Lake George Shipwrecks and Sunken History

Zarzynski, Joseph W, Benway, Bob. Lake George: Its Sunken History Revealed is an assortment of short tales that focus on the sunken heritage of one of North America's most historic waterways the 32 mile long Lake George in upstate New York. Each of the stories focuses on a shipwreck, a maritime mystery, or an underwater archeological discovery and investigation, and will be accompanied by one or two historic images or modern underwater photos.--Publisher Marketing (Check Catalog)

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris

David McCullough. One of Americas most popular historians and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, McCullough (1776) has hit the historical jackpot. Travelers before the telephone era loved to write letters and journals, and McCullough has turned this avalanche of material into an entertaining chronicle of several dozen 19th-century Americans who went to Paris, an immense, supremely civilized city flowing with ideas, the arts, and elegance, where no one spit tobacco juice or defaced public property.--Publisher's Weekly. (Check Catalog)

Last men out : the true story of America's heroic final hours in Vietnam

Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. An exciting, focused account of the bitter evacuation by helicopter of the last Marines securing the U.S. embassy compound in Saigon on April 30, 1975. The Americans washed their bloody hands of the Vietnam War with the Paris Peace Accords of January 1973, which stipulated withdrawal from South Vietnam except for a handful of Marine Security Guards (MSGs) and other personnel posted at the embassy and at a defense outpost (DOA) adjacent to the airport in downtown Saigon.--Kirkus (Check Catalog)

The Statues That Walked: Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island

Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo. Rapa Nui (aka the Easter Islands) have long been thought to illustrate how human environmental overreach led to collapse, as advanced monument builders undermined the ecology, beginning an inevitable slide. The authors make a counter-argument that "the problems were social, not a result of environmental ruin.--Kirkus (Check Catalog)

Brothers, Rivals, Victors: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley and the Partnership That Drove the Allied Conquest in Europe

Jonathan Jordan. Independent historian Jordan ("Lone Star Navy", with research based on diaries and personal accounts, puts us in the mindset of the protagonists and their staffs to understand what was boiling under the surface. Another combination of generals might have fared better or worse—we will never know. Patton died in December 1945 after a car accident, while Eisenhower and Bradley moved upward and on. This is very much an emotional military history, compelling and easy to read, yet also well documented. Recommended to both specialists and general readers.--Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth

Frederick Kempe. Former longtime Wall Street Journal editor Kempe recounts a curious series of episodes in which the Russians appeared to be bearing olive branches, the Americans arrows. The climax of the difficult year 1961, as Kempe demonstrates, was the building of the Berlin Wall following one misreading of Soviet cues after another on the part of the Kennedy administration. In the end, Kennedy had to swallow his pride and accept the fact of the wall, which "had risen as he passively stood by."--Kirkus Reviews. (Check Catalog) 

The Churchills: In Love and War

Mary Lovell. Although the central character here may be Winston Churchill, British biographer Lovell ("A Rage To Live: A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton" essentially offers a popular biography of several members of the 19th- and 20th-century Churchill family, with less coverage beforehand on the earlier Churchills, such as the original Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. Lovell tends to be drawn to strong female characters, and her new book is no exception; she devotes significant attention to American heiresses Jennie Jerome (Winston Churchill's mother) and Consuelo Vanderbilt (his cousin by marriage). --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

A Glorious Army: Robert E. Lee's Triumph, 1862-1863

Jeffrey D. Wert. Wert eschews the tick-tock of battle in favor of analysis of the big-picture, how the army was led and how the rank and file responded. Nimbly sifting the oftentimes conflicting judgments of a wide array of historians and making vivid use of primary source documents, the author demonstrates how everything—the good and the bad—began with Lee.--Kirkus (Check Catalog)

Cambodia's Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land

Joel Brinkley. Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Brinkley takes on the pricey pitfalls of nation building and the labyrinth of centuries-old political corruption in this riveting piece of literary reportage. At once a tale of human tragedy and a primer on the future of Western engagement with developingand autocraticcountries, the book offers a rare look inside a country beleaguered by poverty and imprisoned by patronage and venal leadership since the 13th century; traumatized by colonialism, Pol Pot's brutal Khmer Rouge, and the genocide he unleashed.--Publisher's Weekly (Check Catalog)