history has led us to believe. Ms. Martínez also addresses the ever-popular subject of the Duchess’s jewels, including new research on the famous 1946 Ednam Lodge jewel heist to dispel the long-held rumors that the Duke and Duchess committed jewel theft and insurance fraud. The subjects in this book are not always mainstream, well-known, or even consistent with “popular” opinion, and the objective is not to make anyone “like” the couple. Instead, readers will find refreshingly honest and accurate portrayals of W.E. that will help them understand the real people behind the myth and hype. “Prejudice and preconception are difficult things to set aside, particularly after so many years of negative stories and sordid rumor, but I think readers here will discover an alternative and convincing look at the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. I am sure they would approve and perhaps, just perhaps, the future may be a little bit kinder to Edward and Wallis because of the efforts of people like Ms. Martínez.” -Greg King, author of The Duchess of Windsor: The Uncommon Life of Wallis Simpson

    The chafing restrictions of a typical upbringing in upper-class, small town Alabama simply did not apply to Zelda, who was described as an unusual child and permitted to roam the streets with little supervision. Zelda refused to blossom into a typical 'Southern belle' on anyone's terms but her own and while still in high school enjoyed the status of a local celebrity for her shocking behavior. Everybody in town knew the name Zelda Sayre. Queen of the Montgomery social scene, Zelda had a different beau ready and willing to show her a good time for every day of the week. Before meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda's life was a constant pursuit of pleasure. With little thought for the future and no responsibilities to speak of, Zelda committed herself fully to the mantra that accompanied her photo in her high school graduation book: "Why should all life be work, when we all can borrow. Let's think only of today, and not worry about tomorrow." But for now Zelda was still in rehearsal for her real life to begin, a life she was sure would be absolutely extraordinary. Zelda Sayre married F. Scott Fitzgerald on the 3rd of April 1920 and left sleepy Montgomery behind in order to dive headfirst into the shimmering, glamourous life of a New York socialite. With the publication of Scott's first novel, This Side of Paradise, Zelda found herself thrust into the limelight as the very epitome of the Flapper lifestyle. Concerned chiefly with fashion, wild parties and flouting social expectations, Zelda and Scott became icons of the Jazz Age, the personification of beauty and success. What Zelda and Scott shared was a romantic sense of self-importance that assured them that their life of carefree leisure and excess was the only life really worth living. Deeply in love, the Fitzgeralds were like to sides of the same coin, each reflecting the very best and worst of each other. While the world fell in love with the image of the Fitzgeralds they saw on the cover of magazines, behind the scenes the Fitzgerald's marriage could not withstand the tension of their creative arrangement. Zelda was Scott's muse and he mercilessly mined the events of their life for material for his books. Scott claimed Zelda's memories, things she said, experiences she had and even passages from her diary as his possessions and used them to form the basis of his fictional works. Zelda had a child but the domestic sphere offered no comfort or purpose for her. The Flapper lifestyle was not simply a phase she lived through, it formed the very basis of her character and once the parties grew dull, the Fitzgeralds' drinking became destructive and Zelda's beauty began to fade, the world held little allure for her. Zelda sought reprieve in work and tried to build a career as a ballet dancer. When that didn't work out she turned to writing but was forbidden by Scott from using her own life as material. Convinced that she would never leave her mark on the world as deeply or expressively as Scott had, Zelda retreated into herself and withdrew from the people she knew in happier times. The later years of Zelda's life were marred by her detachment from reality as, diagnosed with schizophrenia, Zelda spent the last eighteen years of her life living in and out of psychiatric hospitals. As Scott's life unraveled due to alcohol abuse, Zelda looked back on the years they had spent together, young and wild and beautiful, as the best of her life. She may have been right but she was wrong about one thing, Zelda did leave her mark on the world and it was a deep and expressive mark that no one could have left but her. Zelda Fitzgerald: The Biography

    And they did it without fanfare or recognition from their employer. Hiltzik's Dealers of Lightning provides a fascinating look at technohistory that sets the record straight. In Dealers of Lightning, Hiltzik describes the forces and faces behind the revolution that the Xerox PARC team single-handedly spawned. The Xerox PARC group was composed solely of top technical minds. The decision was made at Xerox headquarters to give the team complete freedom from deadlines and directives, in hopes of fostering a true creative environment. It worked — perhaps too well. The team responded with a steady output of amazing technology, including the first version of the Internet, the first personal computer, user-friendly word-processing programs, and pop-up menus. Xerox, far from ready for the explosion of innovation, failed to utilize the technology dreamed up by the group. Out of all the dazzling inventions born at Xerox PARC, only a handful were developed and marketed by Xerox. However, one of these inventions, the laser printer, proved successful enough to earn billions for the company, therefore justifying its investment in the research center. Most oftheteam's creations would go on to be developed and perfected by other companies, such as IBM, Apple, and Microsoft. Drawing from interviews with the engineers, executives, and scientists involved in the Xerox PARC, Dealers of Lightning chronicles an amazing era of egos, ideas, and inventions at the dawn of the computer age.

    Part intellectual journey, part memoir, Hamlet's BlackBerry sets out to solve what William Powers calls the conundrum of connectedness. Our computers and mobile devices do wonderful things for us. But they also impose an enormous burden, making it harder for us to focus, do our best work, build strong relationships, and find the depth and fulfillment we crave.Hamlet's BlackBerry argues that we need a new way of thinking, an everyday philosophy for life with screens. To find it, Powers reaches into the past, uncovering a rich trove of ideas that have helped people manage and enjoy their connected lives for thousands of years. New technologies have always brought the mix of excitement and stress that we feel today. Drawing on some of history's most brilliant thinkers, from Plato to Shakespeare to Thoreau, he shows that digital connectedness serves us best when it's balanced by its opposite, disconnectedness.Using his own life as laboratory and object lesson, Powers demonstrates why this is the moment to revisit our relationship to screens and mobile technologies, and how profound the rewards of doing so can be. Lively, original, and entertaining, Hamlet's BlackBerry will challenge you to rethink your digital life.

    We Are the Nerds is a riveting look deep inside this captivating, maddening enterprise–whose army of highly engaged (obsessed?) users have been credited with everything from solving cold case crimes to seeding alt-right fury and helping to land Donald Trump in the White House. We Are the Nerds is a gripping start-up business narrative: the story of how Reddit’s founders, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, rose up from their suburban childhoods to become millionaires and create an icon of the digital age–before seeing the site engulfed in controversies and nearly losing control of it for good. Based on Christine Lagorio’s exclusive access to founders Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, We Are the Nerds is also a compelling exploration of the way we all communicate today–and how we got here. Reddit and its users have become a mirror of the Internet: it has dingy corners, shiny memes, malicious trolls, and a sometimes heart-melting ability to connect people across cultures, oceans, and ideological divides.

     Attu was the westernmost island in the Aleutian chain, located one thousand miles from Alaska, and subject to brutal weather all year round. Prior to the war it had been home to two Americans and forty-five Aleut hunters and their families, but in June 1942 the Japanese had seized the island and now had over two-thousand troops on the barren island threatening the security of the U.S. mainland. The Battle of the Komandorski Islands in the Bering Sea on March 26, 1943, cleared the way for attempt to retake the island of Attu. Code-named Operation Landgrab, the U.S. military planned for the invasion to take place in May. Army planners had initially thought this would be a quick operation, but instead of being a short invasion it dragged on for over two weeks. The Japanese had realized that their options were limited and so launched a last-ditch banzai charge against the American frontline that was suffering from brutal Arctic conditions, equipment failures and food shortages. Although the U.S. military was able to recapture the island it had cost the lives of over five hundred American soldiers. Robert J. Mitchell, Sewell T. Tyng and Nelson Drummond’s book The Capture of Attu provides fascinating insight into this ferocious conflict. Part One of the book provides an overview of the military campaign while Part Two provides personal narratives of the soldiers who fought. This book attempts to put the reader on the battlefield with the ground soldier. Men who fought on Attu, officers and enlisted men, told their stories to Lieutenant Robert J. Mitchell of the 32d Infantry, one of the regiments engaged. These stories tell of the discomforts and perils, the failures and successes, the fear and courage, the many fights between small groups and the occasional humor, of which battle consists. Robert J. Mitchell served as a lieutenant in the US Army's 7th Infantry Division in World War II, being stationed on Attu Island off of Alaska as well as other areas of the Pacific. He was shot in the chest while on Attu and carried the bullet for the rest of his life. While recuperating, he wrote the stories of the other men in his hospital tent. For this he was made an aide to the general in charge of media for the rest of the war. He passed away in 1992. His co-authors Sewell T. Tyng and Nelson Drummond also served on Attu and passed away in 1946 and 1999 respectively. Their book The Capture of Attu was first published in 1944.

     He ordered a superhuman effort to make Britain a nuclear power. Although Britain had been a junior partner in the Manhattan Project which had produced the American bombs, no British scientist had more than partial knowledge of the complex physics involved. The war over, the Americans cut off all help. At a time of daunting economic difficulty and amid the growing tension of the Cold War, the project hurriedly took shape behind a cloak of almost paranoid secrecy and in an atmosphere of constant stringency and shortage. Brian Cathcart’s book ranges over politics, diplomacy, espionage and science, but above all it tells the story of the brilliant young scientist William Penney, his team and their struggle. The men who worked behind the security fences at Aldermaston have been allowed to speak. The tales include fearsome risks, vast resourcefulness, bureaucratic obstruction, naval intransigence and a measure of black humour. The veil is also lifted on the extraordinary contribution of Klaus Fuchs, the Soviet spy. Finally the high drama of the test itself, conducted off the coast of Australia after a naval operation which came close to total fiasco, is recounted in gripping detail. Test of Greatness draws on what at the time the book was published were newly declassified documents. Cathcart also speaks uses primary sources, such as the words of the participants, illustrating and illuminating in vivid, human terms a secret but crucial chapter of post-war British history. Praise for Brian Cathcart: ‘The story of the British bomb mixes science, politics, espionage, Essex and morality. A nation is changed for ever when it decides to become a nuclear power. Brian Cathcart takes this complicated array of factors and makes them rise out of the page and walk to a very wide audience.’ – Sir Peter Hennessy, military historian Brian Cathcart was Assistant Editor of the Independent on Sunday when he wrote Test of Greatness. Since then he has taken up a position at Kingston University London and founded Hacked Off in the aftermath of the tabloid phone-hacking scandal. He has just published his eighth book, The News from Waterloo. His previous works include accounts of the murders of Jill Dando and Stephen Lawrence.

    In February 2006, while researching this book, Matthew Aid uncovered a massive and secret document reclassification program—a revelation that made the front page of the New York Times. This was only one of the discoveries Aid has made during two decades of research in formerly top-secret documents. In The Secret Sentry, Aid provides the first-ever full history of America's largest security apparatus, the National Security Agency. This comprehensive account traces the growth of the agency from 1945 to the present through critical moments in its history, from the cold war up to its ongoing involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Aid explores the agency's involvement in the Iraqi weapons intelligence disaster, where evidence that NSA officials called "ambiguous" was used as proof of Iraqi WMD capacity, and details the intense debate within the NSA over its unprecedented role, pressed by the Bush-Cheney administration, in spying on U.S. citizens. Today, the NSA has become the most important source of intelligence for the U.S. government, providing 60 percent of the president's daily intelligence briefing. While James Bamford's New York Times bestseller The Shadow Factory covered the NSA since 9/11, The Secret Sentry contains new information about every period since World War II . It provides a shadow history of global affairs, from the creation of I srael to the War on Terror.

    The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanishes as soon as it is born. From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long-misunderstood talking drums of Africa, Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information: Charles Babbage, the idiosyncratic inventor of the first great mechanical computer; Ada Byron, the brilliant and doomed daughter of the poet, who became the first true programmer; pivotal figures like Samuel Morse and Alan Turing; and Claude Shannon, the creator of information theory itself. And then the information age arrives. Citizens of this world become experts willy-nilly: aficionados of bits and bytes. And we sometimes feel we are drowning, swept by a deluge of signs and signals, news and images, blogs and tweets. The Information is the story of how we got here and where we are heading.

    Even today remembered primarily as the mentor and lover of Robert Mapplethorpe, the once infamous photographer, Wagstaff, in fact, had an incalculable—and largely overlooked—influence on the world of contemporary art and photography, and on the evolution of gay identity in the latter part of the twentieth century.  Born in New York City in 1921 into a notable family, Wagstaff followed an arc that was typical of a young man of his class. He attended both Hotchkiss and Yale, served in the navy, and would follow in step with his Ivy League classmates to the "gentleman's profession," as an ad executive on Madison Avenue. With his unmistakably good looks, he projected an aura of glamour and was cited by newspapers as one of the most eligible bachelors of the late 1940s. Such accounts proved deceiving, for Wagstaff was forced to live in the closet, his homosexuality only revealed to a small circle of friends. Increasingly uncomfortable with his career and this double life, he abandoned advertising, turned to the formal study of art history, and embarked on a radical personal transformation that was in perfect harmony with the tumultuous social, cultural, and sexual upheavals of the 1960s.Accordingly, Wagstaff became a curator, in 1961, at Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum, where he mounted both "Black, White, and Gray"—the first museum show of minimal art—and the sculptor Tony Smith's first museum show, while lending his early support to artists Andy Warhol, Ray Johnson, and Richard Tuttle, among many others. Later, as a curator at the Detroit Institute of Arts, he brought the avant-garde to a regional museum, offending its more staid trustees in the process.After returning to New York City in 1972, the fifty-year-old Wagstaff met the twenty-five-year-old Queens-born Robert Mapplethorpe, then living with Patti Smith. What at first appeared to be a sexual dalliance became their now historic lifelong romance, in which Mapplethorpe would foster Wagstaff's own burgeoning interest in contemporary photography and Wagstaff would help secure Mapplethorpe's reputation in the art world. In spite of their profound class differences, the artistic union between the philanthropically inclined Wagstaff and the prodigiously talented Mapplethorpe would rival that of Stieglitz and O’Keefe, or Rivera and Kahlo, in their ability to help reshape contemporary art history.Positioning Wagstaff's personal life against the rise of photography as a major art form and the simultaneous formation of the gay rights movement, Philip Gefter's absorbing biography provides a searing portrait of New York just before and during the age of AIDS. The result is a definitive and memorable portrait of a man and an era.

    The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spy plane flew more than three-and-a-half times the speed of sound--so fast that no other aircraft could catch it. Above 80,000 feet, its pilots had to wear full-pressure flight suits similar to what was used aboard the space shuttle.Developed by the renowned Lockheed Skunk Works, the SR-71 was an awesome aircraft in every respect. It was withdrawn from use in 1998, when it was superseded by satellite technology. Twelve of the thirty-two aircraft were destroyed in accidents, but none were ever lost to enemy action.Throughout its thirty-four-year career, the SR-71 was the world's fastest and highest-flying operational manned aircraft. It set world records for altitude and speed: an absolute altitude record of 85,069 feet and an absolute speed record of 2,193.2 miles per hour.The Complete Book of the SR-71 Blackbird covers every aspect of the SR-71's development, manufacture, modification, and active service from the insider's perspective of one of its pilots and is lavishly illustrated with more than 400 photos. Former pilot and author Richard Graham also examines each of the fifty planes that came out the SR-71 program (fifteen A-12s; three YF-12s; and thirty-two SR-71s) and tells each plane's history, its unique specifications, and where each currently resides.

    Twenty-two years later, he did. April 1945 – Berlin. The world had been at war for more than five-and-a-half years – approximately seventy million people were dead across the globe. The epicentre of the twelve-year-old Third Reich was now surrounded, enveloped by bitter Soviet forces hardened by Nazi barbarity in the east over the last four years. As the buildings were blasted into rubble, pounded by Russian guns and bombs, before their troops and tanks, Hitler was hunkered down in his last headquarters – the dark and damp bunker under the Reich Chancellery. As the Third Reich began to crumble as fast as the city’s buildings, what was the state of mind of the tyrant? Only his closest and fanatical allies saw the collapse, none more so than Hitler’s servants, Otto Gunsche and Heinz Linge – two individuals which witnessed the final act of their regime. An act tinged over the last ten days in late April with selfish betrayal, increasingly forlorn hope, pleas, desperation and eventually suicide. As the Soviets closed in with impending vigour, in the concrete tomb below ground and under the thunderous booms of the petrifying battle for Berlin, the mind of the dictator disintegrated into drugs, delusion and a determination to die. Not by the enemy bullet but one of his own. This is the story of the people who held a unique place in world history – the ones who were there when the nightmare of Nazism and the horrors which accompanied it was finally banished as a dark chapter in the story of the human race.

     This book will give you a comprehensive overview of the Canadian history. Author James Weber did the research and compiled this huge list of events that changed the course of this nation forever. Some of them include: - Prehistoric hunters cross over into North America from Asia (30,000 - 10,000 BC) - The Inuit people begin to move into what are now the Northwest Territories (2000 BC) - Leif Ericsson leads Viking expedition to the new World (C.1000 AD) - Martin Frobisher sails to the Hudson Bay (1576) - Samuel de Champlain establishes a French colony (1608) - Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye returns Québec to France (1632) - Treaty of Utrecht (1713) - Great Britain founds Halifax (1749) - The USA invades British colonies (1812-14) - The provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan are created (1905) - World War II (1939-45) - The St Lawrence Seaway Opens (1959) - The Québec referendum on sovereignty is narrowly defeated (1995) - Canada declines to enter the War in Iraq (2003) and many many more The book includes pictures and explanations to every event, making this the perfect resource for students and anyone wanting to broaden their knowledge in histoy. Download your copy now! Tags: history, world history, history books, history of the world, human history, world history textbook, history books for kids, earth history, geographic history, earth history kindle, human history, history books for kids age 9 12, history of the world part 1, canadian history nonfiction, history books for kids age 7-9, history books for young readers, history books for children, canadian history books, history books for kindle, canadian history encyclopedia, canadian history, canadian history books, canadian history for dummies, canadian history textbook, canada history books, canada history, canada

    It is filled with colorful characters, who risk their lives and reputations in the secret service of their nation. R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence, writes: “Raviv and Melman have redefined the gold standard for nonfiction about intelligence. This remarkable history of Israeli intelligence from the War of Independence to Stuxnet calls it straight. By describing the roots of both the triumphs and the screw-ups thoroughly and fairly the authors help us see not only how Israel's survival has been effectively protected but the huge debt the rest of us owe.” The award-winning historian Douglas Brinkley, author of CRONKITE, writes: “The revelatory research amassed in SPIES AGAINST ARMAGEDDON is nothing short of stunning. Raviv and Melman understand the inner workings of Israel’s Mossad better than most Mossad agents. Highly recommended!” James Roche, a former Secretary of the Air Force, writes: "Fascinating vignettes ... a detailed exposition of the activities of serious, professional, and generally successful Israeli operatives who are dedicated totally to the defense of Israel and the Jewish people."