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  Eight Survived - The Harrowing...

  Douglas A. Campbell

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  The incredible wartime saga of the only American submariners 
  to survive the sinking of their ship and evade enemy capture in WWII 
   
   
   
  On the night of August 13, 1944, the U.S. submarine Flier struck a mine in the Sulu Sea in the southern Philippines as it steamed along the surface. All but fifteen of the more than eighty-strong crew went down with the vessel. Of those left floating in the dark, eight survived by swimming for seventeen hours before washing ashore on an uninhabited island. The story of the Flier and its eight survivors is wholly unique in the annals of U.S. military history. 
   
    
   
  Eight Survived tells the gripping story of the doomed submarine and its crew from its first patrol, during which it sank several enemy ships, to the explosion in the Sulu Sea. Drawing on interviews with the survivors and on a visit to the jungle where they washed ashore—where a cast of fascinating characters helped the U.S. sailors evade the Japanese—Douglas Campbell fully captures the combination of extraordinary courage and luck that marked one of the most heroic episodes of World War II.

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  The Prison Angel - Mother...

  Kevin Sullivan, Mary Jordan

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  The winners of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting tell the astonishing story of Mary Clarke. At the age of fifty, Clarke left her comfortable life in suburban Los Angeles to follow a spiritual calling to care for the prisoners in one of Mexico's most notorious jails. She actually moved into a cell  
  to live among drug king pins and petty thieves. She has led many of them through profound spiritual transformations in which they turned away from their lives of crime, and has deeply touched the lives of all who have witnessed the depth of her compassion. Donning a nun's habit, she became Mother  
  Antonia, renowned as "the prison angel," and has now organized a new community of sisters—the Servants of the Eleventh Hour—widows and divorced women seeking new meaning in their lives. "We had never heard a story like hers," Jordan and Sullivan write, "a story of such powerful goodness." 
   
  Born in Beverly Hills, Clarke was raised around the glamour of Hollywood and looked like a star herself, a beautiful blonde reminiscent of Grace Kelly. The choreographer Busby Berkeley spotted her at a restaurant and offered her a job, but Mary's dream was to be a happy wife and mother. She raised  
  seven children, but her two unfulfilling marriages ended in divorce. Then in the late 1960s, in midlife, she began devoting herself to charity work, realizing she had an extraordinary talent for drumming up donations for the sick and poor.  
   
  On one charity mission across the Mexican border to the drug-trafficking capitol of Tijuana, she visited La Mesa prison and experienced an intense feeling that she had found her true life's work. As she recalls, "I felt like I had come home." Receiving the blessings of the Catholic Church for her mission, on  
  March 19, 1977, at the age of fifty, she moved into a cell in La Mesa, sleeping on a bunk with female prisoners above and below her. Nearly twenty-eight years later she is still living in that cell, and the remarkable power of her spiritual counseling to the prisoners has become legendary. 
   
  The story of both one woman's profound journey of discovery and growth and of the deep spiritual awakenings she has called forth in so many lost souls, The Prison Angel is an astonishing testament to the powers of personal transformation.

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  Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

  Lew Wallace

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  Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ considered "the most influential Christian book of the nineteenth century". It became a best-selling American novel and remained at the top of the bestseller lists until the publication of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind.The story recounts in descriptive detail the adventures of Judah Ben-Hur, a fictional Jewish prince from Jerusalem who is enslaved by the Romans at the beginning of the 1st century and becomes a charioteer and a Christian. Running in parallel with Judah's narrative is the unfolding story of Jesus, who comes from the same region and is a similar age. The novel reflects themes of betrayal, conviction, and redemption, with a revenge plot that leads to a story of love and compassion.

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  John Paul Jones and Oliver...

  Editors Charles River

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  Plenty of unusual characters came to the colonies to participate in the war, with many sporting dubious titles such as the Baron de Kalb, but perhaps none arrived in a more unique way than John Paul Jones, a Scottish sailor who had plenty of experience with British ships before a controversial row on one ship compelled him to flee to the colonies in 1775. As it turned out, he was arriving in Virginia just in time for more fighting, this time against the British. 
  	Despite his lofty sobriquet, Jones constantly found himself frustrated by people and events beyond his control during the Revolution, and it would take years before the aggressive commander could take the fight to the British. Through a murky system involving French ships, and an even murkier chain of events, Jones engaged the British in battle around the British Isles, and his aggression became the stuff of legend. While the British accused him of being a pirate, he was feted by the Americans and French during the war before joining the Russian navy after the war.  
  	Americans had few things to celebrate during the War of 1812, and fighting on the frontier against the British and their native allies didn’t go any better than the conflict did in other theaters, but one of the only major victories the Americans won came at the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813. That action made Oliver Hazard Perry, a veteran of the Barbary Wars and commander of the USS Lawrence, a legend whose name has endured for over 200 years. Perry was so instrumental in the victory that British historian C.S. Forester noted “it was as fortunate for the Americans that the Lawrence still possessed a boat that would float, as it was that Perry was not hit." As one of the biggest naval battles of the war, the results meant that America maintained control of Lake Erie, and for his part, Perry would forever be remembered as the “Hero of Lake Erie.”

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  Lobster Boy - The Bizarre Life...

  Fred Rosen

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  The shocking exposé of a carny's murder arranged by his wife—and the daughter who threatened the author to keep the truth from getting out. 
   
   
   
  In his account of the sensational life and murder of Grady Stiles Jr., also known as the legendary carnival "freak" Lobster Boy, author Fred Rosen explains how Stiles's death was engineered by his wife, Mary Teresa, the carny known as the Electrified Girl. Rosen describes how Mary Teresa arranged for her husband's murder after years of physical and emotional abuse. The narrative is full of appearances from the couple's colorful acquaintances, including the World's Only Living Half Girl, Midget Man, and the Human Blockhead. 
   
   
    
  During Mary Teresa's dramatic trial, Rosen becomes a character in his own book. When both he and the prosecution are threatened by Mary Teresa's daughter, who Rosen believes was a coconspirator although she was never indicted, the writer risks his life in pursuit of the truth and the evidence that leads to Mary Teresa's conviction.

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  A Journey North - Jefferson...

  Louis P. Masur

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  Between May 21 and June 16, 1791, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison went on a trip together through Upstate New York and parts of New England on horseback. Whether the country could overcome regional and political differences and remain unified, however, was still very much in question. Hence why some observers at the time wondered whether this excursion into Federalist New England by the two most prominent southern Democratic-Republicans, both future presidents, had an ulterior motive. 
   
   
   
  While in Vermont, they focused on the sugar maple tree, which many hoped might offer a domestic alternative to slave-grown sugar cane imports. An encounter with a free Black farmer at Fort George resulted in a journal entry that illuminates their attitudes toward slavery and race. A meeting with members of the Unkechaug tribe on Long Island led to a vocabulary project that preoccupied Jefferson for decades, and which remains relevant today. 
   
   
   
  Madison later recalled that the trip made Jefferson and him "immediate companions," solidifying a bond with almost no peer in the annals of American history, one that thrived for fifty years. Jefferson declared at the end of his life, that his friendship with Madison had been "a source of constant happiness" to him. This book reveals the moment when it took hold.

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