Britain's best-loved comic genius, Stephen Fry, turns his celebrated wit and insight to unearthing the real America as he travels across the continent in his chariot of Englishness, a black London cab.

Stephen Fry has always loved America. In fact, he came very close to being born here. His fascination for the country and its people sees him embarking on an epic journey across America, visiting each of its fifty states to discover how such a huge diversity of people, cultures, languages, and beliefs creates such a remarkable nation. Stephen starts his journey on the East Coast and zigzags across America, stopping in every state from Maine to Hawaii, talking to each state's hospitable citizens, listening to music, visiting landmarks, viewing small-town life and America's breathtaking landscapes, following wherever his curiosity leads him.

En route he discovers the South Side of Chicago with blues legend Buddy Guy, catches up with Morgan Freeman in Mississippi, strides around with Ted Turner on his Montana ranch, marches with Zulus in Mardi Gras in New Orleans, drums with the Sioux Nation in South Dakota, joins a Georgia family for Thanksgiving, "picks" with bluegrass hillbillies, and finds himself in a Tennessee garden full of dead bodies.

Whether in a club for failed gangsters in Brooklyn, New York (yes, those are real bullet holes), or celebrating Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts (is there anywhere better?), Stephen is welcomed by the people of America—mayors, sheriffs, newspaper editors, park rangers, teachers, and hoboes, bringing to life the oddities and splendors of each locale. A celebration of the magnificent and the eccentric, the beautiful and the strange, Stephen Fry in America is the author's homage to this extraordinary country.

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Erik R. Seeman - The Huron-Wendat Feast of the Dea d, Indian-European Encounters in Early North Ameri ca (2011).jpg

USA Books - Erik R. Seeman - The Huron-Wendat Feast of the Dead, I...Indian-European Encounters in Early North America 2011.jpg

"Two thousand Wendat (Huron) Indians stood on the edge of an enormous burial pit... they held in their arms the bones of roughly seven hundred deceased friends and family members. The Wendats had lovingly scraped and cleaned the bones of the corpses that had decomposed on the scaffolds. They awaited only the signal from the master of the ritual to place the bones in the pit. This was the great Feast of the Dead."
Witnesses to these Wendat burial rituals were European colonists, French Jesuit missionaries in particular. Rather than being horrified by these unfamiliar native practices, Europeans recognized the parallels between them and their own understanding of death and human remains. Both groups believed that deceased souls traveled to the afterlife; both believed that elaborate mortuary rituals ensured the safe transit of the soul to the supernatural realm; and both believed in the power of human bones.
Appreciating each other's funerary practices allowed the Wendats and French colonists to find common ground where there seemingly would be none. Erik R. Seeman analyzes these encounters, using the Feast of the Dead as a metaphor for broader Indian-European relations in North America. His compelling narrative gives undergraduate students of early America and the Atlantic World a revealing glimpse into this fascinating -- and surprising -- meeting of cultures.

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Abraham Ben-Zvi - Decade of Transition (1998).jpg

Historians have long held that the Kennedy administration forged the American alliance with Israel as a way of courting political support from American Jews. In contrast, the Eisenhower administration is believed to have considered Israel a political and strategic liability. In Abraham Ben-Zvi now shows that the Eisenhower years were an "incubation period" during which the ground-work was laid for the eventual American-Israeli alliance. As a result, President Kennedy's Israeli policy is understood as not the beginning, but a continuation of a process with foundations in the prior administration. Focusing on the period between Eisenhower's inauguration and Kennedy's landmark decision to sell the Hawk anti-aircraft missile to Israel, Ben-Zvi shows how the warming of American-Israeli diplomatic relations began with Eisenhower's second term. In his first administration, relations between the two countries reached a nadir with the Suez War, but in 1958, Israel's reaction to an intensifying crisis in Jordan caused Eisenhower to reevaluate Israel's strategic potential. Amid growing fears of unrest in the Middle East and a perceived Soviet threat, Israel could now become a useful ally and a new base of stability in the region. Ben-Zvi argues that both Eisenhower and Kennedy sought an alliance with Israel not to satisfy domestic political concerns, but to invest in Israel's growing strength and political stability. He analyzes Eisenhower's initial perceptions of Israel, and shows how they evolved along with his estimate of the increasing significance of the Middle East on the world stage. Ben-Zvi traces the process of deterrence and coercion used by both presidents to transform Israel into a strategic asset for the United States, from American insistence on inspecting Israel's nuclear weapons facilities to failed attempts to influence Israel's policy on Palestinian refugees. Thoroughly researched and drawing on thousands of documents-many only recently made public- provides a significant reevaluation of the nature and origins of the American-Israeli relationship and the shaping of the modern Middle East.

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Paula Marantz Cohen - Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth (2001).jpg

Veteran cultural critic Cohen (Alfred Hitchcock: The Legacy of Victorianism) explores the advent of the silent film, asserting that the early 20th-century medium represented what American society at the time both embraced (e.g., authentic expression and self-determinism) and rejected (e.g., antiquated European notions and societal stasis). The author considers the "raw materials" of film the body, the landscape, and the face and these components' respective 19th-century antecedents in vaudeville, panoramic displays, and portrait photography. She also discusses their corollaries in genre (comedy, the Western, and melodrama) and their film "vocabulary" (the cut, the long shot, and the close-up). Her contention that the medium is reflexive is not new, yet her seamless integration of seemingly disparate facts is refreshing and convincing.

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James D. Hornfischer - Neptune's Inferno, The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal (2011).jpg

*Starred Review* Hornfischer’s third outstanding book on the U.S. Navy’s surface forces in WWII will have a ready-made audience because its subject is the naval side of the Guadalcanal campaign of 1942. The campaign began when marines landed on that deservedly unfrequented island to halt the creation of a Japanese airbase that might threaten U.S. communications with Australia. The Japanese riposte inflicted a disaster on the U.S. Navy second only to Pearl Harbor, called the Battle of Savo Island. Over the next few months, the two navies went at each other hammer and tongs in what was probably the most intense naval campaign of the war. The Japanese had an ace up their sleeve in the Long Lance torpedo, the best in the world. The U.S. eventually counterbalanced the Japanese by learning (all too slowly) to use radar-directed gunfire to take back the night seas. The author offers balanced assessments of the leaders on both sides, but the real heroes are the American bluejackets, who too often paid with suffering and death for those leaders’ slowness to learn. And as in his first two books, the author’s narrative gifts and excellent choice of detail give an almost Homeric quality to the men who met on the sea in steel titans.

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Michael Dobbs - One Minute to Midnight, Kennedy, K hrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War ( 2008).jpeg

October 27, 1962, was known as Black Saturday in the Kennedy White House. With the Cuban missile crisis at its height, this was a day of nail-biting developments, when the hands of the metaphorical Doomsday Clock reached one minute to midnight and the world grew closer than ever before (or since) to nuclear apocalypse. On Black Saturday, the opposing Cold War leaders, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, mobilized their forces to fight a nuclear war on land, sea and air. The watching world held its breath in terror. In Bobby Kennedy's words, 'There was a feeling that the noose was tightening on all of us, on Americans, on mankind, and that the bridges to escape were crumbling.'Michael Dobbs tells both the human and the political story of Black Saturday, taking the reader not just into the White House and the Kremlin but along the entire Cold War battlefront with the men who were preparing to fight. We see inside U-2s and nuclear submarines; the armies gathering in Florida and Cuba; American warships and Cuban anti-aircraft batteries; the CIA, the NSA and the KGB; Cold War radio stations and listening posts; the feverish conspiracies of Cuban exiles; Castro's headquarters; Khrushchev's dacha; the underground bunker being prepared for Kennedy; the streets of Washington, Moscow and Havana.Using a wealth of untapped archival material, Michael Dobbs brings a fresh perspective to this crucial moment in twentieth-century history, which witnessed one of the greatest mobilizations of men and equipment since the Second World War. His thrilling narrative features a cast of characters - including Soviet veterans never before interviewed by a western writer - that ranges from the ordinary to the larger than life, all with unique stories to tell.

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Nathaniel Philbrick - Mayflower, A Story of Courag e, Community, and War (2007).jpg

What makes Philbrick's book so fascinating and accessible—the way he turns the Pilgrim legend on its head and shakes out fresh insights from the crusty old mythology we all absorbed in grade school—is present in full force in this exceptional audio version. With more than 800 audiobooks to his credit, Guidall gives the term "veteran reader" a whole new meaning. Such leading figures as William Bradford, Benjamin Church and Miles Standish of the so-called Plymouth Colony (which was not even close to Plymouth or its now-famous rock) emerge from the pages of history as understandable if not always admirable figures, and Guidall's evocations of the sadly depleted (by European diseases) Wampanoag Indians and their chief, Massasoit, are equally believable. The bitter voyage of the Seaflower (a slave ship taking captive Wampanoags to be sold in the Caribbean after a disastrous war with Massasoit's son, Philip), which rounds out Philbrick's masterful account, is treated with energy, respect and a straightforwardness that only increases its power.

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Joseph J. Ellis - First Family, Abigail and John A dams (2010).jpg

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Ellis (Founding Brothers) gives "the premier husband-wife team in all American history" starring roles in an engrossing romance. His Abigail has an acute intellect, but is not quite a protofeminist heroine: her ambitions are limited to being a mother and helpmeet, and in the iconic correspondence she often strikes the traditional pose of a neglected wife who sacrifices her happiness by giving up her husband to the call of duty. The author's more piquant portrait of John depicts an insecure, mercurial, neurotic man stabilized by Abigail's love and advice. Ellis's implicit argument--that the John/Abigail partnership lies at the foundation of the Adams family's public achievements--is a bit over-played, and not always to the advantage of the partnership: "Her judgment was a victim of her love for John…," Ellis writes of Abigail's support for the Alien and Sedition Acts, the ugliest blot on John's presidency, all of which explains little and excuses less. Still, Ellis's supple prose and keen psychological insight give a vivid sense of the human drama behind history's upheavals.

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Kathleen Kuiper - The.Britannica.Guide, The Native American Sourcebook, Native American Culture, Nat ive American History (2010).jpg

USA Books - Kathleen Kuiper - The.Britannica.Guide, The Native Ame... Native American Culture, Native American History 2010.jpg

Native American cultures and contributions predate those of the American majority, and yet they are often unfairly consigned to the peripheries of the mainstream. The longevity of many Native American traditions is testament to the strength and endurance of these societies and their perseverance in the face of trials and persecution. This penetrating series explores the ideas and cultures indigenous to the Americas and sheds light on these frequently misunderstood peoples. The narratives in these books will leave readers with a more informed understanding of the Americans whose stories are integral to the fabric of history.
• Vivid illustrations highlight cultural traditions
• A detailed glossary explains terms and concepts
• Explores issues relevant to Native Americans today
Reading level: Young Adult

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Kathleen Kuiper - The.Britannica.Guide, The Native American Sourcebook, Native American Culture, Nat ive American History (2010).pdf

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Richard E Nisbett, Dov Cohen - Culture of Honor, T he Psychology of Violence in the South (1996).jpg

In this brilliantly argued book, the authors explore the reasons behind the higher rate for homicides among whites in the southern United States. They discover that it isn't socioeconomic class, population density, the legacy of slavery, or the heat of the South; it is the traditional "culture of honor" -- in which a man's reputation is seen as central to his economic survival -- that makes the difference.

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Richard E Nisbett, Dov Cohen - Culture of Honor, T he Psychology of Violence in the South (1996).pdf

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Robin Derosa - The Making of Salem The Witch Trial s in History, Fiction and Tourism (2009).jpg

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 are a case study in hysteria and group psychology, and the cultural effects still linger centuries later. This critical study examines original trial transcripts, historical accounts, fiction and drama, film and television shows, and tourist sites in contemporary Salem, challenging the process of how history is collected and recorded. Drawing from literary and historical theory, as well as from performance studies, the book offers a new definition of history and uses Salem as a tool for rethinking the relationships between the truth and the stories people tell about the past.

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Robin Derosa - The Making of Salem The Witch Trial s in History, Fiction and Tourism (2009).pdf

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Rebecca Keegan - The Futurist, The Life and Films of James Cameron (2009).jpg

Coinciding with the release of Avatar, James Cameron's first film in over a decade, Time reporter Keegan's solid biography of the dynamic director sheds welcome light on his cinematic achievements. Growing up in Ontario and later Los Angeles, Cameron was an accomplished artist and budding scientist who would bring his fascination with new technology to all his films. From his days doing grunt work for Hollywood indie legend Roger Corman—including his first directing job, helming Piranha 2—Cameron pursued his artistic vision with a passion that often translated into a tyrannical on-set presence. His string of action hits in the 1980s—Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss—made him one of the most sought-after directors in Hollywood, and he continued through the 1990s, culminating in the 1997 blockbuster Titanic. With each film, Cameron strove for new technological feats, from shooting tricky underwater dialogue scenes in The Abyss to the reconstruction of a near life-size version of the doomed ship in Titanic. Keegan explores not only the director's achievements on film, including an in-depth look at the 3D-film Avatar but also his often tumultuous personal life (including his five marriages). Fans of the charismatic director will welcome a look behind the scenes of some of the biggest movies in the last two-plus decades.

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Rebecca Keegan - The Futurist, The Life and Films of James Cameron (2009).pdf

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William Thomas, Florian Znaniecki - The Polish Pea sant in Europe and America, A Classic Work in Immi gration History (1996).jpg

USA Books - William Thomas, Florian Znaniecki - The Polish Peasant...d America, A Classic Work in Immigration History 1996.jpg

Focusing on the immigrant family, this new, abridged edition of the classic "The Polish Peasant in Europe and America" brings together documents and commentary that will be valuable in teaching United States history survey courses as well as immigration history and introductory sociology courses. It includes a new introduction and epilogue.

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William Thomas, Florian Znaniecki - The Polish Pea sant in Europe and America, A Classic Work in Immi gration History (1996).pdf

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David Garoogian - Profiles of New York (2008).jpg

Profiles of New York2008/09 (Profiles of New York)
David Garoogian (Author, Editor)

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David Garoogian - Profiles of New York (2008).pdf

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Aeron Davis - The Mediation of Power, A critical i ntroduction (2007).jpg

The Mediation of Power investigates how those in positions of power use and are influenced by media in their everyday activities. Each chapter examines this theme through an exploration of some of the key topics and debates in the field, including:

* theories of media and power
* media policy and the economics of information
* news production and journalistic practice
* public relations and media management
* culture and power
* political communication and mediated politics
* new and alternative media
* interest group communications
* media audiences and effects.

The debates are enlivened by first-hand accounts taken from over 200 high-profile interviews with politicians, journalists, public officials, spin doctors, campaigners and captains of industry. Tim Bell, David Blunkett, Iain Duncan Smith, Simon Heffer, David Hill, Simon Hughes, Trevor Kavanagh, Neil Kinnock, Peter Riddell, Polly Toynbee, Michael White and Ann Widdecombe are some of those cited.

About the Author
Aeron Davis is a Senior Lecturer in Political Communication in the Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, London. He has published in the areas of political communication, media sociology, promotional culture and financial markets, and is the author of Public Relations Democracy (2002).

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Aeron Davis - The Mediation of Power, A critical i ntroduction (2007).pdf

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Randy Richmond - The Orillia Spirit, An illustrate d history of Orillia (1996).jpg

The Orillia Spirit tells the history of the city through the stories of its people, who insisted on making their lives and their community alive with significance.
Randy Richmond is the news editor of The Packet and Times in Orillia. He writes a weekly column on local politics, history, and everyday life. Richmond wandered from job to job for several years after graduating from Carleton University. When he reached Orillia, he knew he was home. so he got married, bought a house, had a daughter, and started to listen to the city's stories.

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Randy Richmond - The Orillia Spirit, An illustrate d history of Orillia (1996).pdf

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Center of Military History (U.S. Army) - Operation Urgent Fury, The Invasion of Grenada, October 198 3 (2008).jpg

In October 1983, the U.S. Army was unexpectedly thrown into a “no-notice” joint force contingency operation on the little island of Grenada. Confronted with a deteriorating political situation on Grenada after the deposing and execution of the leader of the government by its own military, the perceived need to deal firmly with Soviet and Cuban
influence in the Caribbean, and the potential for several hundred U.S. citizens becoming hostages, the Ronald W. Reagan administration launched an invasion of the island with only a few days for the military to plan operations. While the military’s capabilities were never in doubt, the unexpectedly strong Cuban and Grenadian resistance in the first two days of the operation and the host of U.S. military errors in planning, intelligence, communications, and logistics highlighted the dangers of even
small contingency operations. As the first joint operation attempted since the end of the Vietnam War, the invasion of Grenada also underscored the problems the U.S. Army faced in trying to work in a joint environment with its Air Force, Navy, and Marine counterparts.
This pamphlet was prepared by Richard W. Stewart, the Center’s Chief Historian, and is an edited extract of Senior Historian Edgar F. Raines’ forthcoming account of U.S. Army operations on Grenada entitled The Rucksack War: U.S. Army Operational Logistics in Grenada, October–November 1983. We hope that you enjoy and profit from this synopsis of the short, yet significant, contingency operation conducted by the U.S. Army as part of the joint team in the early days of the allvolunteer force.

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Center of Military History (U.S. Army) - Operation Urgent Fury, The Invasion of Grenada, October 198 3 (2008).pdf

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Committee on Military Nutrition Research - Reducin g Stress Fracture in Physically Active Military Wo men (1998).jpeg

USA Books - Committee on Military Nutrition Research - Reducing St...ess Fracture in Physically Active Military Women 1998.jpeg

The incidence of stress fractures of the lower extremities during U.S. military basic training is significantly higher among female military recruits than among male recruits. The prevalence of this injury has a marked impact on the health of service personnel and imposes a significant financial burden on the military by delaying completion of the training of new recruits. In addition to lengthening training time, increasing program costs, and delaying military readiness, stress fractures may share their etiology with the longer-term risk of osteoporosis.
As part of the Defense Women's Health Research Program, this book evaluates the impact of diet, genetic predisposition, and physical activity on bone mineral and calcium status in young servicewomen. It makes recommendations for reducing stress fractures and improving overall bone health through nutrition education and monitored physical training programs. The book also makes recommendations for future research to evaluate more fully the effects of fitness levels, physical activities, and other factors on stress fracture risk and bone health.

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Committee on Military Nutrition Research - Reducin g Stress Fracture in Physically Active Military Wo men (1998).pdf

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Jeremy Adam Smith - Daddy Shift, How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family (2009).jpg

USA Books - Jeremy Adam Smith - Daddy Shift, How Stay-at-Home Dads...ed Parenting Are Transforming the American Family 2009.jpg

In this book author tells the stories of fathers who have embraced caregiving and egalitarian marriages, explore the hopes and ideals that inform their choices, and analyze economic and social developments that have made their choices possible. A revealing look at stay-at-home fatherhood—for men, their families, and for American society

It’s a growing phenomenon among American families: fathers who cut back on paid work to focus on raising children. But what happens when dads stay home? What do stay-at-home fathers struggle with—and what do they rejoice in? How does taking up the mother’s traditional role affect a father’s relationship with his partner, children, and extended family? And what does stay-at-home fatherhood mean for the larger society?

In chapters that alternate between large-scale analysis and intimate portraits of men and their families, journalist Jeremy Adam Smith traces the complications, myths, psychology, sociology, and history of a new set of social relationships with far-reaching implications. As the American economy faces its greatest crisis since the Great Depression, Smith reveals that many mothers today have the ability to support families and fathers are no longer narrowly defined by their ability to make money—they have the capacity to be caregivers as well.

The result, Smith argues, is a startling evolutionary advance in the American family, one that will help families better survive the twenty-first century. As Smith explains, stay-at-home dads represent a logical culmination of fifty years of family change, from a time when the idea of men caring for children was literally inconceivable, to a new era when at-home dads are a small but growing part of the landscape. Their numbers and cultural importance will continue to rise—and Smith argues that they must rise, as the unstable, global, creative, technological economy makes flexible gender roles both more possible and more desirable.

But the stories of real people form the heart of this book: couples from every part of the country and every walk of life. They range from working class to affluent, and they are black, white, Asian, and Latino. We meet Chien, who came to Kansas City as a refugee from the Vietnam War and today takes care of a growing family; Kent, a midwestern dad who nursed his son through life-threatening disabilities (and Kent’s wife, Misun, who has never doubted for a moment that breadwinning is the best thing she can do for her family); Ta-Nehisi, a writer in Harlem who sees involved fatherhood as "the ultimate service to black people"; Michael, a gay stay-at-home dad in Oakland who enjoys a profoundly loving and egalitarian partnership with his husband; and many others. Through their stories, we discover that as America has evolved and diversified, so has fatherhood.

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