Other books that might interest you

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  Family Declassified - Uncovering...

  Katherine Fennelly

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  Uncovering My Grandfather's Journey from Spy to Children's Book Author — 
  Why do people keep deep secrets about their lives and ancestry? In Family Declassified, Katherine Fennelly applies her expertise as a social science researcher to answer this question regarding her maternal grandfather, a Jewish Hungarian immigrant who arrived in the US one hundred years ago. A Google search for ‘Francis Kalnay’ yields more than 54,000 results—the vast majority related to the children’s book, Chucaro: Wild Pony of the Pampa, for which he won a Newbery Honor in 1959. Buried deep within the search results are a few references to his years at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the precursor to the CIA. However, none describes how a foreign-born sailor overcame a childhood marked by tragedy and became the head of an elite espionage unit for the Allied Forces during World War II. At the OSS Kalnay was one of the few foreign-born Americans informed and ‘indoctrinated’ in what we now know as the ULTRA decrypts, the German Enigma messages that were used to capture or thwart almost all German offensive intelligence activity during the Second World War. 
  It took several years of reviewing previously unexamined government records and conducting personal interviews and genealogical searches to piece together the life of a man who hid his Jewish identity, the nature of his work as a spy, and the murder of his sister and nephew by Hungarian Nazis. The result is a manuscript that examines the nature of family myths and presents the gripping story of a man whose life was shaped by some of the most extraordinary events of the 20th century.

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  Murray Ball - A Cartoonist's Life

  Mason Ball

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  The bestselling biography of cartoonist Murray Ball, creator of Footrot Flats.  
    
  In Murray Ball: A Cartoonist's Life, Murray's son Mason Ball shares all the hits and misses and long years of hard graft that went into what would become the wildly successful creative enterprise: Footrot Flats. From his unique viewpoint and with candid honesty, Mason reveals the real-life backstory to Murray's most iconic characters and themes, telling the story of the man - and father - who could see the quirks of human nature and capture them with the stroke of a pen. 
  Richly illustrated with family photos and cartoons by the bloke who brought us that most lovable character, the Dog. 
  Let me show you how my dad became a leading cartoonist of his generation, how his endearing characters evolved and where the insightful and humorous ideas sprang from. Let's see the man behind the drawing desk and delve into the workings of his mind. - Mason Ball

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  One Step in a Poppy Field - The...

  Bronwyn Royce

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  Thousands of miles away from where her son was deployed, a powerful premonition is devastatingly confirmed by a knock on the door from two faceless strangers bearing the news that her son had stepped on an improvised explosive device in the poppy fields of Afghanistan. He had lost both of his legs and suffered multiple other injuries, including partial amputation of all the fingers of his left hand. For forty-eight days she stood at his bedside. 
   
   
   
  Not only did he survive against all odds, but in time he began to test the limits of his new capabilities and undertook the first of, what would prove to be, many physical challenges. Just eighteen months after injury, and as part of a team of four servicemen, he rowed across the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. 
   
   
   
  Told mostly from a mother's perspective with contributions from Cayle, the genesis of the book was in the diary she kept while he was in a medically induced coma. It is the story of an extraordinarily brave man who has been through the agonies of rebuilding his life, with the encouragement of family and friends. 
   
   
   
  This was never meant to be another book about war or Afghanistan; it is a message of how love and hope can overcome adversity.

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  Empire of Illusion- Gregor...

  Quentin Drummond Anderson

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  Empire of Illusion: Gregor MacGregor and the Country That Never Was 
  By Quentin Drummond Anderson 
  Gregor MacGregor didn’t just commit a fraud. 
  He created a country — and convinced people to believe in it. 
  In the speculative fever of early nineteenth-century London, MacGregor sold land, issued bonds, and built the illusion of a thriving nation in Central America. Investors bought in. Families risked everything and set sail for a promised future. 
  There was just one problem. 
  When they arrived, there was nothing there. 
  Soldier, social climber, and master of reinvention, MacGregor understood a dangerous truth: authority, convincingly performed, becomes reality in the minds of others. 
  What began as research into history’s greatest deceptions became something far more personal — the discovery that MacGregor was the author’s own distant ancestor. The story shifted from analysis to confrontation: how could such a man exist, and why did so many believe him? 
  Written with the pace of a thriller, Empire of Illusion explores not just how the con worked — but why it worked, and why it still feels familiar today. 
  In a world of distant opportunity, financial hype, and manufactured credibility, the line between truth and illusion is thinner than we think. 
  He didn’t just sell a lie. 
  He sold a country — and they bought it.

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  American in the Making the Life...

  Marcus Eli Ravage

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  "An American in the Making: The Life Story of an Immigrant" is an unconventional immigrant memoir written by Marcus Eli Ravage in 1917. Ravage, a Jewish American writer and journalist originally from Romania, provides a unique perspective on Americanization and the immigrant experience during the early 20th century.    Here are some key points about this thought-provoking work:    Context and Purpose:  Ravage's memoir was conceived at a time when immigrant writers were competing with sociological accounts of "the immigrant story."  Against the growing nativism of the late 1910s and 1920s, Ravage responded to previous representations of "the immigrant" by both immigrant and American writers and critics.  His work engages political and cultural debates surrounding Americanization.  Challenging Americanization:  Ravage presents an unexpected story of Americanization. He portrays himself as "an American in the making," neither fully Americanized nor a greenhorn but a subject of literary production.  His memoir challenges the dialectic of Americanization and shows awareness of his objectification in contemporaneous sociological studies and photojournalistic exposés.  Genre and Identity:  Ravage rewrites the genre of immigrant autobiography. He invites readers to rethink assumptions about immigrant autobiography.  By making immigrant and immigrant intellectual labor coterminous, he blurs the boundaries between these categories.  Legacy:  "An American in the Making" remains timely, especially given contemporary debates about immigration and national identity.  Ravage's memoir dramatizes the multifaceted facets of Americanization discourses and practices.  This memoir offers a fresh perspective on the immigrant experience, identity, and the complexities of becoming an American"

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  Everest - The West Ridge

  Thomas Hornbein, Jon Krakauer

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  In 1963, Jim Whittaker became the first American to summit Everest via the South Col route. Roughly two weeks after Whittaker's achievement, Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld, fellow American mountaineers on the same expedition, became the first climbers ever to summit the world's highest peak via the dangerous and forbidding West Ridge—a route on which only a handful of climbers have since succeeded. 
   
   
   
  This special fiftieth anniversary edition reintroduces the adventure in a larger format by members of the expedition, including leader Norman G. Dyhrenfurth and team doctor Jim Lester. In addition to a new foreword by Jon Krakauer, this volume also features a new preface by Hornbein along with a series of prefaces he wrote for earlier editions, including the original from 1965.

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