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

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

The effects of war refuse to remain local: they persistthrough the centuries, sometimes in unlikely ways far removed fromthe military arena. In Ripples of Battle , the acclaimed historianVictor Davis Hanson weaves wide-ranging military and culturalhistory with his unparalleled gift for battle narrative as heilluminates the centrality of war in the human experience. The Athenian defeat at Delium in 424 BC brought tacticalinnovations to infantry fighting; it also assured the influence ofthe philosophy of Socrates, who fought well in the battle. Nearlytwenty-three hundred years later, the carnage at Shiloh and thedeath of the brilliant Southern strategist Albert Sidney Johnsoninspired a sense of fateful tragedy that would endure and stymieSouthern culture for decades. The Northern victory would alsobolster the reputation of William Tecumseh Sherman, and inspire LewWallace to pen the classic Ben Hur . And, perhaps most resonant forour time, the agony of Okinawa spurred the Japanese towardstate-sanct

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.

From the deadly shores of North Africa to the invasion ofSicily to the fierce jungle hell of the Pacific, the contributionof the World War II Ranger Battalions far outweighed their numbers.They were ordinary men on an extraordinary mission, experiencingthe full measure of the fear, exhaustion, and heroism of combat innearly every major invasion of the war. Whether spearheading alanding force or scouting deep behind enemy lines, these highlymotivated, highly trained volunteers led the way for other soldiers-- they were Rangers. With first-person interviews, in-depth research, and a completeappendix naming every Ranger known to have served, author RobertBlack, a Ranger himself, has made the battles of WWII come to lifethrough the struggles of the men who fought to win the greatest warthe world has ever seen.

During the second Palestinian intifada, Philip C. Winslowworked in the West Bank with the United Nations Relief and WorksAgency (UNRWA), driving up to 600 miles a week in the occupiedterritory. He returned to the region in 2006. In this book, Winslowcaptures the daily struggles, desperation, and anger ofPalestinians; the hostility of settlers; the complex responses ofIsraeli soldiers, officials, and peace activists; and even thebreathtaking beauty of nature in this embattled place.

A firsthand look at the Battle of Gettysburg offers Union andConfederate viewpoints of the conflict, recreating the three daysand discussing the decisions of Lee, Longstreet, and Meade.Reprint.

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.

Part of the briefing included familiarizing the men with theenemy uniforms. Private Robert “Lightnin” Hayes had thisrecollection to add: “I remember the day we were assembled in atent for the first time and an officer told us where we were goingto jump. He then paused to watch our reactions. There was a sandtable near by with a facsimile of the terrain on which we weregoing to drop. There were tw...

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.

September 17, 1944. Thousands of Screaming Eagles–101stAirborne Division paratroopers–descend from the sky over Holland,dropping deep behind German lines in a daring daylight mission toseize and secure the road leading north to Arnhem and the Rhine.Their success would allow the Allied army to advance swiftly intoGermany. The Screaming Eagles accomplish their initial objectiveswithin hours, but keeping their sections of “Hell’s Highway” opentakes another seventy-two days of fierce round-the-clock fightingagainst crack German troops and tank divisions. Drawing on interviews with more than six hundred paratroopers,George E. Koskimaki chronicles, with vivid firsthand accounts, thedramatic, never-before-told story of the Screaming Eagles’ valiantstruggle. Hell’s Highway also tellsof the Dutch citizens andmembers of the underground who were liberated after five years ofNazi oppression and never forgot America’s airborne heroes. Thisrenowned force risked their lives for the freedom of a

A harrowing portrait of a largely forgotten campaign thatpushed one battalion to the limits of human suffering. Despite their lack of jungle training, the 32nd Division’s “GhostMountain Boys” were assigned the most grueling mission of theentire Pacific campaign in World War II: to march over the10,000-foot Owen Stanley Mountains to protect the right flank ofthe Australian army during the battle for New Guinea. Reminiscentof the classics like Band of Brothers and The Things They Carried,The Ghost Mountain Boys is part war diary, part extreme-adventuretale, and—through letters, journals, and interviews—part biographyof a group of men who fought to survive in an environment every bitas fierce as the enemy they faced. Theirs is one of the greatuntold stories of the war. “Superb.” —Chicago Sun-Times “Campbell started out with history, but in the end he has writtena tale of survival and courage of near-mythic proportions.” —America in WWII magazine

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

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

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.