When Columbus set sail from Spain in 1492, he had no intention of seeking out new lands. He was trying to reach China and India by a western sea route. And even after he landed on islands off the coast of America, he continued to believe that he was close to the realms of the Great Khan. COLUMBUS: THE ACCIDENTAL HERO tells the thrilling and little-known story of the reality behind the myth, and replaces the story-book Columbus by the much more fascinating and complex man who found the New World and changed our planet forever.

    In this new book royal historian Lady Colin Campbell covers The Queen’s Marriage in intimate detail. Using her connections and impeccable sources she recounts details of the inside story of the monarch’s relationship with the Duke of Edinburgh and her close family.

    The cruel bon mot which has its sting drawn from the laughter that ensues. It was Oscar Wilde who pointed out that no comment was in bad taste if it was amusing - and if for that reason alone it is worth while preserving these delightful examples of verbal dexterity.

    Created in the 1890s by George Washington Vanderbilt, a member of one of America's wealthiest families, the estate combined a 250-room French Renaissance-style chateau with 125,000 acres of gardens, forests, and working farms. Biltmore House served as Vanderbilt's primary residence for almost 20 years. After Mr. Vanderbilt's death in 1914, life at Biltmore continued for his wife Edith and daughter Cornelia. In 1930, Cornelia Vanderbilt Cecil and her husband, Hon. John Francis Amherst Cecil, opened Biltmore House--the largest private home in the United States--to the public, firmly establishing the Asheville area as a major tourist destination.

    From high-class hookers to 7/7 survivors these monologues paint a revelatory picture of Britain as it is today. After rave reviews at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival and in New York, "Eight" opened in London's West End in July 2009.

     Between December 27, 1942, and December 17, 1944, he shot down forty Japanese aircraft. This achievement meant that he was the U.S.A.’s top flying ace through the course of the Second World War. George C. Kenney, commanding officer of the Fourth Air Force, knew Bong well and his biography of the young hero brings Bong’s short career in the air force to life. One of Kenney and Bong’s first encounters had been when Bong had been cited and temporarily grounded for looping the Golden Gate bridge, flying at low level down Market Street in San Francisco, and blowing the clothes off an Oakland woman’s clothesline. Kenney reprimanded him saying ““there is no need for me to tell you again that this is a serious matter. If you didn’t want to loop around that bridge or fly down Market Street I wouldn’t have you in my Air Force, but you are not going to do it any more and I mean what I say.” Yet, Kenney was also aware of Bong’s flying skill and although he might have been a bit of a daredevil he acknowledged that for the U. S. Air Force to pose a serious threat to the Japanese “We needed kids like this lad.” Dick Bong: America's Ace of Aces is a remarkable book that uncovers the short, but fascinating, career of America’s greatest fighter pilot. It is full of brilliant insights provided by Kenney who was able to watch this young man develop before his life was cruelly cut short testing a jet aircraft shortly before the war ended. “Both flight enthusiasts and students of the second world war will read with considerable interest of the events of Dick Bong's life in a book which sticks close to its subject” Kirkus Reviews George C. Kenney was a United States Army Air Forces general during World War II. He is best known as the commander of the Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA), a position he held from August 1942 until 1945. Kenney wrote three books about the SWPA air campaigns he led during World War II. He also wrote The Saga of Pappy Gunn in 1959 and Dick Bong: Ace of Aces in 1960, which described the careers of Paul Gunn and Richard Bong, two of the most prominent airmen under his command. He passed away in 1977.

    Brown tries to fake to his flight instructor that he has flown before. On his twenty-first birthday, Brown is on his way home after logging eighty-five missions in a P-47 fighter over Italy, France, and Germany. Brown’s stories surrounding his training and combat experiences in World War II reveal brushes with death, continuous peril and, ultimately, a coming of age for a young man whose freshman year in college becomes instead a heroic engagement with one of the fiercest enemies his country has ever encountered. Ever dutiful to the mother who tells him to “write it down, Jamie,” Brown notes his experiences in the journal she provides and adds detail later to deliver a firsthand account of life as a pilot in the final months of combat within the European Theater. Serving as Tail-End Charley – the last man out – in most of the missions he flew, Brown’s job was to record results for the interrogation officers afterward. But Brown offers much more insight in this memoir. Follow his triumphs and travails with colleagues who become lifelong compatriots during an indelible period in American history.

    Ford put together a radio communications network for a nation that had up to this time relied on messages carried by foot over the highest mountains on the globe. More important, his radio connected the secluded nation to the outside world. When in October 1950 the Communist Chinese army began its march to subjugate Tibet, Ford risked his life by staying behind to send out reports over his radio to let the world know of the attack. The Radio Operator is an overdue and gripping recounting of Ford’s valiant effort to save Tibet from Chinese domination and his subsequent capture and imprisonment.James McGrath Morris is the author of the New York Times bestselling Eye on the Struggle as well as two other acclaimed biographies. His previous Kindle Single, Revolution by Murder, was selected as one of the Best Kindle Singles of 2014. His next book, The Ambulance Drivers, will be published in 2017.Cover design by Kerry Ellis.

    I've acted for Belasco and I've laid 'em out in the rows at the Palace. I've doubled as an alligator; I've worked for the Shuberts; and I've been joined to Billy Rose in the holy bonds. I've painted the house boards and I've sold tickets and I've been fired by George M. Cohan. I've played in London before the king and in Oil City before miners with lanterns in their caps. Fanny Brice was indeed show business personified, and in this luminous volume, Herbert G. Goldman, acclaimed biographer of Al Jolson, illuminates the life of the woman who inspired the spectacularly successful Broadway show and movie Funny Girl, the vehicle that catapulted Barbra Streisand to super stardom. In a work that is both glorious biography and captivating theatre history, Goldman illuminates both Fanny's remarkable career on stage and radio--ranging from her first triumph as Sadie Salome to her long run as radio's Baby Snooks--and her less-than-triumphant personal life. He reveals a woman who was a curious mix of elegance and earthiness, of high and low class, a lady who lived like a duchess but cursed like a sailor. She was probably the greatest comedienne the American stage has ever known as well as our first truly great torch singer, the star of some of the most memorable Ziegfeld Follies in the 1910s and 1920s, and Goldman covers her theatrical career and theatre world in vivid detail. But her personal life, as Goldman shows, was less successful. The great love of her life, the gangster Nick Arnstein, was dashing, handsome, sophisticated, but at bottom, a loser who failed at everything from running a shirt hospital to manufacturing fire extinguishers, and who spent a good part of their marriage either hiding out, awaiting trial, or in prison. Her first marriage was over almost as soon as it was consummated, and her third and last marriage, to Billy Rose, the Bantam Barnum, ended acrimoniously when Rose left her for swimmer Eleanor Holm. As she herself remarked, I never liked the men I loved, and I never loved the men I liked. Through it all, she remained unaffected, intelligent, independent, and, above all, honest. Goldman's biography of Al Jolson has been hailed by critics, fellow biographers, and entertainers alike. Steve Allen called it an amazing job of research and added Goldman's book brings Jolson back to life indeed. The Philadelphia Inquirer said it was the most comprehensive biography to date, and Ronald J. Fields wrote that Goldman has captured not only the wonderful feel of Al Jolson but the heartbeat of his time. Now, with Fanny Brice, Goldman provides an equally accomplished portrait of the greatest woman entertainer of that illustrious era, a volume that will delight every lover of the stage.

    His career in baseball spanned forty years and two eras—from the game’s raucous early days to its emergence as big business.Charles C. Alexander, a professor of history at Ohio University, Athens, and the author of Ty Cobb, calls John McGraw “perhaps the single most significant figure in baseball’s history before Babe Ruth transformed the game with his mammoth home runs and unparalleled showmanship.”

    Its portrayal of the Duke of Windsor as a Nazi sympathizer--who would stop at nothing to hide it--is sure to make headlines. Black-and-white photographs.

     Former Ajax physiotherapist writes his WW2 memories. 'See you tonight, and promise to be a good boy!' were the last words his mother said to Salo Muller in 1942 when she took him to school in Amsterdam, right before she was deported to Auschwitz. She and her husband were arrested a few hours later and taken to Westerbork, from where they would later board the train that took them to Auschwitz.The book is, in his own words, “the story of a little boy who experienced the most horrible things, but got through it somehow and ended up in a great place.” Salo, at only 5 years old, spent his time during the Second World War in hiding, in as much as eight different locations in the Netherlands. The book tells the story of his experiences during ww2, but also explains how he tried to make sense of his life after the war, being a young orphan. ˃˃˃ His memories are interwoven with historical facts and explanations, making it both an autobiography and a historical narrative. Salo Muller became famous in the 1970s as the physiotherapist for Ajax, the Amsterdam soccer team. He treated renowned players such as Johan Cruijff, Sjaak Swart and Piet Keizer. The why of the tragedy is something he can’t let go: ˃˃˃ 'Hardly a day goes by when I don’t shed a tear but, unfortunately, it doesn’t change a thing.’ 'See You Tonight and Promise to be a Good Boy!’ was the result of Salo’s participation in of the Shoah Project, initiated by Steven Spielberg and the USC Shoah Foundation, where his testimony was recorded. This encouraged him to write down his story. Scroll up and grab a copy today.

    A microcosm of the deep horrors of civil war, the Shelton Laurel Massacre as it came to be known, pitted neighbor against neighbor, touching every family with violence at their own front door. Told by those who lived it– Confederate and Unionist alike--Keith, who ordered the execution, Polly, whose children’s death precipitated the massacre, Judy and Marthy, who bore torture to protect their men, and Sim, conscripted by the Confederates and haunted by his part in the Massacre—the novel offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of five people tangled in history’s web, caught up together in love and hate. And all five will bear the mark of the massacre long after the event, struggling to come to terms with the bleak consequences of civil war. Based on an actual event and historical characters, And the Crows Took Their Eyes is a richly imagined portrait of a dark and bitter time—illuminated by gleams of humanity at its best

    It is a genuine, firsthand account of a one-year tour that shows how a soldier grew and matured from an awkward, bewildered, inexperienced, eighteen year-old country “bumpkin” from Kentucky, to a tough, battle hardened, fighting soldier. You will laugh, cry and stand in awe at the true life experiences shared in this memoir. The awfulness of battle, fear beyond description, the sorrow and anguish of losing friends, extreme weariness, the dealing with the scalding sun, torrential rain, cold, heat, humidity, insects and the daily effort just to maintain sanity were struggles faced virtually every day. And yet, there were the good times. There was the coming together to laugh, joke, and share stories from home. There was the warmth and compassion shown by men to each other in such an unreal environment. You will see where color, race or where you were from had no bearing on the tight-knit group of young men that was formed from the necessity to survive. What a “bunch” they were! ... then the return to home and all the adjustments and struggles to once again fit into a world that was now strange and uncomfortable. "Call Sign Dracula" is an excellent and genuine memoir of an infantry soldier in the Vietnam War.