American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic


Joseph J. Ellis - 2007
    Historian Ellis guides readers thru the decisive issues of the nation's founding, and illuminates the emerging philosophies, shifting alliances, and personal and political foibles of now iconic leaders. He explains how the idea of a strong federal government, championed by Washington, was eventually embraced by the American people, the majority of whom had to be won over. He details the emergence of the two-party system--then a political novelty--which today stands as the founders' most enduring legacy. But Ellis is equally incisive about their failures, making clear how their inability to abolish slavery and to reach a just settlement with the Native Americans has played an equally important role in shaping our national character. Ellis strips the mythic veneer of the revolutionary generation to reveal men possessed of both brilliance and blindness.

Telepath


Janet Edwards - 2016
    She’s about to enter the Lottery of 2532, which will assess her abilities and decide her hive level, her profession, her whole future life. Amber’s dream is to be level 10 or above, her nightmare is to be a level 99 Sewage Technician. When Lottery discovers Amber is a rare and precious telepath, she must adapt to a new life protecting the people of the crowded hive city. Her job is hunting down criminals before they commit their crimes, but she doesn’t know she’s being hunted herself.

American Indian Stories


Zitkála-Šá - 1921
    Determined, controversial, and visionary, she creatively worked to bridge the gap between her own culture and mainstream American society and advocated for Native rights on a national level. Susan Rose Dominguez provides a new introduction to this edition.

The Crossing


Winston Churchill - 1904
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

A Thousand Miles Up the Nile


Amelia B. Edwards - 1877
    Edwards wrote this historical, egyptological, and cultural study in in 1877, and it became an immediate best-seller, reprinted in 1888 at home in England and abroad. She travelled throughout Egypt at a time when most women didn't leave home. One of the pioneering Egyptologists of the age, she established the Edwards Chair of Egyptology, occupied first by the great Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie.This book is in a sense a seminal work, known to have influenced the modern writings of Elizabeth Peters in her Amelia Peabody Emerson murder-mystery series. (Summary by Sibella Denton)

Auschwitz: A History


Sybille Steinbacher - 2004
    Here the utopian twentieth-century dream of employing science and technology to improve and protect human life was inverted from the latter part of the 1930s through the end of the Second World War, as the same systems were manipulated in the cause of efficient mass slaughter. Historian Sybille Steinbacher's powerful and eminently important book details Auschwitz's birth, growth, and horrible mutation into a dreadful city. How it came to be and how what followed was allowed to occur is a story that everyone needs to understand and remember.

Sunbaked


Junie Coffey - 2015
    Nina’s new hometown is the charming village of Coconut Cove, with its narrow lanes lined with candy coloured houses and gardens overflowing with tropical flowers. Her back yard is a white sand beach and the mesmerizing turquoise sea. But local big shot Barry Bassett has his eye on Nina’s cozy little beach cottage with the aim of tearing it down to build condos. Then Barry’s obnoxious wife Tiffany goes missing, and Nina finds herself sitting across a desk from the very serious chief of police, Blue Roker, wondering how her day dream of easy living in the islands got so far off track so quickly.Join Nina Spark and her new best friends, the philosophizing mailman Danish Jensen and the ever cheerful Pansy Gallagher, as they careen around Pineapple Cay at the maximum speed of fifteen miles an hour in a golf cart, trying to figure out what the heck is going on.This is a story Jimmy Buffett and Agatha Christie might have come up with if they’d been holed up together for a weekend at some slightly faded beachfront hotel with a pitcher of pina coladas and a box of fireworks.For fans of comedic mysteries, and readers looking for a tropical beach vacation in a book at the tail end of a long, hard winter.

Auld Acquaintance


Ruth Hay - 2010
    Anna has a part-time job in a library, and a group of good friends, but her hopes for a brighter future are growing dim. Unexpectedly, she receives a legal letter informing her that she has inherited a piece of property in Scotland. Her first instinct is to ignore this letter as she has no knowledge of the person named as the owner. Anna's friends persuade her to travel to Scotland and stay until she can decide how to dispose of the farm house near Oban. So begins an adventure which opens up prospects for Anna and introduces her to a new environment and new people who help her. Will Anna adjust to living in a farm house with the minimum of amenities?Will she solve the family mystery of the unknown relative who has bestowed this legacy on her?Will she leave Canada for Scotland or return to her homeland and her safe life there?

War of Two: The Dark Mystery of the Duel Between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, and Its Legacy for America


John Sedgwick - 2015
    Why would two such men risk not only their lives but the stability of the young country they helped forge? In War of Two, John Sedgwick explores the long-standing conflict between Founding Father Alexander Hamilton and Vice President Aaron Burr. Matching each other’s ambition and skill as lawyers in New York, they later battled for power along political fault lines that would decide—and define—the future of the United States. A series of letters between Burr and Hamilton suggests the duel was fought over an unflattering comment made at a dinner party. But another letter, written by Hamilton the night before the event, provides critical insight into his true motivation. It was addressed to former Speaker of the House Theodore Sedgwick, a trusted friend of both men, and the author’s own ancestor. John Sedgwick suggests that Hamilton saw Burr not merely as a personal rival but as a threat to the nation. It was a fear that would prove justified after Hamilton’s death…

Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War: Civil War Poems


Herman Melville - 1866
    McPherson's preface thoughtfully discusses the import of Melville's book as a Civil War document. The introduction sketches Melville's pre-war concern with slavery in Moby Dick (1851) and Benito Cereno (1856). The seventy-two deeply moving, austerely beautiful lyrical poems about the Civil War include works on the hanging of John Brown, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and the battles at Donelson, Shiloh, and Gettysburg.Harvard University critic Helen Vendler's essay argues that Melville's innovative manner of transforming this epic matter of history into a new kind of lyric poem makes for arresting and wholly original poetry. For Boston University poet Rosanna Warren, the irregularity of Melville's verse forces readers to participate in the process of arriving at a dark knowledge of war. According to Richard Cox, the organization of Melville's poems conveys that the passions of the war will not cease and yet they seem to continue Abraham Lincoln's task of binding the nation's wounds. Paul Dowling reveals how the poet reshaped the war, distorting history to moderate wartime passions and to imitate Shakespeare's philosophical (but unpopular) dramas.Students and scholars of American literature and history, as well as Civil War enthusiasts, will welcome this outstanding new publication of a long-neglected volume of political poetry by one of America's classic novelists.

The Federalist Papers


Alexander Hamilton - 1788
    Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or revisit an old favorite, these new editions open the door to the stories and ideas that have shaped our world.

God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution


Thomas S. Kidd - 2010
    But when the war for independence sparked in 1776, colonists united under the banner of religious freedom. Evangelical frontiersmen and Deist intellectuals set aside their differences to defend a belief they shared, the right to worship freely. Inspiring an unlikely but powerful alliance, it was the idea of religious liberty that brought the colonists together in the battle against British tyranny.In God of Liberty, historian Thomas S. Kidd argues that the improbable partnership of evangelicals and Deists saw America through the Revolutionary War, the ratification of the Constitution, and the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800. A thought-provoking reminder of the crucial role religion played in the Revolutionary era, God of Liberty represents both a timely appeal for spiritual diversity and a groundbreaking excavation of how faith powered the American Revolution.

Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt


H.W. Brands - 2008
    Traitor to His Class sheds new light on FDR's formative years, his remarkable willingness to champion the concerns of the poor and disenfranchised, his combination of political genius, firm leadership, and matchless diplomacy in saving democracy in America during the Great Depression and the American cause of freedom in World War II. Drawing on archival materials, public speeches, personal correspondence, and accounts by family and close associates, acclaimed bestselling historian and biographer H. W. Brands offers a compelling and intimate portrait of Roosevelt’s life and career.Brands explores the powerful influence of FDR’s dominating mother and the often tense and always unusual partnership between FDR and his wife, Eleanor, and her indispensable contributions to his presidency. Most of all, the book traces in breathtaking detail FDR’s revolutionary efforts with his New Deal legislation to transform the American political economy in order to save it, his forceful—and cagey—leadership before and during World War II, and his lasting legacy in creating the foundations of the postwar international order. Traitor to His Class brilliantly captures the qualities that have made FDR a beloved figure to millions of Americans.

The Continuum


Wendy Nikel - 2018
    For years, Elise has been donning corsets, sneaking into castles, and lying through her teeth to enforce the Place in Time Travel Agency's ten essential rules of time travel. Someone has to ensure that travel to the past isn't abused, and most days she welcomes the challenge of tracking down and retrieving clients who have run into trouble on their historical vacations.But when a dangerous secret organization kidnaps her and coerces her into jumping to the future on a high-stakes assignment, she's got more to worry about than just the time-space continuum. For the first time ever, she's the one out-of-date, out of place, and quickly running out of time.