Publisher: Crown Publishers
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 06/14/2011
ISBN-13: 9780307592200
ISBN-10: 0307592200

When boys fished a headless torso out of New York City's East River in 1897, police had no clues, no witnesses, and no way to identify either the victim or the killer. Rivals Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, editors of the city's two major newspapers, capitalized on this grisly mystery to win readers, journalistic bragging rights, and boost paper sales. The press notoriously blurred fact and fiction, shaped the police investigation in both positive and negative ways, and stoked the public's taste for lurid news as "info-tainment." Curious about the history of modern "shock" reporting? Read all about it: Pete Hamill's Tabloid City offers more juicy details.

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Publisher: Harper
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 06/07/2011
ISBN-13: 9780061958861
ISBN-10: 0061958867

The Whites of Their Eyes reveals that America's ill-prepared militiamen were as likely to walk off in a huff as not, and the vaunted discipline of British troops led to their worst tactical errors. Based on new sources, the author sensitively focuses on the Americans as ordinary men striving to accomplish the extraordinary. He paradoxically explores their defeat in this battle as "triumphant," arguing that it crystallized their resolve to be free of British rule and established new American command structures, which later secured victory in the Revolutionary War. If you liked James Nelson's With Fire and Sword, don't miss The Whites of Their Eyes.

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Publisher: Random House
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 06/14/2011
ISBN-13: 9781400067527
ISBN-10: 1400067529

At the dawn of the 20th century, newly industrialized America promised wealth and prosperity to some--like William McKinley, an affable Civil War hero and self-made man who became America's 25th president. In contrast, urban workers suffered joblessness, harsh working conditions, and crushing poverty that deepened their sense of alienation--like McKinley's killer, Leon Czolgosz. Brilliantly evoking the personal and cultural forces that led to their fatal encounter in 1901, The President and the Assassin offers general readers a more accessible study than Eric Rauchway's Murdering McKinley, but hard-core presidential history buffs will enjoy both titles immensely.

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Publisher: Scribner
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 06/07/2011
ISBN-13: 9781416535454
ISBN-10: 1416535454

The Ripple Effect is an eye-opening investigation of the world's limited fresh water resources. Author Alex Prud'homme explores where water comes from, where it goes, how it gets there, who controls it, how it's wasted (or otherwise threatened), and what (if anything) we can do to keep the well from running dry. His compelling claim that water--not oil--will define 21st-century life lends all-new meaning to the phrase "think before you drink." Still thirsty? Charles Fishman's The Big Thirst also treats global water woes, and Maude Barlow's Blue Gold blasts the bottled water industry.

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Publisher: Harvard University Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 03/31/2005
ISBN-13: 9780674017245
ISBN-10: 0674017242

Historian Gerard DeGroot begins with the early 20th-century physics discoveries that made atomic energy possible. Optimistically developed as an unlimited clean energy source, its military potential was soon realized. By 1939, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt received word that Nazi Germany hoped to develop nuclear arms--and the race was on. The Bomb is "an invaluable and timely history" (Booklist) of the people and events that brought about the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945, sparked the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, and left us with today's legacy of nuclear terror. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to appreciate this richly detailed, compact introduction to a complex topic.

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 06/03/2008
ISBN-13: 9781400043583
ISBN-10: 1400043581

Newly declassified files prove that the U.S. and Soviet Union came thisclose to nuclear confrontation: the 1962 Bay of Pigs debacle brought hostilities to a boil, triggering the Cuban missile crisis. One Minute to Midnight chronicles how events snowballed from President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev's earliest "misunderstandings" to Kennedy's initiation of DEFCON2--the final stage of U.S. defense prior to nuclear attack. Compromise was reached...but not before those in-the-know were left weak-kneed and clammy. Since disaster was averted, Cold War buffs can enjoy this "fast-paced, suspenseful narrative" (Publishers Weekly), along with Jim Rasenberger's The Brilliant Disaster on the Bay of Pigs, too.

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Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 08/01/1995
ISBN-13: 9780684813783
ISBN-10: 0684813785

The Making of the Atomic Bomb is an epic account of the deadliest force man has ever created. Early 20th-century scientific breakthroughs made nuclear energy possible, but atomic weapons were deemed both impossible and unthinkable...at first. Author Richard Rhodes' gripping prose makes this monumental work hard to put down, and readers will return again and again to its superb treatment of psychological, political, and ethical issues surrounding the bomb's conception, development, and deadly realization on August 6, 1945. For those who'd like to start with a shorter work, Gerard DeGroot's The Bomb offers an excellent alternative.

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Publisher: Harper Perennial
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 05/01/2006
ISBN-13: 9780060742850
ISBN-10: 0060742852

Shockwave spotlights world events immediately surrounding the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The personal stories of American soldiers, Los Alamos scientists, and Japanese survivors in the final weeks (and even moments) before, during, and after the bomb was launched are interleaved with vignettes of world leaders--Stalin, Churchill, Truman--who were desperate to end WWII without further horrific Allied casualties. The bomb's role in the war and its long-term effects on the world community are also explored in this cinematic, moving account from a noted BBC filmmaker and historian Stephen Walker. WWII history buffs who like John Hershey's classic Hiroshima will want to compare the two.

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Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 12/31/2007
ISBN-13: 9780307342027
ISBN-10: 0307342026

Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent George Weller slipped into Nagasaki just four weeks after the atom bomb blast of 1945. With increasing shock and horror, he recorded what he found: hospitals full of children dying from radiation poisoning, tens of thousands of Japanese killed outright by the blast, and Allied POWs who had been brutally tortured for years by their Japanese captors. Military censors blocked these unvarnished, evocative, and raw dispatches--and Weller's own copies went missing for 60 years. George Weller's singular reports are a vivid, disturbing time-capsule of post-atomic Hiroshima; highly recommended for WWII completists, but a strong stomach is required.

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