Winston Churchill, CEO: 25 Lessons for Bold Business Leaders


Alan Axelrod - 2009
    Axelrod looks at this much-studied figure in a way nobody has before: he explores 25 key facets of Churchill’s leadership style and decision-making from his early years as a junior cavalry officer and journalist to his role throughout WWII and demonstrates how he was able to overcome near-impossible obstacles. Fluidly and engagingly written, each lesson is enlivened with a vivid vignette from Churchill’s life. As always, Axelrod’s penetrating analysis will instruct, inspire, and encourage those who lead business enterprises, large and small.

You: Staying Young: The Owner's Manual for Extending Your Warranty


Michael F. Roizen - 2007
    Oz and Roizen—the bestselling coauthors of the blockbuster YOU series—present their #1 New York Times bestselling indispensable guide to maintaining vibrant health, improving longevity, and aging gracefully.The body is the most fascinating machine ever created, and nobody talks about it in ways that are as illuminating and compelling as Dr. Michael Roizen and Dr. Mehmet Oz. Most people think of the aging of our bodies the same way we think of the aging of our cars: the older we get, the more inevitable it is that we're going to break down. Most of us believe that at age 40 or so, we begin the slow and steady decline of our minds, our eyes, our ears, our joints, our arteries, our libido, and every other system that affects the quality of life (and how long we live it). But according to Dr. Roizen and Dr. Oz, that's a mistake. Aging isn't a decline in our systems. It's actually very purposeful. The very systems and biological processes that age us are designed to help us when we're a little bit younger. So what's our role as part of the aging population? To learn how those systems work so we can reprogram them to work the way they did when we were younger. Your goal should be: die young at any age. That means you live a high quality of life (with everything from working joints to working genitals) until the day you die. At the core of this landmark book are the Major Agers—14 biological processes that control your rate of aging. Some you've heard of, some you haven't, and some you never knew contributed to the aging process. Some speed decline, others inhibit your repair mechanisms. These Major Agers are everything from short telomeres and inefficient mitochondria to stem cells and wacky hormones. The doctors explain the principles of longevity and many of the causes of aging and how to fight the effects. The climax of the book is a 14-day plan to help you along your path to staying young. The doctors want you to be able to integrate important processes into your daily life in order to make staying young routine, but first you'll need to measure your real age and health right now. Staying young encompasses your emotions and mental health as well as your exercise habits, eating habits, personal hygiene, and genes, among other things. Wouldn't you like to know how to prevent your body from aging badly? The original YOU book showed how bodies work in general, and YOU: On a Diet explained how bodies lose weight and stay fit. Now in YOU: Staying Young, Drs. Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz illuminate the mysterious mechanisms with a lively metaphor—the modern city. What differentiates a vibrant and thriving city that ages gracefully from one that is worn down and rusted out? Despite genetic differences, which are like the geography upon which the city is built, cities age differently because of the way residents treat their education system (stem cells), power plants (mitochondria), electrical grids (brains), transportation routes (blood vessels), and landfills (fat). You—as mayor, resident, and street cleaner—have the power to balance your biological budget to ensure a life that's both long and strong. Thankfully, just as cities can invest in renewal and improving their repair processes, so can you. YOU: Staying Young is filled with signature YOU Tools, including YOU Tests, YOU Tips, and visual and verbal metaphors to bring the science to life.

1801 Home Remedies


Linda Calabresi - 2004
    Presented in handy A-Z format; includes 20 all-time best household healers.

Passion of Command


B.P. McCoy - 2012
    McCoy, USMCIf you read one book in your lifetime on the warrior culture, this is that book. Active-duty Marine Colonel B. P. McCoy expertly relates his innermost thoughts and feelings, drawing on his mastery of personal leadership. Colonel McCoy understands the intangibles that make up our modern-day warriors, those young Americans on whom we place so much responsibility when we send them into harm's way.The author begins with the institutional design that leads some to believe that because of a manifestation of the American culture in which we're taught to kill from a young age through the use of video games, the task of a warrior would somehow be easily executed, based solely on these inequities. To the contrary, Colonel McCoy points out that the battlefield commander is hampered by the societal digression and the simple fact that young Americans can point a video weapon and kill, never feeling the true effects or suffering associated with actual combat. He explains that our culture is not that of predator, but more of prey. Through examples, he concludes that the American society places grave consequence on the taking of a human life, while we still require our young to bear arms against our enemies and to extinguish life. Only through superb training, conducted by passionate leaders, do our young Americans become moral warriors.Colonel McCoy describes the total cost of combat and the price paid by all who choose to become warriors. By pointing to positive training examples and keying on the effects of situational training—battle drills—conducted prior to and during combat, he successfully trained his Marines and developed the proper habits that would be the difference between life and death during combat. He directed his Marines to become "experts in the application of violence," without sacrificing their humanity. In the book, it became clear that he found the combination that allowed his men to achieve tactical superiority in every aspect.The essence of war is violence and the act of killing legitimate human targets without hesitation. To accomplish this, he instituted meaningful training and used his refined principles as a human being to guide him in the leadership and administration on the moral code that rules the field of battle. He is the perfect example of all that we hold dear in our warrior culture. He loved his men, showed them the right way through his personal example, guided his actions with passion and relayed his feelings to his men completely. He is quick to note his own shortcomings and how he overcame them and was the inspiration to the team that triumphed when all Marines survived the day.Emotionally riveting, The Passion of Command provides inside information into the warrior culture and allows one to grasp the complexities when hardening the mind, body, and spirit for the rigors of combat. Most find it difficult to communicate the human effects of combat to people who have never experienced the harsh realities associated with actually engaging an enemy. Colonel McCoy doesn't have that problem. He has opened the door and let the reader in

Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball


Harvey Frommer - 1992
    Frommer paints Shoeless Joe as a baseball natural ("Joe Jackson hit the ball harder than any man ever to play baseball"-Ty Cobb), an illiterate hick (his table untemsils consisted of knife and fingers), and an innocent man snared by the greatest scandal in baseball history.

It Doesn't Take a Hero: The Autobiography of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf


Norman Schwarzkopf - 1992
    Only rarely does history grant a single  individual the ability, personal charisma, moral  force, and intelligence to command the respect,  admiration, and affection of an entire nation. But such a man is General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander  of the Allied Forces in the Gulf War. Now, in this  refreshingly candid and typically outspoken autobiography, General Schwarzkopf reviews his  remarkable life and career: the events, the adventures, and  the emotions that molded the character and shaped  the beliefs of this uniquely distinguished American leader.

Rangers Betrayed (Sgt. Dunn Novels Book 6)


Ronn Munsterman - 2016
    Army Ranger Sergeant Tom Dunn’s newest squad member has a dark secret. And a plan. Nazi Germany’s V2 rockets are streaking down on London, indiscriminately killing civilians. The Allies are desperate to find out how the weapons work. Dunn and his British counterpart, Commando Sergeant Malcolm Saunders, are assigned separate, but related missions. Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister of Armaments, is transporting ten completed V2 rocket engines to another manufacturing facility for installation into the deadly rockets. Thanks to Bletchley Park’s Ultra intelligence, the Allies know all about it. Dunn and his squad earn the assignment to intercept the rocket engines in western Germany. Meanwhile, Saunders and his men parachute into Poland, south of Warsaw, to retrieve a captured V2 rocket gyroscope as well as schematics for the rocket obtained by the Polish Resistance. His wedding day is a week away and he promised Sadie he’ll be there on time, but something goes wrong. Separated from his squad, he scrambles to reunite with his men in time to catch the only way home, but meets one obstacle after another. From their first moment in Germany, as Dunn’s men execute their mission, things go inexplicably wrong. Betrayed by one of his own, Dunn must rely on his quick thinking to get his men out of an impossible situation so they can complete their mission and capture the extremely valuable Nazi V2 rocket engines. In the sixth book of the Sgt. Dunn series, Munsterman continues to masterfully blend history with action-packed plots in another of his fast-paced WWII Action Thrillers.

Chasing Charlie: A Force Recon Marine in Vietnam


Richard Fleming - 2018
    Marine 1st Force Reconnaissance Company during the bloodiest years of the Vietnam War. Dropped deep into enemy territory, Recon relied on stealth and surprise to complete their mission--providing intelligence on enemy positions and conducting raids, prisoner snatches, and ambushes. Fleming's absorbing memoir recounts his transformation from idealistic recruit to cynical veteran as the war claimed the lives of his friends and the missions became ever more dangerous.

Empire Day (New England Book 1)


James Philip - 2018
     It is the day before Empire Day – 4th July - the day each year when the British Empire marks the brutal crushing of the rebellion dignified by the treachery of the fifty-six delegates to the Continental Congress who were so foolhardy as to sign the infamous Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on that day of infamy in 1776. It is nearly two hundred years since George Washington was killed and his Continental Army was destroyed in the Battle of Long Island and now New England, that most quintessentially loyal and ‘English’ imperial fiefdom – at least in the original, or ‘First Thirteen’ colonies - is about to celebrate its devotion to the Crown and the Old Country, of which it still views, in the main, as the ‘mother country’. Yet all is not roses. Since 1776 in a world of empires the British Empire has grown and prospered until now, it stands alone as the ultimate arbiter of global war and peace. The Royal Navy has enforced the global Pax Britannia for over a century since the World War of the 1860s established a lasting but increasingly tenuous ‘peace’ between the great powers. Nonetheless, while elsewhere the Empire may be creaking at the seams, struggling to come to terms with a growing desire for self-determination; thus far the Pax Britannica has survived – buttressed by the commercial and industrial powerhouse of New England stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific North West - intact for all that barely a year goes by without the outbreak of another small, colonial war somewhere... This said, the British ‘Imperial System’ remains the envy of its friends and enemies alike and nowhere has it been so successful as in North America, where peace and prosperity has ruled in the vast Canadian dominions and the twenty-nine old and recent colonies of the Commonwealth of New England for the best part of two centuries. In Whitehall every British government in living memory has complacently based its ‘American Policy’ on the one immutable, unchanging fact of New England politics; that the First Thirteen colonies will never agree with each other about anything, let alone that the sixteen ‘Johnny-come-lately’ new (that is, post-1776) colonies, protectorates, territories and possessions which comprise half the population and eight-tenths of the land area of New England, should ever have any say in their affairs! New England is a part of England and always will be because, axiomatically, it will never unite in a continental union. Notwithstanding, in the British body politic the myths and legends of that first late eighteenth-century rebellion in the New World still touches a raw nerve in the old country, much as in former epochs memories of Jacobin revolts, Oliver Cromwell and the Civil War still harry old deep-seated scars in the national psyche. Empire Day might not have originally been conceived as a celebration of the saving of the first British Empire and but as time has gone by it has come to symbolise the one, ineluctable truth about the Empire: that New England is the rock upon which all else stands, an empire within an empire that is greater than the sum of all the other parts of the great imperium ruled from London. In past times a troubling question has been whispered in the corridors of power in London: what would happen to the Empire – and the Pax Britannica – if the British hold on New England was ever to be loosened? Generations of British politicians have always known that if the question was ever to be asked again in earnest it has but one answer.

B-29 Superfortress (Annotated): The Plane that Won the War


Gene Gurney - 2015
    Author Gene Gurney takes the reader from the superplane’s inception, test flights and production to its combat deployments and its ultimate purpose of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Rogues and Heroes of Newport's Gilded Age


Edward Morris - 2012
    They built lavish villas designed by the best Beaux Arts–style architects of the time, including Richard Morris Hunt, Charles McKim and Robert Swain Peabody. America’s elite delighted in referring to these grand retreats as “summer cottages,” where they would play tennis and polo and sail their yachts along the shores of the Ocean State. The coachman had an important role as the discreet outdoor butler for Gilded Age gentlemen—not only was he in charge of the horses, but he also acted as a travel advisor and connoisseur of entertainment venues. From the driver’s seat, author and guide Edward Morris provides a diverse collection of biographical sketches that reveal the outrageous and opulent lives of some of America’s leading entrepreneurs.

A Headstrong Bride For His Nursing Heart


Evelyn Boyett - 2020
    A handsome engineer. And a conspiracy that just might take both their lives.Hope wants excitement and to escape from her humdrum existence. When she comes to the end of her life she wants to know that she truly lived. Making money and buying anything she wants in the city hasn’t brought her fulfillment, so maybe becoming a mail order bride out west will.Solomon has received his civil engineering degree while nursing a broken heart. He doesn’t have any interest anymore in marriage but agrees to take a mail order bride in order to make his grandfather happy. He never expected a woman like Hope. Or to fall in love.Solomon discovers that the company he works for is using dangerous nitroglycerin to speed up work on the railroad line even though many men have been injured and killed since they started using it. So now he has a decision to make. Will he stand up for the workers and help them get safe working conditions and better pay? Or will he keep his mouth shut and hold on to his job and his only way to support Hope?Hope and Solomon must work together to get justice for the workers. But when a former beau shows up and disrupts things, their fragile relationship is pushed to its limits, leaving them wondering whether getting married was a horrible mistake. Or if it’s possible to find in each other the love and happiness they’ve always longed for.

At Home with Diana


Deb Stratas - 2020
    Read her entire life story - the ups and the downs - from her birth to her final days. Victoria Arbiter, CNN Royal Correspondent praises At Home with Diana: “Packed full of historical facts, touching anecdotes and top tips for visiting, ‘At Home with Diana’ is the perfect addition to any royal lovers’ library. Taking readers on a poignant journey from home to home it serves as the perfect guide to the life and times of a shy young girl the world came to know as the People’s Princess. I thoroughly enjoyed it!"

3,001 Arabian Days: Growing Up in an American Oil Camp in Saudi Arabia (1953-1962) A Memoir


Rick Snedeker - 2018
     On a steamy August day in 1953, Rick Snedeker, then just three years old, stepped off an Arabian American Oil Co. (Aramco) company airliner with his family into a life as different from what they left behind as sandpaper is to silk. It was to prove fabulously exotic and at the same time just like “home” in many ways. In his charming memoir — 3,001 Arabian Days: Growing up in an American Oil Camp in Saudi Arabia (1953-1962) — author Snedeker describes via a series of vignettes his fond and strange remembrances of living for nearly a decade in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Aramco, then the fledgling national oil company, was in those years run by several American oil giants including Standard Oil, and was hastily hiring American experts to develop the far-flung Saudi oil fields. To ease life for the new residents, Aramco built comfortable communities, some aspects of which were reminiscent of how families lived in the States. While a child, Snedeker considered the camels, endless sand dunes and kindly Saudis that filled his childhood in the desert as nothing unusual. Kids enjoyed the live Nativity pageants at King’s Road baseball field; Santa’s arrival on a camel or by helicopter at Christmas; the crowded, boisterous annual tri-camp desert fairs; Pep Flakes cereal, powdered whole milk, and chocolate milkshakes churned in his dad’s new-fangled Waring blender; the Dining Hall’s culinary delights. Then, too, Aramcons occasionally had to confront dangerous diseases, some unknown in America (polio, for example, ravaged Dhahran children in the fifties). But everywhere, watchful eyes looked out for the kids, creating an enveloping sense of safety and security and, Snedeker recalls, a great deal of happiness. Aramco provided generous biannual “long vacations,” allowing round-the-world travel to visit the planet’s most glittering metropolises, unusual getaways and remote hideaways. London. Hong Kong. Zurich. Honolulu. Asmara. Bangkok. Venice. Hofuf. Bahrain. New York City. Being raised in the unique, exotic environment of oil-camp Dhahran made the kids who grew up there different from other American children. When the expatriate Aramco dependents returned to the U.S., they were often seen as “other” by their untraveled peers. But it all turned out fine, as the entertaining read of 3,001 Arabian Days makes clear.

Flotilla Attack


Duncan Harding - 2017
    The old sailors, who could remember her past, said that she was jinxed and ought never sail again. But in the last days of 1940, as the phoney war drew to an end, Britain needed every ship she could lay her hands on, to challenge the might of Hitler’s Kriegsmarine. So it was that Lieutenant-Commander John Lamb found himself commanding the old destroyer Rose, with a crew of misfits and troublemakers, and set sail across the dark and icy seas in a desperate race to prevent the German invasion of Norway.... Duncan Harding is a pseudonym for Charles Whiting (1926-2007), who also wrote as Leo Kessler and John Kerrigan. Charles Whiting volunteered for the Army aged 16 in 1943, where he saw active service in Belgium, Holland and Germany with the 52nd Reconnaissance Regiment. He has over 350 books to his credit, encompassing military history, espionage, biography and action fiction and holds the Sir George Dowty Prize for Literature.