With his characteristic enthusiasm and erudition, PeterAckroyd follows his acclaimed London: A Biography with aninspired look into the heart and the history of the Englishimagination. To tell the story of its evolution, Ackroyd rangesacross literature and painting, philosophy and science,architecture and music, from Anglo-Saxon times to thetwentieth-century. Considering what is most English about artistsas diverse as Chaucer, William Hogarth, Benjamin Britten andViriginia Woolf, Ackroyd identifies a host of sometimescontradictory elements: pragmatism and whimsy, blood and gore, apassion for the past, a delight in eccentricity, and much more. Abrilliant, engaging and often surprising narrative, Albion reveals the manifold nature of English genius.
On April 29, 1968, the North Vietnamese Army is spotted lessthan four miles from the U.S. Marines’ Dong Ha Combat Base. Intensefighting develops in nearby Dai Do as the 2d Battalion, 4thMarines, known as “the Magnificent Bastards,” struggles to ejectNVA forces from this strategic position. Yet the BLT 2/4 Marines defy the brutal onslaught. Pressingforward, America’s finest warriors rout the NVA from theirfortress-hamlets–often in deadly hand-to-hand combat. At the end oftwo weeks of desperate, grinding battles, the Marines and theinfantry battalion supporting them are torn to shreds. But againstall odds, they beat back their savage adversary. The MagnificentBastards captures that gripping conflict in all its horror, hell,and heroism. “Superb . . . among the best writing on the Vietnam War . . .Nolan has skillfully woven operational records and oral historyinto a fascinating narrative that puts the reader in the thick ofthe action.” –Jon T. Hoffman, author of Chesty “
In 1787, the beautiful Lucia is married off to AlviseMocenigo, scion of one of the most powerful Venetian families. Buttheir life as a golden couple will be suddenly transformed whenVenice falls to Bonaparte. We witness Lucia's painful series ofmiscarriages and the pressure on her to produce an heir; herimpassioned affair with an Austrian officer; the glamour and strainof her career as a hostess in Vienna; and her amazing firsthandaccount of the defeat of Napoleon in 1814. With his brave andarticulate heroine, Andrea di Robilant has once again reachedacross the centuries, and deep into his own past, to bring historyto rich and vivid life on the page.
In this heartbreaking but ultimately triumphant story ofcourage and will, journalist Robert Whitaker carefullydocuments--and exposes--one of the worst racial massacres inAmerican history. Whitaker's important book commemorates a legalstruggle, "Moore v. Dempsey, " that paved the way for the civilrights era, and tells too of a man, Scipio Africanus Jones, whosename surely deserves to be known by all Americans. "Whitaker has ... placed the massacre and the Supreme Courtdecision in their full legal and historical context. At the sametime, he has revived the story of a great African-American lawyer,Scipio Africanus Jones." --"New York Times Book Review"
The companion volume to Stars in Their Courses, thismarvelous account of Grant's siege of the Mississippi port ofVicksburg continues Foote's narrative of the great battles of theCivil War--culled from his massive three-volume history--recountinga campaign which Lincoln called "one of the most brilliant in theworld."
In Lone Star Nation , Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W.Brands demythologizes Texas’s journey to statehood and restores thegenuinely heroic spirit to a pivotal chapter in Americanhistory. From Stephen Austin, Texas’s reluctant founder, to the alcoholicSam Houston, who came to lead the Texas army in its hour of crisisand glory, to President Andrew Jackson, whose expansionistaspirations loomed large in the background, here is the story ofTexas and the outsize figures who shaped its turbulent history.Beginning with its early colonization in the 1820s and taking inthe shocking massacres of Texas loyalists at the Alamo and Goliad,its rough-and-tumble years as a land overrun by the Comanches, andits day of liberation as an upstart republic, Brands’ livelyhistory draws on contemporary accounts, diaries, and letters toanimate a diverse cast of characters whose adventures, exploits,and ambitions live on in the very fabric of our nation.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Garry Wills makes a compelling argumentfor a reassessment of Henry Adams as our nations greatest historianand his History as the "nonfiction prose masterpiece of thenineteenth century in America." Adams drew on his own southernfixations, his extensive foreign travel, his political service inthe Lincoln administration, and much more to invent the study ofhistory as we know it. His nine-volume chronicle of America from1800 to 1816 established new standards for employing archivalsources, firsthand reportage, eyewitness accounts, and othertechniques that have become the essence of modern history.Ambitious in scope, nuanced in detail, Henry Adams and the Makingof America throws brilliant light on the historian and the makingof history.
On January 5, 1924, a well-dressed young woman, accompanied bya male companion, walked into a Brooklyn grocery, pulled a “babyautomatic” from the pocket of her fur coat, emptied the cashregister, and escaped into the night. Dubbed “the Bobbed HairedBandit” by the press, the petite thief continued her escapades inthe months that followed, pulling off increasingly spectacularrobberies, writing taunting notes to police officials, and eludingthe biggest manhunt in New York City history. When laundress CeliaCooney was finally caught in Florida and brought back to New York,media attention grew to a fever pitch. Crowds gathered at thecourts and jails where she appeared, the public clamored to knowher story, and newspapers and magazines nationwide obliged bypublishing sensational front-page articles.
Drawing from Smith's own personal journals, this concisebiography paints a rich and detailed portrait of one of America'smost intriguing founding fathers. Historian John Thompson guides usthrough annotated selections of Smith's most important andcompelling writings, adding authoritative perspective andcommentary to round out the picture. The volume includes some ofthe earliest primary source accounts of life in colonial Virginia,including excerpts from Proceedings of the English Colony ofVirginia (1612), Generall Historie of Virginia (1624), and The TrueAdventures and Observations of Captain John Smith (1630). Readers share eyewitness accounts of Smith's capture andimprisonment by the Indians, his explorations of the Chesapeake Bayregion, and various other adventures and exploits in the New World.We get a firsthand look at Smith's pivotal role in the founding andgovernance of colonial Jamestown and his attempts to establishtrade relationships with the Native Americans. We also learn thereal facts behind Smi
In mid-1943 James Megellas, known as “Maggie” to his fellowparatroopers, joined the 82d Airborne Division, his new “home” forthe duration. His first taste of combat was in the rugged mountainsoutside Naples. In October 1943, when most of the 82d departed Italy to preparefor the D-Day invasion of France, Lt. Gen. Mark Clark, the FifthArmy commander, requested that the division’s 504th ParachuteInfantry Regiment, Maggie’s outfit, stay behind for a daring newoperation that would outflank the Nazis’ stubborn defensive linesand open the road to Rome. On 22 January 1944, Megellas and therest of the 504th landed across the beach at Anzio. Followinginitial success, Fifth Army’s amphibious assault, OperationShingle, bogged down in the face of heavy German counterattacksthat threatened to drive the Allies into the Tyrrhenian Sea. Anzioturned into a fiasco, one of the bloodiest Allied operations of thewar. Not until April were the remnants of the regiment withdrawnand shipped to England to r
At the end of 1618, a blazing green star soared across thenight sky over the northern hemisphere. From the Philippines to theArctic, the comet became a sensation and a symbol, a warning ofdoom or a promise of salvation. Two years later, as the Pilgrimsprepared to sail across the Atlantic on board the Mayflower, theatmosphere remained charged with fear and expectation. Men andwomen readied themselves for war, pestilence, or divineretribution. Against this background, and amid deep economicdepression, the Pilgrims conceived their enterprise of exile. Within a decade, despite crisis and catastrophe, they built athriving settlement at New Plymouth, based on beaver fur, corn, andcattle. In doing so, they laid the foundations for Massachusetts,New England, and a new nation. Using a wealth of new evidence fromlandscape, archaeology, and hundreds of overlooked or neglecteddocuments, Nick Bunker gives a vivid and strikingly originalaccount of the Mayflower project and the first decade of thePlymouth Colon
