Hailed for her lifesaving efforts by President Ulysses S. Grant, Admiral Dewey, Susan B. Anthony, and other luminaries of the day, Lewis was the first person awarded a Congressional medal for her years of bravery and extraordinary heroism. Weaving thrilling nautical adventures with tales of other female lighthouse keepers, this compelling biography opens a fascinating and previously unexplored chapter in the history of American women.

    He digs into the war’s major events and reveals the unknown, bizarre, and often wildly amusing things the participants were doing while breaking away from Great Britain.For example, conventional wisdom says that “no taxation without representation” was an important reason for the revolution, but not in the way we’ve been told. Colonists paid the wages of common-court judges, who were reluctant to rule against the men who paid their salaries. Therefore, duties on molasses (the key ingredient in rum) were generally unenforced until the British cut the tariff in half. Strange but true, the spark that touched off the revolution was in fact a tax cut.During the French and Indian War and then again in the first year of the revolution, the British were accused of biological warfare, infecting blankets with smallpox and then concealing them in Indian camps. So feared was the disease that soldiers began to illegally inoculate themselves before widespread vaccination was finally ordered for the army. Washington himself was immune, thanks to a Caribbean trip taken as a young man when his brother Lawrence sought a cure for tuberculosis. Lawrence wasn’t cured, but George was infected with smallpox in Barbados. As a young man in a warm climate, he survived. As an older man in a northern winter, however, the story of the father of our country might have had a different ending.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

    After his death, the contents of his studio, including thousands of glass negatives, were sold off for five dollars. For years the fragile negatives sat forgotten and deteriorating in cardboard boxes in an open carport. How did it happen, then, that the most implausible of events took place? That Disfarmer’s haunting portraits were retrieved from oblivion, that today they sell for upwards of $12,000 each at posh New York art galleries; his photographs proclaimed works of art by prestigious critics and journals and exhibited around the world? The story of Disfarmer’s rise to fame is a colorful, improbable, and ultimately fascinating one that involves an unlikely assortment of individuals. Would any of this have happened if a young New York photographer hadn't been so in love with a pretty model that he was willing to give up his career for her; if a preacher’s son from Arkansas hadn't spent 30 years in the Army Corps of Engineers mapping the U.S. from an airplane; if a magazine editor hadn't felt a strange and powerful connection to the work? The cast of characters includes these, plus a restless and wealthy young Chicago aristocrat and even a grandson of FDR. It’s a compelling story which reveals how these diverse people were part of a chain of events whose far-reaching consequences none of them could have foreseen, least of all the strange and reclusive genius of Heber Springs. Until now, the whole story has not been told.

    It combines authoritative research with a captivating style to bring our heritage home to us.

    Written by USA TODAY’s Washington Bureau chief Susan Page, this biography is informed by more than one hundred interviews with Bush friends and family members, hours of conversation with Mrs. Bush herself in the final six months of her life, and access to her diaries that spanned decades. THE MATRIARCH examines not only her public persona but also less well-known aspects of her remarkable life. As a girl in Rye, New York, Barbara Bush weathered criticism of her weight from her mother, barbs that left lifelong scars. As a young wife, she coped with the death of her three-year-old daughter from leukemia, a loss that changed her forever. In middle age, she grappled with depression so serious that she contemplated suicide. And as first the wife and then the mother of American presidents, she made history as the only woman to see — and advise — both her husband and son in the Oval Office.As with many women of her era, Barbara Bush was routinely underestimated, her contributions often neither recognized nor acknowledged. But she became an astute and trusted political campaign strategist and a beloved First Lady. She invested herself deeply in expanding literacy programs in America, played a critical role in the end of the Cold War, and led the way in demonstrating love and compassion to those with HIV/AIDS. With her cooperation, this book offers Barbara Bush’s last words for history — on the evolution of her party, on the role of women, on Donald Trump, and on her family’s legacy.Barbara Bush’s accomplishments, struggles, and contributions are many. Now, Susan Page explores them all in THE MATRIARCH, a groundbreaking book certain to cement Barbara Bush as one of the most unique and influential women in American history.

    Run-down yet romantic, The Big House stands not only as a cherished reminder of summer’s ephemeral pleasures but also as a powerful symbol of a vanishing way of life.

    It is both a story of a changing era and of an extraordinary team on a championship quest. Very few institutions in American sports can match the enduring excellence of the University of Alabama football program. Across a wide swath of the last century, the tradition-rich Crimson Tide has claimed twelve national championships, captured twenty-five conference titles, finished thirty-four times among the country's top ten, and played in fifty-three bowl games.Especially dominant during the era of the legendary Paul "Bear" Bryant, the larger-than-life figure who towered over the landscape like no man before or since, Alabama entered the 1966 season with the chance to become the first college football team to win three consecutive national championships. Every aspect of Bryant's grueling system was geared around competing for the big prize each and every year, and in 1966 the idea of the threepeat tantalized the players, pushing them toward greatness. Driven by Bryant's enthusiasm, dedication, and perseverance, players were made to believe in their team and themselves. Led by the electrifying force of quarterback Kenny "Snake" Stabler and one of the most punishing defenses in the storied annals of the Southeastern Conference, the Crimson Tide cruised to a magical season, finishing as the nation's only undefeated, untied team. But something happened on the way to the history books.The Missing Ring is the story of the one that got away, the one that haunts Alabama fans still, and native Alabamian Keith Dunnavant takes readers deep inside the Crimson Tide program during a more innocent time, before widespread telecasting, before scholarship limitations, before end-zone dances. Meticulously revealing the strategies, tactics, and personal dramas that bring the overachieving boys of 1966 to life, Dunnavant's insightful, anecdotally rich narrative shows how Bryant molded a diverse group of young men into a powerful force that overcame various obstacles to achieve perfection in an imperfect world.Set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, the still-escalating Vietnam War, and a world and a sport teetering on the brink of change in a variety of ways, The Missing Ring tells an important story about the collision between football and culture. Ultimately, it is this clash that produces the Crimson Tide's most implacable foe, enabling the greatest injustice in college football history. "Keith Dunnavant has written yet another fabulous book about the fabled Alabama football program. You will be amazed at how one of the great injustices in the history of college football cost them their rightful place in history. And you just thought the system was screwed up now." ---Jim Dent, author of The Junction Boys "Keith Dunnavant nails it: all the sacrifices the 1966 Alabama team made to win three national championships in a row, and how we were robbed at the ballot box."---Jerry Duncan, one of the boys of 1966 "Dunnavant infuses reportage and passion into a tale that every Alabamian of a certain age knows: For all the crying about Penn State in 1969, Penn State in 1994, or Auburn in 2004, no team ever got shafted the way the 1966 Crimson Tide did. It's all here: the churning legs, the churning stomachs, and the dreaded gym classes where Bear Bryant's boys made the sacrifices he demanded in order to become champions. They conquered their opponents on the field, but proved to be no match for the politics of the day off the field. The '66 Tide is still waiting for the Missing Ring. Thanks to Dunnavant, we don't have to." ---Ivan Maisel, senior writer, ESPN.com, and co-author of A War in Dixie "Absolutely stunning. The Missing Ring left me breathless. Keith Dunnavant has proven again why he is one of America's greatest sports authors and historians. With so much having been written about Bryant and Alabama, I had my doubts going into this book that there was something I didn't know or hadn't read. Yet Dunnavant has managed to strike gold with The Missing Ring in every way and shape imaginable. His quiet prose goes down as effortlessly as bourbon and branch water. Fans of college football will marvel at his painstaking research. Dunnavant turned the clock back forty years and it was 1966 all over again. The pain and the glory, the pride and the prejudice, all brought to life in the pages of this extraordinary book." ---Paul Finebaum, Paul Finebaum Radio Network

    Robert Dallek’s Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life takes a fresh look at the many compelling questions that have attracted all his biographers: how did a man who came from so privileged a background become the greatest presidential champion of the country’s needy? How did someone who never won recognition for his intellect foster revolutionary changes in the country’s economic and social institutions? How did Roosevelt work such a profound change in the country’s foreign relations? For FDR, politics was a far more interesting and fulfilling pursuit than the management of family fortunes or the indulgence of personal pleasure, and by the time he became president, he had commanded the love and affection of millions of people. While all Roosevelt’s biographers agree that the onset of polio at the age of thirty-nine endowed him with a much greater sense of humanity, Dallek sees the affliction as an insufficient explanation for his transformation into a masterful politician who would win an unprecedented four presidential terms, initiate landmark reforms that changed the American industrial system, and transform an isolationist country into an international superpower. Dallek attributes FDR’s success to two remarkable political insights. First, unlike any other president, he understood that effectiveness in the American political system depended on building a national consensus and commanding stable long-term popular support. Second, he made the presidency the central, most influential institution in modern America’s political system. In addressing the country’s international and domestic problems, Roosevelt recognized the vital importance of remaining closely attentive to the full range of public sentiment around policy-making decisions—perhaps FDR’s most enduring lesson in effective leadership.

    When they married in 1881, everyone expected that she would never concern herself with more than the traditional Prussian princess’s interests of Kirche, Küche, Kinder (church, kitchen, children). Yet within twenty years of his accession as William II, the last German Emperor, she would become in some ways the stronger character and steadying influence her increasingly neurotic and unstable husband required. This is the first biography of an often overlooked personality in modern history.

    Ricks, a dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, whose farsighted vision and inspired action preserved democracy from the threats of authoritarianism, from the left and right alike.Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930s—Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and deeds, against the totalitarian threat from both the left and the right. In a crucial moment, they responded first by seeking the facts of the matter, seeing through the lies and obfuscations, and then acting on their beliefs. Together, to an extent not sufficiently appreciated, they kept the West's compass set toward freedom as its due north.It's not easy to recall now how lonely a position both men once occupied. By the late 1930s, democracy was discredited in many circles and authoritarian rulers were everywhere in the ascent. There were some who decried the scourge of communism, but saw in Hitler and Mussolini men we could do business with, if not in fact saviors. And there were others who saw the Nazi and fascist threat as malign but tended to view communism as the path to salvation. Churchill and Orwell, on the other hand, had the foresight to see clearly that the issue was human freedom—that whatever its coloration, a government that denied its people basic freedoms was a totalitarian menace and had to be resisted.In the end, Churchill and Orwell proved their age's necessary men. The glorious climax of Churchill and Orwell is the work they both did in the decade of the 1940s to triumph over freedom's enemies. And though Churchill played the larger role in the defeat of Hitler and the Axis, Orwell's reckoning with the menace of authoritarian rule in Animal Farm and 1984 would define the stakes of the Cold War for its 50-year course and continues to give inspiration to fighters for freedom to this day. Taken together, in Thomas E. Ricks' masterful hands, their lives are a beautiful testament to the power of moral conviction and to the courage it can take to stay true to it, through thick and thin.

    She speaks with authority because she arrived there as a child in 1892, and with wide-eyed wonder saw the whole place turn to gold.With his divining rod, Mabel's father tapped gold ore on Beacon Hill but missed becoming a millionaire by selling his claim short. Nonetheless, life was rich for young Mabel in a booming town with points of interest like Poverty Gulch, the Continental Hotel, and a fantastic house called Finn's Folly; with characters around like the promoter Windy Joe and (seen from a distance) the madam Pearl De Vere; with something always going on, whether a celebration or a disastrous fire or train wreck or a no-nonsense miners' strike.Mabel Lee's book brings back a time and place with affection. The foreword is by Lowell Thomas, who was her pupil when she was a young schoolmarm in Cripple Creek.

    Having given birth to daughter after daughter after daughter, she becomes desperate and turns to the first of her mystical advisors, Msgr. Philippe, who persuades her, among other things, that she is invisible.And then comes the moment of her greatest triumph with the birth of her son and the heir to the throne of all the Russias, the Tsarevich Alexei.All four volumes are (planned) as follows:1. 'The Funeral Bride' 1884-1894 - published November 20152. 'The Empress of Tears' 1895-1904 - published March 20163. 'The Pride of Eagles' 1905-1914 - to be published by November 20164. 'No Greater Crown' 1914-1918 - to be published by April 2017

    They frequently recreate the actions of presidents, military leaders, and soldiers. From Captain America punching Hitler in the jaw on his very first cover, to The Punisher surviving the battle of Firebase Valley Forge, there are countless instances when the military has crossed over to the pages of comic books.Soldiers and superheroes: A veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Jason Inman re-discovered his childhood love of comic books during long days at the Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq. He couldn’t help but ask why so many comic books are filled with service members. Maybe it’s their loyalty to everyday citizens and the never-ending quest for justice. The men and women who lace up their books and sacrifice their lives know that battle can change a person. What kinds of soldiers were these fictional characters, and how were they changed by war?Discover the super soldiers in Marvel comics, DC comics and beyond: Super Soldiers: A Salute to the Comic Book Heroes and Villains Who Fought for Their Country looks at the intersection between war and pop culture to understand these questions and more. Each chapter revisits military comic book characters and compares them to personal stories from Inman’s military career. Describing superhero soldiers from DC comics and Marvel comics, including lesser-known characters lost to time.

    This sharply drawn and insightful account brings to life this modern-day emperor and the tumultuous era that he did so much to shape.   Jonathan Spence captures Mao in all his paradoxical grandeur and sheds light on the radical transformation he unleashed that still reverberates in China today.

    In the decades since his death in September 1973, millions have read THE HOBBIT, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, and THE SILMARILLION and become fascinated about the very private man behind the books. Born in South Africa in January 1892, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was orphaned in childhood and brought up in near-poverty. He served in the first World War, surviving the Battle of the Somme, where he lost many of the closest friends he'd ever had. After the war he returned to the academic life, achieving high repute as a scholar and university teacher, eventually becoming Merton Professor of English at Oxford where he was a close friend of C.S. Lewis and the other writers known as The Inklings.Then suddenly his life changed dramatically. One day while grading essay papers he found himself writing 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit' -- and worldwide renown awaited him. Humphrey Carpenter was given unrestricted access to all Tolkien's papers, and interviewed his friends and family. From these sources he follows the long and painful process of creation that produced THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE SILMARILLION and offers a wealth of information about the life and work of the twentieth century's most cherished author.