General Books - Page 4

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States)

James M. McPherson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 181 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Now featuring a new Afterword by the author, this handy paperback edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom is without question the definitive one-volume history of the Civil War.
James McPherson's fast-paced narrative fully integrates the political, social, and military events that crowded the two decades from the outbreak of one war in Mexico to the ending of another at Appomattox. Packed with drama and analytical insight, the book vividly recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the Civil War including the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. From there it moves into a masterful chronicle of the war itself--the battles, the strategic maneuvering by each side, the politics, and the personalities. Particularly notable are McPherson's new views on such matters as the slavery expansion issue in the 1850s, the origins of the Republican Party, the causes of secession, internal dissent and anti-war opposition in the North and the South, and the reasons for the Union's victory.
The book's title refers to the sentiments that informed both the Northern and Southern views of the conflict. The South seceded in the name of that freedom of self-determination and self-government for which their fathers had fought in 1776, while the North stood fast in defense of the Union founded by those fathers as the bulwark of American liberty. Eventually, the North had to grapple with the underlying cause of the war, slavery, and adopt a policy of emancipation as a second war aim. This "new birth of freedom," as Lincoln called it, constitutes the proudest legacy of America's bloodiest conflict.
This authoritative volume makes sense of that vast and confusing "second American Revolution" we call the Civil War, a war that transformed a nation and expanded our heritage of liberty.

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

Nathaniel Philbrick

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 278 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Hard to stay interested 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

To me the book concentrated much more on the various Indian tribes and not enough on the passengers of the Mayflower. If you are interested in the History of New England Indian tribes this book is for you.

Riveting Historical Novel of America's Early History 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Mayflower, a historical novel by Nathaniel Philbrick, documents a time of American history that is often hidden behind myth, legend and political correctness.

Mayflower first tells the story of the earliest Pilgrims to come to the New World and then lays out the history of the English-Indian wars fought by the Pilgrims' descendants. Philbrick's description of the early Americans is as compelling as it is accurate - fairly portraying the early settlers and their quest for survival and then for settlement.

I appreciated Mayflower for its evenhanded portrayal of the early Pilgrims and the Native Americans they befriended. In a day of increasing political correctness, most Americans tend to one of two extremes when thinking about the Pilgrims. Some mythologize and glorify the Pilgrims and their motives. Others demonize them for disrupting the "peaceful" life of the American Indians.

The truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. Philbrick does not shy away from the religiosity of the early settlers. Neither does he shy away from the deceptive craftiness of some of the later Indians. He criticizes the actions of Pilgrims and Indians alike, weaving into his narrative fascinating stories of unity, betrayal, and community.

Most American history focuses on the 1700's and the quest for American independence. Mayflower goes back even further, telling the story of the American forefathers' ancestors and the early American settlements. What is perhaps most fascinating about Philbrick's account is how the debates over religion and national identity in the U.S. today were already present on the Mayflower. From the beginning, the Pilgrims included religious and non-religious in their midst - and the debate over what kind of society should emerge was just as controversial then as now.

Pick up Mayflower. Read the story of courage, community, and war. Learn about the earliest Americans. Trust me - you won't be able to put the book down.

Editorial Review:

The startling story of the Plymouth Colony, from the flight to religious freedom to the war that ravaged New England, from the bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea.

Unabridged CDs - 14 CDs, 11 hours

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Mary Roach

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 360 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

An oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem.
For two thousand years, cadavers-some willingly, some unwittingly-have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender reassignment surgery, cadavers have been there alongside surgeons, making history in their quiet way.
In this fascinating, ennobling account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries-from the anatomy labs and human-sourced pharmacies of medieval and nineteenth-century Europe to a human decay research facility in Tennessee, to a plastic surgery practice lab, to a Scandinavian funeral directors' conference on human composting. In her droll, inimitable voice, Roach tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.
"Uproariously funny ...informative and respectful...irreverent and witty...impossible to put down." ~ Publishers Weekly
"Not grisly but inspiring, this work considers the many valuable scientific uses of the body after death." ~ Library Journal
"One of the funniest and most unusual books of the year." ~ Entertainment Weekly
New York Times National Best-Seller

Band of Brothers

Stephen E. Ambrose

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 426 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Tony Bate's Review Right On! 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Anthony Bates couldn't have said it better. It's shocking that so many readers out there just gobble up Ambrose's "feel good history" as unquestionable fact, when in reality what Ambrose writes little more than entertainment for ignorant readers. Everything Bate's mentions is true...the fact that other less fabled, yet equally brave and crucial formations that served in Bastogne get ignored by Ambrose is shameful. Also, his knowledge of the German Army in all of his writings is down right pathetic and revolves more around old 'folk lore' than any type of dedicated research. Ambrose does know how write an compelling story, I'll give him that...although there is a lot of better academic history out there, and it is not very hard to find.

Editorial Review:

A description of life in the Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division, US Army, from the time of their rigorous training in Georgia in 1942 to D-Day and victory. Drawing on interviews, journals and letters, the author tells - often in their own words - the story of these American heroes.

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Revised and Updated Edition

James W. Loewen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 423 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The national bestseller and winner of the American Book Award, thoroughly updated for the first time since its initial publication to include textbooks written since 2000 and featuring a new chapter on what textbooks get wrong about 9/11 and Iraq.

Since its initial publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has gone on to win an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, and to sell one million copies in its various editions.

What started out as a survey of the twelve leading American history textbooks has ended up being what the San Francisco Chronicle calls "an extremely convincing plea for truth in education" beginning with the pre-Columbian period and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, and the My Lai massacre.

In this revised and updated edition, James Loewen surveys six new high school history textbooks written since the first edition of Lies was published. In his inimitable style, he adds material to each chapter noting where the new books have gotten more accurate and where they are still fatally flawed. Loewen also writes at length about the way these textbooks treat the 2001 terrorist attacks and our "response" in Iraq. In fact, while researching this new edition Loewen made the front page of the New York Times in 2006 when he discovered that publishers were passing off as original virtually identical passages on important recent events in a number of history books. And in yet another example of the failure of American history textbooks, he found that "celebrity" historians whose names appear as authors in some cases have never read, let alone written, the texts attributed to them.

Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba... and Then Lost It to the Revolution

T J English

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 41 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great Look into Meyer Lansky and the Havana Mob 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book - great insight into Havana prior to Castro and the inner workings of the mob (New York, Tampa, Las Vegas).

Living history 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Reads like the very best fiction! If this book didn't contain some bawdy passages, I'd recommend it for high school history classes!

Most reviewers have covered the Hollywood/mob names involved in this book but little has been noted of Fidel Castro as a young, rabble-rousing college student and how the Cuban & US governments, as well as the mob, grossly mis-judged this man's zeal & appeal. (I was particularly struck by the fact Fidel & Che began with only a couple of dozen followers.) Cuba's government just threw the lot in jail rather than deal w/them
in a way that might have staved off the revolution to come. This tale is so well-written and researched that you can feel yourself walking through the cane fields with this little army. Of all the stories told in "Havana Nocturne," the story of Fidel Castro is the one most notable, more than anything else due to its being the only one not born out of greed.

This book is a quick read, perhaps because you can't put it down once you start, and one I heartily recommend. You will be talking about it for days and you certainly won't forget it!

Editorial Review:

An award-winning journalist, screenwriter, and historian offers the complete story of how the mob infiltrated Havana in the 1950s, made a fortune, and then lost it all to Fidel Castro.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Charles C. Mann

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Subjects -> History -> Americas -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 202 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Well Researched, Fascinating, and a Real Eye-Opener 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Back in the 1980s I picked up a book off my father's shelf that caught my eye and read it through: "Indian New England Before the Mayflower" by Howard Russell. This book was massively researched the way David McCullough would research a book: every account left by early explorers and observers was read; every reference in regional or local histories or archaeological writings was examined; every New England museum or known archaeological site was visited and informed people interviewed. I was impressed by the scholarship and came away convinced that the Native Americans were far more advanced than we have been led to believe in the typical American History book.

Thus I was not surprised by the content of "1491," which takes the same thesis and expands upon it to cover the entire New World. Charles Mann has researched his book nearly as extensively as Russell - in fact it comes as no surprise that Russell's book is cited as a source for "1491." As an aside I am puzzled by some of the one star reviews that imply "1491" has not been adequately researched - there is a 50 page note section at the back, followed by a 58 page bibliography citing, and I am not making this up, well over 1000 scholarly sources. Such comments make me question whether the writers of such reviews even have copies of the book in their possession, or are they simply launching negative reviews for some ulterior motive.

And this would make sense, because the material IS controversial. The idea that the white man is responsible for the deaths of millions of people does not sit well politically with some folks, who perhaps believe it is somehow an indictment of them, or the United States, or maybe democracy. Who knows? Whatever the reason, there is a school of thought devoted toward minimizing estimates of the Native American population prior to the arrival of Columbus, and minimizing their level of cultural advancement. Perhaps it is more palatable to think that there were only a few pesky savages around and we brought them order and civilization, versus contemplating the possibility that we may have erased an entire hemisphere's worth of civilization. To put this in perspective, imagine a scenario where the New World inhabitants had progressed faster than the Old World, and that huge invasion fleets from Central America began appearing off the European coast and the Mediterranean at the time of the Roman Empire. Imagine if these "Indians" arrived with a suite of diseases lethal to the native Europeans, and possessing technology several centuries ahead of the Romans. Imagine Europe enduring the Black Death five times over, and then waves of "Indians" coming to inhabit the now collapsed and abandoned Roman Empire and slightly less civilized areas surrounding it in Germany or Eastern Europe. Mann presents a good case that this kind of scenario is far more likely to have occurred in the New World when the Europeans arrived than the one we have all been told in American History books.

Regarding the population of pre-Columbian America, for every researcher who claims a low, less dense population, Mann shows that there are other researchers who estimate the population to be ten times higher. We will probably never know. In my opinion, and to his credit, Mann provides a balanced view of this debate, citing both sides, and then weighs in with his assessment (which is more in line with the "high" side). Again, I tend to think he presents a pretty convincing argument.

It is also clear that the idea that Native Americans consisted of small bands of stone age savages frolicking in the woods cannot possibly be true. We all know this intuitively just from the "Pilgrim" story. We all know how the Indians taught the Pilgrims how to farm - how to grow corn and squash and beans and how to fertilize and tend these crops - we've all heard the story of "Squanto." So if the Indians were a bunch of Stone Age savages living in tepees in the woods - how is that they knew more about farming than the Pilgrims? If they were that knowledgeable about farming, doesn't that imply that they had settled into agricultural communities? What do we make of the reports from early European explorers of large villages and even small cities surrounded by square miles of farms? The Pilgrims basically occupied the abandoned Indian town that was situated at Plymouth (it was abandoned because the inhabitants had been decimated by disease), and the early accounts describe it as a full-scale village with streets and large wooden buildings. Kind of like Iowa, only without satellite TV or football teams.

And these are descriptions of the Indians living far from the major population centers and urbanized areas in central America.

All in all, Mann presents a compelling argument that America was a far different place in 1491 than most of us realize. A fascinating account, and definitely a must-read for anyone interested in history.

Editorial Review:

In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. From the astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, which had running water, immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city, to the Mexican corn that was so carefully created in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.

Generation Kill

Evan Wright

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 180 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the tradition of Black Hawk Down and Jarhead comes a searing portrait of young men fighting a modern-day war.

A powerhouse work of nonfiction, Generation Kill expands on Evan Wright's acclaimed three-part series that appeared in Rolling Stone during the summer of 2003. His narrative follows the twenty-three marines of First Recon who spearheaded the blitzkrieg on Iraq. This elite unit, nicknamed "First Suicide Battalion," searched out enemy fighters by racing ahead of American battle forces and literally driving into suspected ambush points.

Evan Wright lived on the front lines with this platoon from the opening hours of combat, to the fall of Baghdad, through the start of the guerrilla war. He was welcomed into their ranks, and from this bird's-eye perspective he tells the unsettling story of young men trained by their country to be ruthless killers. He chronicles the triumphs and horrors-physical, moral, emotional, and spiritual-that these marines endured while achieving victory in a war many questioned before it began. Wright's book is a timely account of war; even more important, it is a timeless description of the human drama taking place on today's battlefields. Written with brutal honesty, raw intensity, and startling intimacy, Generation Kill is destined to become a classic and take its place in the canon of the most captivating and authentic works of war literature.

Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 633 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Anne Frank Diary 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

As a young adult I had read articles on the book. I knew the story. I saw the movie made from the book. However, I had never read the book itself.
The experience of reading the words of Anne as she lived for two year in hiding with her family, and others in hiding, was entirely different than just knowing the story. Reading another persons personal words as they were living the life that inspired them to write is a most intimate experience.
In my adult life I am glad to have had the experience of actually reading Anne Frank's words. I recommend the reading of this book to young and mature persons who wish to understand what transpired in our world history on an intimate level.

Amazing, This is the best book I have ever read... 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is truly one of the greatest books ever written. As a reader reads this book, he will see a young girl blossoming into a phenomenal young woman. All in the confines of her family's "Secret Annexe", while in hiding from the Gestapo, and to keep from being captured, and sent to a concentration camp.

As I read this book, I felt Anne Frank was speaking to me. I felt her anger, her rebellion, and laughed when she would tell a joke, or say something harsh about another member of the "Secret Annexe". Her words, so eloquently written, will touch anybody who reads them, and this book will become one that they will never forget, as it has with me. As I read her diary, and connected with Anne, I felt a depressing feeling, because I knew that at one point her diary entries would suddenly stop, and there would be no fitting ending for this masterpiece.

With that said, what Anne Frank has left for us is a memorable diary, which encompasses what she went through. The hunger, and horrible conditions that she, and many Jews were put through is a testament to how cruel, intolerant, and unjustifiably evil humanity can be.

I recommend this book to anybody who likes to read, and even to those who don't.

Editorial Review:

The compelling diary of a young girl on the brink of maturity as her life draws to toward its tragic end -- one of the most moving and vivid documents of the Jewish experience.

Lincoln

David Herbert Donald

List Price: $25.00 By: Simon & Schuster Audio Amazon Marketplace: 27 new & used starting at $0.79

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 106 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The year's most important biography -- of a leader who still speaks to our times

In the bestselling tradition of Truman, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David Herbert Donald offers a new classic in American history and biography -- a masterly account of how one man's extraordinary political acumen steered the Union to victory in the Civil War, and of how his soaring rhetoric gave meaning to that agonizing struggle for nationhood and equality.

Culminating his half-century of study of Lincoln and his times, Donald brilliantly traces Lincoln's rise from humble origins to the pinnacle of the presidency. He reveals the development of the future President's character and shows how Lincoln's enormous capacity for growth enabled one of the least experienced men ever elected to high office to become a giant in the annals of American politics. And he depicts a man who was basically passive by nature, yet ambitious enough to take enormous risks and overcome repeated defeats.

Much more than a political biography, Lincoln seats us behind the desk of a President who, was both a master of ambiguity and expediency and a great moral leader, as he makes the decisions that preserved the Union and shaped modern America.