Ten Days in a Mad-House


Nelly Bly - 1887
    Her memoirs of this event form the basis of "Ten Days in a Mad-House," which forever changed the way the world looks at treatment and housing of the insane.

My Uncle Martin's Big Heart


Angela Farris Watkins - 2010
    from his niece  My Uncle Martin’s Big Heart is a story about love: love between a young girl and her uncle, and all the love she sees her uncle share—with his family members, with his church congregation, and with all people. In this inspiring narrative about Martin Luther King Jr.—told by his niece—young readers will discover the story of the man behind the civil rights hero and activist, one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century.   As Angela Farris Watkins, PhD, introduces children to her uncle, she presents them with a rare glimpse into his life at home, including special family moments. What unfolds is a story of character and service to God, family, and mankind, and of how one man’s extraordinary love changed the history of the United States and the world.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession


Allison Hoover Bartlett - 2009
    Most thieves, of course, steal for profit. John Charles Gilkey steals purely for the love of books. In an attempt to understand him better, journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett plunged herself into the world of book lust and discovered just how dangerous it can be.John Gilkey is an obsessed, unrepentant book thief who has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of rare books from book fairs, stores, and libraries around the country. Ken Sanders is the self-appointed "bibliodick" (book dealer with a penchant for detective work) driven to catch him. Bartlett befriended both outlandish characters and found herself caught in the middle of efforts to recover hidden treasure. A cat-and-mouse chase that not only reveals exactly how Gilkey pulled off his dirtiest crimes, where he stashed the loot, and how Sanders ultimately caught him but also explores the romance of books, the lure to collect them, and the temptation to steal them. Bartlett looks at the history of book passion, collection, and theft through the ages, to examine the craving that makes some people willing to stop at nothing to possess the books they love.

101 Quotes and Sayings From Maya Angelou: Inspirational Quotes From Phenomenal Woman


Ronda Buckley - 2014
    Maya Angelou, she is a poet, writer of memoirs, novelist, educator, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker and human rights activists.

Undaunted Valor: An Assault Helicopter Unit in Vietnam


Matt Jackson - 2019
    From dodging enemy ground fire and RPGs, to constant mortar and rocket attacks on his base, Colonel Cory stared down the enemy to bring his fellow soldiers’ home.Join Colonel Cory as he recounts some of the most intense helicopter and ground combat of the Vietnam war from the eyes of a man who spent two combat tours there. From being shot down by enemy fire, to leading his air crew to repel an enemy assault, Colonel Cory’s firsthand accounts of the Vietnam War are awe inspiring. Awarded the Silver Star, and two Bronze Stars for Valor, Cory’s hair-raising accounts of what it was like to fly over the Jungles of Vietnam will make you feel as if you are right there with him. Grab your copy of this gripping, true-life story of an American war hero today!! Praise for Undaunted Valor – “If you ever wanted to know what it’s like to fly a helicopter in combat or what goes through the minds of those who do, you have to read this book. Incredible story of an American Hero!” – Author James Rosone of the Red Storm Series

Ten Hail Marys


Kate Howarth - 2010
    Abandoned by her mother as a baby and by her volatile grandmother as a young girl, Kate Howarth was shunted between Aboriginal relatives and expected to grow up fast. It was a childhood beset by hardship, abuse, profound grief, and poverty, but buoyed with the hope that one day she would make a better life for herself and her child. Incredibly moving, this is the compelling true story of a childhood lost and a young woman’s hard-won self-possession.

The Last Sheriff in Texas


James P. McCollom - 2017
    A divided populace who sees him as savior or sinner. Streets filled with guns. Anger toward those who can't speak English. The presence of the Klan. A media in its infancy, awakening to their ability to sway public discourse. This is not modern day America, but postwar Texas. Beeville was the most American of small towns--the place that GIs had fantasized about while fighting through the ruins of Europe, a place of good schools, clean streets, and churches. Old West justice ruled, as evidenced by a 1947 shootout when outlaws surprised popular sheriff Vail Ennis at a gas station and shot him five times, point blank, in the belly. Ellis managed to draw his gun and put three bullets in each assailant; he reloaded and put in each three more. Then he drove himself sixteen miles to a hospital. Time Magazine's full-page article on the shooting was seen by some as a referendum on law enforcement owing to the sheriff's extreme violence, but telegrams, cards, and flowers from all across America poured into the Beeville's tiny post office. Most of Beeville took comfort in knowing that Ennis kept them safe, that Texas was still Texas Yet when a second violent incident threw Ennis into the crosshairs of public opinion once again, his downfall was orchestrated by an unlikely figure: his close friend and Beeville's favorite son, Johnny Barnhart. Feeling the town had to take responsibility for the violence, Barnhart confronted and overthrew Ennis in the election of 1952: a landmark standoff between old Texas, with its culture of cowboy bravery and violence, and urban Texas, with its lawyers, oil institutions, and a growing Mexican population. The town would never be the same again. The Last Sheriff of Texas is a riveting narrative about the postwar American landscape, an era grappling with the same issues we continue to face today. Debate over excessive force in law enforcement, Anglo-Mexican relations, racism, gun control, the influence of the media, urban-rural conflict, the power of the oil industry, mistrust of politicians and the political process--all have surprising historical precedence in the story of Vail Ennis and Johnny Barnhart.

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln


Doris Kearns Goodwin - 2005
    Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry.Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires.It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war.We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through.This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history.

Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign


Jonathan Allen - 2017
    And of course she was supposed to win. How Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump is the tragic story of a sure thing gone off the rails. For every Comey revelation or hindsight acknowledgment about the electorate, no explanation of defeat can begin with anything other than the core problem of Hillary's campaign--the candidate herself. Through deep access to insiders from the top to the bottom of the campaign, political writers Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes have reconstructed the key decisions and unseized opportunities, the well-intentioned misfires and the hidden thorns that turned a winnable contest into a devastating loss. Drawing on the authors' deep knowledge of Hillary from their previous book, the acclaimed biography HRC, Shattered will offer an object lesson in how Hillary herself made victory an uphill battle, how her difficulty articulating a vision irreparably hobbled her impact with voters, and how the campaign failed to internalize the lessons of populist fury from the hard-fought primary against Bernie Sanders. Moving blow-by-blow from the campaign's difficult birth through the bewildering terror of election night, Shattered tells an unforgettable story with urgent lessons both political and personal, filled with revelations that will change the way readers understand just what happened to America on November 8, 2016.

Rush


Jayme H. Mansfield - 2017
    In competition with desperate homesteaders, ruthless land seekers, and a sheriff determined to see her fail, Mary rides out on a horse to strike her claim in the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1893. When she finally thrusts her flag into the dirt, 160 acres becomes her own. But with that claim, she risks more than she could ever imagine. A naïve school teacher and young mother abandoned by her hard-drinking, gold-seeking husband—whom she now believes to be dead—Mary is faced with letting go of a past riddled with loss, hardship, and reminders that a woman isn't capable of surviving on her own. Daniel McKenzie, an illustrative journalist sent on assignment to document the race, has his own past to forget. Bound by a lost love and guilt from a haunting event in the streets of Boston, he wonders whether he will ever know happiness again. Will Mary's and Daniel's stubborn and independent spirits keep them mired in the past? Or will two broken hearts find forgiveness and love in the wild plains of the Midwest?

Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service


Carol Leonnig - 2021
    But the Secret Service wasn't always so troubled.The Secret Service was born in 1865, in the wake of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but its story begins in earnest in 1963, with the death of John F. Kennedy. Shocked into reform by their failure to protect the president on that fateful day, this once-sleepy agency was rapidly transformed into a proud, elite unit that would finally redeem themselves in 1981 by valiantly thwarting an assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan. But this reputation for courage and efficiency would not last forever. By Barack Obama's presidency, the Secret Service was becoming notorious for break-ins at the White House, an armed gunman firing at the building while agents stood by, a massive prostitution scandal in Cartagena, and many other dangerous lapses.To expose the these shortcomings, Leonnig interviewed countless current and former agents who risked their careers to speak out about an agency that's broken and in desperate need of a reform.

Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics


Lawrence O'Donnell - 2017
    Long before Lawrence O'Donnell was the anchor of his own political talk show, he was the Harvard Law-trained political aide to Senator Patrick Moynihan, one of postwar America's wisest political minds. The 1968 election was O'Donnell's own political coming of age, and Playing With Fire represents his master class in American electioneering, as well as an extraordinary human drama that captures a system, and a country, coming apart at the seams in real time. Nothing went to script. LBJ was confident he'd dispatch with Nixon, the GOP frontrunner; Johnson's greatest fear and real nemesis was RFK. But Kennedy and his team, despite their loathing of the president, weren't prepared to challenge their own party's incumbent. Then, out of nowhere, Eugene McCarthy shocked everyone with his disloyalty and threw his hat in the ring. A revolution seemed to be taking place, and LBJ, humiliated and bitter, began to look mortal. Then RFK leapt in, and all hell broke loose. Two assassinations and a week of bloody riots in Chicago around the Democratic Convention later, and the old Democratic Party was a smoldering ruin, and, in the last triumph of old machine politics, Hubert Humphrey stood alone in the wreckage. Suddenly Nixon was the frontrunner, having masterfully maintained a smooth facade behind which he feverishly held his party's right and left wings in the fold through a succession of ruthless maneuvers to see off George Romney, Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, and the great outside threat to his new Southern Strategy, the arch-segregationist George Wallace. But then, amazingly, Humphrey began to close, and so, in late October, Nixon pulled off one of the greatest dirty tricks in American political history, an act that may well meet the statutory definition of treason. The tone was set for Watergate and all else that was to follow, all the way through to today.

Mike Bloomberg: Money, Power, Politics


Joyce Purnick - 2009
    He has run the toughest city in America with an independence and show of ego that first brought him great success—and eventually threatened it. Yet while Bloomberg is internationally known and admired, few people know the man behind the carefully crafted public persona.In Mike Bloomberg, Joyce Purnick explores Mr. Bloomberg's life from his childhood in the suburbs of Boston, to his rise on Wall Street and the creation of Bloomberg L.P., to his mayoral record and controversial gamble on a third term. Drawing on her deep knowledge of New York City politics, and interviews with Bloomberg's friends, family, colleagues, and the mayor himself, she creates a textured portrait of one of the more complex men of our era.

Lewis and Clark


Ralph K. Andrist - 2015
    Under the leadership of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, the men of the Corps of Discovery would cross the continent and into history. Here, from award-winning historian Ralph K. Andrist, is the dramatic story of their epic journey.

If It Ain't Baroque: More Music History as It Ought to Be Taught


David W. Barber - 1992
    Barber takes you on another delightful romp through the pages of music history - as it ought to be taught.