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The great degeneration: how institutions decay and economies die
By Niall Ferguson. 2013
An examination of institutional dysfunction in the Western world argues that such values as a free market and representative government…
are being compromised while future generations are inheriting unmanageable levels of debt. 2013.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 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 galleys at Lepanto
By Jack Beeching. 1982
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.Cahill continues his study of civilizations, begun in "How the Irish Saved Civilization" (DC15036), with an extended look at the…
Torah. He shows how events therein, especially the Jews' belief in one God and their ability to look at reality in a whole new way, influenced civilization. Some strong language. Bestseller. 1998.The geometry of love: space, time, mystery, and meaning in an ordinary church
By Margaret Visser. 2000
This book features the church of Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura in Rome as its subject. The author takes readers on…
a journey through time and space, beginning with the modern church and the community that uses it. She discusses the history, theology, art history and technology, hagiography, folklore and iconography expressed in this 7th century building. 2000.The frackers: the outrageous inside story of the new billionaire wildcatters
By Gregory Zuckerman. 2014
In five years, the United States has seen a historic burst of oil and natural gas production, easing our insatiable…
hunger for energy. A new drilling process called fracking has made us the world's fastest growing energy power, on track to pass Saudi Arabia by 2020. But despite headlines and controversy, no previous book has shown how the revolution really happened. The Frackers tells the dramatic tale of how a group of ambitious and headstrong wildcatters ignored the ridicule of experts and derision of colleagues to pursue massive, long-overlooked deposits. Against all odds, they changed the world- and made astonishing fortunes in the process. Zuckerman's exclusive access enabled him to get close to men like George Mitchell, who developed a new way to drill for gas in shale rock; Harold Hamm, who discovered so much oil he's now worth more than the estate of Steve Jobs; and Aubrey McClendon, who lost more than billion on a misguided gambit. Zuckerman shows how the frackers are now using their wealth to shake up Hollywood, education, politics, sports, and other fields, much like the Rockefellers and Gettys before them. He also explores the debate over the environmental risks of fracking, and whether those risks are worth it for the United States to achieve energy independence and for the rest of the world to follow. 2014.The flu of 1918: millions dead worldwide! (Nightmare Plagues Ser.)
By Jessica Rudolph. 2011
Discusses the 1507 Waldseemüller map - the first to designate America - which is in the collections of and displayed…
by the Library of Congress. Traces the overlapping voyages, some geographical and some intellectual, that brought about the map’s revolutionary depiction of the world. 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 forgotten heroes: the story of the Buffalo Soldiers
By Clinton Cox. 1993
Relates the history of the 9th and 10th Cavalry--the "Buffalo Soldiers"--from 1867 to 1898. The units, composed of emancipated slaves,…
were used to subjugate and remove Native Americans onto reservations and for other hazardous duties in the American west. Junior and Senior High. c1993.The foundations of modern Wales: Wales 1642-1780 (The History of Wales #4)
By Geraint H Jenkins. 1993
This study deals with the history of Wales from the civil war to the industrial revolution. It analyses the powerful…
social forces which took an impoverished, downtrodden nation to the threshold of unprecedented social, economic and political change. 1993.The forgotten man: a new history of the Great Depression
By Amity Shlaes. 2007
Economics reporter analyzes the Great Depression era in the United States and posits that federal intervention in the economy lengthened…
its duration. Considers economic plans from members of Franklin Roosevelt's brain trust and alternate solutions of outsiders such as African American Father Divine and Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson. 2007.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 first moderns: profiles in the origins of twentieth-century thought
By William R Everdell. 1997
An overview of the intellectual forces that precipitated modernism, when a new "world view...gave rise to speed, industry, [and] world…
markets." Surveys key thinkers in academia, science, and the arts, describing their role in helping to usher in the modern era between 1870 and 1914. 1997.When the decolonization of European empires in Africa began 50 years ago, the process was greeted with immense hope for…
the future. Blessed with bountiful natural resources and led by Western-educated elites, the continent seemed to have a realistic chance to create stable, prosperous, democratic societies. Why did it all go wrong? The arrogance and ignorance of European masters planted the seeds of many of Africa's current problems, but Meredith refuses to let Africans off the hook for the endemic violence, corruption, and political repression that plagues so many African states. Some descriptions of violence. 2005.