Beginning in 1842 with a visionary's dream to span the continent with twin bands of iron, Empire Express captures three dramatic decades in which the United States effectively doubled in size, fought three wars, and began to discover a new national identity. From self--made entrepreneurs such as the Union Pacific's Thomas Durant and era--defining figures such as President Lincoln to the thousands of laborers whose backbreaking work made the railroad possible, this extraordinary narrative summons an astonishing array of voices to give new dimension not only to this epic endeavor but also to the culture, political struggles, and social conflicts of an unforgettable period in American history.

    16 pages of photos.

    

    History—As You’ve Never Seen Them Before!  Secret Lives of the Civil War features irreverent and uncensored profiles of men and women from the Union and the Confederacy—complete with hundreds of little-known and downright bizarre facts. You’ll discover that:        •  Mary Todd Lincoln claimed to receive valuable military strategies from ghosts in the spirit         world.      •  Jefferson Davis once imported camels for soldiers stationed in the American southwest.      •  Ulysses S. Grant spent much of the Vicksburg campaign on a horse named “Kangaroo.”      •  James Longstreet fought the Battle of Antietam wearing carpet slippers.      •  William T. Sherman was the victim of two shipwrecks on the same day.      •  Harriet Tubman experienced frequent and bizarre hallucinations.      •  Stonewall Jackson was a notorious hypochondriac (he always sat up straight, fearing that         slouching would compress his vital organs).   With chapters on everyone from William Quantrill (a guerilla leader whose skull later ended up in the basement of a fraternity house) to Rose O’Neal Greenhow (perhaps the South’s most glamorous spy), Secret Lives of the Civil War features a mix of famous faces and unsung heroes. American history was never this much fun in school!

     But Charles Goodrich does not just focus upon the more famous of the fifty-signers as he draws evidence from a wide variety of sources to shine light upon even the most obscure of the Declaration’s signatories. Indeed some of the most fascinating of the lives within this work are those that have more frequently been forgotten. Goodrich begins the work with a short history of why the Declaration of Independence came into being. It provides an excellent grounding for his biographies of all fifty-six signers and lives that they led, both before and after they had added their names to this famous document. “The same intrepidity and genius which had raised them to be leaders of the nation at that crisis, carried them forward in the career of glory through a long period of public life. … we are convinced these biographies will be read with pleasure.” The North American Review This book is worthy reading for anyone interested in how the United States was founded and for people wishing to learn more about the figures that shaped its history in those early years. Charles Augustus Goodrich was an American author and Congregational minister, who popularized the motto "a place for everything and everything in its place". His book Lives of the Signers to the Declaration of independence was first published in 1829 and he passed away in 1862.

    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.”

    He more or less invented modern politi­cal consulting and helped Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush win their races for the White House. Then he reinvented himself as a master of cable television, first as the head of CNBC and, since 1996, as the creator and leader of Fox News, the most influential news network in the country. To liberals, Ailes is an evil genius who helped polarize the country by breaking the mainstream media’s long monopoly on what constitutes news. To conservatives, he’s a champion of free speech and fair reporting whose values and view of Amer­ica reflect their own. But no one doubts that Ailes has transformed journalism. Barack Obama once called him “the most powerful man in America”— and given that Fox News has changed the way millions understand the world, it may be true. Yet for all that fame and infamy, very few people know the real person behind the headlines. Journalist Zev Chafets received unprecedented access to Ailes and his family, friends, and Fox News colleagues. The result is a candid, compelling portrait of a fascinating man. We see Ailes in action at Fox News and hear him reflect on personal mat­ters he has never before discussed publicly. And we discover the heart of his sometimes surprising political beliefs: his profane piety and his unwav­ering belief in the values of his small-town Ohio boyhood. Ailes loves to fight, but he is a happy warrior who has somehow managed to charm and befriend many of the people he has defeated in political campaigns and television wars. Barbara Walters, Rachel Maddow, Jesse Jackson, the Kennedy clan— all are unexpected Ailes fans. Chafets also gives us an unprecedented look at the inner workings of Fox News and explores Ailes’s relationships with Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, Neil Cavuto, Chris Wallace, and the other stars he has nurtured. Ultimately, Ailes is neither villain nor hero but a man full of contradictions and surprises. As Chafets writes, “What will he do next? What stokes his competitive fires and occasional rages? How to reconcile his acts of exceptional loyalty and pri­vate generosity (even to rivals) with his impulse to present himself to the world as a ruthless leg breaker? What makes Roger run—and where, if anywhere, is the finish line? As Ailes himself might say: I report, you decide.”

    Perhaps you thought of grocery stores or something sexy like internet retailing, but chances are you didn’t think of banking. Yet, most likely you interact with a bank every time you’re paid and when you pay your bills. Banks facilitate the flow of money through the economy and even if you don’t interact with a bank daily, the businesses you deal with on a daily basis do. For all the interaction people have with banks, few understand how they work or why they work. Even fewer understand why they should consider including bank stocks in their investment portfolio. There are a lot of misconceptions about banks, including understanding what they are and what they do. For many people the word “bank” evokes images of receiving a toaster upon opening an account, or thoughts of security related to the storing of precious items in a safety deposit box. Others might go further and tap their inner Michael Moore and talk about how banks are greedy and evil. It’s our belief that banks aren’t just places to store idle savings (on which you receive virtually nothing in interest) or to cash checks, but that they should be an integral part of an investor’s portfolio. The goal of this book is to provide you with a foundation and framework with which you can both begin to understand banks, but also learn the basic tools used to analyze banks as investments.

    

    He was looking forward to starting his senior year at Earl L. Vandermeulen High School the next day. But instead, Marty woke in the morning to find his parents brutally bludgeoned, their throats slashed. His mother, Arlene, was dead. His father, Seymour, was barely alive and would die a month later. With remarkable self-possession, Marty called 911 to summon help. And when homicide detective James McCready arrived on the scene an hour later, Marty told him he believed he knew who was responsible: Jerry Steuerman, his father’s business partner. Steuerman owed Seymour more than half a million dollars, had recently threatened him, and had been the last to leave a high-stakes poker game at the Tankleffs’ home the night before. However, McCready inexplicably dismissed Steuerman as a suspect. Instead, he fastened on Marty as the prime suspect–indeed, his only one. Before the day was out, the police announced that Marty had confessed to the crimes. But Marty insisted the confession was fabricated by the police. And a week later, Steuerman faked his own death and fled to California under an alias. Yet the police and prosecutors remained fixated on Marty–and two years later, he was convicted on murder charges and sentenced to fifty years in prison. But Marty’s unbelievable odyssey was just beginning. With the support of his family, he set out to prove his innocence and gain his freedom. For ten years, disappointment followed disappointment as appeals to state and federal courts were denied. Still, Marty never gave up. He persuaded Jay Salpeter, a retired NYPD detective turned private eye, to look into his case. At first it was just another job for Salpeter. As he dug into the evidence, though, he began to see signs of gross ineptitude or worse: Leads ignored. Conflicts of interest swept under the rug. A shocking betrayal of public trust by Suffolk County law enforcement that went well beyond a simple miscarriage of justice. After Salpeter’s discoveries brought national media attention to the case, Marty’s conviction was finally vacated in 2007, and New York’s governor appointed a special prosecutor to reopen the twenty-year-old case. At the same time, the State Investigation Commission announced an inquiry into Suffolk County’s handling of what has come to be widely viewed as one of America’s most disturbing wrongful conviction cases. As gripping as a Grisham novel, A Criminal Injustice is the story of an innocent man’s tenacious fight for freedom, an investigator’s dogged search for the truth. It is a searing indictment of justice in America.

    He explains how bankers worldwide created a secret trillion-dollar machine that delivered cheap mortgages to the masses and riches beyond dreams to the financial innovators.Fundamental to this saga is how “the people who hated to lose” were persuaded to accept risk by “the people who loved to win.” Why did people come to trust and respect arcane financial tools? Who were the bankers competing to assemble the basic components into increasingly intricate machines? How did this process achieve its own unstoppable momentum—ending in collapse, bailouts, and a public outcry against the giants of finance?Provocative and intriguing, The Devil’s Derivatives sheds much-needed light on the forces that fueled the most brutal economic downturn since the Great Depression.

    But where did he get his military experience? Why was picked to take command of the army? Why was he the only American president ever to be elected unanimously (twice!), and did he really chop down that cherry tree as a kid?In this book entitled George Washington: First Guardian of American Liberty by author Michael Crawley, you'll follow the course of George Washington's life, from his birth at Ferry Farm in Virginia in 1732, to his death at his Mount Vernon estate in 1799. You'll learn how his early fame as a hero of the French and Indian War, and his illustrious marriage to a wealthy widow, led to this farm boy becoming one of the most important men in Virginia, a delegate at the Continental Congress where the Founders of America gathered to decide the nation's fate. The first guardian of American liberty looks serene in his portraits, but he didn't always rise above the fray. Washington fought for what he believed in, and his political convictions shocked contemporaries like Thomas Jefferson. Do you know what kind of country George Washington wanted America to be?

    Her story is unparalleled—and offers fascinating insights into the earliest days of the emigrants. Eliza’s parents launched the Oregon Trail era with the original covered wagon trek in 1836. Settling in the region that is now the junction of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, Eliza grew up among native peoples. She learned their language and understood their culture better than any pioneer girl of the era. Eliza was at the Whitman Mission on the day of the fateful attacks that so profoundly changed the course of western history. Her telling of that story is uniquely valuable—even though she was just 10 years old—because she was the only survivor who spoke the language of the attackers. This first-person account is an eye-opening look at life in the early West.Eliza’s story is as fresh and readable today as the day it was written—a rare example of a historic document that can still engage modern readers, even children. This enhanced edition adds dozens of photos, maps, graphics, and notes to the original manuscript. The bonus material provides a layer of context that gives readers deeper insight into her compelling story.

    This is the full story of how the team was saved from disintegration when Honda suddenly pulled out of Formula One; the management buyout for £1.00; and its subsequent sale to Mercedes for £140 million. As CEO, Nick Fry was in the driving seat for one of the most incredible journeys in the history of motorsport. Here, he gives an up-close-and-personal account of how he and Ross Brawn turned disaster into championship glory, and offers a unique and thrilling perspective on an elite global sport.

    An account of what it was like to grow up a White Sox fan in a Cubs nation, this title covers the history of the organisation, from the heartbreak of 1967 and the South-Side Hit Men to the disco demolition and the magical 2005 season when they became world champions.