Norman Dietz
62) Freedom Road
Author
Language
English
Description
It was everywhere. You couldn't talk about the revolution without using the word freedom in the same breath. But Gideon Jackson knew that freedom meant something different if your skin was black. Fast's fictional account of the post-Civil War era takes us into the life of Gideon Jackson, a black man, newly freed, and determined to make a difference.
Author
Language
English
Description
Soon after its debut at the time of the Civil War, the Gatling gun changed the nature of warfare and the course of world history. Discharging 200 shots per minute with alarming accuracy, the world's first machine gun became vitally important to protecting and expanding America's overseas interests. Its inventor, Richard Gatling, was famous in his own time for creating and improving many industrial designs, from bicycles and steamship propellers to...
Author
Language
English
Description
A fifth-generation Texan and longtime cattle rancher, John R. Erickson is the Lamplighter Award-winning author of over 50 books on Western life. In The Modern Cowboy, he paints a vivid and comprehensive portrait of today's cowboy, with his independent nature, practical garb, and legendary horse sense. Enhancing his narrative with good-natured humor, Erickson describes what the cowboy must do during each season of the year. The modern cowboy's hardscrabble...
Author
Language
English
Description
In October 1934, the Chinese Communist Army found itself facing annihilation, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Nationalist soldiers. Rather than surrender, 86,000 Communists embarked on an epic flight to safety. Only thirty were women. Their trek would eventually cover 4,000 miles over 370 days. Under enemy fire they crossed highland swamps, climbed Tibetan peaks, scrambled over chain bridges, and trudged through the sands of the western deserts....
Author
Language
English
Description
In this revelatory, dynamic biography, one of our finest historians, Benson Bobrick, profiles George H. Thomas, arguing that he was the greatest and most successful general of the Civil War. Because Thomas didn't live to write his memoirs, his reputation has been largely shaped by others, most notably Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, two generals with whom Thomas served and who, Bobrick says, diminished his successes in their favor in...
68) Beginners
Author
Language
English
Description
Here is the original manuscript of Raymond Carver's seminal 1981 collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Carver is one of the most celebrated short-story writers in American literature-his style is both instantly recognizable and hugely influential-and the pieces in What We Talk About..., which portray the gritty loves and lives of the American working class, are counted among the foundation stones of the contemporary short story....
Author
Language
English
Description
The story of Anton Dilger brings to life a missing chapter in U.S. history and shows, dramatically, that the Great European War was in fact being fought on the home front years before we formally joined it. The doctor who grew anthrax and other bacteria in that rented house was an American-the son of a Medal of Honor winner who fought at Gettysburg-on a secret mission, for the German Army in 1915. The Fourth Horseman tells the startling story of that...
Author
Language
English
Description
Who changed the sex of God? This groundbreaking book proposes that the rise of alphabetic literacy reconfigured the human brain and brought about profound changes in history, religion, and gender relations. Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values. Writing drove...
Author
Language
English
Description
Even compared to his fellow founders, George Washington stands tall. Our first president has long been considered a stoic hero, holding himself above the rough-and-tumble politics of his day. Now John Ferling peers behind that image, carefully burnished by Washington himself, to show us a leader who was not only not above politics but a canny infighter-a master of persuasion, manipulation, and deniability.In the War of Independence, Washington used...
Author
Language
English
Description
No other narrative from within the corridors of power has offered as frank and intimate an account of the making of the modern Chinese nation as Ji Chaozhu's The Man on Mao's Right. Having served Chairman Mao Zedong and the Communist leadership for two decades, and having become a key figure in China's foreign policy, Ji now provides an honest, detailed account of the personalities and events that shaped today's People's Republic.The youngest son...
Author
Language
English
Description
More than sixty stories, poems, and essays are included in this wide-ranging collection by the extravagantly versatile Raymond Carver. Two of the stories-later revised for What We Talk About When We Talk About Love-are particularly notable in that between the first and the final versions, we see clearly the astounding process of Carver's literary development.
Author
Language
English
Description
Hybrid Church is a practical guide for clergy and leaders who want to have the best of both church worlds: the intimacy of small house church groups and the impact of very large mega-churches. Given that the trend is toward very large and very small, with few churches in the middle, this book will be a welcome resource for both large and small churches.
Author
Language
English
Description
Human Smoke delivers a closely textured, deeply moving indictment of the treasured myths that have romanticized much of the 1930s and '40s. Incorporating meticulous research and well-documented sources-including newspaper and magazine articles, radio speeches, memoirs, and diaries-the book juxtaposes hundreds of interrelated moments of decision, brutality, suffering, and mercy. Vivid glimpses of political leaders and their dissenters illuminate and...
Author
Language
English
Description
The Old Patagonian Express tells of Paul Theroux's train journey down the length of North and South America. Beginning on Boston's subway, he depicts a voyage from ice-bound Massachusetts to the arid plateau of Argentina's most southerly tip. Shivering and sweating by turns as the temperature and altitude rise and plummet, he describes the people he encountered - the tedious Mr. Thornberry in Limon and reading to the legendary blind writer, Jorge...
78) Cathedral
Author
Language
English
Description
This is Raymond Carver's third collection of stories, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, including the canonical titular story about blindness and learning to enter the very different world of another. The twelve stories in Cathedral mark a turning point in Carver's work and "overflow with the danger, excitement, mystery and possibility of life. . . .
Author
Language
English
Description
To coincide with the bicentennial of Thoreau's birth in 2017, this thrilling, meticulous biography by naturalist and historian Kevin Dann fills a gap in our understanding of one modern history's most important spiritual visionaries by capturing the full arc of Thoreau's life as a mystic, spiritual seeker, and explorer in transcendental realms. This sweeping, epic biography of Henry David Thoreau sees Thoreau's world as the mystic himself saw it: filled...
Author
Language
English
Description
In 2001, General Motors hired Bob Lutz out of retirement with a mandate to save the company by making great cars again. He launched a war against penny pinching, office politics, turf wars, and risk avoidance. After declaring bankruptcy during the recession of 2008, GM is back on track thanks to its embrace of Lutz's philosophy.