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At the dawn of the 19th century, Meriwether Lewis and WilliamClark embarked on an unprecedented journey from St. Louis, Missourito the Pacific Ocean and back again. Their assignment was toexplore the newly acquired Louisiana Territory and record thegeography, flora, fauna, and people they encountered along the way.The tale of their incredible journey, meticulously recorded intheir journals, has become an American classic. This single-volume, landmark edition of the famous journals isthe first abridgement to be published in at least a decade.

The Boys’ Crusade is the great historian PaulFussell’s unflinching and unforgettable account of the Americaninfantryman’s experiences in Europe during World War II. Based inpart on the author’s own experiences, it provides a stirringnarrative of what the war was actually like, from the point of viewof the children—for children they were—who fought it. While dealingdefinitively with issues of strategy, leadership, context, andtactics, Fussell has an additional purpose: to tear away the veilof feel-good mythology that so often obscures and sanitizes war’sbrutal essence. “A chronicle should deal with nothing but the truth,” Fussellwrites in his Preface. Accord-ingly, he eschews every kind ofsentimentalism, focusing instead on the raw action and humanemotion triggered by the intimacy, horror, and intense sorrows ofwar, and honestly addressing the errors, waste, fear, misery, andresentments that plagued both sides. In the vast literature onWorld War II, The Boys’ Crusade stands

The story of Jason and the Argonauts and Homer’s tales ofUlysses are among the greatest ancient epics, but are they merelynautical legends or true stories? Mauricio Obregón has combed through classical texts, focusing onthe smallest details, and with his intimate knowledge of historicalnavigation, brilliantly reenacts the voyages the ancient heroesactually traveled. Using the clues embedded in these epic tales,Obregón deftly argues that many of the legends are not merelyfiction, but are, quite possibly, true adventures.

John Julius Norwich’s A History of Venice has been dubbed“indispensable” by none other than Jan Morris. Now, in his secondbook on the city once known as La Serenissima, Norwich advances thestory in this elegant chronicle of a hundred years of Venice’shighs and lows, from its ignominious capture by Napoleon in 1797 tothe dawn of the 20th century. An obligatory stop on the Grand Tour for any cultured Englishman(and, later, Americans), Venice limped into the 19th century–firstunder the yoke of France, then as an outpost of the AustrianHapsburgs, stripped of riches yet indelibly the most ravishing cityin Italy. Even when subsumed into a unified Italy in 1866, itremained a magnet for aesthetes of all stripes–subject or settingof books by Ruskin and James, a muse to poets and musicians, in itsway the most gracious courtesan of all European cities. Byrefracting images of Venice through the visits of such extravagant(and sometimes debauched) artists as Lord Byron, Richard Wagner,and the inimi

They were four exceptional soldiers, a new generation asked tosave an army that had been hollowed out after Vietnam. Theysurvived the military's brutal winnowing to reach its top echelon.They became the Army's most influential generals in the crucible ofIraq. Collectively, their lives tell the story of the Army over thelast four decades and illuminate the path it must travel to protectthe nation over the next century. Theirs is a story of successesand failures, of ambitions achieved and thwarted, of theresponsibilities and perils of command. The careers of this elitequartet show how the most powerful military force in the worldentered a major war unprepared, and how the Army, drawing on areservoir of talent that few thought it possessed, saved itselffrom crushing defeat against a ruthless, low-tech foe. In TheFourth Star, you'll follow: ?Gen. John Abizaid, one of the Army's most brilliant minds.Fluent in Arabic, he forged an unconventional path in the militaryto make himself a

Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters wasplaying cards in Boston's North End when they heard a tremendouscrash. It was like roaring surf, one of them said later. Like arunaway two-horse team smashing through a fence, said another. Athird firefighter jumped up from his chair to look out a window-"Ohmy God!" he shouted to the other men, "Run!" A 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons ofmolasses had just collapsed on Boston's waterfront, disgorging itscontents as a 15-foot-high wave of molasses that at its outsettraveled at 35 miles an hour. It demolished wooden homes, even thebrick fire station. The number of dead wasn't known for days. Itwould be years before a landmark court battle determined who wasresponsible for the disaster.

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.

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.

From the bestselling and PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author ofNetherland, a fascinating, personal, and beautifully crafted familyhistory. Joseph O'Neill's grandfathers--one Turkish, one Irish--were bothimprisoned for suspected subversion during the Second World War.The Irish grandfather, a handsome rogue from a family of smallfarmers, was an active member of the IRA. O'Neill's othergrandfather, a debonair hotelier from the tiny and threatenedTurkish Christian minority, was interned by the British inPalestine on suspicion of being an Axis spy. With intellect, compassion, and grace, O'Neill sets the storiesof these individuals against the history of the last century's mostinhuman events.

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

With the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, once againAmerica's men and women who have seen war close-up are suddenlyexpected to return seamlessly to civilian life. In Flashback, PennyColeman tells the cautionary and timely story of posttraumaticstress disorder in the hope that we can sensitively assist thoseveterans who return from combat in need of help, and the familiesstruggling to support them.

Robert Carter III, thegrandson of Tidewater legend Robert “King” Carter, was born intothe highest circles of Virginia’s Colonial aristocracy. He wasneighbor and kin to the Washingtons and Lees and a friend and peerto Thomas Jefferson and George Mason. But on September 5, 1791,Carter severed his ties with this glamorous elite at the stroke ofa pen. In a document he called his Deed of Gift, Carter declaredhis intent to set free nearly five hundred slaves in the largestsingle act of liberation in the history of American slavery beforethe Emancipation Proclamation. How did Carter succeed in the very action that George Washingtonand Thomas Jefferson claimed they fervently desired but werepowerless to effect? And why has his name all but vanished from theannals of American history? In this haunting, brilliantly originalwork, Andrew Levy traces the confluence of circumstance,conviction, war, and passion that led to Carter’s extraordinaryact. At the dawn of the Revolutionary War, Carter was one of thewealt

For sheer bravado and style, no woman in the North or Southrivaled the Civil War heroine Rose O’Neale Greenhow. Fearless spyfor the Confederacy, glittering Washington hostess, legendarybeauty and lover, Rose Greenhow risked everything for the cause shevalued more than life itself. In this superb portrait, biographerAnn Blackman tells the surprising true story of a unique woman inhistory. “I am a Southern woman, born with revolutionary blood in myveins,” Rose once declared–and that fiery spirit would plunge herinto the center of power and the thick of adventure. Born into aslave-holding family, Rose moved to Washington, D.C., as a youngwoman and soon established herself as one of the capital’s mostcharming and influential socialites, an intimate of John C.Calhoun, James Buchanan, and Dolley Madison. She married well, bore eight children and buried five, and, atthe height of the Gold Rush, accompanied her husband RobertGreenhow to San Francisco. Widowed after Robert died in a tragic

The heartwarming New York Times bestseller by the author ofThe Greatest Generation "When I wrote about the men and women who came out of theDepression, who won great victories and made lasting sacrifices inWorld War II and then returned home to begin building the world wehave today ... it was my way of saying thank you. I was notprepared for the avalanche of letters and responses touched off bythat book. "I had written a book about America, and now America was writingback." Tom Brokaw touched the heart of the nation with his towering #1bestseller The Greatest Generation, a moving tribute to those whogave the world so much -- and who left an enduring legacy ofheroism and grace. The Greatest Generation Speaks was born out ofthe vast outpouring of letters Brokaw received from people eager toshare their personal memories and experiences of a momentous timein America's history. These letters and reflections cross time, distance, andgenerations as they give voice to lives forever chan

In this gripping, page-turning account, Sam Moses has told astory in the tradition of Sebastian Junger’s A Perfect Storm,Robert Kurson’s Shadow Divers, and Hampton Sides’s Ghost Soldiers.It’s a story about the heroism of two men in battle at sea duringWorld War II, and one woman fleeing Nazi Norway with her child.It’s about how courage can change the course of history. AT ALL COSTS: How a Crippled Ship and Two American MerchantMarines Turned the Tide of World War II is the astonishing untoldaccount, with original historical reporting, of how two men facedunfathomable danger to help save the island of Malta, Churchill’scrux of the war. In 1942, the tiny island of Malta was the most heavily bombedplace on earth. Hitler needed Malta as a stepping-stone to get tothe oil in Iraq and Iran (Persia at the time). Blockaded by sea,Malta was running on empty, in food, fuel and ammunition. AxisU-boats and dive-bombers made supply convoys to Malta more likesuicide missions. In this last-hope

For the first time in one enthralling book, here is theincredible true story of the numerous attempts to assassinate AdolfHitler and change the course of history. Disraeli once declared that “assassination never changed anything,”and yet the idea that World War II and the horrors of the Holocaustmight have been averted with a single bullet or bomb has remained atantalizing one for half a century. What historian Roger Moorhousereveals in Killing Hitler is just how close–and how often–historycame to taking a radically different path between Adolf Hitler’srise to power and his ignominious suicide. Few leaders, in any century, can have been the target of so manyassassination attempts, with such momentous consequences in thebalance. Hitler’s almost fifty would-be assassins ranged fromsimple craftsmen to high-ranking soldiers, from the apolitical tothe ideologically obsessed, from Polish Resistance fighters topatriotic Wehrmacht officers, and from enemy agents to his closestassociates. And yet, up to

In this rich and engrossing account, John and Abigail Adamscome to life against the backdrop of the Republic’s tenuous earlyyears. Drawing on over 1,200 letters exchanged between the couple, Ellistells a story both personal and panoramic. We learn about the manyyears Abigail and John spent apart as John’s political career senthim first to Philadelphia, then to Paris and Amsterdam; theirrelationship with their children; and Abigail’s role as John’sclosest and most valued advisor. Exquisitely researched andbeautifully written, First Family is both a revealing portrait of amarriage and a unique study of America’s early years.

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.

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.