The Adventures of The Lone Jack Kid


Joe Corso - 2013
    Ride along with Jesse and Frank James and the Younger brothers as they share in the adventures of The Lone Jack Kid.This was wartime and men lived and died fighting their enemy . . . and sometimes they died fighting each other. Cole looked at the men, raised his hand, and said in a voice loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, “Don’t do it, boys. Sturman was a yellow cur, and a deserter, and you don’t have to die trying to avenge the likes of him.There were seven Indians and they were standing around two semi-naked white women who appeared to be a mother and daughter. Charlie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he aimed - - and fired, and fired, and fired again, repeatedly. He dropped four of the Indians before they knew what hit them. Then he charged into the clearing and shot another Indian reaching for his gun.“My name is Charles Longstreet.” The men looked at each other as recognition set in. “You’re the Lone Jack Kid?” The Kid smiled. “The one and only.” He pulled his hat off of his head and waved it in the air, then he gave the Rebel yell. “See you money grubbers in hell, boys.” He jerked the reins, and nudged Comet with his heals. She turned her head and leaped into the bubbling stream with water as high as the stirrups, and dashed across, splashing tendrils of water high in the air on both sides of her. It was an impressive display of horsemanship, and the toll collectors watched with grudging admiration.

RedCon 1: Memoirs of a Fallujah Marine


Michael Scot Smith - 2014
    Most of them are honorable, but in the end, they are just attempts.Michael S. Smith’s memoir, on the other hand, is the reality of modern combat.Gear up and settle in, but don’t get too comfortable—you’re joining a platoon of United States Marine Corps scouts as they make their way through a pre-deployment workup, a transition to the Middle East, and ultimately into Operation Al Fajr, an assault to retake Fallujah, Iraq. It will be the largest and deadliest American battle since Hue City, Vietnam. The memoir is a microscopic and unwavering look at personal interactions, struggles, nightmares, and scars of the men in the platoon, its 1st Section in particular. They grow from an untested unit into a seasoned group of combat veterans. In addition to life amid the horrors of death and destruction, Smith also delivers the hilarity lost in most accounts of war, which the men must maintain in order to keep their sanity.You’re going to be frightened as you slug it out with the enemy, but with that come unwavering friendships forged in battle and the irrefutable honor in the defense of freedom.

Jinx at the Greenbrier


Deanna Edens - 2016
     Her stories begin when she arrived in 1936 and met such notable historical personalities as Eleanor Roosevelt, Clare Boothe Luce, and Sam Snead. Her adventures continue through the era when the Greenbrier housed high-level German and Japanese diplomats at the beginning of World War II, then through the days when it served as a United States Army hospital. Jinx’s exploits encompass encounters with interior designer Dorothy Draper, the Duchess of Windsor, and Bing Crosby—just to name a few. Jinx at the Greenbrier offers a fascinating picture of the celebrities, high-society personalities, and government officials who frequented the grand Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia during the thirties and forties. Prop up your feet, grab a cuppa tea, and delight in these misadventures, as told through the eyes of an eighty-six-year-old woman reminiscing about the days when she was little girl growing up at the fabulous Greenbrier Resort.

Hadrian's Wall Path


Henry Stedman - 2006
    It is proving an immensely popular walk and in the first 18 months of its opening in 2003 it attracted almost 400,000 walkers.

CALIFORNIA: A Trip Across the Plains, in the Spring of 1850


James Abbey - 2015
    He kept a day-by-day journal of his overland journey. Abbey provides a wealth of information about what it was like to travel overland by wagon in 1850.

Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, and the Rise of America's Xanadu


Les Standiford - 2019
    Trusting his remarkable instincts, within less than a year he had built the Royal Poinciana Hotel, and two years later what was to become the legendary Breakers--instantly establishing the island as the preferred destination for those who could afford it. Over the next 125 years, Palm Beach has become synonymous with exclusivity--especially its most famous residence, "Mar-a-Lago." As Les Standiford relates, "the high walls of Mar-a-Lago and other manses like it were seemingly designed to contain scandal within as much as keep intruders out."With the authority and narrative prose style that has gained Standiford's work widespread acclaim, Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, and the Rise of America's Xanadu tells the history of this fabled landscape intertwined with the colorful lives of its famous protagonists. Flagler's own marriages to Ida Alice Shourds and Mary Lily Kenan perhaps initiated the dramas to come. While sewing machine heir Paris Singer and architect Addison Mizner created the "Mediterranean look" of Palm Beach in the 1910s, inspiring the building of such modern day palaces as Eva and Ed Stotesbury's "El Mirasol," the centerpiece of Palm Beach became the fever dream of Marjorie Merriweather Post and her equally wealthy husband E. F. Hutton, for whom Ziegfeld Follies designer Joseph Urban built "Mar-a-Lago" in 1927. Marjorie "ruled" social Palm Beach through two other marriages and for years on her own until her death in 1973. The fate of her mansion threatened to tear apart the very fabric of the town until Donald Trump acquired it in 1985.Les Standiford brings alive a fabled place and the characters--the rich, famous and infamous alike--who have been drawn inexorably to it.

Hey Doc!: The Battle of Okinawa As Remembered by a Marine Corpsman


Ed Wells - 2017
    This is the wartime memories of a Marine Corpsman who served in Company B, of the 6th Battalion of the 4th Regiment. He saw 100 days of continuous combat during the Battle of Okinawa, including the Battle for Sugar Loaf, and was part of the landing force that was headed to Japan when the atomic bomb dropped. These were recorded after 60 years of reflection, and are presented to honor all veterans.

Jam Butties and a Pan of Scouse


Maggie Clarke - 2017
    The story covers Maggie Clarke's upbringing in the tenements close to the docks, the River Mersey and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal: an area notorious for having the worst slums in Britain, yet the closest community as well.At the tender age of 11, Maggie Clarke finds herself the matriarch of the family when her Irish mother runs off with another man. Leaving school at 14 to work at a local factory putting sticks into lollies, she is determined to make a better life for herself and her family - before starting her own family with her childhood sweetheart, who she marries at 19 after 'falling in the family way'. She has one night of married life with her husband before he is sent to India with the Navy and is devastated when she never hears from him again, presuming him a casualty of the war that is raging at home and abroad. Another tragedy strikes when Maggie's brother Tommy is also claimed by the war, leaving her father inconsolable, but Maggie knows life has to go on and falls in love with Joseph, an Irish settler who she has 8 children with. But her happiness is short-lived as her first husband suddenly appears out of the blue demanding a divorce, and her new husband drinks away what little money they have, returning in fits of rage that leave Maggie and her children hungry and afraid. Many times she is only able to feed her brood by the kindness of neighbours putting a 'pan of scouse' on the range for her, or feeding her kids jam butties to help out. Maggie's story sweeps across the changing face of Liverpool, from its squalid dock streets, the tenement blocks and cobbled roads to the decline of the docklands, new council housing, the rise of the Mersey beat, the Beatles and the energy and passion of a city that is home to a cast of colourful characters with the resilience to withstand the heartbreak and hardships that only the poorest can know.

A Thousand Days of Magic: Dressing Jacqueline Kennedy for the White House


Oleg Cassini - 1995
    Jacqueline Kennedy’s selection of Oleg Cassini to design her personal wardrobe as First Lady was not only fashion history, but political history as well. As the creator of the "Jackie look," Cassini made the First Lady one of the best-dressed women in the world and a glamorous icon of the Kennedy era. During the 1000 days of the Kennedy administration, Cassini designed over 300 outfits for Jackie Kennedy—coats, dresses, evening gowns, suits, and day wear—and coordinated every aspect of her wardrobe, from shoes and hats to gloves and handbags. In this book, Cassini offers a fascinating and comprehensive view of his role as Jackie’s personal couturier, a position that allowed him unprecedented access to both Jackie and John Kennedy as a designer and a trusted friend. From the details of his first meetings with the First Lady to his thoughts on Jackie’s clothes and their legacy, Cassini’s recollections are far-ranging and informative. Also included are Cassini's original sketches accompanied by 200 color and black-and-white photographs of the First Lady as she tours India, France, England, and Italy, shows off the White House, and hosts state dinners and family gatherings. Public moments as well as private ones capture the great elegance and charm of one of the most admired and emulated women in the world.

BUNKER 1945 - The Last Ten Days of ADOLF HITLER


Christian Shakespeare - 2019
    Twenty-two years later, he did. April 1945 – Berlin. The world had been at war for more than five-and-a-half years – approximately seventy million people were dead across the globe. The epicentre of the twelve-year-old Third Reich was now surrounded, enveloped by bitter Soviet forces hardened by Nazi barbarity in the east over the last four years. As the buildings were blasted into rubble, pounded by Russian guns and bombs, before their troops and tanks, Hitler was hunkered down in his last headquarters – the dark and damp bunker under the Reich Chancellery. As the Third Reich began to crumble as fast as the city’s buildings, what was the state of mind of the tyrant? Only his closest and fanatical allies saw the collapse, none more so than Hitler’s servants, Otto Gunsche and Heinz Linge – two individuals which witnessed the final act of their regime. An act tinged over the last ten days in late April with selfish betrayal, increasingly forlorn hope, pleas, desperation and eventually suicide. As the Soviets closed in with impending vigour, in the concrete tomb below ground and under the thunderous booms of the petrifying battle for Berlin, the mind of the dictator disintegrated into drugs, delusion and a determination to die. Not by the enemy bullet but one of his own. This is the story of the people who held a unique place in world history – the ones who were there when the nightmare of Nazism and the horrors which accompanied it was finally banished as a dark chapter in the story of the human race.

War of 1812: A History From Beginning to End


Henry Freeman - 2016
    Yet the effects of what seems a minor and insignificant conflict are far-reaching, even to today. The world settled into the roles it would play out for decades, and the boundaries of the United States and Canada would be set for the next two hundred years. Inside you will read about... ✓ The Beginning of the War ✓ From Tippecanoe to War Hawks ✓ The War in the North ✓ The Battles of the Middle United States: Iowa and Lake Erie ✓ The Patriot’s War ✓ Washington in Flames ✓ A Bit About Pirates ✓ What is the impact of the War of 1812? And much more! Unlikely heroes would rise, leading to eventual power, while Native Americans would play out their own struggle on a backdrop of bloodshed and intrigue.

First Blood for the Flying Tigers: Twelve days after Pearl Harbor, a band of American mercenaries took their revenge on the Empire of Japan


Daniel Ford - 2010
    That was the 1st American Volunteer Group – sponsored by the White House, equipped and paid by a U.S. loan, but officially part of the Chinese Air Force. On December 20, this band of mercenaries won immortality over the city of Kunming. An expanded version, with new photographs, of the cover story for 'America in WWII' magazine, December 2010.

Living Hell: The Prisoners of Santo Tomas (Based on the Diaries of Isla Corfield)


Celia Lucas - 2013
    But to the women locked up there it was something else. A Living Hell. More than 4,000 internees were held there from January 1942 until February 1945.'Living Hell' is their harrowing story. The book is based on the diaries of Isla Corfield. An Englishwoman whose comfortable life in Shanghai was suddenly disrupted by the outbreak of World War Two, she fled with her daughter Gill on an evacuee ship.But the ship was captured by the Japanese -- and Isla and Gill would have to struggle to survive as prisoners of war in both Santo Tomas and Los Banos internment camps.In the communities of the camps, Isla and her daughter experienced the extremes of both friendship and loss. Cut-off from information about the war and with no end to their internment in sight, the pair experience starvation, disease and desperation.Finally liberated by the Americans after four years, Isla's story is both humbling and life-affirming - the story of one brave Englishwomen's battle to survive against terrible odds.It is one of the great untold stories of World War Two. "An incredible story of bravery and will-power." - Robert Foster, best-selling author of 'The Lunar Code'. Celia Lucas is a writer of children’s fiction and biography. She is a journalist, feature writer and public relations consultant. Winner of Tir na Nog Prize 1988 she has also collaborated on a TV series with husband Ian Skidmore. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher.

Colorado: A History of the Centennial State


Carl Abbott - 1976
    In this revised edition, co-authors Carl Abbott, Stephen J. Leonard, and Thomas J. Noel incorporate more than a decade of new events, findings, and insights about Colorado in an accessible volume that general readers and students will enjoy. The new edition tells of conflicts, new alliances, and changing ways of life as Hispanic, European, and African American settlers flooded into a region that was already home to Native Americans. Providing balanced coverage of the entire state's history - from Grand Junction to Lamar and from Trinidad to Craig - the authors also reveal how Denver and its surrounding communities developed and gained influence. While continuing to elucidate the significant impact of mining, agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism on Colorado, this new edition broadens its coverage. The authors expand their discussion of the twentieth century with several new chapters on the economy, politics, and cultural conflicts of recent years. In addition, they address changes in attitudes toward the natural environment as well as the contributions of women, Hispanics, African Americans, and Asian Americans to the state. Dozens of new illustrations, updated statistics, and an extensive bibliography of the most recent research on Colorado history enhance this edition.

Pie 'n' Mash and Prefabs - My 1950s Childhood: A 1950s Childhood


Norman Jacobs - 2015
    One solution was to erect prefabs on fields and open spaces to give temporary accommodation to those who had been bombed out. It was in one of these ‘modern’ boxes that young Norman Jacobs grew up through the 1950s and 1960s. In a lively, detailed and humorous picture of a postwar Hackney childhood, Norman takes us back to an age of rationing, bomb sites, street markets, colourful characters and camaraderie. And in reminiscing about stodgy school food, jumpers for goalposts, Listen with Mother, greyhound racing, pie ’n’ mash, holiday camps, and the advent of American-style burger bars, he provides a glimpse into a way of life that has vanished for ever. Set against a backdrop of Rock ’n’ Roll, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of President Kennedy, funny, poignant and sometimes sad, Norman’s is a story full of innocence and happiness that will take you back to the best of times – the days we thought would never end.