Publisher: Random House
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/22/2013
ISBN-13: 9780385525183
ISBN-10: 0385525184

Journalist Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, examines the eight years during which President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney headed the Executive Branch of the U.S. government. Baker describes the strong influence Cheney had on all aspects of policy, often disagreeing with Bush and other members of the Cabinet. Despite Cheney's assertive style, Bush made his own decisions, not always agreeing with Cheney's conservative recommendations. This "evenhanded" (Library Journal) discussion relies both on official documents and accounts by other Cabinet members, providing an interesting and accessible resource for anyone interested in George W. Bush's administration.

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Publisher: Random House
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/05/2013
ISBN-13: 9781426211560
ISBN-10: 1426211562

Three great American aviators made huge contributions to the development of flight from before World War I to the 1940s: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, and Charles Lindbergh. In this engaging triple biography, author Winston Groom recounts their lives and vividly depicts their respective contributions to the practice and science of aeronautics. He also relates how the men viewed German re-armament after World War I and gave varied opinions on how to respond to Adolf Hitler's escalating preparations for war. Anyone interested in 20th-century international politics, the history of aviation, or the lives of these three celebrity pilots will find The Aviators compelling.

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Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/05/2013
ISBN-13: 9781594487279
ISBN-10: 1594487278

In 1944, an American B-24 bomber crashed somewhere in the Pacific with its crew of 11 and disappeared. Despite the plane's huge size, it took decades of determined searching to locate the remains of the aircraft and crew. In Vanished, author Wil Hylton vividly depicts the airmen and their service before their last flight, the ways in which their surviving relatives dealt with their loss, and the private efforts by several individuals to find the crash site. Hylton compellingly traces each thread of the story, which will especially interest not only World War II buffs but also readers who enjoyed books such as Mitchell Zuckoff's Frozen in Time.

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Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/22/2013
ISBN-13: 9781250000279
ISBN-10: 1250000270

Harry S. Truman served as President of the U.S. from 1945 to 1953. During his occupancy of the White House it became clear that the president's mansion needed extensive rehabilitation. A three-year project to renovate the entire structure rescued the building and updated the interiors -- during which time the Trumans lived in the Blair House across Pennsylvania Avenue. While noting the momentous events that played out on the domestic and international stages, author Robert Klara takes readers not only behind the scenes, but even behind the walls of the building. The Hidden White House will intrigue readers interested in architectural history as well as the history of Truman's presidency.

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Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/18/2013
ISBN-13: 9780393241099
ISBN-10: 0393241092

Until the end of World War II, British society relied on a rigid class structure that assigned precisely defined roles to the wealthy and aristocrats, on one hand, and the poor and uneducated, on the other. Covering about two centuries of British history, journalist Lucy Lethbridge examines in detail how this social structure made it possible to maintain large families in giant houses through the work of multitudes of servants. Fans of television's Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey or of Edwardian period novels will recognize the situations and people Lethbridge engagingly portrays in Servants, which Kirkus Reviews says "adds poignancy to the master-servant dynamic."

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Publisher: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 03/03/2009
ISBN-13: 9781416572466
ISBN-10: 1416572465

Assembling excerpts from historical documents and newspaper accounts of the period from 1892 to the end of 1941, author Nicholson Baker provides a "you were there" sense of the origins of World Wars I and II. In Human Smoke, as he weaves the themes of aggression and pacifism together into a provocative, panoramic examination of the causes of war and its devastating effects, Baker's dominant theme supports a pacifist stance towards the World Wars and war in general. Both those who tend to agree with Baker and those who are not persuaded will find themselves questioning whether war is effective or necessary.

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Publisher: Pantheon Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 03/06/2012
ISBN-13: 9780375422775
ISBN-10: 0375422773

This "mesmerizing tale, brilliantly told" (Kirkus Reviews) by acclaimed science historian George Dyson (son of renowned physicist Freeman Dyson) recounts how scientists at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies built a machine called MANIAC -- short for Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator, and Computer. Inspired by mathematician Alan Turing's dream of a "a single machine which can be used to compute any computational sequence," Hungarian-American polymath John von Neumann assembled a team of geniuses -- including Kurt Gödel, Julian Bigelow, and others -- to bring this vision to life in the 1940s and '50s. If you enjoyed the scope of James Gleick's The Information, you'll be enthralled by this sprawling history of the computer.

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Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 04/12/2011
ISBN-13: 9780374227340
ISBN-10: 0374227349

Acclaimed political theorist Francis Fukuyama contends that primitive tribal cultures developed political systems in response to societal needs: adaptive systems persisted longest, eventually becoming institutions from which our modern nation states evolved. In this first of two volumes, superbly chosen examples of state formation (including China, India, and Middle-Eastern regions) affirm the global scope of The Origins of Political Order. Readers interested in history's big sociopolitical questions (think Machiavelli's The Prince) will find big answers here, drawn from modern studies in anthropology, macroeconomics, legal history, and related specialties.

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Publisher: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 05/30/2006
ISBN-13: 9780743271721
ISBN-10: 0743271726

Author Larry McMurtry, best known for his award-winning Western novels, including the Lonesome Dove trilogy, explores the development of superstardom in The Colonel and Little Missie, a dual biography of Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley. McMurtry's vivid, engaging style brings these stars of the Wild West Show to life, relating how Cody's showmanship attracted fans from ordinary Americans to Queen Victoria -- who emerged from mourning to see the spectacle. Devotees of Wild West history, fans of sharpshooter Annie and Indian fighter Bill, and anyone interested in the origins of showbiz will find this an enthralling read.

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Publisher: Vintage Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 01/04/2005
ISBN-13: 9781400031726
ISBN-10: 1400031729

At the beginning of English settlement in North America stands the Jamestown colony, founded in 1607 in Virginia. Americans familiar with the lore of colonial history remember the heroic John Smith and his rescuer, Pocahontas, though the romantic version of their relationship is more legendary than historical. In Love and Hate in Jamestown, journalist David Price provides a detailed account of Smith's leadership and a subtle portrait of the intelligent and compassionate Pocahontas. The fate of the Jamestown colony after Smith's return to England makes for compelling, if grim, reading. Kirkus Reviews calls this thorough, accessible, and engaging treatment of Jamestown's history a "first-rate work of popular history."

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