The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919

by Mark Thompson

With elegance and pathos, historian Mark Thompson relates the saga of the Italian front, the nationalist frenzy and political intrigues that preceded the conflict, and the towering personalities of the statesmen, generals, and writers drawn into the heart of the chaos. A work of epic scale, The White War does full justice to the brutal and heart-wrenching war that inspired Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

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America's hidden history : untold tales of the first pilgrims, fighting women, and forgotten founders who shaped a nation

by Kenneth C. Davis. Relates historical events that significantly impacted the development of the United States in the years prior to Washington's inauguration, considering such subjects as the nation's real first pilgrims and the lesser-known aspects of the first Thanksgiving. (Check Catalog)

The Baltimore Plot: The First Conspiracy to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln

by Michael J. Kline

Was evidence of a plot to murder Abraham Lincoln as he traveled through Baltimore en route to his 1861 inauguration genuine, or was it a product of detective Allan Pinkerton s imagination? Historians have been divided on the issue, but to author Kline, a lawyer by occupation, a conspiracy case based on circumstantial evidence can be made, and he makes it in exacting but fascinating detail. For dramatic support to his legal briefs, Kline recounts Lincoln s train journey, climaxing in a scene in which Lincoln must decide whether to credit Pinkerton s report of having infiltrated a conspiracy and to heed Pinkerton s counsel to alter his travel schedule through Baltimore, then a secessionist hotbed with a reputation for mob violence. It was a second, independent source of intelligence that convinced Lincoln to accede to Pinkerton, which also buttresses Kline s conviction that the plot was real. Gathering inculpatory information, arguing its probative value, and re-creating the tension of the secession crisis, Kline will absorb Lincoln readers with his thorough presentation of Lincoln s surreptitious arrival in Washington, which Lincoln himself subsequently regretted.
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What Shall We Do With the Negro?: Lincoln, White Racism, and Civil War America

by Paul D. Escott

Award-winning historian Escott takes up the persistence of racism in 19th-century America by arguing that Abraham Lincoln especially has been miscast in American memory as an unduly enlightened thinker on matters of racial equality, when in fact he was conflicted at best and complicit too often in the common racial attitudes of his day. In his most assertive sections, Escott argues that, as President, Lincoln had an "overriding devotion to reunion," as well as doubts about changing American racial attitudes and fears of losing political support by endorsing more than emancipation, all of which led to a minimalist policy on race, rights, and proposed reconstruction. At the same time, Escott continues, the Confederacy paradoxically was forced by need to propose arming and freeing some slaves to win independence, preserve slavery, and ensure white men's rule. In sum, Escott insists that events rather than philosophy or principles directed, even dictated, much of American policy on slavery and freedom, and racism remained embedded in American life.
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The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story

by Elliott West

The so-called Nez Perce War of 1877 was one of the most unlikely, heroic, and tragic episodes in the history of the American West. Since encountering and helping to sustain the Lewis and Clark expedition, the several bands of the Nez Perce had maintained harmonious relations with the U.S. government. Then, after the government insisted that all of the bands relocate to a reservation well removed from their homeland, a band led by Chief Joseph resisted, leading the army on a 1,500-mile chase that ended just short of the Canadian border, capturing, in the process, the attention, even sympathy, of the general public. West, a professor of American history at the University of Arkansas, has written a detailed and often moving chronicle of the conflict. He lays the groundwork with an excellent analysis of Nez Perce culture on the eve of their flight. He also asserts provocatively that the effort to relocate the Nez Perce was part of the larger, post Civil War federal strategy to overcome sectional and ethnic divisions. The highlight of the narrative is the flight of the approximately 800 Nez Perce, including the iconic figures Joseph and Looking Glass, as they strive to battle and break free of their pursuers. This is a superb reexamination of a sad but memorable story.
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To live or to perish forever : two tumultuous years in Pakistan

by Nicholas Schmidle. Journalist Schmidle offers a gripping, grim account of his two years as a journalism fellow in Pakistan, where his travels took him into the most isolated and unfriendly provinces, and into the thick of interests and beliefs that impede that nation's peace and progress. The author reports on the murky relationship between the Pakistani intelligence agencies and the Taliban and how American bombings have actually helped the Taliban gain influence in the border regions. While Schmidle amplifies the danger an unstable Pakistan poses to its neighbors and the world, he also turns a constructively critical eye back to American support of mujahideen during the Afghan war against the Soviets and shows how American intervention was both a help and an exacerbation of problems between Pakistan and Afghanistan. --Publisher's Weekly (Check Catalog)

The Hudson-Fulton Celebration : New York's river festival of 1909 and the making of a metropolis

by Kathleen Eagen Johnson. aAn invaluable window on how New York self-consciously and very publicly transformed itself from a city that was merely athe largesta to an undisputed world class metropolis . . . a rich historical record of newspapers, manuscripts, artifacts, photographs, and graphics . . . offers a new lens to examine identity, industry, and environment.aafrom the Foreword by Kenneth T. Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor of History and the Social Sciences and Director of the Herbert H. Lehman Center for American History at Columbia University (Check Catalog)

The lonely soldier : the private war of women serving in Iraq

by Helen Benedict. Modern times have created soldiers in both the male and female variety. Both carry heavy guns. Both are involved in firefights. Both are wounded. Both are killed. But the female version, a growing percentage of the US armed forces, is sexually harassed and abused and occasionally raped by the male version. Isolated and belittled in a military culture that is hostile, many of the women who have served in Iraq have found that they must protect themselves not just from an angry population, but from the men who are supposed to be their comrades. ... Benedict's book, filled with compelling and heartbreaking stories, is a groundbreaking testament to the bravery, resilience, and almost insurmountable obstacles faced by women in stationed in Iraq. --Foreward Magazine Reviews (Check Catalog)

The age of the unthinkable : why the new global disorder constantly surprises us and what to do about it

by Joshua Cooper Ramo. Former foreign editor of Time, Ramo pushes the reader into uncomfortable yet exhilarating places with controversial ways of thinking about global challenges (e.g., studying why Hezbollah is the most efficiently run Islamic militant group). His book, which lays bare the flaws in current thinking on everything from American political influence to the economy, is designed to change the physics of the way we think. Analyzing the failure of the Bush administration's Democratic Peace Theory and the fruitless efforts at a Mideast peace process, Ramo suggests that people must change the role they imagine for themselves from architects of a system they can control to gardeners in a living ecosystem --Publisher's Weekly. (Check Catalog)