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This page contains is a list of books recommended for your reading pleasure. There are many good titles and authors included, all of which are highly engaging stories. You are encouraged to spend some time learning about many good books below. Click on “Book Details” link to see further summary about the book.
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The explosive story of America’s secret post-WWII science programs, from the author of the New York Times bestseller Area 51
In the chaos following World War II, the U.S. government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich’s scientific minds. These were the br...Book Details
Publish : February 11, 2014
Publisher : Little, Brown and Company
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Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America
On June 27, 1976, an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by a group of Arab and German terrorists who demanded the release of 53 terrorists. The plane was forced to divert to Entebbe, in Uganda -- ruled by the murderous despot Idi Amin, who had no interest in intervening.
Days l...Book Details
Publish : December 1, 2015
Publisher : Little, Brown and Company
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Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport, the Most Audacious Hostage Rescue Mission in History
Between the Confederacy and recognition by Great Britain stood one unlikely Englishman who hated the slave trade. His actions helped determine the fate of a nation.
As the United States threatened to break into civil war, the Southern states found themselves in an impossible position: Their econo...Book Details
Publish : July 21, 2015
Publisher : Crown
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Our Man in Charleston: Britain’s Secret Agent in the Civil War South
An intimate look at the Moon and its relationship to life on Earth--from the primordial soup to the Artemis launches--from an acclaimed Scientific American and Atlantic contributor
Far from being a lifeless ornament in the sky, the Moon holds the key to some of science’s central questions, and ...Book Details
Publish : January 16, 2024
Publisher : Random House
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Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are
Former Army officer Parnell and collaborator Bruning (Shadow of the Sword) reprise Parnell’s 16 months as an infantry platoon leader in Afghanistan in this heartfelt memoir. In 2006, Parnell and his 10th Mountain Division platoon, the self-styled Outlaws, arrived in Afghanistan’s Bermel Valley, ...Book Details
Publish : February 28, 2012
Publisher : Harper Collins
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Outlaw Platoon: Heroes, Renegades, Infidels, and the Brotherhood of War in Afghanistan
Ferdinand Magellan's daring circumnavigation of the globe in the sixteenth century was a three-year odyssey filled with sex, violence, and amazing adventure. Now in Over the Edge of the World, biographer and journalist Laurence Bergreen entwines a variety of candid, firsthand accounts, bringing to l...Book Details
Publish : October 14, 2003
Publisher : William Morrow
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Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe
Published in time for the 75th anniversary, a gripping and definitive account of the event that changed twentieth-century America—Pearl Harbor—based on years of research and new information uncovered by a New York Times bestselling author.
The America we live in today was born, not on July 4,...Book Details
Publish : September 20, 2016
Publisher : Scribner
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Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness
Susan Zuccotti narrates the life and work of Pere Marie-Benoit, a courageous French Capuchin priest who risked everything to hide and save Jews in France and Italy during the Holocaust. Who was this extraordinary priest and how did he become adept at hiding Jews, providing them with false papers, an...Book Details
Publish : June 1, 2013
Publisher : Indiana University Press
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Pere Marie-Benoit and Jewish Rescue: How a French Priest Together with Jewish Friends Saved Thousands During the Holocaust
An exhilarating and intimate account of the life of music legend Tom Petty, by an accomplished writer and musician who toured with Petty
No one other than Warren Zanes, rocker and writer and friend, could author a book about Tom Petty that is as honest and evocative of Petty's music and the remar...Book Details
Publish : November 10, 2015
Publisher : Henry Holt and Co.
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Petty: The Biography
Finding and identifying a pirate ship is the hardest thing to do under the sea. But two men—John Chatterton and John Mattera—are willing to risk everything to find the Golden Fleece, the ship of the infamous pirate Joseph Bannister. At large during the Golden Age of Piracy in the seventeenth cen...Book Details
Publish : June 16, 2015
Publisher : Random House
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Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship
An unprecedented high-level master narrative of America's intelligence wars, from the only person ever to helm both CIA and NSA, at a time of heinous new threats and wrenching change
For General Michael Hayden, playing to the edge means playing so close to the line that you get chalk dust on your...Book Details
Publish : February 23, 2016
Publisher : Penguin Press
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Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror
A devastating investigation into the “corporate poverty complex”—the myriad businesses that profit from the poor
Poverty is big business in America. The federal government spends about $900 billion a year on programs that directly or disproportionately impact poor Americans, including anti-...Book Details
Publish : May 28, 2024
Publisher : The New Press
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Poverty for Profit: How Corporations Get Rich off America’s Poor
Power Failure is the electrifying behind-the-scenes story of the collapse of Enron, the high-flying gas and energy company touted as the poster child of the New Economy that, in its hubris, had aspired to be “The World’s Leading Company,” and had briefly been the seventh largest corporation in...Book Details
Publish : March 25, 2003
Publisher : Doubleday
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Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron
In wartime, the commander-in-chief has two tasks: to formulate a winning strategy and to find the men who can lead the nation to victory. Distinguished military historian Arnold delivers a riveting narrative of how George Washington, James Polk, Jefferson Davis, and Lyndon Johnson succeeded--or fail...Book Details
Publish : June 7, 1994
Publisher : Crown
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Presidents Under Fire: Commanders-in-Chief in Victory and Defeat
In Public Enemies, bestselling author Bryan Burrough strips away the thick layer of myths put out by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to tell the full story—for the first time—of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and the assortment of crimin...Book Details
Publish : June 28, 2005
Publisher : Penguin Books
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Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
The heroic story of the founding of the U.S. Navy during the Revolution has been told before, yet missing from most maritime histories of America’s first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels, from 20-foot whaleboats to 40-cannon men-of-war, that truly revealed the new nation’s character—...Book Details
Publish : May 31, 2022
Publisher : Liveright
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Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution
A real-life political thriller about an American financier in the Wild East of Russia, the murder of his principled young tax attorney, and his dangerous mission to expose the Kremlin’s corruption.
Bill Browder’s journey started on the South Side of Chicago and moved through Stanford Business...Book Details
Publish : February 3, 2015
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
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Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice
"'It doesn't get better.' To us, that phrase nailed one of the essential truths, maybe even the essential truth, about being stuck at an outpost whose strategic and tactical vulnerabilities were so glaringly obvious to every soldier who had ever set foot in that place that the name itself -- Keating...Book Details
Publish : May 3, 2016
Publisher : Dutton
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Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor
March 7, 1968: Several hundred miles northwest of Hawaii, the nuclear-armed K-129 surfaces and then sinks; all of its crewmen and officers perish at sea. Who was commanding the rogue Russian sub? What was its target? How did it infiltrate American waters undetected? Navy veteran Kenneth Sewell, draw...Book Details
Publish : September 6, 2005
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
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Red Star Rogue: The Untold Story of a Soviet Sumbarine’s Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S.
Sammy Hagar—legendary lead singer of Van Halen, founder of the Cabo Wabo Tequila brand, and one of rock music’s most notoriously successful performers—tells his unforgettable story in this one-of-a-kind autobiography of a life at the top of the charts. From his decade-long journey alongside Ed...Book Details
Publish : March 15, 2011
Publisher : It Book
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Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock
In a small New England town, in the early 60s, a shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers. Jamie Morton looks up to see a striking man, the new minister. Charles Jacobs, along with his beautiful wife, will transform the local church. The men and boys are all a bit in love with Mrs...Book Details
Publish : November 11, 2014
Publisher : Scribner Book Company
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Revival
In an epic that "is nothing less than the story of America itself" (Wil Hygood, The Boston Globe), Barry begins in the 19th century with man's battle to control the Mississippi River and the development of a unique society in the Delta and New Orleans. The tale ends with murder, dynamited levees, an...Book Details
Publish : April 9, 1997
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
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Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America
November 1587. A report reaches London that Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition, which left England months before to land the first English settlers in America, has foundered. On Roanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina, a tragedy is unfolding. Something has gone very wrong, and the colony—11...Book Details
Publish : June 30, 2001
Publisher : Arcade Publishing
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Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony
In late December 1941, General Douglas MacArthur, caught off guard by the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, is forced to retreat to Corregidor, a jagged, rocky island fortress at the mouth of Manila Bay. Months later, under orders from the president, the general is whisked away in the dark of ni...Book Details
Publish : December 1, 2020
Publisher : Dutton Caliber
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Rock Force: The American Paratroopers Who Took Back Corregidor and Exacted MacArthur’s Revenge on Japan
In the summer of 1941, at the height of the war in the Western Desert, a bored and eccentric young officer, David Stirling, came up with a plan that was radical and entirely against the rules: a small undercover unit that would inflict mayhem behind enemy lines.
Despite intense opposition, Winsto...Book Details
Publish : October 4, 2016
Publisher : Crown Publishing Group (NY)
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Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain’s Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War
Two months after the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in February 1898, Congress authorized President McKinley to recruit a volunteer army to drive the Spaniards from Cuba. From this army emerged the legendary “Rough Riders,” a mounted regiment drawn from America’s western territories...Book Details
Publish : March 10, 2016
Publisher : William Morrow
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Rough Riders: Theodore Roosevelt, His Cowboy Regiment, and the Immortal Charge Up San Juan Hill
World War I is often viewed as a war fought by armies of millions living and fighting in trenches, aided by brutal machinery that cost the lives of many. But behind all of this an intellectual war was also being fought between engineers, chemists, code-breakers, physicists, doctors, mathematicians, ...Book Details
Publish : April 15, 2015
Publisher : Pegasus Books
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Secret Warriors: The Spies, Scientists and Code Breakers of World War I
Dolphins have always been an object of fascination to humanity, with little understanding of the secrets behind our admiration.
This first-of-its-kind book explores the secrets behind the dolphin smile through short stories of the daily lives and interactions of a community of wild Florida dolphins...Book Details
Publish : December 9, 2017
Publisher : Independently published
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Secrets behind the Dolphin Smile: 25 Amazing Things Dolphins Do
Christopher Dickey takes us inside the best and most ambitious anti-terror operation in the country, the seat-of-the-pants intelligence operation of the NYPD with undercover resources all over the world and two extraordinary men in charge....Book Details
Publish : February 3, 2009
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
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Securing the City: Inside America’s Best Counterterror Force–The NYPD
Benjamin Franklin conceived of it. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle endorsed it. Winston Churchill campaigned for it. Kaiser Wilhelm first employed it. Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt went to war with it, and more recently the United States fought an energy crisis with it. For several months every year,...Book Details
Publish : February 17, 2005
Publisher : Basic Books
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Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time
Includes a section of black & white photos and one section of color plates. In the fall of 1991, two deep wreck divers discovered a World War II German U-boat sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey. No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artifacts that John Chatterton and...Book Details
Publish : June 29, 2004
Publisher : Random House
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Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II
Offers a detailed account of the Battle of Shiloh, a turning point when both the Union and the Confederacy realized the grand scale of the conflict, the large number of casualties to be expected, and that the war would not end quickly....Book Details
Publish : March 20, 2012
Publisher : National Geographic
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Shiloh, 1862
The tragic story of one downed WWII American naval aircraft crew, brutally beheaded to boost the morale of their captors. Includes detailed accounts of war crimes trials....Book Details
Publish : September 1, 1995
Publisher : Stackpole Books
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Shobun, A Forgotten War Crime in the Pacific
From the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Shooter, comes a riveting narrative of how snipers have changed the course of America's war on al Qaida in the Middle East and Africa.
Retired Marine sniper Jack Coughlin (Shooter) and John Bruning pull back the curtain of secrecy to take an ...Book Details
Publish : October 28, 2014
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
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Shock Factor: American Snipers in the War on Terror
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon, a moment forever ingrained in history. Perhaps the world's greatest technological achievement-and a triumph of American spirit and ingenuity-the Apollo 11 mission, and the entire Apollo program, was a mammo...Book Details
Publish : March 12, 2019
Publisher : Little, Brown and Company
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Shoot for the Moon: The Space Race and the Extraordinary Voyage of Apollo 11
Bat Masterson knew better than most of his contemporaries that the majority of what was written about the old west was little more than rattlesnake piss and bat guano. He said, ""nerve was the quality that marked the great gunfighters."" Perhaps more telling is what Masterson suggested was the ""sec...Book Details
Publish : October 8, 2018
Publisher : Lulu.com
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Shot All to Hell: Bad Ass Outlaws, Gunfighters, and Lawmen of the Old West
It was the most famous bank robbery of all time, involving the legendary James-Younger gang's final shocking holdup—the infamous Northfield Raid—and the thrilling two-week chase that followed. Mark Lee Gardner, author of the critically acclaimed To Hell on a Fast Horse, takes us inside Northfiel...Book Details
Publish : July 23, 2013
Publisher : William Morrow
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Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, and the Wild West’s Greatest Escape
Gary Gilmore, the infamous murderer immortalized by Norman Mailer in The Executioner's Song, campaigned for his own death and was executed by firing squad in 1977. Writer Mikal Gilmore is his younger brother. In Shot in the Heart, he tells the stunning story of their wildly dysfunctional family: the...Book Details
Publish : August 1, 1995
Publisher : Anchor
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Shot in the Heart
Before the ink was dry on the U.S. Constitution, the establishment of a permanent military became the most divisive issue facing the new government. The founders—particularly Jefferson, Madison, and Adams—debated fiercely. Would a standing army be the thin end of dictatorship? Would a navy prote...Book Details
Publish : March 17, 2008
Publisher : W. W. Norton Company
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Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy
In 1914, the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton announced an ambitious plan to lead the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition - the first trek across Antarctica from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the South Pole. Shackleton's third expedition would prove frought with adventure - and peril.
South is ...Book Details
Publish : November 1999
Publisher : Penguin Books
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South: The Illustrated Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition 1914-1917
From the author of the international bestseller A Higher Call comes the riveting World War II story of an American tank gunner’s journey into the heart of the Third Reich, where he will meet destiny in an iconic armor duel—and forge an enduring bond with his enemy.
When Clarence Smoyer is ass...Book Details
Publish : February 19, 2019
Publisher : Ballantine Books
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Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives In World War II
Despite its being one of prehistory s most alluring landmarks, before the Stonehenge Riverside Project led by noted archeologist Mike Parker Pearson, only half of Stonehenge itself and far less of its surroundings had ever been investigated, and many records from previous digs are inaccurate or inco...Book Details
Publish : June 4, 2013
Publisher : The Experiment
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Stonehenge: A New Understanding: Solving the Mysteries of the Greatest Stone Age Monument
Twelve historical accounts of crimes committed at sea in chronological order....Book Details
Publish : 1966
Publisher : Grosset and Dunlap
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Strange Crimes at Sea: Twelve True and Startling Tales of Pirates, Mutineers, and Madmen
Shocking revelations of a wife’s adultery explode in an incendiary nineteenth-century trial, exposing upper-crust New York society and its secrets. What could possibly go wrong in a wealthy matriarch’s country home when her dilettante son, his restless wife, and his widowed brother live there to...Book Details
Publish : February 20, 2024
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
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Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York
In Supernavigators, award-winning author David Barrie takes us on a tour of the cutting-edge science of animal navigation, where scientists are unraveling how creatures as various as butterflies, birds, crustaceans, fish, reptiles, and even people find their way.
Weaving interviews with leading ...Book Details
Publish : April 2019
Publisher : The Experiment
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Supernavigators: The Astounding New Science of How Animals Find Their Way
Seymour Morris Jr. combines political history, military biography, and business management to tell the story of General Douglas MacArthur's tremendous success in rebuilding Japan after World War II in Supreme Commander, a lively, in-depth work of biographical history complementary to The Generals, T...Book Details
Publish : April 15, 2014
Publisher : Harper
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Supreme Commander: MacArthur’s Triumph in Japan
The first in a new in-depth nonfiction series examining the devastating terrorist attacks that changed the course of history from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jack Carr and Pulitzer Prize finalist James M. Scott, beginning with the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut. 1983: the United Sta...Book Details
Publish : September 24, 2024
Publisher : Atria/Emily Bestler Books
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Targeted: Beirut — The 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing and the Untold Origin Story of the War on Terror
Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.
On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Sal...Book Details
Publish : September 26, 2006
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
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Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
A brutal killing, an all-out manhunt, and a riveting account of the first murder trial in U.S. history--set in the 1600s in colonial New England against the backdrop of the Pequot War (between the Pequot tribe and the colonists of Massachusetts Bay), an explosive trial whose outcome changed the cour...Book Details
Publish : March 16, 2021
Publisher : Pantheon Books
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Terror to the Wicked: America’s First Trial by Jury That Ended a War and Helped to Form a Nation
Tesla’s inventions transformed our world, and his visions have continued to inspire great minds for generations.
Nikola Tesla invented the radio, robots, and remote control. His electric induction motors run our appliances and factories, yet he has been largely overlooked by history. In Tesla, ...Book Details
Publisher : W. W. Norton Company
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Tesla: Inventor of the Modern
On July 8, 2014, Israel launched air strikes on Hamas-controlled Gaza, followed by a ground invasion. The ensuing fifty-one days of war left more than 2,200 people dead, the vast majority of whom were Palestinian civilians, including over 500 children. During the assault, at least 10,000 homes were ...Book Details
Publish : June 30, 2015
Publisher : Nation Books
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The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza
An eye-opening assement of American power and deglobalization in the bestselling tradition of The World is Flat and The Next 100 Years .
Near the end of the Second World War, the United States made a bold strategic gambit that rewired the international system. Empires were abolished and replaced by...Book Details
The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder
Basil Antonelli was born in a tiny village, in a quiet valley, beneath the Apennine heights of central Italy in 1920. Forces drove him across an ocean where he found a new and better life in America. There he flourished. Out of a sense of duty to his adopted home he joined the United States Army onl...Book Details
Publish : January 1, 2012
Publisher : Wilson History & Research Center
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The American: The Life, Times, and War of Basil Antonelli
Kevin Mitnick, the world's most celebrated hacker, now devotes his life to helping businesses and governments combat data thieves, cybervandals, and other malicious computer intruders. In his bestselling The Art of Deception, Mitnick presented fictionalized case studies that illustrated how savvy co...Book Details
Publish : January 1, 2006
Publisher : Wiley
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The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers
“A searing, facts-driven indictment of America’s drone wars and their implications for US democracy and foreign policy. A must-read for concerned citizens” (Library Journal, starred review) from bestselling author Jeremy Scahill and his colleagues at the investigative website The Intercept.
...Book Details
Publish : May 3, 2016
Publisher : Simon Schuster
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The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program
The bald eagle is regal but fearless, a bird you're not inclined to argue with. For centuries, Americans have celebrated it as "majestic" and "noble," yet savaged the living bird behind their national symbol as a malicious predator of livestock and, falsely, a snatcher of babies. Taking us from befo...Book Details
Publish : December 2022
Publisher : Liveright Publishing Company
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The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird
The prizewinning historian and internationally bestselling author of D-Day reconstructs the devastating airborne battle of Arnhem in this gripping new account.
On September 17, 1944, General Kurt Student, the founder of Nazi Germany's parachute forces, heard the groaning roar of airplane engines....Book Details
Publish : May 17, 2008
Publisher : Viking
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The Battle of Arnhem: The Deadliest Airborne Operation of World War II
A master storyteller at his best—the O. Henry Prize winner Stephen King delivers a generous collection of stories, several of them brand-new, featuring revelatory autobiographical comments on when, why, and how he came to write (or rewrite) each story.
Since his first collection, Nightshift, pu...Book Details
Publish : November 3, 2015
Publisher : Scribner
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The Bazaar of Bad Dreams
Oflag 64, a World War II prisoner of war (POW) camp based in Schubin, Poland, was speculated to be one of the only POW camps set up exclusively for U.S. Army ground component officers. About 150 American officers lived in the camp in 1943, and by 1945, that number had expanded to 1,500. When the Ger...Book Details
Publish : January 10, 2017
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
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The Big Break: The Greatest American WWII POW Escape Story Never Told
On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying t...Book Details
Publish : October 1, 2009
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin
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The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America
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