last year, this updated collection contains the best of Robertson Davies' newspaper and magazine articles written over the past 50 years. "Each piece is entertaining and enlightening. . . ".--Publishers Weekly.

    But the historic landfall of October 1492 was only a secondary event of the year. The preceding January, they had accepted the surrender of Muslim Granada, ending centuries of Islamic rule in their peninsula. And later that year, they had ordered the expulsion or forced baptism of Spain's Jewish minority, a cruel crusade undertaken in an excess of zeal for their Catholic faith. Europe, in the century of Ferdinand and Isabella, was also awakening to the glories of a new age, the Renaissance, and the Spain of the "Catholic Kings" - as Ferdinand and Isabella came to be known - was not untouched by this brilliant revival of learning. Here, from the noted historian Malveena McKendrick, is their remarkable story.

    Ness follows up his Untouchables fame with a search for America's first serial killer in Cleveland, Ohio

    But through it all they persisted, motivated by the promise of a better life in which they could gather and worship God in their own ways. A collection of ragtag ships carried them across the ocean, among them The Mayflower. Crammed into the ship's hull, 102 people made this most famous pilgrimage. Besieged by illness and Indians and, many of them believed, witches, the Pilgrims eventually flourished, building up colonies and establishing their own rules for the practice of religion. Here is their dramatic story.

    This biography of two great atheletes recounts the political legacy, extraordinary personal links and enduring friendship between four-times Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens, and World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Joe Louis, black athletes born in an America demeaned by racism and poverty.

    In 1960, as a suicidal teenager, Sawyer was institutionalized, misdiagnosed, and suffered through 89 electroshock treatments before being transfered, labeled as “unimproved.” The damage done has haunted her life. Discharged in 1966, after finally receiving proper psychiatric care, Sawyer kept her past secret and moved on to graduate from Yale University, raise two children, and become a respected psychotherapist. That is, until 2001, when she reviewed her hospital records and began to remember a broken childhood and the even more broken mental health system of the 1950s and 1960s, Revisiting scenes from her childhood and assembling the pieces of a lost puzzle, her autobiography is a cautionary tale of careless psychiatric diagnosis and treatment, both 50 years ago and today. It is an informative story about understanding PTSD and making emotional sense of events that can lead a soul to darkness. Most of all, it’s a story of perseverance: pain, acceptance, healing, hope, and success. Hers is a unique voice for this generation, shedding light on an often misunderstood illness.

    Stuck in a rut, baseball was dying. Then Steinbrenner bought the Yankees, a second-division club with wife-swapping pitchers, leaving the House That Ruth Built not with a slam but a simper. He vowed not to interfere—before soon changing his mind. Across town, Tom Seaver led the Mets’ stellar pitching line-up, and iconic outfielder Willie Mays was preparing to say goodbye. For months, the Mets, under Yogi Berra, couldn’t get it right. Meanwhile, the A’s were breaking a ban on facial hair while maverick owner Charlie Finley was fighting to keep them underpaid. But beneath the muttonchops and mayhem, lay another world. Elvis commanded a larger audience than the Apollo landings. A Dodge Dart cost $2,800, gas was a quarter per gallon. A fiscal crisis loomed; Vietnam had ended, the vice president resigned, and Watergate had taken over. It was one of the most exciting years in the game’s history, the first with the designated hitter and the last before arbitration and free agency. The two World Series opponents went head-to-head above the baby steps of a dynasty that soon dwarfed both league champions. It was a turbulent time for the country and the game, neither of which would ever be the same again.

    However, the Crown Prosecution Service refused to charge him, citing a lack of evidence.High-profile searches were conducted, yet Suzy’s body was never found; the trail that might lead investigators to her, long since lost.Haunted by another missing person case, investigator and former Scotland Yard detective, David Videcette, has spent five years painstakingly reinvestigating Suzy’s cold case disappearance.Through a series of incredible new witness interviews and fresh groundbreaking analysis, he uncovers piece by piece what happened to Suzy and why the case was never solved.People don't just disappear...

    To the south, through the Dardanelles and the Aegean Sea, lay the Mediterranean, around which the Greek, Roman, Persian, and Arab worlds revolved. To the north, through the Bosporus, lay the Black Sea, with its Russian and eastern European coastline. And across the narrow Bosporus was Asia Minor, bridge to the Orient. Because of its strategic location, the city on the Golden Horn was coveted by a succession of different peoples. But even though it frequently was under siege, even though control of it often changed hands, and even though, indeed, it was conquered and leveled more than once, the city proved to be virtually immortal. Founded nearly twenty-seven centuries ago as the Greek colony of Byzantium, the city was harassed by the barbaric Thracians, attacked by the Persians, vied for by the Athenians and Spartans. Weakened and dispirited, its citizens finally were forced to seek the protection of Rome, and the city became little more than a Roman outpost. Then, in the fourth century, the Roman Emperor Constantine I decided to build his capital on the site. It was in the new city of Constantinople that ancient Greco-Roman culture was married to Eastern Orthodox Christianity and that Western civilization became Christian civilization. As the center of the vast Byzantine Empire, the city was one of the richest and most important on earth. But because of its wealth, it was sacked by the Crusaders in 1204. And because of its strategic location, it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Since then, as the city of Istanbul, it has remained an international metropolis, a city of East and West, a city whose great paintings, mosaics, statuary, and architecture reflect the many cultures that have been centered there and the many ages the city has survived. Here is its story.

    Who's the greatest quarterback of all time, Joe Montana or Tom Brady? Brett Favre? Who was the most dominate linebacker, Lawrence Taylor or Dick Butkus? Was Deion Sanders better than Ronnie Lott? Are the Packers of Steelers the greatest franchise ever? Sports Illustrated has polled its pro football experts to determine the Top 10 in more than 20 categories. The rankings appear alongside stirring photography and classic stories from SI's archives. This is the best of the NFL's best, or more simply, FOOTBALL'S GREATEST.

    . . . Steffy meets the burden by demonstrating that corporate behemoth BP (formerly British Petroleum) could have prevented the 11 deaths on April 20, 2010, aboard the Deepwater Horizon. . . . The deaths and the gigantic oil spill following the sinking of Deepwater Horizon will surely become a landmark of corporate ineptness and greed for the remainder of human history, thanks in part to Steffy's remarkable account." San Antonio Express-News "Steffy has produced a fascinating, gripping, revealing account. . . . The book details events aboard the Deepwater Horizon in April of 2010 to start, but it digs deeper into what is revealed as a culture of cost-cutting boiling over within BP. Steffy documents years of incidents and poor management decisions, detailing the rise of key characters like John Browne and Tony Hayward alongside riveting outlines of horrifying events in Texas City and at other BP locations. . . . The book reads like fiction at times, with the author's heavily-detailed accounts of explosions and conversations creating vivid, nearly fantastical images. The tragic history of BP is all-too-real, though, as the lost lives and environmental damage certainly attest to.. . . Steffy is a thorough, straightforward author. His concerns largely lie with the loss of life and the general culture of cost-cutting of BP, painting an apt and terrifying picture of rampant, steady, costly neglect." Seattle Post Intelligencer "Steffy provides valuable insight and crucial corporate context in explaining how so much oil ended up in the Gulf of Mexico." BusinessWeek "[Steffy's] investigations reveal a corporate culture of cost-cutting initiatives that put profits ahead of workers' lives and the environment, with repeated safety violations and an abysmal accident history. . . . Steffy details how, in the context of BP's record, the disaster was just part of a pattern of poor decision making in the relentless pursuit by BP to become the largest and most profitable oil company in the world." Booklist About the BookAs night settled on April 20, 2010, a series of explosions rocked Deepwater Horizon, the immense semisubmersible drilling platform leased by British Petroleum, located 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. The ensuing inferno claimed 11 lives, and it would rage uncontained for two days, until its wreckage sank to a final resting place nearly a mile beneath the waves. On the ocean floor, the unit's wellhead erupted. Over the next ten weeks, as repeated attempts to cap the geyser failed, an estimated 200 million gallons of oil--the equivalent of 20 Exxon Valdez spills--spewed into the Gulf of Mexico, eventually lapping up on beaches as far away as Florida.Drowning in Oil, by award-winning Houston Chronicle business reporter and columnist Loren Steffy--considered by many to be the writer with the best access to the story--is an unprecedented and gripping narrative of this catastrophe and how BP's winner-take-all business culture made it all but inevitable.Through never-before-published interviews with BP executives and employees, environmental experts, and oil industry insiders, Steffy takes us behind the scenes of 100 years of BP corporate history. Beginning with the conglomerate's early gambits in the Middle East to its recent ascent among energy titans, Steff unearths the roots of the Gulf oil spill in the unwritten bargain between oil producers and consumers, whose insatiable appetites drive the search for new supplies faster, farther, and deeper.Beyond this, the Deepwater Horizon disaster took place after a history of cost cutting in pursuit of profits, particularly under the guidance of its two most recent ex-CEOs, John Browne and Anthony Hayward.Exhaustively researched and documented, Drowning in Oil is the first in-depth examination of how a lack of corporate responsibility and government oversight led to the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. It is an objective, no-punches-pulled account of the energy industry: its environmental impact and the intense competition among stakeholders in today's oil markets.This book puts all the pieces together, offering a definitive account of BP's pursuit of outsized profits as the industrial world awakens to the grim realities of Peak Oil."They fumbled around the darkened room and found an instruction manual. By flashlight, they read the starting procedures. They were doing everything right. After five or six futile tries, they gave up and headed back toward the bridge. Back on the bridge, alarms were shrieking and the captain knew they were running out of time. The subsea engineer had hit the emergency disconnect for the well, and although the control panel showed the rig should be free, it wasn't. The hydraulics were dead. Fire continued to shoot from the top of the derrick. The rig had no power, and without power, it had no pumps for the firefighting equipment, no way to shut off the flow of gas from the well, and no way to disconnect the rig from the flaming umbilical that had it tethered to the wellhead." --from Drowning in Oil

    Each of the ten chapters is a virtual time capsule which reminds, as we plunge headlong into the future, of the richness and importance of our past. Illustrations throughout.

    Touchdown could mean that we've just won another football National Championship or it could indicate that a tornado is on the ground.  I could never be a storm chaser. I'm the one the storm chases. Funnels circle around me like shark fins as I bow my head in a school hallway, kneel down in a convent, or give birth to a newborn baby wailing in unison with the tornado sirens.  I huddle with toddlers in showers and beg for shelter in a McDonald's freezer. I remain a sitting duck in a second-floor apartment, and find myself in the wrong place at the wrong time while in the emergency room with storm victims.Life in the Rocket City is a thrill ride which is not for the faint of heart, this I know. So brace yourself for a front row seat on a ride through Tornado Valley! Alabama is the home of the world's deadliest twisters, and Huntsville is in the heart of the arena. Our space history is out of this world, but our tornado history will blow you away.Take a rollercoaster ride through the history of Alabama tornadoes before plunging into the gripping story of the Day of Devastation. Witness the stars falling on Alabama in 1833. Then get ready for the sky to fall! The plot twists as Huntsville's torrid tornado past comes alive in the 1974 Super Tornado Outbreak. The rollercoaster corkscrews as it encounters an unexpected twister in 1989 that slingshots the reader into the angry vortex on Airport Road. The ride cruises before taking another gut-wrenching dive that catapults its riders into an inverted twist from yet another Anderson Hills tornado in 1995. The town turns upside-down but Huntsville survives, revives, and thrives. But the worst is yet to come. Another tornado season is just around the corner. Beware of the month of April, especially on a Wednesday.The warning sirens wail, we're bombarded by softball-sized hail, and an EF3 tornado slams into the jail. It's just another day in Alabama, but the countdown clock is ticking. The next tornado warning could be "the one." Our voice drops to a whisper when we mention an EF5. We realize life is too short. The coaster accelerates. Can you feel the torque? We have no idea what's around the next bend. Suddenly, the nightmare comes true as the ride zooms out of control, this time in a free-fall on April 27, 2011. Alabama is bombarded by a record 62 tornadoes in one day. Abruptly, the ride comes to a screeching halt. The adrenaline rush subsides. You've just experienced Huntsville's Havoc. Immediately the passengers ask one another, "Do you want to ride again?" Some will and some swear, never again.

    John Bell Hood and his Army of Tennessee had dreams of capturing Nashville and marching on to the Ohio River, but a small Union force under Hood's old West Point roommate stood between him and the state capital. In a desperate attempt to smash John Schofield's line at Franklin, Hood threw most of his men against the Union works, centered on the house of a family named Carter, and lost 30 percent of his attacking force in one afternoon, crippling his army and setting it up for a knockout blow at Nashville two weeks later. With firsthand accounts, letters and diary entries from the Carter House Archives, local historian James R. Knight paints a vivid picture of this gruesome conflict.

    Holliday, D. D. S., better known as Doc Holliday, has become a legendary figure in the history of the American West. In Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait, Karen Holliday Tanner reveals the real man behind the legend. Shedding light on Holliday’s early years, in a prominent Georgia family during the Civil War and Reconstruction, she examines the elements that shaped his destiny: his birth defect, the death of his mother and estrangement from his father, and the diagnosis of tuberculosis, which led to his journey west. The influence of Holliday’s genteel upbringing never disappeared, but it was increasingly overshadowed by his emerging western personality. Holliday himself nurtured his image as a frontier gambler and gunman.Using previously undisclosed family documents and reminiscences as well as other primary sources, Tanner documents the true story of Doc’s friendship with the Earp brothers and his run-ins with the law, including the climactic shootout at the O. K. Corral and its aftermath.This first authoritative biography of Doc Holliday should appeal both to historians of the West and to general readers who are interested in his poignant story.