An account of what it was like to grow up a White Sox fan in a Cubs nation, this title covers the history of the organisation, from the heartbreak of 1967 and the South-Side Hit Men to the disco demolition and the magical 2005 season when they became world champions.

    From America's first serial killers and deadly vampire-like diseases to haunted ghost ships and vicious river pirates, our nation's history is weirder than you could have ever imagined. So dive in and prepare to be shocked, because sometimes the truth is even stranger than fiction.

    The colonists were fighting for rights they felt they deserved, not only as British citizens, but as human beings. The belief that rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were God given and not dependent upon any government or ruler gave the revolutionaries the courage to fight against overwhelming odds and eventually win their freedom. Inside you will read about... ✓ A Series of Oppressions ✓ Death and Taxes ✓ Out of Many, One ✓ War in Earnest ✓ Voices of Liberty ✓ Independence And more! The new government they created for the United States of America would be unlike anything seen before in world history, and their fight has continued to change the world to this day.

    Beginning his epic history in the early 1600s, Eric Jay Dolin traces the dramatic rise and fall of the American fur industry, from the first Dutch encounters with the Indians to the rise of the conservation movement in the late nineteenth century. Dolin shows how the fur trade, driven by the demands of fashion, sparked controversy, fostered economic competition, and fueled wars among the European powers, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations. The trade in beaver, buffalo, sea otter, and other animal skins spurred the exploration and the settlement of the vast American continent, while it alternately enriched and gravely damaged the lives of America’s native peoples. Populated by a larger-than-life cast—including Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant; President Thomas Jefferson; America’s first multimillionaire, John Jacob Astor; and mountain man Kit Carson—Fur, Fortune, and Empire is the most comprehensive and compelling history of the American fur trade ever written. 16 pages of color and 16 pages of black-and-white illustrations, as well as a two-page, endpaper map of the American fur trade beyond the Mississippi.Starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus Reviews."Nobody writes about the link between American history and natural history with the scholarly grace of Eric Jay Dolin. Fur, Fortune, and Empire is a landmark study filled with a cast of eccentric Western-type characters. Dolin's research is prodigious. Not since the days of Francis Parkman has a historian analyzed the fur trade industry with such brilliance. Highly recommended!" -- Douglas Brinkley, Author, Cronkite and The Wilderness Warrior"Fur, Fortune, and Empire is no melancholy affair. The book bursts with colorful characters, venal corporations, and violent confrontations, all presented with sharp-eyed clarity in a narrative that clips right along. . . . One of the great pleasures of Eric Jay Dolin's work in both Leviathan and Fur, Fortune, and Empire comes in discovering centuries old antecedents of the economic and natural resource issues that we struggle with today. . . . there are plenty of insights as well as much reading pleasure to be had here." Bruce Barcott, Audubon Magazine"A superb one-volume examination of an era when American ingenuity and its competitive spirit began to flourish. . . Dolin describes in marvelous detail . . . colorful figures of the American fur trades' western expansion. . . . at last, we now have a book that properly accounts for America's rise as a fur-trade power." -- Michael Taube, The Wall Street Journal"Though guns, germs and steel certainly played their parts, Dolin's "Fur, Fortune, and Empire" leaves little doubt that the trade in pelts "was a powerful force in shaping the course of American history from the early 1600s through the late 1800s, playing a major role in the settlement and evolution of the colonies, and in the growth of the United States." Dolin puts forth a compelling and well-annotated tale of greed, slaughter and geopolitics as the Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Swedes, Russians and the American colonists fought for a slice of the profit." -- Art Winslow, The Los Angeles Times

    In December 1944, during the bloody Battle of the Bulge, teams of German commandos disguised as American soldiers slipped behind the US front lines. Riding in captured US jeeps, they committed sabotage, sowed confusion and caused paranoia among American troops. Word quickly spread that the undercover commandos were out to kill US General Eisenhower. Popular legend has made the false flag operation out to be a skilled and menacing ploy with cunning German spies speaking American English. Their commander, propaganda hero SS Lt. Col. Otto Skorzeny, seemed a mastermind. But the reality was much different, and all the more deadly. The planning and training were slapdash, the mission desperate, its chances slim to none. Sitting Ducks is a fast read equaling about 49 print pages.

    

    It started like a Hollywood thriller, secretly transporting from England $25 million in British gold bullion, delivered to the ship in unguarded bread trucks, a pre-war “Neutrality Patrol” that was really an unofficial hostile search for the far bigger and more powerful German battleship Prinz Eugen, and sneaking through the Panama Canal at night with the ship’s name and hull number covered for secrecy. Now, with the ship bulging with an unusual load of fuel and supplies, in the company of a large fleet quietly passing under San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, the crew was about to learn of their latest (but not last) and most improbable adventure yet as the captain made an announcement that would change the war and their lives forever, “We are going to Tokyo!”. Over three years, scores of battles and hundreds of thousands of ocean miles later, the Nashville and her crew had earned 10 Battle Stars, served from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific, from the Aleutians to the Yangtze River, as McArthur’s flagship and suffered heavy casualties from a devastating kamikaze attack. Tokyo Rose reported her sunk, repeatedly. Earlier, with goodwill trips that included France, England, Scandinavia, Bermuda and Rio de Janeiro, the new, sleek Nashville built a pre-war reputation as a “glamour ship”. But with war came the secret missions, capturing the second and third Japanese POWs of the war, having a torpedo pass just under the stern, being strafed and bombed by Japanese planes, losing a third of the crew in a single devastating Kamikaze attack, swimming in shark infested waters protected by marines with machine guns, enjoying the beauty of Sydney and her people, planning a suicide mission to destroy the Japanese fishing fleet, and bombarding Japanese troops and airfields across the Pacific. The Nashville crew served their ship and country well. They came from Baltimore row-houses, New York walk-ups, San Francisco flats, Kansas wheat farms, Colorado cattle ranches, Louisiana bayous and Maine fishing towns. Many had never traveled more than 25 miles from home and had never seen the ocean until they joined the service. They were part Irish, part Italian, part Polish and All-American. Battered, burnt and bombed, they made the USS Nashville their home and lived and died as eternal shipmates. Historical narrative enriched with the personal stories of the crew, this is the story of a ship and crew of ordinary men who did extraordinary things.

    It is a genuine, firsthand account of a one-year tour that shows how a soldier grew and matured from an awkward, bewildered, inexperienced, eighteen year-old country “bumpkin” from Kentucky, to a tough, battle hardened, fighting soldier. You will laugh, cry and stand in awe at the true life experiences shared in this memoir. The awfulness of battle, fear beyond description, the sorrow and anguish of losing friends, extreme weariness, the dealing with the scalding sun, torrential rain, cold, heat, humidity, insects and the daily effort just to maintain sanity were struggles faced virtually every day. And yet, there were the good times. There was the coming together to laugh, joke, and share stories from home. There was the warmth and compassion shown by men to each other in such an unreal environment. You will see where color, race or where you were from had no bearing on the tight-knit group of young men that was formed from the necessity to survive. What a “bunch” they were! ... then the return to home and all the adjustments and struggles to once again fit into a world that was now strange and uncomfortable. "Call Sign Dracula" is an excellent and genuine memoir of an infantry soldier in the Vietnam War.

    Ford put together a radio communications network for a nation that had up to this time relied on messages carried by foot over the highest mountains on the globe. More important, his radio connected the secluded nation to the outside world. When in October 1950 the Communist Chinese army began its march to subjugate Tibet, Ford risked his life by staying behind to send out reports over his radio to let the world know of the attack. The Radio Operator is an overdue and gripping recounting of Ford’s valiant effort to save Tibet from Chinese domination and his subsequent capture and imprisonment.James McGrath Morris is the author of the New York Times bestselling Eye on the Struggle as well as two other acclaimed biographies. His previous Kindle Single, Revolution by Murder, was selected as one of the Best Kindle Singles of 2014. His next book, The Ambulance Drivers, will be published in 2017.Cover design by Kerry Ellis.

    Few military feats stir the imagination like the image of a pair of riflemen waiting quietly in a building, a bomb crater, or a mountain pass for a Taliban or Al Qaeda fighter to walk into their crosshairs.Sniper presents real-life tales from the military's frontline snipers—their hits and their misses, the anguish of loss, and the anxiety of the first kill. Authors Gina Cavallaro and Matt Larsen provide riveting accounts of American soldiers and marines on the battlefield, and take a rare look at how Rangers and Special Forces snipers train and operate, and how the war on terror has changed the role of military snipers.

    

    ​     He was also a kid who did the same kind of harebrained things most teenagers do.​  Only steps away from the Oval Office, he fought with a foreign head of state for space in a restroom. ​​ He devised a shortcut that tripped countless alarms and summoned an agitated band of Secret Service agents. He spilled ice ​water on Frank Sinatra's sock.    And that was just the small stuff. ​A funny, fast-paced memoir, Downstairs at the White House is richly decorated with presidents, first ladies, celebrities . . . and events that shook America.   ​

     The Giants of The Polo Grounds is the definitive work on baseball’s New York Giants and their tenure in New York City. An “Editor’s Choice” of The New York Times when it was first published more than 20 years ago, the book was also a Spitball Magazine nominee for the Best Baseball Book of the year. Author Noel Hynd, a former contributor to Sports Illustrated, has now created a new edition that maintains all the previous text, but expands the work to more than 600 pages from the original 375. Included this time are more stories about McGraw, Ott, Durocher and Mays and their opponents, plus more on the men and women from other sports and various fields of entertainment who also were ‘giants’ of the Polo Grounds: from boxers Jack Dempsey and Sugar Ray Robinson to entertainers Annie Oakley and Tallulah Bankhead to football’s Red Grange and soccer’s Béla Guttmann. The Giants of The Polo Grounds is the story of a famous team, a renowned ball park, an invincible spirit and America’s most vibrant city from the 1880’s to the 1950’s. The new edition is packed with remarkable anecdotes about Broadway, New York politics, good guys and bad guys who made the Giants' era in New York unique and memorable. The new edition, practically the equivalent of two volumes, also features more than 100 photos and illustrations, most of them new, some rarely seen. Critical Praise for The Giants of The Polo Grounds “A compelling and comprehensive history of an extraordinary ball club.” -New York Times “Grandly digressive! The owners, stars like Mathewson and Mays, various eccentric players are all here in this vivid history by Sports Illustrated contributor Hynd.” - Publishers’ Weekly “Fans of all ages will treasure the crazy quilt text for its stylish recall of the game’s summer roots.” -Kirkus Library Journal “Just plain enjoyable as baseball is supposed to be.” - The Pennsylvania Gazette Think of it as a grand slam into the center field bleachers in the bottom of the 9th!

    As Philbrick reveals in this electrifying new book, the story of the Pilgrims does not end with the First Thanksgiving; instead, it is a fifty-five-year epic that is at once tragic and heroic, and still carries meaning for us today.

    A golden Fender Stratocaster hidden away in an attic for 30 years. A sunburst Gibson Les Paul worth $100,000. Jimi Hendrix’s Strat burned by the guitarist during a concert—and then mysteriously lost for decades. The mint Fender Broadcaster forgotten under a bed in a neighbor’s house. The 1960s Rickenbacker bought for $50 at a garage sale! These days, classic vintage guitars can bring Ferrari and Porsche prices. Baby boomers who wish they’d been rock ’n’ roll stars have shot the market into the stratosphere for classic models. As with automobiles, finding that classic guitar stashed away beneath a bed, in a closet, hidden away in an attic, or in the dusty corner of a guitar shop is the Holy Grail.