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.
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.
Ernest Furgurson, author of Ashes of Glory and Chancellorsville 1863 , brings his talents to a pivotal andoften neglected Civil War battle–the fierce, unremitting slaughterat Cold Harbor, Virginia, which ended the lives of 10,000 Unionsoldiers. In June of 1864, the Army of the Potomac attacked heavilyentrenched Confederate forces outside of Richmond, hoping to breakthe strength of Robert E. Lee and take the capital. Facing almostcertain death, Union soldiers pinned their names to their uniformsin the forlorn hope that their bodies would be identified andburied. Furgurson sheds new light on the personal conflicts thatled to Grant’s worst defeat and argues that it was a watershedmoment in the war. Offering a panorama rich in detail and revealinganecdotes that brings the dark days of the campaign to life, NotWar But Murder is historical narrative as compelling as anynovel.
In this luminous portrait of wartime Washington, Ernest B.Furgurson–author of the widely acclaimed Chancellorsville1863 , Ashes of Glory , and Not War butMurder --brings to vivid life the personalities and events thatanimated the Capital during its most tumultuous time. Here amongthe sharpsters and prostitutes, slaves and statesmen are detectiveAllan Pinkerton, tracking down Southern sympathizers; poet WaltWhitman, nursing the wounded; and accused Confederate spy AntoniaFord, romancing her captor, Union Major Joseph Willard. Here aregenerals George McClellan and Ulysses S. Grant, railroad crew bossAndrew Carnegie, and architect Thomas Walter, striving to finishthe Capitol dome. And here is Abraham Lincoln, wrangling withofficers, pardoning deserters, and inspiring the nation. FreedomRising is a gripping account of the era that transformedWashington into the world’s most influential city.
By the world-renowned novelist, playwright, critic, and authorof Wizard of the Crow, an evocative and affecting memoir ofchildhood. Ngugi wa Thiong’o was born in 1938 in rural Kenya to a fatherwhose four wives bore him more than a score of children. The manwho would become one of Africa’s leading writers was the fifthchild of the third wife. Even as World War II affected the lives ofAfricans under British colonial rule in particularly unexpectedways, Ngugi spent his childhood as very much the apple of hismother’s eye before attending school to slake what was thenconsidered a bizarre thirst for learning. In Dreams in a Time of War, Ngugi deftly etches a bygone era,capturing the landscape, the people, and their culture; the socialand political vicissitudes of life under colonialism and war; andthe troubled relationship between an emerging Christianized middleclass and the rural poor. And he shows how the Mau Mau armedstruggle for Kenya’s independence against the British informed noton
“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
Sherman's March is the vivid narrative of General William T.Sherman's devastating sweep through Georgia and the Carolinas inthe closing days of the Civil War. Weaving together hundreds ofeyewitness stories, Burke Davis graphically brings to life thedramatic experiences of the 65,000 Federal troops who plunderedtheir way through the South and those of the anguished -- and oftendefiant -- Confederate women and men who sought to protectthemselves and their family treasures, usually in vain. Dominatingthese events is the general himself -- "Uncle Billy" to his troops,the devil incarnate to the Southerners he encountered.
Whether he is evoking the blind carnage of the Tet offensive,the theatrics of his fellow Americans, or the unraveling of his ownillusions, Wolff brings to this work the same uncanny eye fordetail, pitiless candor and mordant wit that made This Boy's Life amodern classic.
An examination of the polarized characters and careers ofWilliam Tecumseh Sherman and Stonewall Jackson creates a work thatis at once a dual biography, military history, and analysis of theAmerican penchant for patriotic bloodshed. Reprint. NYT.
In the tradition of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and SebastianJunger’s The Perfect Storm comes a true tale of riveting adventurein which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a greathistorical mystery–and make history themselves. For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was morethan a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents,braving depths that induced hallucinatory effects, navigatingthrough wreckage as perilous as a minefield, they pushed themselvesto their limits and beyond, brushing against death more than oncein the rusting hulks of sunken ships. But in the fall of 1991, not even these courageous divers wereprepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in thefrigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: aWorld War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wastelandof twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones–all buried underdecades of accumulated sediment. No identifying marks were visible on
Paris - Underground BY ETTA SHIBER. Contents include: I Escapefrom Europe i II Flight from Paris 13 III The English Pilot 22 IVRunning the Gauntlet 31 V They Are Here 37 VI Plans for Escape 51VII William Escapes 57 VIII A Trip to Doullens 67 IX Ten T
November 11, 1918. The final hours pulsate with tension asevery man in the trenches hopes to escape the melancholydistinction of being the last to die in World War I. The Alliedgenerals knew the fighting would end precisely at 11:00 A.M, yet inthe final hours they flung men against an already beaten Germany.The result? Eleven thousand casualties suffered–more than duringthe D-Day invasion of Normandy. Why? Allied commanders wanted topunish the enemy to the very last moment and career officers saw afast-fading chance for glory and promotion. Joseph E. Persico puts the reader in the trenches with theforgotten and the famous–among the latter, Corporal Adolf Hitler,Captain Harry Truman, and Colonels Douglas MacArthur and GeorgePatton. Mainly, he follows ordinary soldiers’ lives, illuminatingtheir fate as the end approaches. Persico sets the last day of thewar in historic context with a gripping reprise of all that led upto it, from the 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke, FranzFerdinand
At the end of World War II, long before an Allied victory wasassured and before the scope of the atrocities orchestrated byHitler would come into focus or even assume the name of theHolocaust, Allied forces had begun to prepare for its aftermath.Taking cues from the end of the First World War, planners had begunthe futile task of preparing themselves for a civilian healthcrisis that, due in large part to advances in medical science,would never come. The problem that emerged was not widespreaddisease among Europe’s population, as anticipated, but massivedisplacement among those who had been uprooted from home andcountry during the war. Displaced Persons, as the refugees would come to be known, were notcomprised entirely of Jews. Millions of Latvians, Poles,Ukrainians, and Yugoslavs, in addition to several hundred thousandGermans, were situated in a limbo long overlooked by historians.While many were speedily repatriated, millions of refugees refusedto return to countries that were forever changed by the wa
It is a tale as familiar as our history primers: A derangedactor, John Wilkes Booth, killed Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre,escaped on foot, and eluded capture for twelve days until he methis fiery end in a Virginia tobacco barn. In the national hysteriathat followed, eight others were arrested and tried; four of thosewere executed, four imprisoned. Therein lie all the classicelements of a great thriller. But the untold tale is even morefascinating. Now, in American Brutus, Michael W. Kauffman, one of the foremostLincoln assassination authorities, takes familiar history to adeeper level, offering an unprecedented, authoritative account ofthe Lincoln murder conspiracy. Working from a staggering array ofarchival sources and new research, Kauffman sheds new light on thebackground and motives of John Wilkes Booth, the mechanics of hisplot to topple the Union government, and the trials and fates ofthe conspirators. Piece by piece, Kauffman explains and corrects commonmisperceptions and analy
The secretive Mysteries conducted at Eleusis in Greece fornearly two millennia have long puzzled scholars with strangeaccounts of initiates experiencing otherworldly journeys. In thisgroundbreaking work, three experts—a mycologist, a chemist, and ahistorian—argue persuasively that the sacred potion given toparticipants in the course of the ritual contained a psychoactiveentheogen. The authors then expand the discussion to show thatnatural psychedelic agents have been used in spiritual ritualsacross history and cultures. Although controversial when firstpublished in 1978, the book’s hypothesis has become more widelyaccepted in recent years, as knowledge of ethnobotany has deepened.The authors have played critical roles in the modern rediscovery ofentheogens, and The Road to Eleusis presents an authoritativeexposition of their views. The book’s themes of the universality ofexperiential religion, the suppression of that knowledge byexploitative forces, and the use of psychedelics to reconcile theh
Throughout history, the Balkans have been a crossroads, a zoneof endless military, cultural, and economic mixing and clashingbetween Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, Catholicism andOrthodoxy. In this highly acclaimed short history, Mark Mazowersheds light on what has been called the tinderbox of Europe, whosetroubles have ignited wider wars for hundreds of years. Focusing onevents from the emergence of the nation-state onward, The Balkansreveals with piercing clarity the historical roots of currentconflicts and gives a landmark reassessment of the region’shistory, from the world wars and the Cold War to the collapse ofcommunism, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and the continuingsearch for stability in southeastern Europe.
In the spring of 2003, acclaimed journalist Anne Nivat set offfrom Tajikistan on a six-month journey through the aftermath of theAmerican invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Nivatfelt compelled to meet and write about the lives of everydaypeople, whom she allows to speak in their own voices, in their ownwords--words of hope, sadness, anger, and, above all, theuncertainty that fills their everyday lives. Her new Preface forthe paperback edition looks at the situation in Iraq today.
Award-winning historian Mary Beth Norton reexamines the Salemwitch trials in this startlingly original, meticulously researched,and utterly riveting study. In 1692 the people of Massachusetts were living in fear, and notsolely of satanic afflictions. Horrifyingly violent Indian attackshad all but emptied the northern frontier of settlers, and manytraumatized refugees—including the main accusers of witches—hadfled to communities like Salem. Meanwhile the colony’s leaders,defensive about their own failure to protect the frontier, ponderedhow God’s people could be suffering at the hands of savages. Struckby the similarities between what the refugees had witnessed andwhat the witchcraft “victims” described, many were quick to see avast conspiracy of the Devil (in league with the French and theIndians) threatening New England on all sides. By providing thisessential context to the famous events, and by casting her net wellbeyond the borders of Salem itself, Norton sheds new light on oneof the most pe
In 1863, after surviving the devastating Battle of Corinth,Newton Knight, a poor farmer from Mississippi, deserted theConfederate Army and began a guerrilla battle against theConfederacy. For two years he and other residents of Jones Countyengaged in an insurrection that would have repercussions far beyondthe scope of the Civil War. In this dramatic account of an almostforgotten chapter of American history, Sally Jenkins and JohnStauffer upend the traditional myth of the Confederacy as a heroicand unified Lost Cause, revealing the fractures within Civil-Warera Southern society. No man better exemplified these complexitiesthan Newton Knight, a pro-Union sympathizer in the deep South whorefused to fight a rich man’s war for slavery and cotton.
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 experience of war has affected every generation in thetwentieth and twenty-first centuries, and every soldier has a storyto tell. Since the year 2000, the Veteran's History Project, a newpermanent department of the Library of Congress, has beencollecting and preserving the memories of veterans. In addition tomore than 50,000 recorded oral histories, the Veteran's HistoryProject has amassed thousands of letters, photographs, scrapbooks,and invaluable mementos from nearly a century of warfare. In the first book to showcase the richness and depth of thiscollection, Voices of War tells a compelling, emotional, history ofthe experience of war, weaving together veterans' stories from inWorld Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf. Thestories are organized thematically into sections-from signing up tocoming home, generations of veterans recall individual experiencesthat together tell the extraordinary story of America at war.Letters, photographs, sketches and paintings enrich the compellingoral hi