A history of America's military on horseback. For three thousand years, the horse soldier has played a key role in both war fighting and in peace keeping all over the world, not only as a highly mobile strike force in battle but also as an instrument of reconnaissance and occupation, exploration, and irregular warfare. The American tradition of the mounted warrior is a proud one. But in the first days of our revolution, it looked as if George Washington was prepared to dispense with the use of mounted troops altogether. Eventually he saw their value, and over the next hundred years the cavalry... View More...
Since its establishment by Charlestown settlers in 1649, the city of Malden has reinvented itself many times. As a community of businesses and neighborhoods, it has long been known as a modern and forward-looking community. Throughout the centuries, Malden has inherited institutions developed by its wealthy and influential citizens. Much of this wealth came from the mills and factories, which were powered by the numerous rivers, streams, and ponds in the area. Ambitious businessmen spent their fortunes by constructing grand houses and facades, while innovative immigrants joined in the municipa... View More...
Until Alzheimer's disease wreaked its gradual destruction, Ronald Reagan was an inveterate writer. He wrote not only letters, short fiction, poetry, and sports stories, but speeches, newspaper articles, and radio commentary on public policy issues, both foreign and domestic. Most of Reagan's original writings are pre-presidential. From 1975 to 1979 he gave more than 1,000 daily radio broadcasts, two-thirds of which he wrote himself. They cover every topic imaginable: from labor policy to the nature of communism, from World War II to the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, from the future ... View More...
Republished fifty years later to coincide with the release this fall of the film of the same title written and directed by Aaron Sorkin with an all-star cast, this is the classic account of perhaps the most infamous, and definitely the most entertaining, trial in recent American history. In the fall of 1969 eight prominent anti-Vietnam War activists were put on trial for conspiring to riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. One of the eight, Black Panther cofounder Bobby Seale, was literally bound and gagged in court by order of the judge, Julius Hoffman, and his case was s... View More...
This two-volumes-in-one collection of 1,200 rare black-and-white photographs, gathered through the joint efforts of the National Historical Society and the Civil War Times, covers the leaders and the common soldiers, the compact of comradeship, the ideologies of the governments at war, the aspirations of the people who supported them and the devastation wreaked on the nation. View More...
In an effort to provide unemployed writers with work during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the United States Government, through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), funded the Federal Writers' Project. One of the group's most noteworthy and enduring achievements was the Slave Narrative Collection, consisting of more than 2,000 transcripts of interviews with former slaves, who, in blunt, simple words, provided often-startling first-person accounts of their lives in bondage. This book reprints some of the most detailed and engrossing life histories in the collection. Each narrative is c... View More...
"I know only two tunes," said Ulysses S. Grant. "One of them is Yankee Doodle and the other isn't." Jimmy Carter observed: "Whatever starts in California unfortunately has an inclination to spread." And Warren Harding complained: "The White House is a prison. I can't get away from the men who dog my footsteps. I am in jail."This entertaining, handy little book includes over 400 other memorable quotes, expressed by America's chief executives over the past two centuries, among them Chester Arthur's blunt, "I may be President of the United States, but my private life is nobody's damn business," C... View More...
Chronicles retired general George Washington's adventurous 680-mile trek down the Potomac River, a journey during which he endeavored to prevent disunion, collected key frontier data, and inspired engineering achievements. View More...
In addition to being an uncompromising defender of liberty, esteemed diplomat, and successor to George Washington, John Adams was a passionate and prolific writer. Adams biographer John Patrick Diggins gathers an impressive variety of his works in this compact, original volume, including parts of his diary and autobiography, and selections from his rich correspondence with this wife, Abigail, Thomas Jefferson, and others. The Portable John Adams also features his most important political works: "A Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law," "Thoughts on Government," "A Defense of Constitutions," "N... View More...
Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system f... View More...
From the New York Times bestselling author of Band of Brothers and D-Day, the definitive book on Lewis and Clark's exploration of the Louisiana Purchase, the most momentous expedition in American history and one of the great adventure stories of all time. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a voyage up the Missouri River to the Rockies, over the mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, and back. Lewis and his partner, Captain William Clark, made the first map of the trans-Mississippi West, provided invaluable sci... View More...
From the bestselling author of Band of Brothers and D-Day, the definitive book on Lewis and Clark's exploration of the Louisiana Purchase, the most momentous expedition in American history and one of the great adventure stories of all time. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a voyage up the Missouri River to the Rockies, over the mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, and back. Lewis and his partner, Captain William Clark, made the first map of the trans-Mississippi West, provided invaluable scientific data on... View More...
National Book Critics Circle Award WinnerNew York Times BestsellerA New York Times Notable Book of the YearA Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the YearA Boston Globe Best Book of 2016A Chicago Review of Books Best Nonfiction Book of 2016 From the Civil War to our combustible present, White Rage reframes our continuing conversation about race, chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America--now in paperback with a new afterword by the author, acclaimed historian Carol Anderson. As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014, and media commentators across the ideolo... View More...
An unprecedented publishing event: to mark the centenary of its foundation, the British Security Service, MI5, has for the first time opened its archives to an independent historian. The book reveals the precise role of the Security Service in twentieth-century British history, from its foundation by Captain Kell of the British Army in October 1909, through two world wars, up to and including its present roles in counterespionage and counterterrorism. The book describes how MI5 has been managed, what its relationship has been with government, where it has triumphed, and where it has failed. In... View More...
A narrative history of native Americans, this book describes their fight for lands on the edge of the ever-shrinking frontier of the West, and how they were betrayed time and again by the expanding white nation of the East. View More...