Book picks similar to
The Kingdom and the Republic: Sovereign Hawaiʻi and the Early United States by Noelani Arista
history
hawaii
books-i-need
world-history
If Kennedy Lived: The First and Second Terms of President John F. Kennedy: An Alternate History
Jeff Greenfield - 2013
What would happen to his life, his presidency, his country, his world?Now he presents his most compelling narrative of all about the historical event that has riveted us for fifty years. What if Kennedy were not killed that fateful day? What would the 1964 campaign have looked like? Would changes have been made to the ticket? How would Kennedy, in his second term, have approached Vietnam, civil rights, the Cold War? With Hoover as an enemy, would his indiscreet private life finally have become public? Would his health issues have become so severe as to literally cripple his presidency? And what small turns of fate in the days and years before Dallas might have kept him from ever reaching the White House in the first place?As with Then Everything Changed, the answers Greenfield provides and the scenarios he develops are startlingly realistic, rich in detail, shocking in their projections, but always deeply, remarkably plausible. It is a tour de force of American political history.
Black Skin Privilege and the American Dream
David Horowitz - 2013
Weatherman was a fringe group most of whose ideas were rejected by the dominant culture. But unfortunately their views on race were not. In succeeding decades the idea of "white skin privilege" became the new default position for racial crusaders and race hustlers alike who believed that white skin privilege was alive and well in our society -- not because white Americans were actively racist, but because they enjoyed the invisible privileges and prerogatives that go along with their skin color. In this searing pamphlet on the racial realities of contemporary America, David Horowitz and John Perazzo show that in fact the most insidious bias in our culture today is black skin privilege. Black skin privilege means the press will fail to report an epidemic of race riots targeting whites for beatings, shooting and other violence in major American cities over the last several years. Black skin privilege means that whites -- as in the case of the Duke lacrosse players -- will be presumed guilty of racial crimes when they are clearly innocent and then never accorded an apology by those who have stigmatized them. Black skin privilege has created an optical illusion in the liberal culture that white on black attacks are commonplace events when in fact there are five times as many black attacks on whites as the reverse. (As Horowitz and Perazzo note, in 2010, blacks committed more than 25 times the number of acts of interracial violence than whites did.) Black skin privilege exists in the affirmative action programs of our system of higher education and in our culture, where a black racist like Al Sharpton could be regarded by the national media as a civil rights leader and then hired as a TV anchor by NBC. This pamphlet gives the statistics and hard numbers the mainstream media conceal. It also probes the double standards and double talk that has come to dominate the way America talks when it talks about race.
When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods & Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age
Justin Kaplan - 2006
William Waldorf Astor (born 1848) and his cousin John Jacob Astor IV (born 1864) led incomparably privileged lives in the blaze of public attention. Novelist, sportsman, and inventor, John Jacob went down with the Titanic, after turbulent marital adventures and service in the Spanish-American War. Collector of art, antiquities, and stately homes, William Waldorf became a British subject and acquired the title of Viscount Astor. In New York during the 1890s and after, the two feuding Astors built monumental grand hotels, chief among them the original Waldorf-Astoria on lower Fifth Avenue. The Astor hotels transformed social behavior. Home of the chafing dish and the velvet rope, the Waldorf-Astoria drew the rich, famous, and fashionable. It was the setting for the most notorious society event of the era—a costume extravaganza put on by its hosts during a time of widespread need and unemployment. The celebrity-packed lobbies, public rooms, lavish suites, and exclusive restaurants of the grand hotels became distinctive theaters of modern life.
The Badlands: Decadent Playground of Old Peking
Paul French - 2012
Home to the city's drifters, misfits and the odd bohemian, it was a place of opium dens, divebars, brothels, flophouses and cabarets, and was infamous for its ability to satisfy every human desire from the exotically entertaining to the criminally depraved.These vignettes of eight non-Chinese residents of the precinct – White Russians, Americans and Europeans – bring the Badlands vividly back to life, providing a short but potent account of a place and a way of life until now largely forgotten, but here rendered unforgettable.
Crucible of Terror
Max Liebster - 2003
After his arrest, followed by four months of solitary confinement in a Nazi prison, Liebster plummets headlong into the nightmare
The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s
H.W. Brands - 1995
Sound familiar?"(Fritz Lanham, Houston Chronicle) Just as we do today, Americans of the 1890s faced changes in economics, politics, society, and technology that led to wrenching and sometimes violent tensions between rich and poor, capital and labor, white and black, East and West. In The Reckless Decade, H. W. Brands demonstrates that we can learn a lot about the contradictions that lie at the heart of America today by looking at them through the lens of the 1890s. The 1890s saw the closing of the American frontier and a shift toward imperialist ambitions. Populists and muckrakers grappled with robber barons and gold-bugs. Americans addressed the unfinished business of Reconstruction by separating blacks and whites. Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and other black leaders clashed over the proper response to continuing racial inequality. Those on top of the economic heap—Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan—created vast empires of wealth, while those at the bottom worked for dimes a day. Brands brings all this to life in a vivid narrative filled with larger-than-life characters facing momentous challenges as they worked toward an uncertain future.
Who Controls America
Mark Mullen - 2017
All of the mentioned are just puppets on an invisible string doing the biddings of a few unseen puppeteers. Yes, that’s right. A few elite and undisclosed organizations send our children off to war, restrict the growth of the middle class, and limit educational opportunities for American citizens. The sad truth is this is nothing new. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin warned of the dangers and destructive power of these elites if left unchecked. These few unchosen were able, and continue, to use the Federal Reserve Banking System, universities, and war to create economic recessions and depressions that provide unnoticed benefits to a select group of social manipulators. In this stunning new book, Mark Mullen takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of secret partnerships created by unfamiliar ideologues designed to acquire most of the nation’s wealth and power. In Who Controls America, Mullen shines a light on those few elites who place greed, power, and profits above the interests of the American citizen and the pursuit of the American Dream.
My Father's Island: A Galapagos Quest (Pelican Press)
Johanna Angermeyer - 1990
Like her father, she came to love the Galapagos and to dream of having a life there. Her experience was filled with the perils and incomparable pleasures of living on the Galapagos.
Too Rich: The Family Secrets of Doris Duke
Jason Thomas - 1995
This highly entertaining biography, written by Jason Thomas and culled from the recollections and family records of Duke's godson, Pony Duke, represents the only candid record of Doris Duke's remarkable life and highly controversial death. From early childhood—too rich to play with other children for fear of disease, kidnapping, or mixing with those of less desirable lineage—Doris was virtually imprisoned in a cold, sterile mansion on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue (the house reeked of ammonia used to keep her environment germ-free) with a powerful father and a bitter, blue-blooded mother. As she broke free into adulthood, Doris inherited a massive fortune and learned to live life on her own terms. She entered into an arranged marriage and later divorced (her first); she learned the ways of sex and desire in the arms of a muscular Hawaiian Olympic champion; she followed her next love into World War II and returned alone. And amid her numerous and headline-making affairs, Doris Duke increased her vast wealth. Her investments in real estate, art, and business allowed her to leave behind far more money than she inherited, something few heiresses can boast. She learned from an early age that those who befriended her mind or romanced her body more than likely desired her wallet, and this realization left Doris Duke a lonely woman.<br>From interviews, private family documents, and the words of Doris herself, Too Rich provides facts and insights never before unearthed by the outside media. Her bizarre adoption of a thirty-five-year-old woman, Chandi Heffner, and, in later years, sensational events surrounding Duke's death and suspected murder in 1993—including the inside story of her butler, Bernard Lafferty—are meticulously documented in this uniquely intimate portrait of one of the most interesting and controversial celebrities of the twentieth century.<br><br>PONY DUKE is Doris Duke's cousin and godson and one of the surviving members of the Duke clan. He is a self-employed businessman and rancher living in Montana. JASON THOMAS is a novelist and former nationally syndicated columnist.<br><br>She was the richest child born in America; she had the president's private phone number; her scandalous marriages and affairs—with an ambassador, Olympian, musician, politician, general, international stud, and movie star—were legendary. But who, really, was Doris Duke? Who was the mysterious woman behind the billions, who took private pleasure in singing gospel music, loving nature, and seducing men? What insurmountable rules and expectations of wealth corralled her life into the world of the lonely elite—and led, at the age of eighty, to her alleged murder?<br><br>Too Rich was made into a successful CBS television mini-series entitled Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke starring Richard Chamberlain and Lauren Bacall.
It's Just the Way It Was: Inside the War on the New England Mob and other stories
Joe Broadmeadow - 2019
Make no mistake about it, it was a war targeting the insidious nature of the mob and their detrimental effect on Rhode Island and throughout New England. Indeed, the book reveals the extensive nature of Organized Crime throughout the United States. From the opening moments detailing a mob enforcer’s near death in a hail of gunfire to the potentially deadly confrontation between then Detective Brendan Doherty and a notorious mob associate, Gerard Ouimette, this book puts you right there in the middle. Most books on the mob tell a sanitized story of guys who relished their time as mobsters. As Nicholas Pileggi, author of “Wiseguys,” put it, “most mob books are the egomaniacal ravings of an illiterate hood masquerading as a benevolent godfather.” This is not that kind of book. This is the story of the good guys. It’s just the way it was.
Sid James: A Biography
Cliff Goodwin - 1995
Covering Sid's early years in South Africa and life as a ladies' hairdresser, his obsession with gambling and women, his questioning by Scotland Yard in a murder case, Hancock's Half Hour and the Carry On films, and Sid's death on stage at the age of 63, Cliff Goodwin reveals the amazing truth behing the legend.
Post Mortem: Solving History's Great Medical Mysteries
Philip A. Mackowiak - 2007
of Maryland School of Medicine), offers case histories of the health problems of a dozen long-dead famous figures diagnosed from modern medical perspectives. Illustrations depict patients including the odd-looking Pharaoh Akhenaten, C
Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988
Jane Mayer - 1988
Then came the Iran-Contra scandal, and his once-charmed presidency began coming apart. This explosive book provides the first authoritative account of Reagan's second term White House--a book that is both a gripping narrative and a carefully documented investigation. 8-page photo insert.
Mark Steyn's Passing Parade
Mark Steyn - 2006
Inside you'll find Steyn's take on Ronald Reagan, Idi Amin, the Princess of Wales, Bob Hope, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Artie Shaw and Pope John Paul II - plus Zimbabwe's Reverend Canaan Banana, Scotty from Star Trek, Nixon's secretary and Gershwin's girlfriend. It's the passing parade of our times, from presidents and prime ministers to the guy who invented Cool Whip.