Book picks similar to
Thrilling Cities by Ian Fleming
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Winston S. Churchill: Youth, 1874-1900 (Volume I)
Randolph S. Churchill - 1966
The book contains Churchill's letters written as a child, as a boy at Harrow, as a cadet at Sandhurst, and later as a subaltern in India.
Obachan: A Young Girl's Struggle for Freedom in Twentieth Century Japan
Tani Hanes - 2020
Sent away at thirteen to live with relatives, hired out at fifteen to pay off a family debt, desperate for an education at any cost, this is the story of a young girl who never gave up on herself, no matter what her circumstances, no matter how bleak her life seemed to be.It is the story of my Obachan, or grandmother, as told to me by her, an amazing story which begins in the countryside of Japan and ends in the war torn streets of Kawasaki. I wrote it down as I heard it, believing it sounded more like a movie than her life; only the names have been changed out of respect for her living family. This is the journey she took as she exchanged one set of dreams for another, as she grew from a wide-eyed, hopeful teenager to a young mother in wartime Japan.
W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963
David Levering Lewis - 2000
This monumental biography--eight years in the research and writing--treats the early and middle phases of a long and intense career: a crucial fifty-year period that demonstrates how Du Bois changed forever the way Americans think about themselves.
The Court of Last Resort: The True Story of a Team of Crime Experts Who Fought to Save the Wrongfully Convicted
Erle Stanley Gardner - 1952
In 1945, Erle Stanley Gardner, noted attorney and author of the popular Perry Mason mysteries, was contacted by an overwhelmed California public defender who believed his doomed client was innocent. William Marvin Lindley had been convicted of the rape and murder of a young girl along the banks of the Yuba River, and was awaiting execution at San Quentin. After reviewing the case, Gardner agreed to help—it seemed the fate of the “Red-Headed Killer” hinged on the testimony of a colorblind witness. Gardner’s intervention sparked the Court of Last Resort. The Innocence Project of its day, this ambitious and ultimately successful undertaking was devoted to investigating, reviewing, and reversing wrongful convictions owing to poor legal representation, prosecutorial abuses, biased police activity, bench corruption, unreliable witnesses, and careless forensic-evidence testimony. The crimes: rape, murder, kidnapping, and manslaughter. The prisoners: underprivileged and vulnerable men wrongly convicted and condemned to life sentences or death row with only one hope—the devotion of Erle Stanley Gardner and the Court of Last Resort. Featuring Gardner’s most damning cases of injustice from across the country, The Court of Last Resort won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. Originating as a monthly column in Argosy magazine, it was produced as a dramatized court TV show for NBC.
The Bloody Battle of Suribachi: The Amazing Story of Iwo Jima That Inspired Flags of Our Fathers
Richard Wheeler - 1965
Revised with a new introduction by the author and recently discovered photos, this book served as invaluable source material both for James Bradley’s bestseller Flags of Our Fathers as well as Clint Eastwood’s acclaimed film of the same name.
The Emperor Charlemagne
E.R. Chamberlin - 1986
At the height of his power in the early ninth century Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Lombards and Emperor of the Romans, ruled all the Christian lands of western Europe except the British Isles and southern Italy and Sicily. Charismatic, gregarious, energetic and cultured, he initiated and encouraged a renaissance of learning and artistic enterprise that appeared to later generations as a Golden Age. An incomparable general, administrator and law-giver, he was as skilled on the battlefield as in the council chamber, and by sheer force of character held together an empire that rivalled the Byzantines in the East.To the many portraits of the man who was crowned the first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Russell Chamberlin now adds a modern portrait which reveals the man behind the achievements. This book brings to life a key personality and a formative period in European history.
So Well Remembered
James Hilton - 1945
A respected lawyer and civic leader, he possessed the skill and charisma to shine on the national stage. But ambition is not without a cost. When Boswell must choose between the promise of a bright future or staying behind for the people who have come to depend on him, his decision comes at a shocking price. "So Well Remembered" is a story of a people pulled reluctantly toward modernity amid the farms and factories of Lancashire, and a celebration of the steadfast character of the common English village.
The Travels of Sherlock Holmes (A Sherlock Mystery Book 1)
John Hall - 1999
While mourning and memorialising Sherlock, the best and the wisest man he has ever known, Watson suffers an additional bereavement - the death of his wife. Alone in the world, Watson’s only choice is to move forwards with his life and also move out of London, a place where he knows the past will haunt him. While working in a convalescent hospital in Surrey, Watson meets a patient who claims to know the truth and can answer his painstaking questions. The patient, delirious with pain, says he witnessed Sherlock in Tibet, Persia and other exotic locations. Thus begins Watson's hunt for the truth which leads him from the darkest alleys of London all the way to the upper echelons of the British Empire. The Travels of Sherlock Holmes is the First of John Hall's Sherlockian pastiches and a brilliant addition to the Holmes and Watson casebooks. John Hall spent many years in the civil service before becoming a professional writer specialising in crime fiction. His book Death of a Collector won the Sherlock Magazine’s competition for the best new fictional detective. He is also the author of several other Sherlock mysteries.
The Butterscotch Bride
Parker J. Cole - 2020
A story of love and sacrifice in the years before the War that devastated the country.A young enslaved girl, singled out and favored by her mistress, arrives to a new plantation when tragedy strikes the household.An enslaved man, recaptured twice after escaping his bondage, bides his time until he can escape again.Their paths will collide as they meet and destiny will be changed as they fight for both freedom and love.**This is the prequel to the upcoming release of A Groom for Altar, Book 7 of The Blizzard Brides series**
Japanese Fairy World - Stories From The Wonder-Lore Of Japan
William Elliot Griffis - 1880
D. (1843-1928) was an American orientalist, author and Congregational preacher. In September 1870 Griffis was invited to Japan for the purpose of organizing schools along Western lines. He prepared the New Japan Series of reading and spelling books and primers for Japanese students in the English language. He published 18 books on Japan and Japanese culture, wrote several hundred articles, and made numerous public lectures. It wasn't just Japan and the Orient he was interested in, in his lifetime Griffis travelled to Europe 11 times, mainly to the Netherlands. He was a member of the committee of the Boston Congregational Club to erect a Pilgrim memorial at Delfshaven, the Netherlands in 1909. In 1926 he returned to Japan to receive the Order of the Rising Sun. He died in 1928. His works include The Religions of Japan (1895), Charles Carleton Coffin (1898), Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks (1918) and Welsh Fairy Tales (1921).
Helen of Pasadena
Lian Dolan - 2010
She's a sharp and funny speaker who is much in demand.
The Big Change: America Transforms Itself, 1900-50
Frederick Lewis Allen - 1952
Best known as the author of Only Yesterday, Allen originated a model of what is sometimes called instant history, the reconstruction of past eras through vivid commentary on the news, fashions, customs, and artifacts that altered the pace and forms of American life. The Big Change was Allen's last and most ambitious book. In it he attempted to chart and explain the progressive evolution of American life over half a century. Written at a time of unprecedented optimism and prosperity, The Big Change defines a transformative moment in American history and provides an implicit and illuminating perspective on what has taken place in the second half of the twentieth century.Allen's theme is the realization, in large measure, of the promise of democracy. As against the strain of social criticism that saw America as enfeebled by affluence and conformity, Allen wrote in praise of an economic system that had ushered in a new age of well being for the American people. He divides his inquiry into three major sections. The first, 'The Old Order, ' portrays the turn-of-the-century plutocracy in which the federal government was largely subservient to business interests and the gap between rich and poor portended a real possibility of bloody rebellion. 'The Momentum of Change' graphically describes the various forces that gradually transformed the country in the new century: mass production, the automobile, the Great Depression and the coming of big government, World War II and America's emergence as a world power. Against this background, Allen shows how the economic system was reformed without being ruined, and how social gaps began to steadily close.The concluding section, 'The New America, ' is a hopeful assessment of postwar American culture. Allen's analysis takes critical issue with many common perceptions, both foreign and domestic, of American life and places remaining social problems in careful perspective. As William O'Neill remarks in his introduction to this new edition, The Big Change is both a deep and wonderfully readable work of social commentary, a book that gains rather than loses with the year
Horses Don't Fly: The Memoir of the Cowboy Who Became a World War I Ace
Frederick Libby - 2000
Growing up on a ranch in Sterling, Colorado, Frederick Libby mastered the cowboy arts of roping, punching cattle, and taming horses. As a young man he exercised his skills in the mountains and on the ranges of Arizona and New Mexico as well as the Colorado prairie. When World War I broke out, he found himself in Calgary, Alberta, and joined the Canadian army. In France, he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps as an "observer," the gunner in a two-person biplane. Libby shot down an enemy plane on his first day in battle over the Somme, which was also the first day he flew in a plane or fired a machine gun. He went on to become a pilot. He fought against the legendary German aces Oswald Boelcke and Manfred von Richthofen, and became the first American to down five enemy planes. He won the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry in action.
Libby's memoir of his cowboy days in the last years of the Old West evokes a real-life Cormac McCarthy novel. His description of World War I combines a rattling good account of the air war over France with captivating and sometimes poignant depictions of wartime London, the sorrow for friends lost in combat, and the courage and camaraderie of the Royal Flying Corps. Told in charming, straightforward vernacular, Horses Don't Fly is an unforgettable piece of Americana.