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In this lively and engaging history, Stephen Puleo tells thestory of the Boston Italians from their earliest years, when alargely illiterate and impoverished people in a strange landrecreated the bonds of village and region in the cramped quartersof the North End. Focusing on this first and crucial Italianenclave in Boston, Puleo describes the experience of Italianimmigrants as they battled poverty, illiteracy, and prejudice;explains their transformation into Italian Americans during theDepression and World War II; and chronicles their rich history inBoston up to the present day.
This is the story of a small group of soldiers from the 101stAirborne Division’s fabled 502nd Infantry Regiment—a unit known as“the Black Heart Brigade.” Deployed in late 2005 to Iraq’sso-called Triangle of Death, a veritable meat grinder just south ofBaghdad, the Black Hearts found themselves in arguably thecountry’s most dangerous location at its most dangerous time. Hit by near-daily mortars, gunfire, and roadside bomb attacks,suffering from a particularly heavy death toll, and enduring achronic breakdown in leadership, members of one Black Heartplatoon—1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion—descended, overtheir year-long tour of duty, into a tailspin of poor discipline,substance abuse, and brutality. Four 1st Platoon soldiers would perpetrate one of the mostheinous war crimes U.S. forces have committed during the IraqWar—the rape of a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and the cold-bloodedexecution of her and her family. Three other 1st Platoon soldierswould be overrun at
In this unprecedented account, Chandra Manning uses letters,diaries, and regimental newspapers to take the reader inside theminds of Civil War soldiers-black and white, Northern andSouthern-as they fought and marched across a divided country. Withstunning poise and narrative verve, Manning explores how the Unionand Confederate soldiers came to identify slavery as the centralissue of the war and what that meant for a tumultuous nation. Thisis a brilliant and eye-opening debut and an invaluable addition toour understanding of the Civil War as it has never been renderedbefore.
On January 28, 1945, 121 hand-selected U.S. troops slippedbehind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March thirtyrugged miles to rescue 513 POWs languishing in a hellish camp,among them the last survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March. Arecent prison massacre by Japanese soldiers elsewhere in thePhilippines made the stakes impossibly high and left little time toplan the complex operation. In Ghost Soldiers Hampton Sides vividly re-creates thisdaring raid, offering a minute-by-minute narration that unfoldsalongside intimate portraits of the prisoners and their lives inthe camp. Sides shows how the POWs banded together to survive,defying the Japanese authorities even as they endured starvation,tropical diseases, and torture. Harrowing, poignant, and inspiring, Ghost Soldiers is the mesmerizing story of a remarkablemission. It is also a testament to the human spirit, an account ofenormous bravery and self-sacrifice amid the most tryingconditions.
Los Angeles was the fastest growing city in the world, madwith oil fever, get-rich-quick schemes, celebrity scandals, andreligious fervor. It was also rife with organized crime, with amayor in the pocket of the syndicates and a DA taking bribes tothrow trials. In A Bright and Guilty Place , Richard Raynernarrates the entwined lives of two men, Dave Clark and LeslieWhite, who were caught up in the crimes, murders, and swindles ofthe day. Over a few transformative years, as the boom times shadedinto the Depression, the adventures of Clark and White wouldinspire pulp fiction and replace L.A.’s reckless optimism with anew cynicism. Together, theirs is the tale of how the city ofsunshine got noir.
An analysis of the Civil War, drawing on letters and diariesby more than one thousand soldiers, gives voice to the personalreasons behind the war, offering insight into the ideology thatshaped both sides. Reprint. PW.
At the age of thirty-three, Ekow Eshun—born in London toAfrican-born parents—travels to Ghana in search of his roots. Hegoes from Accra, Ghana’s cosmopolitan capital city, to the storiedslave forts of Elmina, and on to the historic warrior kingdom ofAsante. During his journey, Eshun uncovers a long-held secret abouthis lineage that will compel him to question everything he knowsabout himself and where he comes from. From the London suburbs ofhis childhood to the twenty-first century African metropolis,Eshun’s is a moving chronicle of one man’s search for home, and ofthe pleasures and pitfalls of fashioning an identity in thesevibrant contemporary worlds.
In a remarkable feat of historical detective work, DavidRobertson illuminates the shadowy figure who planned a slaverebellion so daring that, if successful, it might have changed theface of the antebellum South. This is the story of a man who, likeNat Turner, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X, is a complex yet seminalhero in the history of African American emancipation. Denmark Vesey was a charasmatic ex-slave--literate, professional,and relatively well-off--who had purchased his own freedom with thewinnings from a lottery. Inspired by the success of therevolutionary black republic in Haiti, he persuaded some ninethousand slaves to join him in a revolt. On a June evening in 1822,having gathered guns, and daggers, they were to converge onCharleston, South Carolina, take the city's arsenal, murder thepopulace, burn the city, and escape by ship to Haiti or Africa.When the uprising was betrayed, Vesey and seventy-seven of hisfollowers were executed, the matter hushed by Charleston's elitefor fear of furth
In this classic study, Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M.McPherson deftly narrates the experience of blacks--former slavesand soldiers, preachers, visionaries, doctors, intellectuals, andcommon people--during the Civil War. Drawing on contemporaryjournalism, speeches, books, and letters, he presents an eclecticchronicle of their fears and hopes as well as their essentialcontributions to their own freedom. Through the words of theseextraordinary participants, both Northern and Southern, McPhersoncaptures African-American responses to emancipation, the shiftingattitudes toward Lincoln and the life of black soldiers in theUnion army. Above all, we are allowed to witness the dreams of adisenfranchised people eager to embrace the rights and the equalityoffered to them, finally, as citizens.
In the waning days of Venice’s glory in the mid-1700s, AndreaMemmo was scion to one the city’s oldest patrician families. At theage of twenty-four he fell passionately in love withsixteen-year-old Giustiniana Wynne, the beautiful, illegitimatedaughter of a Venetian mother and British father. Because of theirdramatically different positions in society, they could not marry.And Giustiniana’s mother, afraid that an affair would ruin herdaughter’s chances to form a more suitable union, forbade them tosee each other. Her prohibition only fueled their desire and sobegan their torrid, secret seven-year-affair, enlisting the aid ofa few intimates and servants (willing to risk their own positions)to shuttle love letters back and forth and to help facilitate theirclandestine meetings. Eventually, Giustiniana found herselfpregnant and she turned for help to the infamous Casanova–himselfinfatuated with her. Two and half centuries later, the unbelievable story of thisstar-crossed couple is told in a
When World War II broke out in Europe, the American army hadno specialized division of mountain soldiers. But in the winter of1939–40, after a tiny band of Finnish mountain troops brought theinvading Soviet army to its knees, an amateur skier named CharlesMinot “Minnie” Dole convinced the United States Army to let himrecruit an extraordinary assortment of European expatriates,wealthy ski bums, mountaineers, and thrill-seekers and form theminto a unique band of Alpine soldiers. These men endured nearlythree years of grueling training in the Colorado Rockies and in theprocess set new standards for both soldiering and mountaineering.The newly forged 10th Mountain Division finally faced combat in thewinter of 1945, in Italy’s Apennine Mountains, against theseemingly unbreakable German fortifications north of the GothicLine. There, they planned and executed what is still regarded asthe most daring series of nighttime mountain attacks in U.S.military history, taking Mount Belvedere and the sheer, tre
“Dray captures the genius and ingenuity of Franklin’s scientificthinking and then does something even more fascinating: He showshow science shaped his diplomacy, politics, and Enlightenmentphilosophy.” –Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An AmericanLife Today we think of Benjamin Franklin as a founder of Americanindependence who also dabbled in science. But in Franklin’s day,the era of Enlightenment, long before he was an eminent statesman,he was famous for his revolutionary scientific work. Pulitzer Prizefinalist Philip Dray uses the evolution of Franklin’s scientificcuriosity and empirical thinking as a metaphor for America’sstruggle to establish its fundamental values. He recounts howFranklin unlocked one of the greatest natural mysteries of his day,the seemingly unknowable powers of lightning and electricity. Richin historical detail and based on numerous primary sources,Stealing God’s Thunder is a fascinating original look at one of ourmost beloved and complex founding fathers
In 1971 a young French ethnologist named Francois Bizot wastaken prisoner by forces of the Khmer Rouge who kept him chained ina jungle camp for months before releasing him. Four years laterBizot became the intermediary between the now victorious KhmerRouge and the occupants of the besieged French embassy in PhnomPenh, eventually leading a desperate convoy of foreigners to safetyacross the Thai border. Out of those ordeals comes this transfixing book. At its centerlies the relationship between Bizot and his principal captor, a mannamed Douch, who is today known as the most notorious of the KhmerRouge’s torturers but who, for a while, was Bizot’s protector andfriend. Written with the immediacy of a great novel, unsparing inits understanding of evil, The Gate manages to be at oncewrenching and redemptive.
In his writing, Borges always combined high seriousness with awicked sense of fun. Here he reveals his delight in re-creating (ormaking up) colorful stories from the Orient, the Islamic world, andthe Wild West, as well as his horrified fascination with knifefights, political and personal betrayal, and bloodthirsty revenge.Spark-ling with the sheer exuberant pleasure of story-telling, thiscollection marked the emergence of an utterly distinctive literaryvoice.
This provocative work challenges traditional accounts ofMeriwether Lewis and William Clark’s expedition across thecontinent and back again. Uncovering deeper meanings in theexplorers’ journals and lives, Exploring Lewis and Clark exposes their self-perceptions and deceptions, and how theyinteracted with those who traveled with them, the people theydiscovered along the way, the animals they hunted, and the landthey walked across. The book discovers new heroes and brings oldones into historical focus. Thomas P. Slaughter interrogates the explorers’ dreams, how theywrote and what they aimed to possess, their interactions withanimals, Indians, and each other, their sense of themselves asleaders and men, and why they feared that they had failed theirnation and President. Slaughter’s Lewis and Clark are moreconfused, frightened, courageous, and flawed than in previousaccounts. They are more human, their expedition more dramatic, andthus their story is more revealing about our own relationships tohistory
When he was a student in Paris, Truong Nhu Tang met Ho ChiMinh. Later he fought in the Vietnamese jungle and emerged as oneof the major figures in the "fight for liberation" -- and one ofthe most determined adversaries of the United States. He became theVietcong's Minister of Justice, but at the end of the war he fledthe country in disillusionment and despair. He now lives in exilein Paris, the highest level official to have defected from Vietnamto the West. This is his candid, revealing and unforgettableautobiography.
In this raw and moving memoir, Claude Thomas describes hisservice in Vietnam, his subsequent emotional collapse, and hisremarkable journey toward healing. At Hell's Gate is not only agripping coming-of-age story but a spiritual travelogue from thehorrors of combat to the discovery of inner peace—a journey thatinspired Thomas to become a Zen monk and peace activist who travelsto war-scarred regions around the world. "Everyone has theirVietnam," Thomas writes. "Everyone has their own experience ofviolence, calamity, or trauma." With simplicity and power, thisbook offers timeless teachings on how we can all find healing, andit presents practical guidance on how mindfulness and compassioncan transform our lives. This expanded paperback edition features: Discussion questions for reading groups A new afterword by the author reflecting on how the current warsin Iraq and Afghanistan are affecting soldiers—and offering adviceon how to help returning soldiers to cope with their combatexperi
《利玛窦》是一个人的传奇，更是一个时代的剪影。十六世纪地理大发现之后.中西文化交流进入了一个全新的时代。一五八三年.意大利传教士利玛窦运用“文化适应”的传教策略，成功地进入了中国内地，从而揭开了明末清初中西文化交流的高潮。《利玛窦》讲述的就是这位传奇人物为了实现他在晚明中国传教的梦想，不断认识、不断适应中国文化的故事。面对当今中西文化交流的诸多困惑，把眼光放长一点，回到利玛窦时代，来重新认识与思考中西文化的异同.这可以让我们用一种历史的、客观的眼光来给传统文化定位，用开放的、发展的眼光来看待文化交流与冲突。
