Book picks similar to
The Apologia of Robert Keayne by Bernard Bailyn
history-american
history-business
history-colonial
history-documents
Red Blanket: An uncensored memoir that reveals the underbelly of surgical training
John Harch - 2020
Liberalism or How to Turn Good Men into Whiners, Weenies and Wimps
Burgess Owens - 2016
As heard on Mark Levin and Glenn Beck radio. The Black middle class—saviors of the American way.Liberalism or How to Turn Good Men into Whiners, Weenies and Wimps documents the role of the 21 white, self-avowed socialist, atheist and Marxist founders of the NAACP and their impact on the Black community’s present status at the top of our nations misery index. It highlights the decades of anti-Black legislation supported by liberal black leaders who prioritized class over race in their zeal for the promises of socialism. Their anti-Black legislation, dating back with the 1932 Davis-Bacon Act, continues today to suppress inter-community Black capitalism, federal construction related Black employment, work and job experience for Black teenagers, quality education access for urban black children, and the role of black men as leaders within the family unit. Liberalism or How to Turn Good Men into Whiners, Weenies and Wimps highlights the strategy, used in 1910, to inject the atheist ideology of socialism into a once enterprising, self-sufficient, competitive and proud Christian black community. A portion of that community, the conservative Black middle class, is positioned to pull our nation back from this abyss. Americans can ensure that the century-long sacrifice of lost hopes, dreams and lives made by the proud, courageous, patriotic, capitalist, Christianbased, self-sufficient, education-seeking Black community of the early 1900s was not in vain—but only if we choose to learn lessons from those past Black generations.
Flashing Saber: Three Years in Vietnam
Matthew Brennan - 1985
The Blues, as they were called, were perpetually understrength and considered to be acceptable losses in hopeless situations—but their amazingly successful record proved otherwise.A firsthand account of mortal combat with the Ninth Cavalry, Flashing Saber is the remarkable story of the brave men who served in the First Air Cavalry Division's reconnaissance squadron. Included is an account of an air-ground raid that overran a regimental command post and killed more high-ranking enemy officers than any similar engagement of the war. The story begins when a teenager, an Eagle Scout and West Point Prep School student, goes to Vietnam in 1965. Motivated by patriotism and the desire to see combat firsthand, Brennan volunteers for front line duty and spends years as an artillery forward observer and infantryman. Promoted to sergeant and then to lieutenant, Brennan participates in hundreds of assault landings.An expansion and careful reworking of his previous work, Brennan's War, published in 1985, and in the vein of classic memoirs by Johnnie Clark and Frederick Downs, Flashing Saberis a harrowing firsthand account of life and death in war, one filled with breathtaking details about a renowned unit.
Becoming Superman: A Writer's Journey from Poverty to Hollywood with Stops Along the Way at Murder, Madness, Mayhem, Movie Stars, Cults, Slums, Sociopaths, and War Crimes
J. Michael Straczynski - 2019
Michael Straczynski has been one of the most successful writers in Hollywood, one of the few to forge multiple careers in movies, television and comics. Yet there’s one story he’s never told before: his own.In this dazzling memoir, the acclaimed writer behind Babylon 5, Sense8, Clint Eastwood’s Changeling and Marvel’s Thor reveals how the power of creativity and imagination enabled him to overcome the horrors of his youth and a dysfunctional family haunted by madness, murder and a terrible secret.Joe's early life nearly defies belief. Raised by damaged adults—a con-man grandfather and a manipulative grandmother, a violent, drunken father and a mother who was repeatedly institutionalized—Joe grew up in abject poverty, living in slums and projects when not on the road, crisscrossing the country in his father’s desperate attempts to escape the consequences of his past. To survive his abusive environment Joe found refuge in his beloved comics and his dreams, immersing himself in imaginary worlds populated by superheroes whose amazing powers allowed them to overcome any adversity. The deeper he read, the more he came to realize that he, too, had a superpower: the ability to tell stories and make everything come out the way he wanted it. But even as he found success, he could not escape a dark and shocking secret that hung over his family’s past, a violent truth that he uncovered over the course of decades involving mass murder.Straczynski’s personal history has always been shrouded in mystery. Becoming Superman lays bare the facts of his life: a story of creation and darkness, hope and success, a larger-than-life villain and a little boy who became the hero of his own life. It is also a compelling behind-the-scenes look at some of the most successful TV series and movies recognized around the world.Featuring an introduction by Neil Gaiman.
They Are All My Family: A Daring Rescue in the Chaos of Saigon's Fall
John P. Riordan - 2015
They were his 33 Vietnamese staff members and their families. Unable to secure exit papers for the employees, Citibank ordered Riordan to leave the country alone. Safe in Hong Kong, Riordan could not imagine leaving behind his employees and defied instructions from his superiors not to return to Saigon. But once he did make it back on the last commercial flight, his actions were daring and ingenious.In They Are All My Family, Riordan recounts in a vivid narrative how the escape was organized and carried out. He assembled all 106 of the Vietnamese into his villa and a neighboring one telling them to keep their locations secret. A CIA contact told him that only dependents of Americans were allowed to escape on U.S. military cargo planes. Riordan repeatedly went to the processing area and claimed groups of the Vietnamese as his relatives—his wife and children—somehow managing to get through the bureaucratic shambles. Eventually he went back and forth to the airport 15 times. Filling out papers in groups, using false documents and even resorting to a bribe, he succeeded in rescuing the group. For the last round, the group drove the bank van to the airport pretending they had bundles of money to transport. Miraculously, all these gambits worked and the Citibank group made it to Guam and the Philippines, eventually reuniting at Camp Pendleton in California. All the while, Riordan assumed he had been fired for ignoring orders but once the mission was completed, his extraordinary commitment and resourcefulness won him widespread praise from senior officials. Citibank spent a million dollars to resettle the Vietnamese, offering jobs to some of the staff and their spouses.Decades later, Riordan has located the Vietnamese and reconnected with them, sharing accounts of those frantic days and the derring-do it took to get them out to safety. John Riordan is now a farmer in Wisconsin. His story of those fateful days decades ago and their aftermath provides a compelling insight to the courage of individuals when all seemed lost. For all the tragedy of the Vietnam War, this saga is an uplifting counterpoint and a compelling piece of micro-history.
Ghosts in the Forest (Kindle Single)
Corinne Purtill - 2015
They did not know that the war they were fleeing had in fact ended—25 years earlier. Corinne Purtill was one of the first journalists to meet the families upon their incredible return to society. Years later she returned to Cambodia to learn the truth about their time on the run. What she found was a darker and more complicated tale than the one they first shared, a story of terror, isolation, fierce loyalty, appalling choices and murder. The result is a story that examines the unyielding human need for family and connection and the meaning of survival. Corinne Purtill is a journalist who has reported around the world for publications including Quartz, GlobalPost, CNN, Salon and the Cambodia Daily. She lives in California with her family. Cover design by Hannah Perrine Mode
Holy Toledo: Lessons From Bill King, Renaissance Man of the Mic
Ken Korach - 2013
Bill was also one of the most influential broadcasters of all time, an inspiration to legions of his fellow broadcasters who looked up to him. No less an authority than John Madden tells Ken Korach in this 80,000-word testament to Bill’s uniqueness that when he turned from coaching to broadcasting, no one was more of an influence on him than Bill. But this was true of Bill the man as well, not merely Bill the broadcaster. “We all wanted to live vicariously through Bill. The things that he did, we wished we could do,” Madden tells Ken Korach. Korach, longtime voice of the A’s and Bill’s partner for ten seasons until King’s death in 2005, is the perfect one to bring Bill to life on the page. A half-century ago, Ken Korach was a kid in Los Angeles, spinning the night dial to tune in Warriors basketball games from faraway San Francisco for one reason: He just had to hear Bill. Now, in Holy Toledo – Lessons from Bill King, Renaissance Man of the Mic, he tells the remarkable story of King the legendary baseball, basketball and football broadcaster. Bill was a student of Russian literature, a passionate sailor, a fan of eating anything and everything from gourmet to onions and peanut butter, a remarkable painter. Korach draws on a lifetime of listening to and learning from King – as well as extensive research, including more than fifty interviews with King’s family members, colleagues, friends and associates – to create this rich portrait, eagerly awaited by thousands of fans who have flocked to the Holy Toledo Facebook page and heard about the book through Ken’s media appearances.Holy Toledo features a moving foreword by Hall of Fame broadcaster Jon Miller, previously of ESPN, and a brilliant cover by Mark Ulriksen, internationally recognized for his New Yorker magazine covers, that captures King’s flair and personality.Billy Beane“The best part about Bill wasn’t just that he was so good at his job but that he was so interesting outside of his job. His mustache epitomized that. He looked eccentric and he was eccentric, in a good way.”Bob Welch“If I had a hitter I had trouble with, I’d ask Bill how I should pitch him. He always had a good answer.”Greg Papa“Bill King was the greatest radio broadcaster in the history of the United States.”Tom Meschery“Talking with Bill was like talking with an encyclopedia.… If you wanted to talk sports, literature – when Bill talked you listened, because he always had something interesting to talk about.”Al Attles“He didn’t sugarcoat it. Bill was a departure from the way it was. If a player from the Warriors made a mistake, Bill told it like it was.”Ed Rush“I’d put the radio out the window and keep turning it to certain angles and it would go in and go out. I’d listen to the Warriors and the Raiders. To do all three sports like he did, he was phenomenal. He was out of this world.”Tom Flores“Bill made some of the great plays in the history of the Raiders even greater with his description. Those moments were kept alive in his voice.”Jason Giambi“He was such an incredible man. I had so much fun with him and he would always ask how my family was doing and I have the fondest memories of him. We would talk about life and all the things he had seen. He made me well rounded.”Rick Barry“He had the ability to see a game, a basketball game, and express what was happening in eloquent terms, at times instantaneously. When he was saying something, it was happening.”
Stories of the American Revolution (The Thomas Fleming Library)
Thomas Fleming - 2018
Here, collected for the first time and posthumously, are Fleming's favorite works. He takes us back to the days of the founders, detailing the surprising facts of American life in 1776, including its resemblance to today. He tells the seldom-told tale of the Loyalists, supporters of England who acted on their political convictions with impressive courage during the Revolution, and reveals little-known facets of men ranging from Franklin to Lafayette, Howe to Washington. He concludes with the Constitutional Convention of 1787 when fifty-five men from twelve virtually autonomous states came to Philadelphia in a brave - some thought foolhardy - attempt to replace a loose and fragile confederation with a strong national government. Their astonishing achievement became a standard of enlightenment the world over.
Citizen Coors: A Grand Family Saga of Business, Politics, and Beer
Dan Baum - 2000
From the moment when the dsitute Prussian Adolph Coors stows away to America in 1868, through the creation of the Heritage Foundation, to the global expansion of the billion-dollar Coors Brewing Company, the Coors family triumphed by iron-willed commitment to its own values -- values that ironically prove the family's undoing on both the business and political fronts.Acclaimed writer Dan Baum captures it all, from Adolph's Prohibition-provoked suicide to the banishment of an heir-apparent for marrying without permission. Baum vividly depicts the genius, eccentricity, and tragic weaknesses of the remarkable Coors family.
Andrew Carnegie
David Nasaw - 2006
Celebrated historian David Nasaw, whom The New York Times Book Review has called "a meticulous researcher and a cool analyst," brings new life to the story of one of America's most famous and successful businessmen and philanthropists- in what will prove to be the biography of the season. Born of modest origins in Scotland in 1835, Andrew Carnegie is best known as the founder of Carnegie Steel. His rags to riches story has never been told as dramatically and vividly as in Nasaw's new biography. Carnegie, the son of an impoverished linen weaver, moved to Pittsburgh at the age of thirteen. The embodiment of the American dream, he pulled himself up from bobbin boy in a cotton factory to become the richest man in the world. He spent the rest of his life giving away the fortune he had accumulated and crusading for international peace. For all that he accomplished and came to represent to the American public-a wildly successful businessman and capitalist, a self-educated writer, peace activist, philanthropist, man of letters, lover of culture, and unabashed enthusiast for American democracy and capitalism-Carnegie has remained, to this day, an enigma. Nasaw explains how Carnegie made his early fortune and what prompted him to give it all away, how he was drawn into the campaign first against American involvement in the Spanish-American War and then for international peace, and how he used his friendships with presidents and prime ministers to try to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. With a trove of new material-unpublished chapters of Carnegie's Autobiography; personal letters between Carnegie and his future wife, Louise, and other family members; his prenuptial agreement; diaries of family and close friends; his applications for citizenship; his extensive correspondence with Henry Clay Frick; and dozens of private letters to and from presidents Grant, Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt, and British prime ministers Gladstone and Balfour, as well as friends Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, and Mark Twain-Nasaw brilliantly plumbs the core of this facinating and complex man, deftly placing his life in cultural and political context as only a master storyteller can.
Living the Château Dream
Dick Strawbridge - 2021
With enormous tasks, like installing a lift, plus the beginnings of lifelong traditions, this much-anticipated follow-up includes many firsts for the Strawbridge family. As Dick and Angel recount stories of the next two years at the château, we start to understand the true extent of the work and skill that it has taken to make this incredible house into a much-loved home.With never-before-told stories of remarkable discoveries, amazing transformations and once-in-a-lifetime celebrations, this book is sure to delight and inspire in equal measure!
My Week at the Blue Angel: Stories from the Storm Drains, Strip Clubs, and Trailer Parks of Las Vegas
Matthew O'Brien - 2010
Thompson’s Las Vegas, with the Good Doctor as tour guide. A Lord of the Rings-like adventure in the city’s underground flood channels. A seven-day stay at a seedy motel on East Fremont Street.The stories in My Week at the Blue Angel aren’t about Steve Wynn, Cirque du Soleil, or how to play poker and they aren’t set in Caesars Palace, XS Nightclub, or a 2,000-seat showroom. They’re about prostitutes, ex-cons, and the homeless and they’re set under Caesars Palace and in trailer parks and weekly motels.In this creative-nonfiction collection, Matthew O’Brien—author of Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas—and veteran photographer Bill Hughes show a side of the city rarely seen. A side beyond the neon lights, themed facades, and motel-room doors. A side beyond the barbwire fences, “No Trespassing” signs, and midnight shadows.A side of Las Vegas many locals and visitors are curious about, but few ever explore.
Waiting Wives: The Story of Schilling Manor, Home Front to the Vietnam War
Donna Moreau - 2005
Author Donna Moreau was the daughter of one such waiting wife, and here she writes of growing up at a time when The Flintstones were interrupted with news of firefights, fraggings, and protests, when the evening news announced death tolls along with the weather forecasts. The women and children of Schilling Manor fought on the emotional front of the war. It was not a front composed of battle plans and bullets. Their enemies were fear, loneliness, lack of information, and the slow tick of time. Waiting Wives: The Story of Schilling Manor, Home Front to the Vietnam War tells the story of the last generation of hat-and-glove military wives called upon by their country to pack without question, to follow without comment, and to wait quietly with a smile. A heartfelt book that focuses on this other, hidden side of war, Waiting Wives is a narrative investigation of an extraordinary group of women. A compelling memoir and domestic drama, Waiting Wives is also the story of a country in the midst of change, of a country at war with a war.
Heads in Beds: Hospitality and Tourism Marketing
Ivo Raza - 2004
Heads in Beds gives insight into achieving best results by demystifing many misconceptions about marketing. Focusing on the practical side of managing hospitality and tourism marketing, this text includes several topics not covered anywhere else--marketing to travel agents, COOP marketing with wholesalers, and loyalty marketing. It provides readers with solid advice and strong direction. Heads In Beds is a book written for practitioners by a practitioner. So whether you are just starting a new job, a general manager, sales and marketing director, or a seasoned veteran looking for methods to increase your yield, the material in this book will help you manage the marketing function and generate better results. Other relevant job titles include: VPs and Directors of promotions, sales, destinations, and tourism, as well as hotel operators or innkeepers.
Bobby Rydell: Teen Idol on the Rocks: A Tale of Second Chances
Bobby Rydell - 2016
And there were those hits: “Wild One,” “Volare,” and “Forget Him,” to name a few. He was far more than just a teen idol. Bobby’s voice and boy next door charm earned him a spot singing, acting, and dancing with Ann-Margret in the film adaptation of the hit musical comedy, Bye Bye Birdie. His comedic talents made him a nighttime fixture during the golden age of TV variety shows, and his phrasing and musicianship led to dozens of headlining gigs in the casino showrooms of Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Frank Sinatra anointed him as his favorite pop singer of the early ‘60s. But early success took a toll on his life. Bobby Rydell’s brutally honest street corner narrative evolved during an eighteen-month collaboration with Allan Slutsky, the award-winning author and producer of the widely acclaimed book and documentary film, Standing in the Shadows of Motown. Inspiring, gut-busting, and, at times, heartbreaking, Teen Idol On The Rocks gives you a front row seat to the turbulent, six decade journey of one of rock and roll’s earliest, and most celebrated teen idols.