Title: Boots On The Ground

Author: Elizabeth Partridge

In over a decade of bitter fighting it claimed the lives of more than 18,000 American soldiers and beleaguered four U.S. presidents. More than forty years after America left Vietnam in defeat in 1973, the war remains controversial and divisive both in the United States and abroad.

The history of this era is complex; the cultural impact extraordinary. But it’s the personal stories of eight people–six American soldiers, one American military nurse, and one Vietnamese refuge–that create the heartbeat of Boots on the Ground. From dense jungles and terrifying firefights to chaotic helicopter rescues and harrowing escapes, each individual experience reveals a different facet of the war and moves us forward in time. Alternating with these chapters are profiles of key American leaders and events, reminding us of all that was happening at home during the war, including peace protests, presidential scandals, and veterans’ struggles to acclimate to life after Vietnam.

With more than one hundred photo graphs, award-winning author Elizabeth Partridge’s unflinching book captures the intensity, frustration, and lasting impacts of one of the most tumultuous periods of American history.

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.

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.

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.

Title: The Great Cowboy Strike