Setting sail from New York harbour with 8,500 ground troops, a powerful British fleet swung south towards South Carolina. One year later, Charleston fell. And as King George′s forces pushed inland and upward, it appeared the six-year-old colonial rebellion was doomed to defeat. In a stunning work on forgotten history, acclaimed historian Walter Edgar takes the American Revolution far beyond Lexington and Concord to re-create the pivotal months in a nation′s savage struggle for freedom. It is a story of military brilliance and devastating human blunders - and the courage of an impossibly outnumbered force of demoralised patriots who suffered terribly at the hands of a merciless enemy, yet slowly gained confidence through a series of small triumphs that convinced them their war could be won. Alive with incident and colour.

    In Havana Nocturne, T.J. English offers a multifaceted true tale of organized crime, political corruption, roaring nightlife, revolution & international conflict that interweaves the dual stories of the Mob in Havana & the event that would overshadow it, the Cuban Revolution.As the Cuban people labored under a violently repressive regime throughout the 50s, Mob leaders Meyer Lansky & Charles "Lucky" Luciano turned their eye to Havana. To them, Cuba was the ultimate dream, the greatest hope for the future of the US Mob in the post-Prohibition years of intensified government crackdowns. But when it came time to make their move, it was Lansky, the brilliant Jewish mobster, who reigned supreme. Having cultivated strong ties with the Cuban government & in particular the brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista, Lansky brought key mobsters to Havana to put his ambitious business plans in motion. Before long, the Mob, with Batista's corrupt government in its pocket, owned the biggest luxury hotels & casinos in Havana, launching an unprecedented tourism boom complete with the most lavish entertainment, the world's biggest celebrities, the most beautiful women & gambling galore. But their dreams collided with those of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara & others who would lead the country's disenfranchised to overthrow their corrupt government & its foreign partners—an epic cultural battle that English captures in all its sexy, decadent, ugly glory. Bringing together long-buried historical information with English's own research in Havana—including interviews with the era's key survivors—Havana Nocturne takes readers back to Cuba in the years when it was a veritable devil's playground for mob leaders. English deftly weaves together the parallel stories of the Havana Mob—featuring notorious criminals such as Santo Trafficante Jr & Albert Anastasia—& Castro's 26th of July Movement in a riveting, up-close look at how the Mob nearly attained its biggest dream in Havana—& how Fidel Castro trumped it all with the revolution.

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

    There’s no question that Arnold, an American army officer, switched his loyalty to the British side. Over the years, however, historians, partisans, and gossips have added to Arnold’s unsavory reputation by distorting, embroidering, or simply ignoring factual details. In this informed and thoughtful account, Jim Murphy goes in search of the real man behind the “traitor” label, rumors, and folktales that became part of the Benedict Arnold legend. Drawing on Arnold’s few surviving writings and on the letters, memoirs, and political documents of his contemporaries, Murphy builds a fascinating portrait of a brilliant man, consistently undervalued by his peers, who made a choice that continues to reverberate through American history. Dramatic accounts of crucial battles and political maneuvers round out this lively biography of a patriot who could have been a hero.

    The struggle for control of New York was by far the largest military venture of the Revolutionary War, involving almost every significant participant on both sides from General William Howe to Nathan Hale, Benedict Arnold to George Washington. Barnet Schecter brilliantly links eighteenth-century events with the city's modern landscape, illuminating the forgotten battlefield that remains in our midst.

          Today, most Americans are familiar only with the "big names" associated with the Founding - Washington, Adams, Madison, Hamilton and so on. Because we have forgotten so many of our lesser-known Founders, many of whom warned of the dangers of centralized federal power, we have also strayed from the system of limited government prescribed by our Constitution. The resulting imbalance of power, allowed to get worse over decades, has created the problems with executive overreach and the expansive federal bureaucracy that plague America today.       Senator Mike Lee, a champion of constitutionally limited government, now seeks to give these nearly forgotten but far-sighted early American thinkers their proper due. He will introduce readers to the influential, liberty-minded Americans who may not be household names but should be, including: · Mercy Otis Warren, one of revolutionary America's most prominent female writers and protégé of John Adams who engaged in vigorous debate against the encroachment of federal power and broke with Adams over the Constitution · Canasatego, an Iroquois chief who taught Benjamin Franklin the basic principles behind the separation of powers in government · Aaron Burr, whose "trial of the century" in the early 1800s defined the limits of executive power and warned of its potential for abuse · Elbridge Gerry, who championed individual rights and greater power for the states over the newly formed federal government - and without whom there would be no Bill of Rights. Written Out of History is not simply a history lesson. By channeling voices from the past, this book will inject renewed passion into the debate over what the Constitution means to us today, and the limits it sets on a power-hungry federal government.From the Hardcover edition.

    Here, from American Heritage, is the human, vital, dramatic story of America's beginnings - from the journeys of early explorers and the founding of Plymouth and Jamestown to the French and Indian Wars and victory in the War of Independence.

    He is unprepared for the reality of America’s bloody fight for independence. The Continental Army is starving, underpaid, and dangerously close to mutiny, and Washington fights not just to defeat the British but to maintain order and morale among his own men.As anonymous letters by officers calling for revolt circulate through camp in Newburgh, New York, Washington must make a choice: preserve the young republic by keeping civilian control of the military, or reshape the new government by standing in solidarity with his troops and assuming greater power for himself.During one fateful week in American history, Josiah will watch a conflicted general become a legend and will discover for himself that the greatest struggles of war are those within the hearts and minds of fallible men.

    The mythmaking about this self-made man began early, some of it starting during his campaign for the presidency in 1860. As an American icon, Lincoln has been the subject of speculation and inquiry as authors and researchers have examined every aspect- personal and professional -of the president's life. In Lincoln Legends, noted historian and Lincoln expert Edward Steers Jr. carefully scrutin

    As the 1790s began, a fragile America teetered on the brink of oblivion, Russia towered as a vast imperial power, and France plunged into revolution. But in contrast to the way conventional histories tell it, none of these remarkable events occurred in isolation.Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian Jay Winik masterfully illuminates how their fates combined in one extraordinary moment to change the course of civilization. A sweeping, magisterial drama featuring the richest cast of characters ever to walk upon the world stage, including Washington, Jefferson, Louis XVI, Robespierre, and Catherine the Great, The Great Upheaval is a gripping, epic portrait of this tumultuous decade that will forever transform the way we see America's beginnings and our world

    Truman left the White House in 1953, his reputation was in ruins. Tarred by corruption scandals and his controversial decision to drop nuclear bombs on Japan, he ended his second term with an abysmal approval rating, his presidency widely considered a failure. But this dim view of Truman ignores his crucial role in the 20th century and his enduring legacy, as celebrated historian Aida D. Donald explains in this incisive biography of the 33rd president. In Citizen Soldier, Donald shows that, for all his failings, Truman deserves recognition as the principal architect of the American postwar world. The son of poor Missouri farmers, Truman overcame professional disaster and personal disillusionment to become something of a hero in the Missouri National Guard during World War I. His early years in politics were tainted by the corruption of his fellow Missouri Democrats, but Truman's hard work and scrupulous honesty eventually landed him a U.S. Senate seat and then the Vice-Presidency. When Franklin Roosevelt passed away in April 1945, Truman unexpectedly found himself at the helm of the American war effort -- and in command of the atomic bomb, the most lethal weapon humanity had ever seen. Truman's decisive leadership during the remainder of World War II and the period that followed reshaped American politics, economics, and foreign relations; in the process, says Donald, Truman delineated the complex international order that would dominate global politics for the next four decades. Yet his accomplishments, such as the liberal reforms of the Fair Deal, have long been overshadowed by a second term marred by scandal. Until we reevaluate Truman and his presidency, Donald argues, we cannot fully understand the world he helped create. A psychologically penetrating portrait, Citizen Soldier candidly weighs Truman's moments of astonishing greatness against his profound shortcomings, offering a balanced treatment of one of America's most consequential -- and misunderstood -- presidents.

    The truth is much more nuanced and fascinating--and will completely change the way readers and historians view his reign and legacy.Most Americans dismiss George III as a buffoon--a heartless and terrible monarch with few, if any, redeeming qualities. The best-known modern interpretation of him is Jonathan Groff's preening, spitting, and pompous take in Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway masterpiece. But this deeply unflattering characterization is rooted in the prejudiced and brilliantly persuasive opinions of eighteenth-century revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, who needed to make the king appear evil in order to achieve their own political aims. After combing through hundreds of thousands of pages of never-before-published correspondence, award-winning historian Andrew Roberts has uncovered the truth: George III was in fact a wise, humane, and even enlightened monarch who was beset by talented enemies, debilitating mental illness, incompetent ministers, and disastrous luck.In The Last King of America, Roberts paints a deft and nuanced portrait of the much-maligned monarch and outlines his accomplishments, which have been almost universally forgotten. Two hundred and forty-five years after the end of George III's American rule, it is time for Americans to look back on their last king with greater understanding: to see him as he was and to come to terms with the last time they were ruled by a monarch.

    Once there, he stood for the rights of common citizens, founded the Democratic Party, expanded the powers of the presidency, paid off the national debt, and postponed civil war by prevailing against the advocates of states’ rights. By today’s standards, however, Jackson was hardly politically correct: He also owned many slaves on his Tennessee plantation and sponsored the Indian Removal Act, which triggered the brutal forced march of tens of thousands of Native Americans to Oklahoma. Here is his story.

    Drawing on new sources, he weaves the lives of six people into a seamless narrative that casts fresh light on the range of experience in colonial America on the cusp of revolution. While some of the protagonists—a Native American warrior, a British aristocrat, George Washington—play major roles on the field of battle, others—a woman, a slave, and a laborer—struggle no less valiantly to realize freedom for themselves.Through these lives we understand that the Revolution was, indeed, fought over the meaning of individual freedom, a philosophical idea that became a force for violent change. A powerful narrative and a brilliant defense of American values, Revolution Song makes the compelling case that the American Revolution is still being fought today and that its ideals are worth defending.

    In Patriot Pirates, Robert H. Patton, grandson of the battlefield genius of World War II, writes that during America’s Revolutionary War, what began in 1775 as a New England fad--converting civilian vessels to fast-sailing warships, and defying the Royal Navy’s overwhelming firepower to snatch its merchant shipping--became a massive seaborne insurgency that ravaged the British economy and helped to win America’s independence. More than two thousand privately owned warships were commissioned by Congress to prey on enemy transports, seize them by force, and sell the cargoes for prize money to be divided among the privateer’s officers, crewmen, and owners.Patton writes how privateering engaged all levels of Revolutionary life, from the dockyards to the assembly halls; how it gave rise to an often cutthroat network of agents who sold captured goods and sparked wild speculation in purchased shares in privateer ventures, enabling sailors to make more money in a month than they might otherwise earn in a year. As one naval historian has observed, “The great battles of the American Revolution were fought on land, but independence was won at sea.”Benjamin Franklin, then serving at his diplomatic post in Paris, secretly encouraged the sale of captured goods in France, a calculated violation of neutrality agreements between France and Britain, in the hopes that the two countries would come to blows and help take the pressure off American fighters.Patton writes about those whose aggressive speculation in privateering promoted the war effort: Robert Morris--a financier of the Revolution, signer of the Declaration of Independence, member of the Continental Congress who helped to fund George Washington’s army, later tried (and acquitted) for corruption when his deals with foreign merchants and privateers came to light, and emerged from the war as one of America’s wealthiest men . . . William Bingham… John R. Livingston--scion of a well-connected New York family who made no apologies for exploiting the war for profit, calling it “a means of making my fortune.” He worried that peace would break out too soon. (“If it takes place without a proper warning,” said Livingston, “it may ruin us.”) Vast fortunes made through privateering survive to this day, among them those of the Peabodys, Cabots, and Lowell's of Massachusetts, and the Derbys and Browns of Rhode Island.A revelation of America’s War of Independence, a sweeping tale of maritime rebel-entrepreneurs bent on personal profit as well as national freedom.