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  The Shattered Lens - A War...

  Jonathan Alpeyrie, Bonnie...

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  Capturing history was Jonathan Alpeyrie's job, but he never expected to become a news story himself. For a decade, the French American photojournalist weaved in and out of over a dozen conflict zones. But, during his third assignment to Syria, Alpeyrie was betrayed by his fixer and handed over to a band of Syrian rebels. For eighty one days, he was bound, blindfolded, and beaten. Over the course of his captivity, Alpeyrie kept his spirits up and strived to see, without his camera lenses, the humanity in his captors. The Shattered Lens is his firsthand account: the account of a photojournalist who has always answered the next adrenaline pumping assignment but, during his headline making kidnapping, was left to consider the value and risks of his career, to ponder the violent conflicts he had seen, and to put the historical events over which he had no control into perspective.

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  Valiant Boys - True Stories from...

  Tony Blackman, Anthony Wright

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  A fascinating collection of personal accounts of operating Britain’s first V bomber by aircrew and ground crew.Valiant Boys tells the story from the aircraft’s birth, taking off from Vickers’ tiny airfield at Wisley near Brooklands, to its premature death from fatigue. There are tales of testing atom bombs in the Australian desert, dropping hydrogen bombs in the middle of the Pacific, and attacking airfields with conventional bombs in Egypt during the Suez campaign. We are reminded of how the Valiant provided the UK’s first nuclear deterrent by always having some armed aircraft on stand-by twenty-four hours a day, supported by their air and ground crews, ready to be flown at a moment’s notice on a one-way trip to launch an atomic war. Some Valiants were given a photographic role providing accurate images from high altitude and were used not only to gather military intelligence but also to survey the UK and countries overseas. Others were developed into flight refueling tankers, breaking point to point records before enabling Britain’s fighter aircraft to be refueled and fly anywhere in the world.Valiant Boys completes Tony Blackman’s trilogy of the three V bombers. As Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Sir Michael Beetham makes it clear in his foreword, “It is good to have a book written by aircrew and ground crew telling their stories and how they operated the aircraft so that all these things are recorded and not forgotten.” Not as well-known as the Vulcan and Victor, the Valiant is often overlooked; this book will change that.

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  When Benjamin Franklin Met the...

  Peter Charles Hoffer

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  The story of a unique friendship in colonial America between a Founding Father and a founder of the evangelical movement.   In the 1740s, two very different developments revolutionized Anglo-American life and thought—the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening. This book takes an encounter between the paragons of each movement—the printer and entrepreneur Benjamin Franklin and the British-born revivalist George Whitefield—as an opportunity to explore the meaning of the beginnings of modern science and rationality on one hand and evangelical religious enthusiasm on the other.   There are people who both represent the times in which they live and change them for the better. Franklin and Whitefield were two such men. The morning that they met, they formed a long and lucrative partnership: Whitefield provided copies of his journals and sermons, Franklin published them. So began a unique, mutually profitable, and influential friendship.   By focusing this study on Franklin and Whitefield, Peter Charles Hoffer defines with great precision the importance of the Anglo-American Atlantic World of the eighteenth century in American history. With a swift and persuasive narrative, Hoffer introduces readers to the respective life story of each man, examines in engaging detail the central themes of their early writings, and concludes with a description of the last years of their collaboration. Franklin’s and Whitefield’s intellectual contributions reach into our own time, making Hoffer’s enjoyable account of these extraordinary men and their extraordinary friendship relevant today.</

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  No Turning Back

  Alethia Stendal

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  Minutes before, the prosecutor had made his opening statement projecting only hatred and contempt toward my father, a missionary charged with rebellion. The police had arrested him the night before by covertly setting a trap. The press had already shamed and ridiculed him nationally and internationally, proclaiming his guilt on headline news before the hearing had even begun. The cold demeanor of the judge terrified us and the odds seemed to be undeniably stacked against my dad. I looked at the judge's stern, intimidating eyes and wondered what my father would decide. She had laid the choice before him. He could face the trial (and be charged with 15 years or more in prison if she declared him guilty) or leave Colombia forever. "Choose the States," I prayed, "Who knows what will happen to you here"... 
  This book recounts some of the most important stories of my life including how I found true love and how my father, Russell M. Stendal, was arrested and falsely accused of terrorism.

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  The Son of a Monster

  Oli Porri Santoro

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  Since 2008, the Fourniret affair has been devastating France and Belgium. The serial killer Michel Fourniret was sentenced to life imprisonment for a series of kidnappings, rapes and murders. His wife, Monique Olivier, was also given life imprisonment with preventive detention of twenty-eight years. Their shadows continue to hover over some thirty unsolved murders.
  In 2014, the journalist Oli Porri Santoro began his investigation; and in the process, he met and befriended Selim, the only son of the diabolical couple. Selim had since built a new life for himself in the south of France, under a new identity. 
  The day after their meeting, fate intervened. Selim received a letter from his father, whom he had not heard from for ten years. Over the next ten years, Santoro and Selim began corresponding with Fourniret (there are more than a hundred letters) and met him in prison at Ensisheim in Alsace. 
  This is a true story never before told, with unpublished confessions of murders never obtained by investigators, the revealing of the name of a potential accomplice, evidence of Michel Fourniret's presence at the Ranucci trial in 1976, and the truth about the fate of the remains of the Postiches gang treasure.

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  Lessons of Hope - How to Fix Our...

  Joel Klein

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  In 2002, New York City's newly elected mayor, Michael Bloomberg, made a historic announcement: his administration had won control of the city's school system in a first step toward reversing its precipitous decline. In a controversial move, he appointed Joel Klein, an accomplished lawyer from outside the education establishment, to lead this ambitious campaign. 
   
   
  Lessons of Hope is Klein's inside account of his eight-year mission of improvement: demanding accountability, eliminating political favoritism, and battling a powerful teachers union that seemed determined to protect a status quo that didn't work for kids. Klein's initiatives resulted in more school choice, higher graduation rates, and improved test scores. The New York City model is now seen as a national standard for meaningful school reform. But the journey was not easy. Klein faced resistance and conflict at every turn.

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