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Grace from the Rubble: Two Fathers' Road to Reconciliation after the Oklahoma City Bombing
By Jeanne Bishop. 2020
"Readers should have tissues at hand before beginning Bishop&’s affecting story. This incredible and empathetic story is a testament to…
the powers of forgiveness, fellowship, and redemption." --Publishers Weekly Starred Review The heart-stirring story of how the father of a young woman killed in the Oklahoma City bombing and the father of her killer, Timothy McVeigh, forged an unlikely friendship and found forgiveness. In what was to become the deadliest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, the Oklahoma City bombing was one in a long line of violent attacks that have left communities across the nation searching for healing and hope. With the soaring message of the power of love to conquer evil, Grace from the Rubble tells the intertwining stories of four captivating individuals: Julie Welch, a young professional full of promise, and Tim McVeigh, the troubled mind behind the horrific event; Bud Welch, a father whose only daughter (Julie) was murdered, and Bill McVeigh, the father of her killer. With searing details by first-hand witnesses, including the Governor of Oklahoma, masterful storyteller Jeanne Bishop describes the suspenseful scenes leading up to that fateful day and the dramatic events afterward as one father buried his daughter and the other saw his only son arrested and tried for mass murder.Vivid and haunting, this true story is rich with memories and beautiful descriptions of the nation's heartland, a place of grit and love for neighbors and family. Bishop tells how murder affected her own family and led her to meet Bud and, ultimately, how she learned to see humanity amidst inhuman violence.With compassion for all who have been touched by tragedy, this poignant narrative will touch your heart with the astonishing forgiveness that led to an extraordinary friendship.Conversations with Isaac Newton: A Fictional Dialogue Based on Biographical Facts
By Michael White. 2020
Isaac Newton's influence on our world is immense. He formulated the theory of gravity, devised a radical new theory of…
light and created a calculus that would revolutionize mathematics. His theory of matter in motion sparked the Industrial Revolution. But there was far more to Newton even than these great discoveries. Opening with an informative foreword by the bestselling author of The Body Bill Bryson, the book is then divided into two parts: a biographical essay that provides a concise overview of Newton's life, upbringing, education and achievements; and a Q&A dialogue based on rigorous research and incorporating Newton's actual spoken or written words whenever possible. Biographer Michael White brings Newton to life through detailed research and giving Newton a free voice to tell you about his unorthodox upbringing, his eminent political career, his bitter feuds with rivals and his secret explorations of the occult.Seven More Men: And the Secret of Their Greatness
By Eric Metaxas. 2020
In Seven More Men, the sequel to the enormously successful Seven Men, #1 New York Times bestselling author Eric Metaxas…
offers more captivating stories of some of the most inspiring men in history. A gallery of greatness comes to life as Metaxas reveals men who faced insurmountable struggles and challenges with victorious resolve. Heroes and role models have always been tremendously important--essential for inspiring our lives and shaping the world. But in the last few decades, the need for men of valor and integrity is more vital than ever. Award-winning biographer Eric Metaxas restores a sense of the heroic in the compelling profiles of Martin Luther, George Whitefield, William Booth, George Washington Carver, Sergeant Alvin York, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Billy Graham. Each man evinces a particular quality: the courage to surrender themselves to a higher purpose, and the willingness to give something dear to them away for the good of others.With vitality and warmth, Metaxas draws electrifying insights for our daily lives from the inexhaustible richness of history. Inevitably inspiring, this anthology reminds us that certain qualities are worthy of emulation. Becoming acquainted with these seven heroes cannot fail to make your life immeasurably richer.Pocahontas
By Leslie Gourse. 1996
The Stunning and Emotional Autobiography of an Auschwitz Survivor April 7, 1944—This date marks the successful escape of two Slovak…
prisoners from one of the most heavily-guarded and notorious concentration camps of Nazi Germany. The escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, fled over one hundred miles to be the first to give the graphic and detailed descriptions of the atrocities of Auschwitz. Originally published in the early 1960s, I Escaped from Auschwitz is the striking autobiography of none other than Rudolf Vrba himself. Vrba details his life leading up to, during, and after his escape from his 21-month internment in Auschwitz. Vrba and Wetzler manage to evade Nazi authorities looking for them and make contact with the Jewish council in Zilina, Slovakia, informing them about the truth of the &“unknown destination&” of Jewish deportees all across Europe. This first-hand report alerted Western authorities, such as Pope Pius XII, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, to the reality of Nazi annihilation camps—information that until then had only been recognized as nasty rumors.I Escaped from Auschwitz is a close-up look at the horror faced by the Jewish people in Auschwitz and across Europe during World War II. This newly edited translation of Vrba&’s memoir will leave readers reeling at the terrors faced by those during the Holocaust. Despite the profound emotions brought about by this narrative, readers will also find an astounding story of heroism and courage in the face of seemingly hopeless circumstances.My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams
By Abigail Adams. 2007
Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson
By Daniel Ellsberg, S. Brian Willson. 2011
After serving in the Vietnam War, S. Brian Willson became a radical, nonviolent peace protester and pacifist, and this memoir…
details the drastic governmental and social change he has spent his life fighting for. Chronicling his personal struggle with a government he believes to be unjust, Willson sheds light on the various incarnations of his protests of the U.S. government, including the refusal to pay taxes, public fasting, and, most famously, public obstruction. On September 1, 1987, Willson was run over by a U.S. government munitions train during a nonviolent blocking action in which he expected to be removed from the tracks. Providing a full look into the tragic event, Willson, who lost his legs in the incident, discusses how the subsequent publicity propelled his cause toward the national consciousness. Now, 23 years later, Willson tells his story of social injustice, nonviolent struggle, and the so-called American way of life.Pistoleros!: Volume 1: 1918
By Farquhar McHarg. 2011
In Farquhar McHarg's autobiography, a young boy from Glasgow finds himself in the middle of Barcelona's revolutionary underworld at the…
tail end of World War I. Volume One chronicles McHarg's liaisons between the British Secret Service Bureau and the Spanish anarchists. McHarg tells of a corrupt Spanish regime bent on crushing a rebellious working class and the generous and recklessly idealistic men and women who struggled to transform it after rejecting traditional party politics. When a lifelong friend and fellow anarchist was gunned down, McHarg raced to write this epic history before he too could be silenced. This unique, first-person account of revolutionary activities in 20th-century Europe gives rare perspective and insight into modern revolutionary history.FDR and Lucy: Lovers and Friends
By Resa Willis. 2005
Simon Bolivar, The Liberator
By Guillermo Antonio Sherwell. 2006
The different commanders had obtained some partial successes, but they soon recognized the necessity of Bolivar's leadership, and sent Arismendi…
to Port-au-Prince to ask him to return. Admiral Brion also besought him to go back to Venezuela. At the end of December Bolivar reached Margarita Island with some Venezuelan exiles. Once there, he issued a proclamation convoking an assembly, for his paramount desire was to have the military power subordinated to the civil government.Galvanized: The Odyssey of a Reluctant Carolina Confederate
By Michael K. Brantley. 2020
Every Civil War veteran had a story to tell. But few stories top the one lived by Wright Stephen Batchelor.…
Like most North Carolina farmers, Batchelor eschewed slaveholding. He also opposed secession and war, yet he fought on both sides of the conflict. During his time in each uniform, Batchelor barely avoided death at the Battle of Gettysburg, was captured twice, and survived one of the war&’s most infamous prisoner-of-war camps. He escaped and, after walking hundreds of miles, rejoined his comrades at Petersburg, Virginia, just as the Union siege there began. Once the war ended, Batchelor returned on foot to his farm, where he took part in local politics, supported rights for freedmen, and was fatally involved in a bizarre hometown murder. Michael K. Brantley&’s story of his great-great-grandfather&’s odyssey blends memory and Civil War history to look at how the complexities of loyalty and personal belief governed one man&’s actions—and still influence the ways Americans think about the conflict today.Nehru (Routledge Historical Biographies)
By Benjamin Zachariah. 2004
This engaging new biography dispels many myths surrounding Nehru, and distinguishes between the icon he has become and the politician…
he actually was. Benjamin Zachariah places Nehru in the context of the issues of his time, including the central theme of nationalism, the impact of Cold War pressures on India and the transition from colonial control to a precarious independence. How did Jawaharlal Nehru come to lead the Indian nationalist movement, and how did he sustain his leadership as the first Prime Minister of independent India? Nehru's vision of India, its roots in Indian politics and society, as well as its viability have been central to historical and present-day views of India. Connecting the domestic and international aspects of his political life and ideology, this study provides a fascinating insight into Nehru, his times and his legacy.Sulla: The Last Republican (Classical Lives Ser.)
By Arthur Keaveney. 2004
In this second edition of Arthur Keaveney's classic biography, a fresh generation of students, scholars and readers are introduced to…
one of the most pivotal figures in the outgoing Roman Empire. A definitive book in its field, this second edition is a must read. Completely rewritten and updated to include the further discoveries of the last two decades, it challenges traditional views of Sulla as a tyrant and harsh military dictator and instead delivers a compellingly complex portrait of a man obsessed with the belief that he was blessed with divine favour.Written by a leading authority on the classical world, this lively and entertaining book transports us through Sulla's rise from poverty and obscurity to his dictatorship of Rome, highlighting his dedication and achievements in better ordering the Republic before his decline a generation later.David Livingstone: African Explorer (Sower Ser.sower Series Biographies)
By John H. Tiner, Diane Davis, Joyce Bohn, Rebecca Booher. 1997
Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-century Holy Woman
By Samuel Fanous, Henrietta Leyser. 2004
Samuel Fanous and Henrietta Leyser present a vivid interdisciplinary study devoted to the life, work and extant vita of Christina…
of Markyate, which draws on research from a wide range of disciplines. This fascinating and comprehensive collection surveys the life of an extraordinary medieval woman. Christina of Markyate made a vow of chastity at an early age, against the wishes of her parents who intended her to marry. When forced into wedlock, she fled in disguise and went into hiding, receiving refuge in a network of hermitages. Christina became a religious recluse and eventually founded a priory of nuns attached to St. Albans. Beautifully illustrated, this book provides students who regularly encounter Christina with a research compendium from which to begin their studies, and introduces Christina to a wider audience.Alfonso X, the Justinian of His Age: Law and Justice in Thirteenth-Century Castile
By Joseph F. O'Callaghan. 1975
In this magisterial work, Joseph O'Callaghan offers a detailed account of the establishment of Alfonso X's legal code, the Libro…
de las leyes or Siete Partidas, and its applications in the daily life of thirteenth-century Iberia, both within and far beyond the royal courts. O'Callaghan argues that Alfonso X, el Sabio (the Wise), was the Justinian of his age, one of the truly great legal minds of human history.Alfonso X, the Justinian of His Age highlights the struggles the king faced in creating a new, coherent, inclusive, and all-embracing body of law during his reign, O'Callaghan also considers Alfonso X's own understanding of his role as king, lawgiver, and defender of the faith in order to evaluate the impact of his achievement on the administration of justice. Indeed, such was the power and authority of the Alfonsine code that it proved the king's downfall when his son invoked it to challenge his rule. Throughout this soaring legal and historical biography, O'Callaghan reminds us of the long-term impacts of Alfonso X's legal works, not just on Castilian (and later, Iberian) life, but on the administration of justice across the world.The Scholems: A Story of the German-Jewish Bourgeoisie from Emancipation to Destruction
By Jay Howard Geller. 2019
The evocative and riveting stories of four brothers—Gershom the Zionist, Werner the Communist, Reinhold the nationalist, and Erich the liberal—weave…
together in The Scholems, a biography of an eminent middle-class Jewish Berlin family and a social history of the Jews in Germany in the decades leading up to World War II.Across four generations, Jay Howard Geller illuminates the transformation of traditional Jews into modern German citizens, the challenges they faced, and the ways that they shaped the German-Jewish century, beginning with Prussia's emancipation of the Jews in 1812 and ending with exclusion and disenfranchisement under the Nazis. Focusing on the renowned philosopher and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem and his family, their story beautifully draws out the rise and fall of bourgeois life in the unique subculture that was Jewish Berlin. Geller portrays the family within a much larger context of economic advancement, the adoption of German culture and debates on Jewish identity, struggles for integration into society, and varying political choices during the German Empire, World War I, the Weimar Republic, and the Nazi era. What Geller discovers, and unveils for the reader, is a fascinating portal through which to view the experience of the Jewish middle class in Germany.Charles Austin Beard: The Return of the Master Historian of American Imperialism
By Richard Drake. 2018
Richard Drake presents a new interpretation of Charles Austin Beard's life and work. The foremost American historian and a leading…
public intellectual in the first half of the twentieth century, Beard participated actively in the debates about American politics and foreign policy surrounding the two world wars. Drake takes this famous man's life and rewrites his intellectual biography by placing the European dimension of Beard's thought at the center. This radical change of critical focus allows Drake to correct previous biographers' oversights and, in Charles Austin Beard, present a far more nuanced appreciation for Beard's life than we have read before.Drake proposes a restoration of Beard's professional reputation, which he lost in large part because of his extremely unpopular opposition to America's intervention in World War II. Drake analyzes the stages of Beard's development as a historian and critic: his role as an intellectual leader in the Progressive movement, the support that he gave to the cause of American intervention in World War I, and his subsequent revisionist repudiation of Wilsonian ideals and embrace of non-interventionism in the lead-up to World War II. Many of his dire predictions about the inevitable consequences of pre-World War II American foreign policy have come to pass. Drake shows that, as Americans tally the ruinous costs—both financial and moral—of nation-building and informal empire, the life and work of this prophet of history merit a thorough reexamination.Bitter Choices: Loyalty and Betrayal in the Russian Conquest of the North Caucasus
By Michael Khodarkovsky. 2014
Russia’s attempt to consolidate its authority in the North Caucasus has exerted a terrible price on both sides since the…
mid-nineteenth century. Michael Khodarkovsky tells a concise and compelling history of the mountainous region between the Black and Caspian seas during the centuries of Russia’s long conquest (1500–1850s). The history of the region unfolds against the background of one man’s life story, Semën Atarshchikov (1807–1845). Torn between his Chechen identity and his duties as a lieutenant and translator in the Russian army, Atarshchikov defected, not once but twice, to join the mountaineers against the invading Russian troops. His was the experience more typical of Russia’s empire-building in the borderlands than the better known stories of the audacious kidnappers and valiant battles. It is a history of the North Caucasus as seen from both sides of the conflict, which continues to make this region Russia’s most violent and vulnerable frontier.Napoleon and de Gaulle: Heroes and History
By Patrice Gueniffey. 2020
One of France’s most famous historians compares two exemplars of political and military leadership to make the unfashionable case that…
individuals, for better and worse, matter in history. Historians have taught us that the past is not just a tale of heroes and wars. The anonymous millions matter and are active agents of change. But in democratizing history, we have lost track of the outsized role that individual will and charisma can play in shaping the world, especially in moments of extreme tumult. Patrice Gueniffey provides a compelling reminder in this powerful dual biography of two transformative leaders, Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle. Both became national figures at times of crisis and war. They were hailed as saviors and were eager to embrace the label. They were also animated by quests for personal and national greatness, by the desire to raise France above itself and lead it on a mission to enlighten the world. Both united an embattled nation, returned it to dignity, and left a permanent political legacy—in Napoleon’s case, a form of administration and a body of civil law; in de Gaulle’s case, new political institutions. Gueniffey compares Napoleon’s and de Gaulle’s journeys to power; their methods; their ideas and writings, notably about war; and their postmortem reputations. He also contrasts their weaknesses: Napoleon’s limitless ambitions and appetite for war and de Gaulle’s capacity for cruelty, manifested most clearly in Algeria. They were men of genuine talent and achievement, with flaws almost as pronounced as their strengths. As many nations, not least France, struggle to find their soul in a rapidly changing world, Gueniffey shows us what a difference an extraordinary leader can make.