Vietnam Saga: Exploits of a combat helicopter pilot


Stan Corvin - 2017
    Army as a two-tour helicopter pilot in Vietnam. It is a true-life story of a pilot who fought for freedom and often his very life. Vietnams Saga is also a story about the meaning of life. Standing back from his war experience, Stan reflects on his ever-present faith and how it carried him through this challenging period of his life. Originally written as a legacy to Stan Corvin’s family- something that will be passed down for many generations-Vietnam Saga is now an opportunity for you to share in the legacy and the personal recollections, memories, thoughts, fears and shed tears of a decorated and dedicated American military pilot. The book also contains numerous photos.

Best Stories from Around the World


Deepa Agarwal - 2017
    Wells, Conan Doyle, Washington Irving and many more. Hailing from different countries such as America, Ireland, the United Kingdom and India, this book is an entertaining consolidation of diverse stories which cover a broad range of topics and themes. While ‘The Gift of the Magi’ resonates with the sense of love and loss, ‘The Selfish Giant’ and ‘Rip Van Winkle’ relives our childhood. Some stories warm your heart, some make you think and some delight you with their magical language while at the same time they explore universal themes and arouse a gamut of responses. A must-have, this book offers a plethora of classics to read and enjoy for any lover of a good story.

GOD & SPIES: RECENTLY DECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET OPERATION


Garry Matheny - 2018
    Author GM Matheny was a US Navy saturation diver on the nuclear submarine USS Halibut. Involved in Operation Ivy Bells. America's most important (and most dangerous of the Cold War) clandestine operations. If you like good old fashioned American bravado, espionage and American history, you will enjoy this book. GOD & SPIES is a firsthand account of America's greatest intelligence coup! Operation Ivy Bells was not a onetime intercept of foreign intelligence but an ongoing operation of multiple Soviet military channels! Another reason for the high interest in our operation was the audacious nature in which it was done—with not one person risking his neck but the crews of two US Navy nuclear submarines which rendezvoused in Soviet territorial waters. “How did I end up as a navy diver, four hundred feet down in a frigid Russian sea? After making my dad totally disgusted with me, I set out to make him happy. ‘Honor thy father’ - I struggled with a decision to serve God. ‘Lord, I will give my life to you and serve you if you let me make this dive.’ But I had the impression He only wanted to know one thing: ‘What if I do not let you? Will you serve me anyway?’”

Into the Darkness: The Harrowing True Story of the Titanic Disaster: Riveting First-Hand Accounts of Agony, Sacrifice and Survival


Alan J. Rockwell - 2017
    No human being who stood on her decks that fateful night was alive to commemorate the event on its 100th anniversary. Their stories are with us, however, and the lessons remain. From the moment the world learned the Titanic had sunk, we wanted to know, who had survived? Those answers didn’t come until the evening of Thursday, April 18, 1912―when the Cunard liner Carpathia finally reached New York with the 706 survivors who had been recovered from Titanic’s lifeboats. Harold Bride, “Titanic’s surviving wireless operator,” relayed the story of the ship’s band. “The way the band kept playing was a noble thing. I heard it first while still we were working wireless when there was a ragtime tune for us. The last I saw of the band, when I was floating out in the sea with my lifebelt on, it was still on deck playing ‘Autumn.’ How they ever did it I cannot imagine.” There were stories of heroism―such as that of Edith Evans, who was waiting to board collapsible Lifeboat D, the last boat to leave Titanic, when she turned to Caroline Brown and said, “You go first. You have children waiting at home.” The sacrifice cost Evans her life, but as Mrs. Brown said later, “It was a heroic sacrifice, and as long as I live I shall hold her memory dear as my preserver, who preferred to die so that I might live.” There was mystery. There was bravery. There was suspense. There was cowardice. Most men who survived found themselves trying to explain how they survived when women and children had died. But mostly, there was loss. On her return to New York after picking up Titanic’s survivors, Carpathia had become known as a ship of widows. Rene Harris, who lost her husband, Broadway producer Henry Harris, in the disaster, later spoke of her loss when she said, “It was not a night to remember. It was a night to forget.” Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished letters, memoirs, and diaries as well as interviews with survivors and family members, veteran author and writer Alan Rockwell brings to life the colorful voices and the harrowing experiences of many of those who lived to tell their story. More than 100 years after the RMS Titanic met its fatal end, the story of the tragic wreck continues to fascinate people worldwide. Though many survivors and their family members disappeared into obscurity or were hesitant to talk about what they went through, others were willing to share their experiences during the wreck and in its aftermath. This book recounts many of these first-hand accounts in graphic, compelling detail.

Torpedo 8: The Story of Swede Larsen’s Bomber Squadron


Ira Wolfert - 1943
    VT-8 rose from the ashes of the Battle of Midway to become an indispensable air arm in the series of engagements for the Solomon Islands and beyond. In three months, the crack squadron carried out thirty-nine attack missions, sixteen against ships, twenty-three against ground targets. Their motto following the tragedy at Midway was "Attack and Revenge." Herman Wouk paid homage to the squadron in his 1971 novel War and Remembrance, referring to the pilots as, "The soul of America in action." *Includes annotations and images.

Gunner Officer on the Western Front: The Story of a Prime Minister's Son at War


Herbert Asquith - 2018
    The author witnessed the mud-soaked agony of the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, and the rapidly moving events of the following year. The book contains one of the most extraordinary accounts of the German spring offensive in 1918, from the point of view of a gunner officer with a grandstand view of the ruthless German advance.The author's father was Prime Minister at the outbreak of the first world war. The author's three brothers also served during the war; his eldest brother died during the Battle of the Somme.

Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Casebook


Gene H. Bell-Villada - 2002
    Each casebook reprints documents relating to a work's historical context and reception, presents the best critical studies, and, when possible, features an interview with the author. Accessible and informative to scholars, students, and nonspecialist readers alike, the books in this series provide a wide range of critical and informative commentaries on major texts. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is arguably the most important novel in twentieth-century Latin American literature. This Casebook features ten critical articles on Garcia Marquez's great work. Carefully selected from the most important work on the novel over the past three decades, they include pieces by Carlos Fuentes, Iris Zavala, James Higgins, Jean Franco, Michael Wood, and Gene H. Bell-Villada. Among the intriguing aspects of the work discussed are its mythic dimension, its "magical" side, its representations of women, its relationship with past chronicles of exploration and discovery, its portrayals of Western power and imperialism, its astounding diffusion throughout the globe and the media, and its simple truth-telling, its fidelity to the tangled history of Latin America. The book incorporates several theoretical approaches--historical, feminist, postcolonial; the first English translation of Fuentes's renowned, oft-cited, eight page meditation on the work; a general introduction; and a 1982 interview with Garcia Marquez.

The Weekend That Changed Wall Street: An Eyewitness Account


Maria Bartiromo - 2010
     During a single historic weekend (September 12-14, 2008) the fate of Lehman Brothers was sealed, Merrill Lynch barely survived, and AIG became a ward of the federal government. Top CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo spent the entire weekend taking frantic phone calls from the most powerful players on Wall Street and in Washington, as they toiled to keep the economy from complete collapse. Those CEOs and dozens of other sources gave Bartiromo behind-the-scenes details unavailable to other members of the media, of the crisis and its aftermath. Now she draws on her high-level network to provide an eyewitness account of the biggest events of the financial crisis including at length interviews with former treasury secretary Henry Paulson, former AIG chairman Hank Greenberg, former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain, and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, among many others. Writing with both authority and dramatic flair, Bartiromo weaves a thrilling narrative that will make news. She also tackles the big questions: how did an unmatched period of market euphoria and growth turn sour, catapulting the economy into a dangerous slide? And in the long run, how will the near-catastrophe really change Wall Street?

Herman Melville: Moby-Dick: Essays - Articles - Reviews


Nick Selby - 1998
    This "Columbia Critical Guide" starts with extracts from Melville's own letters and essays and from early reviews of "Moby-Dick" that set the terms for later critical evaluations. Subsequent chapters deal with the "Melville Revival" of the 1920s and the novel's central place in the establishment, growth, and reassessment of American Studies in the 1940s and 1950s. The final chapters examine postmodern New Americanist readings of the text, and how these provide new models for thinking about American culture.

So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures


Maureen Corrigan - 2014
    It's a book that has remained current for over half a century, fighting off critics and changing tastes in fiction. But do even its biggest fans know all there is to appreciate about The Great Gatsby?Maureen Corrigan, the book critic for "Fresh Air" and a Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out that while Gatsby may be the novel most Americans have read, it's also the ones most of us read too soon -- when we were "too young, too defensive emotionally, too ignorant about the life-deforming powers of regret" to really understand all that Fitzgerald was saying ("it's not the green light, stupid, it's Gatsby's reaching for it," as she puts it). No matter when or how recently you've read the novel, Corrigan offers a fresh perspective on what makes it so enduringly relevant and powerful. Drawing on her experience as a reader, lecturer, and critic, her book will be a rousing consideration of Gatsby: not just its literary achievements, but also its path to "classic" (its initial lukewarm reception has been a form of cold comfort to struggling novelists for decades), its under-acknowledged debt to hard-boiled crime fiction, its commentaries on race, class, and gender.With rigor, wit, and an evangelistic persuasiveness, Corrigan will leave readers inspired to grab their old paperback copies of Gatsby and re-experience this great novel in an entirely new light.

Fan Mail


Nick Hornby - 2013
    But occasionally over the years he’s found it impossible to turn down a particularly enticing assignment or, in the case of the 2012-13 Premier League, just unable to resist writing about that most spectacular of seasons. Fortunately for those who love great writing about soccer, all these fugitive pieces are collected in Fan Mail. You can follow the fortunes, as Hornby did, of a hopelessly out-of-their-depth Cambridge United in the old Second Division, discover why Perry Groves was an unlikely hero among Arsenal fans, enjoy Hornby trying to explain the World Cup to Americans, and share with him the pain of watching his national team.

The Lincoln Story Book A Judicious Collection of the Best Stories and Anecdotes of the Great President, Many Appearing Here for the First Time in Book Form


Henry Llewellyn Williams - 2005
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

1,077 Fun Facts: To Leave You In Disbelief


Charles Klotz - 2020
    

Hemingway: The Writer as Artist


Carlos Baker - 1952
    Professor Baker has also written two new chapters in which he discusses Hemingway's two posthumously published books, A Movable Feast and Islands in the Stream.CONTENTS: Introduction. I. The Slopes of Montparnasse. II. The Making of Americans. III. The Way It Was. IV. The Wastelanders. V. The Mountain and the Plain. VI. The First Forty-Five Stories. VII. The Spanish Earth. VIII. The Green Hills of Africa. IX. Depression at Key West. X. The Spanish Tragedy. XI. The River and the Trees. XII. The Ancient Mariner. XIII. The Death of the Lion. XIV. Looking Backward. XV. Islands in the Stream.

A TASTE OF THE TRENCHES: The story of a soldier on the Western Front


D. Reitz - 2015
     Deneys Reitz was an unusual soldier. Having fought against the British in the Boer War, in 1917 he decided to go to London, in order to join the British Army. Presenting himself at a recruiting office in Chelsea, he enlisted as a private soldier. Shortly afterwards he was commissioned, and was sent to the Western Front in September 1917. Whilst on the Western Front, he witnessed the German spring offensive in 1918, and the allied counter-attack which followed. He was wounded twice as well as being gassed. Reitz experienced more than his fair share of the difficulties of trench warfare, from finding himself living in a trench whose sides were built out of sandbag-covered corpses, to being stretchered into a Casualty Clearing Station with serious wounds.