Category Archives: Historical

PIRATE HUNTERS

Book Reviews, Historical, Mystery, Non-fiction

Title: Pirate Hunters

Author: Robert Kurson

Early one January morning in 20012, I received an international call from an unknown number. It was coming from the Dominican Republic, But I didn’t know anyone in that country. I had never been there in my life. The voice on the line, however, was unmistakable. “if you like pirates, meet me in New Jersey.” The caller was John Chatterton, one of the heroes of my book Shadow Divers. I hadn’t spoken to Chatterton in more than a year, but knew his New York-tinged baritone right away. “What kind of Pirates?” I asked. “seventeenth century. Caribbean. The real deal.”

So begins Pirate Hunters, a thrilling new adventure of danger and deep-sea diving, historic mystery and suspense, by the author of the New York Times bestseller Shadow Divers.

Finding and identifying a pirate ship is the hardest thing to do under the sea. But two men–John Chatterton and John Mattera–and willing to risk everything to find the Golden Fleece, The ship of the infamous pirate Joseph Bannister. At large during the Golden Age of Piracy in the seventeenth century, Bannister should have been immortalized in the lore of the sea–his exploits were more notorious than Blackbeard’s, more daring than Kidd’s. But the story, and his ship, have been lost to time. If Chatterton and Mattera succeed, they will make history–it will be just the second time ever that a pirate ship has been discovered and positively identified. Soon, however, they realize that cutting-edge technology and a willingness to lose everything aren’t enough to track down Bannister’s ship. They must travel the glove in search of historic documents and accounts of the great pirate’s exploits, face down dangerous rivals, battle the tides of nations and governments and experts. But it’s only when they learn to think and act like pirates–like Bannister–that they become able to go where no pirate hunters have gone before.

Fast paced and filled with suspense, fascinating characters, history, and adventure, Pirate Hunters is an unputdownable story that goes deep to discover truths and souls long believed lost.

PEARL HARBOR FROM INFAMY TO GREATNESS

Book Reviews, Historical, Non-fiction

Title: Pearl Harbor From Infamy to Greatness

Author: Craig Nelson

The America we live in today was born not on July 4, 1776, but on December 7, 1941, when an armada of hundreds of Japanese warplanes supported by aircraft carriers, destroyers, and midget submarines suddenly and savagely attacked the United States, killing 2,403 men–and forcing America’s entry into World War II. Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness follows moment by moment,
the sailors, soldiers, pilots, diplomats, admirals, generals, emperor, and president as they engineer, fight, and react to this stunningly dramatic event in world history.

Bestselling author Craig Nelson maps the road to war, beginning in 1914, with Franklin D. Roosevelt, then the assistant secretary of the navy (and not yet afflicted with polio), attending the laying of the keel of the USS Arizona at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Writing with vivid intimacy, Nelson traces Japan’s leaders as they lurch into ultranationalist fascism, which culminates in their insanely daring yet militarily brilliant scheme to terrify America with one of the boldest attacks ever waged. Within seconds, the country would never be the same.

In addition to learning the little–understood history of how and why Japan attacked Hawaii, we hear an abandoned record player endlessly repeating “Sunrise Serenade” as bombs shatter the decks of the Pennsylvania; we feel cold terror as lanky young American sailors must anxiously choose between staying aboard their sinking ships or diving overboard into harbor waters aflame with burning fuel; we watch as navy wives tearfully hide with their children in caves from a rumored invasion; and we understand the frustration and triumph of a lone American yeenager as he shoots down a Japanese bomber, even as the attack destroys hundreds of US airplanes and dozens of ships.

Backed by a research team’s five years of work, which produced nearly a million pages of documents, as well as Nelson’s through reexamination of the original evidence assembled gby federal investigators, this page-turning and definitive work provides a trhirlling blow-by-blow account from both the Japanese and American perspectives and is historical drama on the grandest scale. Nelson delivers all the terror, chaos, violence, tragedy, and heroism of the attack in stunning detail and offers surprising conclusions about the tragedy’s unforeseen and resonant consequences that linger even today.

1917 WAR PEACE & REVOLUTION

Book Reviews, Historical, Non-fiction

Title: 1917 War Peace & Revolution

Author: David Stevenson

1917 was a year of calamitous events and on of pivotal importance in the development of the First World War. In 1917: War Peace and Revolution, leading historian David Stevenson examines this crucial year in context and illuminates the century that followed. He shows how in this one year the war was transformed but also what drove the conflict onwards and how it continued to escalate.

Two developments in particular–the Russian Revolution and American intervention–had worldwide repercussions. Offering a close examination of thee key decisions, Stevenson considers Germany’s campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare, America’s declaration of war in resp9onse, and Britain’s frustration of German strategy by adopting the convoy system, as well as why (paradoxically) the military and political stalemate in Europe persisted. Focusing on the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, on the disastrous spring offensive that plunged the French army into mutiny, on the summer attacks that undermined the moderate Provisional Government in Russia and exposed Italy to national humiliation at Caporetto, and on the British decision for the ill-fated Third Rattle of Ypres (Passchendaele). 1917 offers a truly international understanding of events. The failed attempts to end the war by negotiation further clarify the underly8ing forces that prolonged it.

David Stevenson also analyses the global consequences of the year’s developments, showing how counties such as Brazil and China joined the belligerents, Britain offered responsible government to India and the Allies promised a Jewish national home in Palestine. Blending political and military history, and moving from capital to capital and between the cabinet chamber and the battle front, the book highlights the often tumultuous debates through which leaders entered and escalated the war, and the paradox that continued fighting could be justified as the shortest road towards regaining peace.

AN UNLIKELY TRUST

Book Reviews, Historical, Non-fiction

Title: An Unlikely Trust

Author: Gerard Helferich

At the dawn of the twentieth century,
Theodore Roosevelt and J. Pierpont Morgan were the two most powerful men in America and perhaps in the world. As the nation’s preeminent financier, Morgan presided over an elemental shift in American business, away from family-owned companies and toward modern corporations of unparalleled size and influence. As president, Theodore “Roosevelt vastly expanded the power of his office, seeking to rein in those corporations and rebalance their interests with those of workers, consumers, and society at large.

Overpowering figures and titanic personalities, Roosevelt and Morgan could easily have become sworn enemies. And when they have been considered together (never before at book length, they have often been portrayed as battling colossi: the great thrust builder versus the original trustbuster. But their long association was far more complex than that–and even mutually beneficial.

Despite their ,many differences in temperament and philosophy. Roosevelt and Morgan had much in common– social class. am unstinting Victorian morality a drive for power. a need for order. and a genuine (though not purely altruistic) concern for the welfare of the nation. Working this common ground, the premier progressive and the quintessential capitalist were ale to accomplish what neither could have achieved alone–including, more than once, averting national disaster. In the process they permanently changed the way that government and business worked together.

An Unlikely Trust is the story of the uneasy but momentous collaboration between Theodore Roosevelt and J. Pierpont Morgan. It is also the story of how government and business evolved from a laissez-faire relationship to the active regulation we know today. And it is an account of how, despite all that has changed in America over the past century so much remains the same, including the growing divide between rich and poor, the tangled bonds uniting politicians and business leaders, and the pervasive feeling that government is working for the special interests rather than for the people. Not least of all, it is the story of how citizens with vastly disparate outlooks and interests managed to come together for the good of their common country.

THE GREAT COWBOY STRIKE – Bullets, Ballots, & Class conflicts in the American West

Book Reviews, Historical, Non-fiction

Title: The Great Cowboy Strike

Author: Mark A Lause

In the pantheon of American icons, the cowboy embodies the traits of “rugged individualism,” independent, solitary, and stoical. In reality cowboys were grossly exploited and underpaid seasonal workers, who responded to the abuses of their employers in a series of militant strikes. Their resistance arose from the rise and demise of a “beef bonanza” that attracted international capital. Business interest approached the market with the expectation that it would have the same freedom to brutally impose its will as it had exercised on native peoples and the recently emancipated African Americans. These assumptions contributed to a series of bitter and violent “range wars,” which broke out from Texas to Montana and framed the appearance of labor conflicts in the region. These social tensions stirred a series of political insurgencies that become virtually endemic to the American West of the Gilded Age. Mark A. Lause explores the relationship between these neglected labor conflicts, the “range wars,” and the third-party movements.

The Great Cowboy Strike subverts American mythology to reveal the class abuses and inequalities that have blinded an nation to its true history and nature.

FIRST TO FIGHT THE U.S. MARINES IN WORLD WAR I

Book Reviews, Historical

Title: First to Fight The U.S Marines in World War I

Author: Oscar E. Gilbert and Romain Cansiere

“Retreat, hell! We just got here!” The words of Captain Lloyd Williams at Belleau Wood in June 1918 entered United States Corps legend, and the Marine Brigade’s actions there–along with the censor’s failure to take out the name of the Brigade in the battle reports–made the Corps famous.

The Marines went to war as part of the American Expeditionary Force, bitterly resented by the Army and General Pershing. The Army tried to use them solely as labor troops and replacements, but the German spring offensive of 1918 forced the issue. The French begged Pershing to commit his partially trained men, and two untested American divisions, supported by British and French units, were thrown into the path of five German divisions. Three horrific weeks later, the Marines held the entirety of Belleau Wood. The Marines then fought in the almost forgotten Blanc Mont Ridge Offensive in October, as well as in every well-known AEF action until the end of the war.

First to Fight looks at all the operations of the Marine Corp[s in World War I, covers the activities of both ground and air units, and considers the units that supported the Marine Brigade. This is the full and dramatic story of how, during the war years, the Marine Corps changed from a small organization of naval security detachments to an elite land combat force.

ANDREW JACKSON AND THE MIRACLE OF NEW ORLEANS

Book Reviews, Historical, Non-fiction

Title: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans

Author: Brian Kilmeade and Don Yeger

The War of 1812 saw America threatened on every side. Encouraged by the British, Indian tribes attacked settlers in the West, while the Royal Navy terrorized the coasts. By mid-1814, President James Madison’s generals had lost control of he war in the North,, losing battles in Canada. Then British troops set the White House ablaze, and a feeling of hopelessness spread across the country.

Into this dire situation stepped Major General Andrew Jackson. A native of Tennessee who had witnessed the horrors of the Revolutionary War and Indian attacks, he was glad America had finally decided to confront repeated British aggression. But he feared that President Madison’s men were overlooking the most important target of all: New Orleans.

If the British conquered New Orleans, they would control the mouth of the Mississippi River, cutting Americans off from that essential trade route and threatening the previous decade’s Louisiana Purchase. The new Nation’s dreams of western expansion would be crushed before they really got off the ground.

So Jackson faced three enormous challenges. He had to convince President Madison and his War Department to take him seriously, even though he wasn’t one of the well-educated Virginians and New Englanders who dominated the government. He had to assemble a coalition of frontier militiamen, French-speaking Louisianans, Cherokee and Choctaw Indians, freed slaves, and even some pirates. And he had to defeat the most powerful military force in the world–in the confusing terrain of the Louisiana bayous.

in short, then Jackson needed a miracle. The local Ursuline nuns set to work praying for his outnumbered troops. And so the Americans, driven by patriotism and protected by prayer, began he battle that would shape our young nation’s destiny.

As they did in their two previous bestsellers, kilmeade and Yaeger make history come alive with a riveting true story that will keep you turning the pages. You’ll finish with a new understanding of one of America’s greatest generals–who later became one of you most controversial presidents. And you’ll have a renewed appreciation for the brave men who fought so that America could one day stretch “from sea to shining sea.”

THE ODYSSEY OF ECHO COMPANY

Book Reviews, Historical, Non-fiction

Title: The Odyssey of Echo Company

Author: Doug Stanton

On a single night, January 31, 1968, as many as 100,000 soldiers in the North Vietnamese Army attack thirty-six cities throughout South Vietnam, hoping to dislodge American forces. forty-six young American soldiers of an Army reconnaissance platoon (Echo Company, 1/501) of the 101st Airborne Division hailing from farms, small towns, and big cities, are thrust into savage combat having been in-country only a few weeks. Their battles against North Vietnamese soldiers and toughened Viet Cong guerrillas are relentless, often hand to hand, and waged ac ross landing zones, rice paddies hamlets, rivers and dense jungle. Their exhausting day-to-day existence, which involves ambushes, grueling machine-gun battles, and heroic rescues of wounded comrades, forges the group into a lifelong brotherhood, The Odyssey of Echo Company is about these young men and centers on the searing experiences of one of them, Stanley Parker, who is wounded three times during the fighting.

When the young men came home, some encounter a country that doesn’t understand what they have survived. Many fall silent, knowing that few want to hear the stories they have lived to tell–until now. Based on interviews, personal letters, and Army after-action reports, and augmented by maps and combat zone photos, The Odyssey of Echo Company recounts the wartime service and incoming of ordinary young American men in an extraordinary time and confirms Doug Stanton’s prominence as an unparalleled storyteller of our age.

THOMAS JEFFERSON AND THE TRIPOLI PIRATES

Book Reviews, Historical, Non-fiction

Title: Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates

Author: Brian Kilmeade

This is the little-known story of how a newly independent nation was challenged by four Muslim powers and what happened when America’s third president decided to stand up to intimidation.

When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, America faced a crisis. The new nation was deeply in debt and needed its economy to grow quickly, but its merchant ships were under attack. Pirates from North Africa’s Barbary coast routinely captured American sailors and held them as slaves, demanding ransom and tribute payments far beyond what the new country could afford.

Over the previous fifteen years, as a diplomat and then as secretary of state, Jefferson had tried to work with the Barbary states (Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco). Unfortunately, he found in impossible to negotiate with people who believed their religion justified the plunder and enslavement of non-Muslims. These rogue states would show no mercy–at least not while easy money could be made by extorting the Western powers. So President Jefferson decided to move beyond diplomacy. He sent the U.S Navy’s new warships and a detachment of Marines to blockade Tripoli–launching the Barbary Wars and beginning America’s journey toward future superpower status.

As they did in their previous bestseller, George Washington’s Secret Six, Kilmeade and Yaeger have transformed a nearly forgotten slice of history into a dramatic story that will keep you turning the pages to find our what happens next. Among the many suspenseful episodes: 1. Lieutenant Andrew Sterett’s ferocious cannon battle on the high seas against the treacherous pirate ship Tripoli. 2. Lieutenant Stephen Decatur’s daring night raid of an enemy harbor, with the aim of destroying an American ship that had fallen into the pirates’ hands. 3. General William Eaton’s unprecedented five-hundred-mile land march from Egypt to the port of Derne, where the Marines launched a surprise attack and an American flag was raised in victory on foreign soil for the first time.

few today remember these men and other heroes who inspired the Marine Corps hymn “From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli, we fight our country’s battles in the air and, on land and sea.” Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates recaptures this forgotten war that changed American history with a real-life drama of intrigue, bravery, and battle on the high seas.

THE UNWOMANLY FACE OF WAR

Book Reviews, Historical, Non-fiction

Title: The Unwomanly Face Of War

Author: Svetlana Alexievich/strong>

For more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich has been the memory and conscience of the twentieth century. When the Swedish Academy awarded her the Novel Prize, it cited her invention of “a new kink of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions….a history of the soul.”

The Unwomanly Face of War is the long awaited English translation of Alexievich’s first book, a groundbreaking oral history of women in World War II across Europe and Russia. Alexievich chronicles the experiences of the Soviet women who fought on the front lines, on the home front, and in the occupied territories. These women–more than a million in total–were nurses and doctors, pilots, tank drivers, machine-gunners, and snipers. They battled alongside men, and yet, after the victory, their efforts and sacrifices were forgotten.

Alexievich traveled thousands of miles and visited more than a hundred towns to record these women’s stories. Together, this symphony of voices reveals a different aspect of the war–the everyday details of life in combat left out of the official histories.

Translated by the renown Rchard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Unworthy Face of War is a powerful and poignant account of the central conflict of the twentieth century a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human side of war.