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In 1755, New England troops embarked on a "great and noble scheme" to expel 18,000 French-speaking Acadians from Nova Scotia, killing thousands, separating innumerable families, and driving many into forests where they waged a desperate guerrilla resistance. The right of neutrality - to live in peace from the imperial wars waged between France and England - had been one of the founding values of Acadia. John Mack Faragher draws on original research to weave 150 years of history into a gripping narrative of both the civilization of Acadia and the British plot to destroy it.

Americans revere their Constitution. However, most of us are unaware how tumultuous and improbable the drafting and ratification processes were. As Benjamin Franklin keenly observed, any assembly of men bring with them "all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests and their selfish views." One need not deny that the Framers had good intentions in order to believe that they also had interests.

In the spring of 1864, Robert E. Lee faced a new adversary: Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant. Named commander of all Union armies in March, Grant quickly went on the offensive against Lee in Virginia. On May 4th, Grant's army struck hard across the Rapidan River into north central Virginia, with Lee's army contesting every mile. They fought for 40 days until, finally, the Union army crossed the James River and began the siege of Petersburg. The campaign cost 90,000 men - the largest loss the war had seen.

Pandemics and war, social turmoil and corrupt governments, natural disasters and environmental collapse—it's hard not to watch the signs of the times and feel afraid. But we can journey through that fear to find hope. With the warnings of a prophet and the lively voice of a storyteller, Choctaw elder and author of Ladder to the Light Steven Charleston speaks to all who sense apocalyptic dread rising around and within.

Nearly 30 years after the end of the Cold War, today's world leaders are abandoning disarmament treaties, building up their nuclear arsenals, and exchanging threats of nuclear strikes. To survive this new atomic age, we must relearn the lessons of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War: the Cuban missile crisis. Serhii Plokhy offers an international perspective on the crisis, tracing the tortuous decision-making that produced and then resolved it, which involved John Kennedy and his advisers, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and their commanders on the ground.

In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas, was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives, and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class.

In the fall of 1959, Harvard recruited 18 "Negro" boys as an early form of affirmative action. Four years later they would graduate as African Americans. Some 50 years later, one of these trailblazing Harvard grads, Kent Garrett, began to reconnect with his classmates and explore their vastly different backgrounds, lives, and what their time at Harvard meant.

Who are the Kennedys? Are they the brilliant, heroic, extraordinary people their admirers believe them to be? Or are they arrogant, competitive, self-absorbed children of a willful and immensely rich patriarch, as their detractors claim? In fact, they are all of these things, and more.

In Writing the Big Book, William H. Schaberg presents an exciting, research-driven narrative of the history of the book, Alcoholic Anonymous, and the formative years of A.A. Granted extensive access to the group's archives along with several other sources, the author reveals the early Fellowship's conflicts and personalities, successes and failures, and dispels many of the myths found in such canonical texts as Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers, Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, and A Brief History of the Big Book.

With command and wit, William J. Bennett reacquaints Americans with their heritage in an engaging narrative that cuts through the cobwebs of time, memory, and prevailing cynicism. Washington, Franklin, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and others reemerge not as marble icons or dust-dry names in a textbook, but as full-blooded, heroic pioneers whose far-reaching vision forged a nation that attracted - that still attracts - millions yearning to breathe free.

With eloquent simplicity, one of the world's last Native American medicine men demonstrates how traditional tribal wisdom can help us maintain spiritual and physical health in today's world.

Frank Sinatra desperately wanted to be part of John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s gang. He had his own famed "Rat Pack", made up of hard drinking, womanizing individuals like himself - guys like Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Peter Lawford - but the guy "Ol' Blue Eyes" really wanted to hang with was Lawford's brother-in-law, the real chairman of the board, John F. Kennedy. In Sinatra and the Jack Pack, Michael Sheridan delves deep into the acclaimed singer's relationship with the former president.

January 15, 1959—a day that changed one family forever. White supremacists kidnapped and severely beat rural Alabama preacher Israel Page, nearly killing him because he had sued a White sheriff's deputy for injuries suffered in a car crash. After "they" "got Daddy," Israel Page's children began leaving the Jim Crow South, the event leaving an indelible mark on the family and its future. Decades later, the events of that day fueled journalist Sharon Tubbs's epic quest to learn who had "gotten" her mother's daddy and why.

With intrigue that rivals the best le Carre novels, Russians Among Us tells the urgent story of Russia’s espionage efforts against the United States and the West from the end of the Cold War to the present.

The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819 the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with 20 crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than 90 days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, and disease and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival.

There are many, many studies of the Civil War. Books have been written on its economic effects, its political causes, its relationship to western expansion. But the real fascination of the war is the story of combat, men in battle. Combat: The Civil War tells this story in the words of men who actually marched into battle. We share their experiences, their fears, and their moments of bravery at Vicksburg, on board the Monitor, at Gettysburg, and at the bloody battle of Antietam. These eyewitness accounts are interspersed with brief commentaries by some of our most respected historians....

The New York Times best seller that tells the story of an overheated stock market and the financial disaster that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s. A riveting living history about Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929. Captures the era, the intoxicating expectancy, the hope that ruled men's heart and minds before the bubble burst and the black despair of the decade that followed.

In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. The events and people who crowd this audiobook guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America....

Want to make sense of the US Constitution? This new edition walks you through this revered document, explaining how the articles and amendments came to be and how they have guided legislators, judges, and presidents - and sparked ongoing debates along the way. You'll get the lowdown on all the big issues - from separation of church and state to impeachment to civil rights - that continue to affect Americans' daily lives. Plus, you'll find out about the different approaches to interpretation and how the document has changed over the past 200+ years.

The American president has come to be the most powerful figure in the world. And back in the 19th century, a great man held that office. William Lee Miller's new book closely examines that great man in that hugely important office: Abraham Lincoln as president.