Book picks similar to
Dark Horse: A Biography of Wendell Willkie by Steve Neal
biography
united-states
american-politics
history
Wrestling Observer's Tributes: Remembering Some of the World's Greatest Wrestlers
Dave Meltzer - 2001
Book by Meltzer, Dave
Tony Accardo is Joe Batters
Neil Gordon - 2018
Throw in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and the murders of John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, Marilyn Monroe, Bugsy Siegel, Sam Giancana, Lucky Luciano, Tony the Ant Spilotro, Johnny Roselli and Jimmy Hoffa. Toss in Hollywood scandal and the mobbed up career of Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack. Now you can begin to grasp the epic story of Tony Accardo. Why has this story never been told? Accardo killed everyone in his path: family, friends, cops, reporters, movie stars, and politicians. Operating from deep within the shadows Tony influenced national policy, exploited the FBI, owned politicians, and fixed presidential elections. Connected to every gangster from Al Capone to Lucky Luciano to John Gotti, Joe Batters is the must-read that every Godfather fan is craving.
Greetings from Myanmar
David Bockino - 2016
Traversing the country, he encounters a pompous Western businessman swindling his way to millions, a local vendor with a flair for painting nudes, and long ago legends of a western circus. Sensitively written and expertly researched, Greetings from Myanmar: Exploring the Price of Progress in One of the Last Countries on Earth to Open for Business is the story of a flourishing nation still very much in limbo and an answer to the hard questions that arise when tourism not only charts, but shapes a place as well.
Dear Fran, Love Dulcie: Life and Death in the Hills and Hollows of Bygone Australia
Victoria Twead - 2021
Both are newly-weds; Dulcie has a baby girl and Fran is expecting a baby. But there the similarities end.Fran is a Detroit city girl enjoying modern conveniences. Dulcie is a pineapple farmer’s wife enduring the extremes of Australia. Bushfires, floods, cyclones, droughts, dingo attacks and accidents are all too common. Regardless, Dulcie’s optimism shines through, revealing her love of the land and fascination for the wild creatures that share her corner of Queensland.Each book purchased will help support Careflight, an Australian aero-medical charity that attends emergencies, however remote.
My Watch Volume 2: Political and Public Affairs
Olusegun Obasanjo - 2015
It is a memoir of a lifetime spent in service to country, of a man who has been destined with the watch, with the vigilance, with the responsibility to his people to speak up and speak out.My Watch spans large expanses of time, from the pre-colonial Owu history, to early Abeokuta and the last throes of an independent city state at turn-of-the-century colonial Nigeria, to the early life of its author, his civil war experience, his stewardship of the transitional government of 1976-1979, the interregnum, his second appearance on the national scene as a civilian president on Nigeria's return to democracy in 1999, the completion of the first civilian-civilian transfer of government in Nigeria's history that inaugurated the Yar'Adua presidency and signalled the end of Obasanjo's tenure in office, and the years hence.Presented in three volumes, this exquisitely narrated memoir, in turns intensely personal and broadly nationalistic and international, completes a trilogy of autobiographies—My Command, Not My Will, and My Watch—told by this sojourner of Nigerian and world history.
Young Einstein: From the Doxerl Affair to the Miracle Year
L. Randles Lagerstrom - 2013
In 1905 an unknown 26-year-old clerk at the Swiss Patent Office, who had supposedly failed math in school, burst on to the scientific scene and swept away the hidebound theories of the day. The clerk, Albert Einstein, introduced a new and unexpected understanding of the universe and launched the two great revolutions of twentieth-century physics, relativity and quantum mechanics. The obscure origin and wide-ranging brilliance of the work recalled Isaac Newton’s “annus mirabilis” (miracle year) of 1666, when as a 23-year-old seeking safety at his family manor from an outbreak of the plague, he invented calculus and laid the foundations for his theory of gravity. Like Newton, Einstein quickly became a scientific icon--the image of genius and, according to Time magazine, the Person of the Century.The actual story is much more interesting. Einstein himself once remarked that “science as something coming into being ... is just as subjectively, psychologically conditioned as are all other human endeavors.” In this profile, the historian of science L. Randles Lagerstrom takes you behind the myth and into the very human life of the young Einstein. From family rifts and girlfriend troubles to financial hardships and jobless anxieties, Einstein’s early years were typical of many young persons. And yet in the midst of it all, he also saw his way through to profound scientific insights. Drawing upon correspondence from Einstein, his family, and his friends, Lagerstrom brings to life the young Einstein and enables the reader to come away with a fuller and more appreciative understanding of Einstein the person and the origins of his revolutionary ideas.About the cover image: While walking to work six days a week as a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, Einstein would pass by the famous "Zytglogge" tower and its astronomical clocks. The daily juxtaposition was fitting, as the relative nature of time and clock synchronization would be one of his revolutionary discoveries in the miracle year of 1905.
Favre for the Record
Brett Favre - 1997
Born the son of an indomitable high school football coach in hardscrabble Kiln, Mississippi, Favre has gone on to become the NFL's most valuable player two years running (a feat equaled only by the legendary Joe Montana) and, after twenty-nine years, has brought the Lombardi Trophy back to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Favre has also paid dearly for his devotion to the brutal game of professional football. Priding himself on his ability to withstand incredible levels of physical pain and to continue playing when most players would head to the sidelines, Favre admitted last year to a dependency on Vicodin pain killers. But he faced his problem like he faces opposing defensive linemen, head-on, and voluntarily admitted himself into the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas for drug counseling. In Favre, Brett shares portions of his daily journal written during treatment and will reveal just what it took to break a debilitating habit. In the end, readers will be inspired by this small town son's sacrifice and struggle to make it to the NFL, his unwavering commitment to honor his profession, and his perseverance to realize his dream on his own terms.
Underneath the Southern Cross
Michael Hussey - 2013
This is THE cricket biography of 2013. Michael Hussey's huge popularity does not rest solely on his incredible playing record. Popularly known as Mr Cricket, he made his Test debut against the West Indies in Brisbane in November 2005, and has scored 6,183 Test runs over 78 Tests in his career. But to his fans, it is the way he plays the game rather than simply the sum of his achievements that marks him out as one of the best-loved cricketers of his generation. He is a middle-order maestro with a batting average of 51.52, but he has always played cricket with an integrity and sense of values that is the epitome of what cricket stands for. His autobiography takes you behind the scenes to his world of cricket. From his lengthy struggle to break into the Australian side, through to his masterly achievements in the Australian team, in ODI and Indian Premier League - this book follows his extraordinary cricket career., with plenty of surprisingly frank admissions & behind the scenes dramas.
Youth In Asia: 1968. Vietnam. The Central Highlands. Young Men Will Change. Some Will Die.
Allen Tiffany - 2015
Youth In Asia relives the friendships, loyalties and betrayals of young men in combat.
Written by an infantryman who served as both an enlisted man and an officer after the war, Youth In Asia presents a realistic account of five men of the 173rd Airborne Brigade separated from their unit in the darkness of a jungle night. After the furious fight for Hill 875 and the battles around Dak To, this story is set near the border with Cambodia as North Vietnamese Army units and Viet Cong irregulars are massing for the brutal Tet Offensive of 1968 that broke the back of America's war effort.It is a story of determination, triumph and loss. It is a story of furious, close combat in lethal firefights, and it is a story of confusion both on the battlefield and in the minds of young men a million miles from their homes. Those that survive will have changed. Forever.
Indian Depredations in Texas
J.W. Wilbarger - 1985
Frequently the two groups resorted to violence assert their rights to the lands. J. W. Wilbarger’s remarkable book Indian Depredations in Texas contains more than 250 separate narratives of attacks and counterattacks that occurred from the 1820s to the 1870s. Wilbarger, a pioneer who had emigrated to Texas in 1837, was fully aware of the dangers that he faced by living on the frontier of the American West as his own brother had miraculously survived being scalped and left for dead in 1833. Over the course of the next fifty years Wilbarger compiled accounts of Native American attacks that formed the basis of his book. Yet, rather than simply relying on hearsay and rumors of attacks, he sought out the victims and as he states in his Preface, many of the articles had been “written by others, who were either cognizant of the facts themselves or had obtained them from reliable sources." This book is fascinating work that remains an importance source covering the early settlement of the region by Americans, based on stories told by surviving pioneers. "unique among pioneer chronicles." — J. Frank Dobie J. B. Wilbarger was a Methodist minister, author and pioneer. He first moved West to Texas in 1837 at the urging of his brother Josiah Pugh Wilbarger. His book Indian Depredations in Texas was first published in 1889 and he passed away in 1892.
How Bernie Won: Inside the Revolution That's Taking Back Our Country--And Where We Go from Here
Jeff Weaver - 2018
He vowed not to run a negative campaign. He would focus on policies, not personalities. He would not be beholden to big money. He would actually make America great. Weaver also shows how they overcame significant challenges: A media that thrived on negative campaigns. A party that thrived on personalities. And a political system that thrived on big money. Weaver explains how Bernie beat them all and, in doing so, went from having little national name recognition when he entered to the race to being one of the most respected and well-known people in the world by its end--because, Weaver argues, Bernie won the race.He moved the discussion from the concerns of the 1% to those of the 99%. He forced the Democrats to remember their populist roots. And he showed that an outsider with real ideas and ways to get them done was more popular than someone propped up by backroom political sugar daddies.From holding bags of "Bernie buttons" and picket-stick signs, to managing thousands of campaign workers, to looking ahead to 2020, Weaver chronicles the birth of a revolution that didn't end in November 2016. It's only just begun.