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The great escape: the untold story
By Ted Barris. 2014
On the night of March 24, 1944, eighty airmen crawled through a 400-foot-long tunnel, code-named "Harry," and dashed from Stalag…
Luft III, the infamous WWII German POW camp. It became known as The Great Escape. The breakout had taken a year to plan, involved 2,000 POWs, and prompted a massive manhunt across occupied Europe. All but three escapees were recaptured, and on Hitler’s orders, fifty were murdered. The author recounts this battle of wits and determination through the voices of those involved, assembles original interviews, memoirs, letters and diaries to reconstruct the Great Escape’s untold story. Bestseller. 2014.The girls of Atomic City: the untold story of the women who helped win World War II
By Denise Kiernan. 2013
At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents. But to most of the…
world, the town did not exist. Thousands of civilians—many of them young women from small towns across the South—were recruited to this secret city, enticed by solid wages and the promise of war-ending work. Kept very much in the dark, few would ever guess the true nature of the tasks they performed each day in the hulking factories in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains. That is, until the end of the war—when Oak Ridge’s fateful secret was revealed. Bestseller. 2013.The Great Dominion: Winston Churchill in Canada, 1900-1954
By David Dilks. 2005
Winston Churchill's connection with Canada ("the Great Dominion", as he called it) spanned more than half a century: at Winnipeg…
he heard the news of Queen Victoria's death, in Ottawa in the dark days of 1941 he proclaimed his confidence in victory, and in 1952 had to concede that the result of victory had been far less satisfying than he had wished. No other Commonwealth country sparked such detailed knowledge or lifelong interest. 2005.The great hill stations of Asia
By Barbara Crossette. 1998
In 1997 this New York Times journalist traveled across Asia, visiting the classic hill towns built by several colonial powers.…
She recalls her journeys to these remote locations, discusses their history, and describes how each has evolved since being inherited by an independent nation. 1998.The good fight: political memoirs, 1909-1958
By David Lewis. 1981
The golden spruce: A True Story Of Myth, Madness And Greed
By John Vaillant. 2005
In 1997, when a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an Alaskan island north of the Canadian border,…
they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. The author braids together the strands of this mystery and brings to life the historical collision of Europeans and the Haida and the harrowing world of logging. Canada Reads 2012. Winner of the 2005 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction. Bestseller. 2005.The genius of China: 3,000 years of science, discovery, and invention
By Robert K. G Temple, Joseph Needham. 1986
Reveals the Chinese origins of such "modern" inventions as paper and printing, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass. Temple's eleven topics--including…
astronomy, engineering, medicine, and warfare--provide historical context and show that more than half of the basic discoveries considered "Western" were developed earlier in China. 1998, c1986.The gentleman from New York: Daniel Patrick Moynihan : a biography
By Godfrey Hodgson. 2000
Presents an account of the popular senator's life as a politician who championed both liberal and conservative causes. Traces Moynihan's…
difficult childhood, his educational path, and his varied career in government. Discusses the philosophy behind his landmark 1965 report on African American families. Some strong language. 2000.The follow: a true story
By Linda Spalding. 1998
The author recounts her expedition into the forests of Borneo in search of a reclusive primatologist, who has devoted her…
life to protecting orphaned orangutans. Describes the beauty of the island, the local society, and the despoilment of natural resources through poaching, deforestation, and misguided ecotourism. 1998.Describes the unlikely friendship between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Pauli Murray, a granddaughter of a mixed race slave and…
a lesbian, who became a lawyer and civil rights pioneer, and the important work they each did for justice and freedom. 2016.The frock-coated communist: the revolutionary life of Friedrich Engels
By Tristram Hunt. 2009
Friedrich Engels was a textile magnate and fox-hunter, a raffish, high-living, heavy drinking devotee of the good things in life.…
But Engels was also the man behind Karl Marx who for forty years funded him, looked after his children, soothed his furies, and provided one-half of history's most celebrated ideological partnership. He was co-author of The Manifesto of the Communist Party and co-founder of what would come to be known as Marxism. Interpreted and misinterpreted, quoted and misquoted, Friedrich Engels became one of the central architects of modern global socialism. 2009.The first Vietnam war
By Peter M Dunn. 1985
Immediately after the Japanese surrender at the end of the Second World War, Saigon was occupied by British forces directed…
from Mountbatten's South East Asia Command. These forces became the first of a Western nation to clash with a Communist-led revolution in Asia, and by thwarting the Viet Minh's desperate attempts to seize power, made it impossible for South Vietnam to hold out when North Vietnam fell to the Communists in 1954. 1985.The flight of the patriot: escape from revolutionary Iran
By Yadi Sharifirad. 2010
Sharifirad was shot down in the Iraqi-Iranian war in the early 1990s, saved by a group of local Kurds, and…
eventually returned to Iran where he became a national hero. The Ayatollah sent him to Pakistan as military attaché, but when he returned to Teheran, he was accused of being a CIA spy and was imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured. Upon his release, despite constant surveillance, he resolved to smuggle his family out of the country. Some descriptions of sex and violence, some strong language. 2010.The fix: soccer and organized crime
By Declan Hill. 2010
The first American: the life and times of Benjamin Franklin
By H. W Brands. 2000
Biography of one of America's founding fathers, incorporating correspondence and anecdotes of his contemporaries. Franklin was heralded as a leading…
inventor and scientist, author, and diplomat as well as a bon vivant. In exploring Franklin's conversion from British loyalist to revolutionary, Brands seeks out the genius behind the man. 2000.The corrosion of conservatism: why I left the right
By Max Boot. 2018
Pronouncing Mexican immigrants to be "rapists," Donald Trump announced his 2015 presidential bid, causing Max Boot to think he was…
watching a dystopian science-fiction movie. The respected conservative historian couldn't fathom that the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan could endorse such an unqualified reality-TV star. Yet the Twilight Zone episode that Boot believed he was watching created an ideological dislocation so shattering that Boot's transformation from Republican foreign policy adviser to celebrated anti-Trump columnist becomes the dramatic story of The Corrosion of Conservatism. No longer a Republican, but also not a Democrat, Boot here records his ideological journey from a "movement" conservative to a man without a party, beginning with his political coming-of-age as a young emigre from the Soviet Union, enthralled with the National Review and the conservative intellectual tradition of Russell Kirk and F. A. Hayek. Against this personal odyssey, Boot simultaneously traces the evolution of modern American conservatism, jump-started by Barry Goldwater's canonical The Conscience of a Conservative, to the rise of Trumpism and its gradual corrosion of what was once the Republican Party. While 90 percent of his fellow Republicans became political "toadies" in the aftermath of the 2016 election, Boot stood his ground, enduring the vitriol of his erstwhile conservative colleagues, trolled on Twitter by a white supremacist who depicted his "execution" in a gas chamber by a smiling, Nazi-clad Trump. And yet, Boot nevertheless remains a villain to some partisan circles for his enduring commitment to conservative fiscal and national security principles. 2018.The far-off hills
By Rita Anton. 1979
Following her husband's death in 1976, Anton spent several years in India as a volunteer Jesuit Lay Missionary. Having travelled…
extensively in India, she presents a realistic look at this nation in transition. 1979.The end of elsewhere: travels among the tourists
By Taras Grescoe. 2003
Taras Grescoe plunges into the ruts where the tourists are thickest, starting at the tip of Spain's Land's End and…
finishing, nine months later, on the soldier-patrolled beaches of China's End of the Earth. Along the way, he crosses the entire Eurasian landmass, experiencing all sorts of travel such as all-inclusive resorts, pilgrimages, and bus tours. Some descriptions of sex and violence, some strong language. 2003.The enemy within: terror, lies, and the whitewashing of Omar Khadr
By Ezra Levant. 2011
Omar Khadr, the last Western prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, pled guilty to killing a U.S. sergeant in Afghanistan, in an…
agreement that allowed him to be transferred to Canada after one year. Levant includes information about the Khadr family, Khadr's psychological assessment, and his trial that has often been ignored in the mainstream media. He looks at the definition of "child soldier," life at Guantanamo Bay, the media coverage of the case, a tainted plea bargain, and the Canadian government's plan for Omar Khadr's rehabilitation upon his return to Canada. Includes violence and strong language. 2011.The end of Hong Kong: the secret diplomacy of imperial retreat
By Robert Cottrell. 1993
On June 30, 1997, Britain ended its colonial rule over Hong Kong, the wealthy city state with six million people.…
The terms of the handover to China were to be those set out in a Joint Declaration initialled by Britain and China in 1984. This is an account of the diplomacy behind that settlement, and the prospects that lay ahead for Hong Kong. 1993.