In a series of moving and provocative conversations, ninemembers of the Israeli Defense Force tell why they refused to servein the West Bank and Gaza. The "Refuseniks" describe their riskymoral decision against the background of what is perhaps the mostvolatile conflict in the world today: the Israeli-Palestinianstruggle. Their individual choices and their collective activismhave generated intense debate in Israel and the internationalcommunity, from the leading Israeli newspaper Ha'Aretz to a segmenton 60 Minutes. In a sociocultural mosaic of the Refusenik movement and thepolitical context in which it arose, these men describe theirindividual family backgrounds and beliefs. Dedicated to the welfareof their country and its cultural heritage, they outline theirconcerns for the future of Israel. As they tell their stories ofpersonal struggle, they also raise the disturbing and highlycontroversial issue of human rights abuses in the occupiedterritories. These personal accounts offer new perspe

The veteran Wall Street Journal science reporterMarilyn Chase’s fascinating account of an outbreak of bubonicplague in late Victorian San Francisco is a real-life thriller thatresonates in today’s headlines. The Barbary Plague transports us to the Gold Rush boomtown in 1900, at the end of thecity’s Gilded Age. With a deep understanding of the effects onpublic health of politics, race, and geography, Chase shows how onecity triumphed over perhaps the most frightening and deadly of allscourges.

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.

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

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

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

The award-winning correspondent for the MacNeil/LehrerNewsHour gives a moment-by-moment account of her walk into historywhen, as a 19-year-old, she challenged Southern law--and Southernviolence--to become the first black woman to attend the Universityof Georgia. A powrful act of witness to the brutal realities ofsegregation.

The sinking of the Dorchester in the icy waters offGreenland shortly after midnight on February 3, 1942, was one ofthe worst sea disasters of World War II. It was also the occasionof an astounding feat of heroism—and faith. As water gushed through a hole made by a German torpedo, fourchaplains—members of different faiths but linked by bonds offriendship and devotion—moved quietly among the men onboard.Preaching bravery, the chaplains distributed life jackets,including their own. In the end, these four men went down with theship, their arms linked in spiritual solidarity, their voicesraised in prayer. In this spellbinding narrative, award-winningauthor and journalist Dan Kurzman tells the story of these heroesand the faith—in God and in country—that they shared. They were about as different as four American clergymen could be.George Lansing Fox (Methodist), wounded and decorated in World WarI, loved his family and his Vermont congregation—yet he re-enlistedas soon as he heard about Pearl Harbo

No one in Vietnam had to tell door gunner and gunship crewchief Al Sever that the odds didn’t look good. He volunteered forthe job well aware that hanging out of slow-moving choppers overhot LZs blazing with enemy fire was not conducive to a long life.But that wasn’t going to stop Specialist Sever. From Da Nang to Cu Chi and the Mekong Delta, Sever spentthirty-one months in Vietnam, fighting in eleven of the war’ssixteen campaigns. Every morning when his gunship lifted off, oftento the clacking and muzzle flashes of AK-47s hidden in the dawnfog, Sever knew he might not return. This raw, gritty,gut-wrenching firsthand account of American boys fighting and dyingin Vietnam captures all the hell, horror, and heroism of thattragic war.

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

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.

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.

From transforming the ways of war to offering godlike views ofinaccessible spots, revolutionizing rescues worldwide, andproviding some of our most-watched TV moments—including the cloudof newscopters that trailed O. J. Simpson’s Bronco—the helicopteris far more capable than early inventors expected. Now James Chilesprofiles the many helicoptrians who contributed to the developmentof this amazing machine, and pays tribute to the selfless heroismof pilots and crews. A virtual flying lesson and scientificadventure tale, The God Machine is more than the history of aninvention; it is a journey into the minds of imaginative thinkersand a fascinating look at the ways they changed our world.

What ties Americans to one another? What unifies a nation ofcitizens with different racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds?These were the dilemmas faced by Americans in the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries as they sought ways to bind the newly UnitedStates together. In A is for American, award-winning historian Jill Leporeportrays seven men who turned to language to help shape a newnation’s character and boundaries. From Noah Webster’s attempts tostandardize American spelling, to Alexander Graham Bell’s use of“Visible Speech” to help teach the deaf to talk, to Sequoyah’sdevelopment of a Cherokee syllabary as a means of preserving hispeople’s independence, these stories form a compelling portrait ofa developing nation’s struggles. Lepore brilliantly explores thepersonalities, work, and influence of these figures, seven mendriven by radically different aims and temperaments. Through thesesuperbly told stories, she chronicles the challenges faced by ayoung country trying to unify

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.