In the “wilderness” years after Winston S. Churchill unflinchingly guided his country through World War II, he turned his masterful hand to an exhaustive history of the country he loved above all else. And the world discovered that this brilliant military strategist was an equally brilliant storyteller. In 1953, the great man was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for “his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.”   This second of four volumes exploring the history of this great nation explores the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the power struggles of the Tudor and Stuart families, the growth of the monarchy, the Protestant Reformation, England’s Civil War, and the discovery of the Americas. A History of the English-Speaking Peoples remains one of the most compelling and vivid works of history ever written.   “This history will endure; not only because Sir Winston has written it, but also because of its own inherent virtues―its narrative power, its fine judgment of war and politics, of soldiers and statesmen, and even more because it reflects a tradition of what Englishmen in the hey-day of their empire thought and felt about their country’s past.” —The Daily Telegraph

    But the truth is far more sinister, says Austin Ruse. We're actually living in the age of the low information voter, easily mislead by all-too-convincing false statistics and studies. In Fact-Shaming, Ruse debunks so-called "facts" used to advance political causes one after the other, revealing how poorly they stand up to actual science.

    There simply could not be a more important book at a more important juncture in American -- and world -- history.

    This is what mother decided would be our best chance at survival. This was not an easy undertaking. To blend into the Polish community it was essential not to look Jewish; not to sound Jewish; to know a fair amount about Catholicism; and be able to think on your feet when unexpected events occurred. Above all one needed to be lucky. With counterfeit documents we changed our name and moved to Lublin, the site of Majdanek, the second largest concentration camp in Poland. At that time I was five years old and my brother was seven. We had to learn new names and to never reveal our past. No sooner we got settled that members of my father’s family descended on us seeking shelter. In a small, primitive house we hid up to eight members of my father’s family.

    Guns are drawn, and in the ensuing hail of bullets, only the husband walks away. However, police soon find out, that what seems to be a robbery gone wrong is anything but. The Case of the Ragged Stranger, as the tabloids dubbed it, is a tale of deceit, betrayal, and depravity, a stranger-than-fiction mystery story whose shocking solution riveted the nation and made it one of the most sensational crimes of the Jazz Age.

    Newman, Canada's most "cussed and discussed" political journalist, on the death spiral of the Liberal Party.The May 2, 2011 federal election turned Canadian governance upside down and inside out. In his newest and possibly most controversial book, bestselling author Peter C. Newman argues that the Harper majority will alter Canada so much that we may have to change the country's name. But the most lasting impact of the Tory win will be the demise of the Liberal Party, which ruled Canada for seven of the last ten decades and literally made the country what it is. Newman chronicles, in bloody detail, the de-construction of the Grits' once unassailable fortress and anatomizes the ways in which the arrogance embedded in the Liberal genetic code slowly poisoned the party's progressive impulses.When the Gods Changed is the saga of a political self-immolation unequalled in Canadian history. It took Michael Ignatieff to light the match.

    To those who didn’t know, the biscuit factory that towered over Carlisle might look like just another slice of the industrial North, a noisy and chaotic place with workers trooping in and out at all hours. For the biscuit girls it was a place where they worked hard, but also where they gossiped, got into scrapes and made lifelong friends. Outside the factory walls there might be difficult husbands or demanding kids, and sometimes even heartbreak and tragedy, but they knew there would always be an escape from their troubles at Carr's. Some, like Barbara, only applied because she needed the extra cash, until things got a bit easier at home. Her supervisor cross examined her about who would be looking after the kids while she was at work, but let her have the job. Like many of the women who joined up ‘temporary’ Barbara went on to stay at Carrs for 32 years.Beginning in the 1940s, these heartwarming and vividly-remembered stories have all been told by the women themselves to Hunter Davies.

    In this first installment of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Freedom from Fear, Kennedy tells how America endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of that unprecedented calamity. Kennedy vividly demonstrates that the economic crisis of the 1930s was more than a reaction to the excesses of the 1920s. For more than a century before the Crash, America's unbridled industrial revolution had gyrated through repeated boom and bust cycles, consuming capital and inflicting misery on city and countryside alike. Nor was the alleged prosperity of the 1920s as uniformly shared as legend portrays. Countless Americans eked out threadbare lives on the margins of national life. Roosevelt's New Deal wrenched opportunity from the trauma of the 1930s and created a lasting legacy of economic and social reform, but it was afflicted with shortcomings and contradictions as well. With an even hand Kennedy details the New Deal's problems and defeats, as well as its achievements. He also sheds fresh light on its incandescent but enigmatic author, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Marshalling unforgettable narratives that feature prominent leaders as well as lesser-known citizens, The American People in the Great Depression tells the story of a resilient nation finding courage in an unrelenting storm.

    It is instant history with added jokes.Read about how John Major learned the English language from his time in Nigeria. There is Tony Blair, with his verb-free sentences which imply everything and promise nothing. Gordon Brown, the grumpiest prime minister of recent years, both Stalin and Mr Bean. And now David Cameron - who really, really hates being drawn with a condom on his head.Let's not forget John Prescott, who can wrestle the English language to the mat and win by two falls to a submission, Michael Fabricant with his hairpiece stolen from the tail of a My Little Pony, Sir Peter Tapsell, a grandee so grand that when he rises to speak, Hansard writers are replaced by a crack team of monks to write up his words in illuminated lettering. Nick Clegg, with his default expression of a man's whose chldren's puppy is still missing. And of course, the famous 2010 press conference in the garden of Downing Street, a love-in that would have been illegal in 44 American states.This book will have you laughing, chuckling, roaring, sniggering, and sometimes despairing.

    A teenage girl disappears on her way home from Coatesville High School. A reputed witch turns up dead in Pottsville. A young woman seemingly helps solve her own murder after she dies in a Philadelphia park.True-crime author Tammy Mal digs up facts on four of Pennsylvania’s weirdest killings in her book Tortured Minds: Pennsylvania’s Most Bizarre—But Forgotten—Murders. These 1930s crimes have long fallen into obscurity, but Mal deftly revives them in stark detail, from discovery of the body and through the trial. Ghosts, witches, resentment, and sex factor into these crimes, giving them a chilling edge as Mal brings them back to life in her latest true-crime book. It’s a look into just what tortured minds can do, certain to convince you to lock your doors after dark.

    She documents her early days in the Democratic Party and the Democratic Alliance, at a time when the party was locked in a no-holds-barred factional conflict. And she chronicles the intense political battles to become mayor of Cape Town, leader of the DA and premier of the Western Cape, in the face of dirty tricks from the ANC and infighting within her own party.This is a story about political intrigue and treachery, floor-crossing and unlikely coalitions, phone tapping and intimidation, false criminal charges and judicial commissions. It documents Zille’s courageous fight against corruption and state capture and her efforts to realign politics and entrench accountability. And it describes a mother’s battle to raise children in the pressured world of South African politics.This book is as frank, honest and unflinching as Helen Zille herself, and will appeal to anyone interested in the story of South African politics over the past fifty years.

    In a year that sees a Scottish referendum on independence, Linda Colley analyses some of the forces that have unified Britain in the past.She examines the mythology of Britishness, and how far - and why - it has faded. She discusses the Acts of Union with Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and their limitations, while scrutinizing England's own fractures. And she demonstrates how the UK has been shaped by movement: of British people to other countries and continents, and of people, ideas and influences arriving from elsewhere.As acts of union and disunion again become increasingly relevant to our daily lives and politics, Colley considers how - if at all - the pieces might be put together anew, and what this might mean.Based on a 15-part BBC Radio 4 series.

    We conservatives have truth and rationality and logic on our side. We just need to remind ourselves why we are right, and we need that reminder delivered in a way that’s not a lecture, not a history lesson, and not a complicated political diatribe.” If you think all conservatives are old white dudes, think again. Meet the Chicks on the Right (if you haven’t already). Everyone loves to tell them they’re wrong. Everyone. Liberals say they’re wrong because, well, they’re conservative. Conservatives tell them they’re wrong because they are not conservative enough. Or because they’re too conservative. Or because they’re the wrong kind of conservative. With all the blame flying around, it’s easy to lose sight of one important thing: They think like you. And they are right. It’s right to revere the Constitution. It’s right to value personal responsibility, economic liberty, and free enterprise. It’s right to think that political correctness is crap, and it’s right to call out the mainstream media for bias. And it’s right to laugh at the so-called War on Women and to stand up for the unborn. As they do every day on their blog and radio show, Miriam Weaver and Amy Jo Clark offer a definitive response to critics on the right and the left, and a cheerfully snarky pep talk for likeminded conservatives. On the one hand, they are tired of the media’s portrayal of conservatives as repressed sticks-in-the-mud; on the other hand, they are sick of GOP leaders who play right into that stereotype. With humor and insight, Mock and Daisy, as the Chicks are known on their blog, explain why:Capitalism is a good thing—success and the money that comes with it are nothing to be ashamed of! First Amendment protections extend to all Americans, not just those with whom we agree. Americans have a constitutional right to things that go pew-pew-pew. Skin color is irrelevant. It makes sense to be pro-life and pro-Plan B. The Chicks offer suggestions for a conservative makeover that will realign the GOP with the regular folks who are frustrated with uptight and clueless politicians. But they also show why conservatism makes sense for everyone, especially those who love their country, their families, God, rock and roll, and a well-made cocktail (not necessarily in that order).

    Heinlein was sixty-six, at the height of his literary career; J. Neil Schulman was twenty and hadn't yet started his first novel. Because he was looking for a way to meet his idol, Schulman wangled an assignment from the New York Daily News--at the time the largest circulation newspaper in the U.S.--to interview Heinlein for its Sunday Book Supplement. The resulting taped interview lasted three-and-a-half hours. This turned out to be the longest interview Heinlein ever granted, and the only one in which he talked freely and extensively about his personal philosophy and ideology. "The Robert Heinlein Interview" contains Heinlein you won't find anywhere else--even in Heinlein's own "Expanded Universe." If you wnat to know what Heinlein had to say about UFO's, life after death, epistemology, or libertarianism, this interview is the only source available. Also included in this collection are articles, reviews, and letters that J. Neil Schulman wrote about Heinlein, including the original article written for The Daily News, about which the Heinleins wrote Schulman that it was, "The best article--in style, content, and accuracy--of the many, many written about him over the years." This book is must-reading for any serious student of Heinlein, or any reader seeking to know him better.

    As First Lord of the Admiralty at the start of the First World War, Churchill found himself blamed for the catastrophic military fiasco of the Dardanelles. Thrown for the first time into the political wilderness, he decided to rejoin the British Army and take his place on the Western Front.The first standalone account of this period of his life since the 1920s, Churchill in the Trenches reconstructs his six months near the Belgian town of Ypres. It reveals he how he gradually won over the troops he commanded -- the tough but traumatized 6th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers. And it tells the largely unknown story of how amid mud and squalor, one of the 20th century's most memorable characters became one of its greatest leaders.Peter Apps is global defense correspondent for Reuters news. In 2006, he broke his neck in a minibus accident while covering the civil war in Sri Lanka, leaving him largely paralyzed from the shoulders down. Of the 20 or so countries he has reported from, more than half have been since the injury. He is currently on sabbatical as executive director of the Project for Study of the 21st Century (PS21) www.projects21.com.Cover design by Kerry Ellis.