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79 KB
6 sty 16 10:32

Elizabeth H. Oakes - American Writers (2004).jpg

American Writers is the newest title in the five-volume Facts On File series American Biographies. The other titles in the series are: American Religious Leaders (2003); American Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Business Visionaries (2002); American Political Leaders (2002); and American Political Activists (2002). Like its predecessors, American Writers is geared toward high-school and undergraduate students seeking basic background information.
The volume has alphabetically arranged entries for approximately 260 authors from a variety of genres--poetry, fiction, drama, essay, and autobiography. Each straightforward, easily digested entry contains a short biography, critical analysis, and a bibliography of works about the author in both printed and Web formats. To demonstrate the diversity of American authors, emphasis is placed not only on the literary importance of the writers included but also on their ethnic and cultural backgrounds. For example, the article on nineteenth-century writer Mary Wilkins Freeman discusses not only her published works but also the conflict she experienced as an early feminist with a Puritan religious background. Ha Jin, one of the contemporary writers Oakes describes, has only been writing in English for a decade, yet he has been recognized with many awards, such as the PEN/Hemingway Award and the National Book Award. His entry describes his life in China during the Cultural Revolution and his life as a student immigrant to the U.S. Other features of the volume include a list of entries by literary genre; a list of entries by literary movement, region, subject, and style; a list of entries by decade of the authors' birth; and a general index.
Oakes states in her author's note that she aimed "to include writers who have not often been represented in major reference works of this kind" and that the volume stands out for its "coverage of multiethnic writers and its attention to contemporary writers." Although not innovative or flashy, American Writers offers a convenient introduction and is a worthwhile purchase for public, high-school, and undergraduate library collections. Lisa Johnston

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6 sty 16 10:32

Elizabeth H. Oakes - American Writers (2004).pdf

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Helen Prejean - Dead Man Walking, An Eyewitness Ac count Of The Death Penalty In The United States (1 994).jpg

Prejean, a Catholic nun, has written a moral indictment of capital punishment. This book is the result of her visits to two death-row inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary where she serves as a spiritual advisor. Although she documents the inequalities of the judicial system that has condemned these men, her main point is that if society is to inflict this extreme punishment, it should, itself, be perfect. Needless to say, it is not. Opponents of the death penalty will find reinforcement for their cause here. The general reader, however, will probably find the book too narrow in focus, too self-righteous. Prejean writes well, but her material will not attract the wide audience she wants. An optional purchase.

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6 sty 16 10:32

James W. Loewen - Lies My Teacher Told Me, Everyth ing Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (1996 ).jpg

Loewen's politically correct critique of 12 American history textbooks—including The American Pageant by Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy; and Triumph of the American Nation by Paul Lewis Todd and Merle Curti—is sure to please liberals and infuriate conservatives. In condemning the way history is taught, he indicts everyone involved in the enterprise: authors, publishers, adoption committees, parents and teachers. Loewen (Mississippi: Conflict and Change) argues that the bland, Eurocentric treatment of history bores most elementary and high school students, who also find it irrelevant to their lives. To make learning more compelling, Loewen urges authors, publishers and teachers to highlight the drama inherent in history by presenting students with different viewpoints and stressing that history is an ongoing process, not merely a collection of—often misleading—factoids. Readers interested in history, whether liberal or conservative, professional or layperson, will find food for thought here. Illustrated.

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6 sty 16 10:32

Sean Wilentz - The Age of Reagan, A History, 1974- 2008 (2008).jpg

Starred Review. Distinguished Princeton historian Wilentz-winner of a Bancroft Prize for The Rise of American Democracy-makes an eloquent and compelling case for America's Right as the defining factor shaping the country's political history over the past 35 years. Wilentz argues that the unproductive liberalism of the Carter years was a momentary pause in a general tidal surge toward a new politics of conservatism defined largely by the philosophy and style of Ronald Reagan. Even Bill Clinton, he shows, tacitly admitted the ascendance of many Reaganesque core values in the American mind by styling himself as a centrist "New Democrat" and moving himself and his party to the right. Wilentz postulates Reagan as the perfect man at the ideal moment, not just ruling his eight years in the White House, but also casting a long shadow on all that followed (a shadow, one might add, still being felt in the Republican presidential campaign today). While examining in detail the low points of Reagan's presidency, from Iran-Contra to his initial belligerence toward the Soviet Union, Wilentz concludes in his superb account that Reagan must be considered one of the great presidents: he reshaped the geopolitical map of the world as well as the American judiciary and bureaucracy, and uplifted an American public disheartened by Vietnam and the grim Carter years. While much has been written by Reagan admirers, Wilentz says, "his achievement looks much more substantial than anything the Reagan mythmakers have said in his honor." 16 pages of b&w photos.

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6 sty 16 10:32

Sean Wilentz - The Age of Reagan, A History, 1974- 2008 (2008).pdf

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6 sty 16 10:32

Alejandro Portes - Immigrant America, A Portrait, Third edition. Revised, Expanded, and Updated (200 6).jpg

This third edition of the widely acclaimed classic has been thoroughly expanded and updated to reflect current demographic, economic, and political realities. Drawing on recent census data and other primary sources, Portes and Rumbaut have infused the entire text with new information and added a vivid array of new vignettes and illustrations.Recognized for its superb portrayal of immigration and immigrant lives in the United States, this book probes the dynamics of immigrant politics, examining questions of identity and loyalty among newcomers, and explores the psychological consequences of varying modes of migration and acculturation. The authors look at patterns of settlement in urban America, discuss the problems of English-language acquisition and bilingual education, explain how immigrants incorporate themselves into the American economy, and examine the trajectories of their children from adolescence to early adulthood. With a vital new chapter on religion--and fresh analyses of topics ranging from patterns of incarceration to the mobility of the second generation and the unintended consequences of public policies--this updated edition is indispensable for framing and informing issues that promise to be even more hotly and urgently contested as the subject moves to the center of national debate.

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Alejandro Portes - Immigrant America, A Portrait, Third edition. Revised, Expanded, and Updated (200 6).pdf

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Malcolm Campbell - Ireland's New Worlds, Immigrant s, Politics, and Society in the United States and Australia, 1815-1922 (2007).jpg

01 - USA - Malcolm Campbell - Irelands New Worlds, Immigrants, Pol...ety in the United States and Australia, 1815-1922 2007.jpg

In the century between the Napoleonic Wars and the Irish Civil War, more than seven million Irish men and women left their homeland to begin new lives abroad. While the majority settled in the United States, Irish emigrants dispersed across the globe, many of them finding their way to another “New World,” Australia.Ireland’s New Worlds is the first book to compare Irish immigrants in the United States and Australia. In a profound challenge to the national histories that frame most accounts of the Irish diaspora, Malcolm Campbell highlights the ways that economic, social, and cultural conditions shaped distinct experiences for Irish immigrants in each country, and sometimes in different parts of the same country. From differences in the level of hostility that Irish immigrants faced to the contrasting economies of the United States and Australia, Campbell finds that there was much more to the experiences of Irish immigrants than their essential “Irishness.” America’s Irish, for example, were primarily drawn into the population of unskilled laborers congregating in cities, while Australia’s Irish, like their fellow colonialists, were more likely to engage in farming. Campbell shows how local conditions intersected with immigrants’ Irish backgrounds and traditions to create surprisingly varied experiences in Ireland’s new worlds.

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6 sty 16 10:32

Malcolm Campbell - Ireland's New Worlds, Immigrant s, Politics, and Society in the United States and Australia, 1815-1922 (2007).pdf

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6 sty 16 10:32

Allis Radosh, Ronald Radosh - A Safe Haven, Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel (2009).jpg

On May 14, 1948, under the stewardship of President Harry S. Truman, the United States became the first nation to recognize the State of Israel—just moments after sovereignty had been declared in Jerusalem. But it was hardly a foregone conclusion that America would welcome the creation of this new country. While acknowledging this as one of his proudest moments, Truman also admitted that no issue was "more controversial or more complex than the problem of Israel." As the president told his closest advisers, these attempts to resolve the issue of a Jewish homeland had left him in a condition of "political battle fatigue."

Based on never-before-used archival material, A Safe Haven is the most complete account to date of the events that led to this historic occasion. Allis and Ronald Radosh explore the national and global pressures bearing on Truman and the people—including the worldwide Jewish community, key White House advisers, the State Department, the British, the Arabs, and the representatives of the new United Nations—whose influence, on both sides, led to his decision.

Impeccably researched, brilliantly told, A Safe Haven is a suspenseful, moment-by-moment re-creation of this crossroads in U.S.-Israeli relations and Middle Eastern politics.

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David S. Heidler - Daily Lives of Civilians in War time Modern America, From the Indian Wars to the V ietnam War (2007).jpg

01 - USA - David S. Heidler - Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime... America, From the Indian Wars to the Vietnam War 2007.jpg

In post-Civil War America, civilians were ordinarily far-removed from the actual fighting. War brought about tremendous and far-reaching changes to America's society, politics, and economy nonetheless. Readers are offered detailed glimpses into the lives of ordinary folk struggling with the privations, shortages, and anxieties brought on by U.S. entry into war. They are also shown how they strove to turn changing times to their advantage, especially civically and economically, as minorities pressed for political inclusion and traders profited from government contracts and women took on well-paying skilled jobs in large numbers for the first time.Susan Badger Doyle's chapter on the Indian Wars in the American West shows how for whites the migration westward was the path to a land of opportunity, for Native Americans migration it was a disastrous epoch that led to their near-extermination. Michael Neiberg's piece on World War I highlights how America's entry into the war on the Allied side was far from universally popular or supported because of large German and Irish immigrant communities, and how this tepid support led to the creation of some of the harshest censorship and curtailment of civil rights in U.S. history. Judy Litoff's chapter on the home front during World War II focuses on the exceptional changes brought on by total mobilization for the war effort, African-Americans' push for expanded civil rights, to women entering the workforce in large numbers, to the public's acceptance, even expectation, of centralized planning and government intervention in economic and social matters. Jon Timothy Kelly's essay on the Cold War provides a look at how the country quickly returned to a state of readiness when the end of World War II ushered in the Cold War and the immanent threat of nuclear annihilation, even as a booming economy brought undreamt of material prosperity to huge numbers of Americans. Finally, James Landers describes how American involvement in Vietnam, the first televised war, profoundly changed American attitudes about war even as this particular conflict touched few Americans, but divided them like few previous events have.

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6 sty 16 10:32

David S. Heidler - Daily Lives of Civilians in War time Modern America, From the Indian Wars to the V ietnam War (2007).pdf

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6 sty 16 10:32

Bruce Cumings - The Korean War, A History (2010).jpg

This is not a conventional military history and anyone looking for a conventional military history will be disappointed. Cumings, a leading expert on modern Korean history, is primarily interested in debunking common American myths about the Korean war. The book is organized as a series of essays on aspects of the Korean war. Topics covered include the ultimate genesis of the war as a civil conflict between Korean clients of the Japanese imperium and anti-colonial insurgents, the essentially arbitrary post-WWII division of Korea, the nature of the American occupation and direct rule of Korea, the efforts of the US to rollback Communism in the Korean peninsula, the remarkably brutal nature of the conflict - including our use of saturation bombing, and the last consequences of the war for both Korea and the USA.

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James B. Swan - Chicago's Irish Legion, The 90th I llinois Volunteers in the Civil War, 2nd Annotated Edition (2009).jpg

01 - USA - James B. Swan - Chicagos Irish Legion, The 90th Illinoi...olunteers in the Civil War, 2nd Annotated Edition 2009.jpg

This title presents the first comprehensive regimental history of Chicago's Irish Volunteers. Extensively documented and richly detailed, "Chicago's Irish Legion" tells the compelling story of Chicago's 90th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, the only Irish regiment in Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's XV Army Corps. Swan's sweeping history of this singular regiment and its pivotal role in the western theater of the Civil War draws heavily from primary documents and first-person observations, giving readers an intimate glimpse into the trials and triumphs of ethnic soldiers during one of the most destructive wars in American history. At the onset of the bitter conflict between the North and the South, Irish immigrants faced a wall of distrust and discrimination in the United States. Many Americans were deeply suspicious of Irish religion and politics, while others openly doubted the dedication of the Irish to the Union cause. Responding to these criticisms with a firm show of patriotism, the Catholic Church and Irish politicians in northern Illinois - along with the Chicago press and community - joined forces to recruit the Irish Volunteers. Composed mainly of foreign-born recruits, the legion's heroic endeavors for the Union rapidly dispelled any rumors of disloyalty. The volunteers proved to be instrumental in various battles and sieges, including the marches to the sea and through the Carolinas, suffering great casualties and providing indispensable support for the Union. With a meticulous eye for accuracy, Swan traces the remarkable journey of these unique soldiers from their regiment's inception and first military engagement in 1862 to their disbandment and participation in the Grand Review of General William T. Sherman's army in 1865. Enhancing the volume are firsthand accounts from the soldiers who endured the misery of frigid winters and brutal environments, struggling against the ravages of disease and hunger as they marched more than twenty-six hundred miles over the course of the war. Also revealed are personal insights into some of the war's most harrowing events, including the battles at Vicksburg and Chattanooga and Sherman's famous campaign for Atlanta. In addition, Swan exposes the racial issues that affected the soldiers of the 90th Illinois, including reactions to the Emancipation Proclamation and the formations of the first African American fighting units as well as the effects of widespread anti-Irish sentiment on the lives of the volunteers. Swan rounds out the volume with stories of survivors' lives after the war, adding an even deeper personal dimension to this absorbing chronicle.

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6 sty 16 10:32

James B. Swan - Chicago's Irish Legion, The 90th I llinois Volunteers in the Civil War, 2nd Annotated Edition (2009).pdf

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Nathaniel Philbrick - Sea of Glory, America's Voya ge of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 18 38-1842 (2003).jpg

01 - USA - Nathaniel Philbrick - Sea of Glory, Americas Voyage of...scovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 2003.jpg

The expeditions of Magellan, Columbus, and Lewis and Clark have been well documented and are instantly familiar to anyone with even a passing interest in world history. But the average person is likely unaware of the U.S. Exploring Expedition or its mercurial leader, Charles Wilkes. This despite the numerous accomplishments and lasting legacy of the massive four-year project that involved six ships and hundreds of men. The "Ex. Ex.," as it came to be known, is credited with the discovery of Antarctica, the first accurate charting of what is now Oregon and Washington, the retrieval of thousands of new species of life, and the foundation of the Smithsonian Institution. Yet when Wilkes returned, instead of being hailed as a great man of science or a national hero, he was shunned by the President, ignored by the press, and was the subject of so much ill will on the part of his men that he was ultimately put on trial for a variety of offenses. In the portrayal presented in Nathaniel Philbrick's Sea of Glory, Wilkes is a passionate man, brash and enthusiastic, driven by seemingly impossible goals, many of which he actually accomplished. But he's also a petty, mean-spirited loner, egotistical enough to unilaterally give himself a promotion in the middle of the expedition. Without Wilkes' singularity of purpose, it's hard to imagine the mission being as successful as it was, but it's also hard to conceive a personality more poorly suited to leadership than the near-universally-despised Wilkes. Philbrick also skillfully reveals the insecurity behind the tyranny in excerpts from letters to Wilkes' wife, Jane. The accounts of the expedition's adventures are at various times exhilarating and tragic as the crew scales the volcanoes of Hawaii, becomes involved in a bloody war with Fijian natives, and struggles merely to stay alive while at the same time not killing Wilkes. Philbrick's compelling narrative and meticulous research provide a vivid picture of the triumphs and hardships of the exploration age.

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Richard M. Fried - The Russians are Coming, The Ru ssians are Coming, Pageantry and Patriotism in Col d-War America (1998).jpg

01 - USA - Richard M. Fried - The Russians are Coming, The Russian...ing, Pageantry and Patriotism in Cold-War America 1998.jpg

This book explores a widely lived yet little remembered facet of America's cultural and political history: the Cold War as experienced at the grassroots level. Here, Fried traces the cresting of modern patriotic observance during World War II and then shows how patriotic and civic activists
afterwards labored to recreate a remembered unity and commitment in the tension-filled Cold War era. A variety of national and local entities mounted campaigns "to sell America to the Americans" through "rededication" celebrations like Know Your America Week and Freedom Week. The American Heritage
Foundation wheeled out the Freedom Train, which carried seminal documents of the nation's past to railroad depots across the US. Fried revisits the 1950 "Communist invasion" of Mosinee, Wisconsin, when ersatz Stalinists harassed and bullied citizens and the town's eateries served only potato soup
and black bread. He also depicts the creation and inauguration of new patriotic events like Loyalty Day and Armed Forces Day.
Meticulously researched, this book recreates a colorful, sometimes comical, and always revealing dimension of our history.

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Richard M. Fried - The Russians are Coming, The Ru ssians are Coming, Pageantry and Patriotism in Col d-War America (1998).pdf

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Charles Musser - The Emergence of Cinema, The Amer ican Screen to 1907 (1994).jpg

The origins of motion picture technologies are described and analyzed by Charles Musser in this lavishly illustrated volume. He considers social and economic as well as aesthetic aspects of the beginnings of movie making.

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James T. McHugh - Ex Uno Plura, State Constituti ons and Their Political Cultures (2003).jpg

State constitutions have become increasingly important in light of recent trends in jurisprudence that favor decentralizing the American federal system. Ex Uno Plura uses a political culture approach to explore eight state constitutional traditions. McHugh argues that state jurisprudence is not merely a reflection of the process, values, and decisions found at the federal level, especially through the influence of the Fourteenth Amendment. A close examination of separate state constitutions, including their origins, sociopolitical cultures, and jurisprudence, reveals historically, culturally, and philosophically unique characteristics, each of which will contribute to the ongoing debate concerning American judicial federalism. The states included are Alaska, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming.

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James T. McHugh - Ex Uno Plura, State Constituti ons and Their Political Cultures (2003).pdf

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Stephen Fry - Stephen Fry in America, Fifty States and the Man Who Set Out to See Them All (2010).jpg

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

01 - USA - 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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6 sty 16 10:32

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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