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  Students Build Biological Machines

  PBS NewsHour

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  Scientists in the growing field of synthetic biology use basic biological "building blocks" -- snippets of DNA -- to engineer useful living organisms, like bacteria that can break down plastic. Tom Bearden reports on a do-it-yourself biology competition for college students.

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  Back in the Fight - The...

  Joseph Kapacziewski, Charles W....

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  The inspiring and thrilling combat memoir of the only Army Ranger serving in direct combat operations with a prosthetic limb.On October 3, 2005, Kapacziewski and his soldiers were coming to the end of their tour in Northern Iraq when their convoy was attacked by enemy fighters. A grenade fell through the gunner's hatch and exploded, shattering Kapacziewski's right leg below the knee, damaging his right hip, and severing a nerve and artery in his right arm.He endured more than forty surgeries, but his right leg still wasn't healing as he had hoped, so in March 2007, Kapacziewski chose to have it amputated with one goal in mind: to return to the line and serve alongside his fellow Rangers. One year after his surgery, Kapacziewski accomplished his goal: he was put back on the line, as a squad leader of his Army Ranger Regiment.On April 19, 2010, during his ninth combat deployment (and fifth after losing his leg), Kapacziewski's patrol ran into an ambush outside a village in eastern Afghanistan. After a fellow Ranger fell to withering enemy fire, shot through the belly, Sergeant Kap and another soldier dragged him seventy-five yards to safety and administered first aid that saved his life while heavy machineguns tried to kill them. His actions earned him an Army Commendation Medal with "V" for Valor. He had previously been awarded a Bronze Star for Valor—and a total of three Purple Hearts for combat wounds.Back in the Fight is an inspiring and thrilling tale readers will never forget.

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  The Private Lives of the Tudors...

  Tracy Borman

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  A history focused on the monarchs’ intimate daily lives that “furnishes readers with a ‘Hey, did you know…?’ on almost every page” (The New York Times Book Review). England’s Tudor monarchs—Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I—are perhaps the most celebrated of history’s royal families. But for all we know about them, their lives away from the public eye remain largely beyond our grasp. Here, an acclaimed historian delves deep behind the public facade of the monarchs, showing us what their lives were like beyond the stage of the court. Drawing on original material from those closest to them—courtiers like the “groom of the stool,” a much-coveted position, surprisingly—Tracy Borman examines Tudor life in fine detail. What did the monarchs eat? What clothes did they wear, and how were they designed, bought, and cared for? How did they wield power? When sick, how were they treated? What games did they play? How did they practice their faith? And whom did they love, and how did they give birth to the all-important heirs? Exploring their education, upbringing, and sexual lives, and taking us into the kitchens, bathrooms, schoolrooms, and bedrooms at court, The Private Lives of the Tudors charts the course of the entire dynasty, surfacing new and fascinating insights into these celebrated figures. “No royal family is better known…But there’s still much to learn from The Private Lives of the Tudors thanks to the expertise and persistence of Borman…The most captivating moments of Private Lives, and there are plenty of them, bring the reader into other personal Tudor moments of strength, weakness, and heartache.”?Christian Science Monitor “Comprehensively researched and compulsively readable…thoroughly entertaining.”?Minneapolis Star Tribune

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  Rebels in Repose - Confederate...

  Allie Stuart Povall

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  The postwar life of surviving Rebel generals—the triumph and heartbreak, success and failure of Robert E. Lee, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and others.   The South’s high command traveled dramatically divergent paths after the dissolution of the Confederacy.   Their professional reputations were often rewritten accordingly, as the rise of the Lost Cause ideology codified the deification of Lee and the vilification of James Longstreet. The irascible Jubal A. Early, Robert E. Lee’s “bad old man,” went to Canada after the war and remained an unreconstructed Rebel until his death. Lee became president of Washington College and urged reconciliation with the North. Braxton Bragg never found solid economic footing and remained mournful of slavery’s demise until his own, when a heart attack took him in Galveston.   Allie Povall shares the stories of nineteen of these former generals, touching briefly on their antebellum and wartime experiences before richly detailing their attempts to salvage livelihoods from the wreckage of America’s defining cataclysm.

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  James Connolly - 16Lives

  Lorcan Collins

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  James Connolly (1868-1916) became a leading Irish socialist and revolutionary, and was one of the leaders of Ireland's rebellion in 1916. As a youth he had served in the British army in Ireland and, seeing how they treated the local population, became hugely disillusioned with the British Army. He became involved in socialism in Scotland and was the driving force behind the creation of Ireland's trade union movement. He was Commandant of the Dublin Brigade in the Easter Rising and, too injured to stand before the firing squad, was executed tied to a chair.
  Written in an entertaining, educational and assessible style, this biography is an accurate and well-researched portrayal of the man behind the uprising. Including the latest archival evidence, James Connolly is part of the Sixteen Lives series which looks at the events, lives and deeds of the sixteen men executed for their role in Ireland's Easter 1916 Rising.

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  Mission Accomplished - The...

  Frank Mares

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  A heroic account of a man who overcame immense obstacles to avenge his country against Nazi Germany during the Second World War.  Appalled at the German occupation of his homeland in 1939, Frank Mares determined to assist his country in their battle for freedom in the only way he could—as a fighter pilot. Unable to do so from Czechoslovakia he began his mission, navigating his way through Poland to France, through manned borders, guarded stations and hostile territory, in order to assist the offensive against their common enemy. Armed with fake identities, evading arrest and faced with uncertainties and frustrations at every turn, his journey was one of courage and fortitude. Narrowly avoiding a five-year enlistment in the foreign legion, Frank eventually made it into the French Air Force and finally, following the withdrawal of France from the war, joined 601 Squadron with the British RAF. Patriotic and determined, he was involved in numerous dogfights and had many engagements with the enemy, flying Hurricanes, of which he was particularly fond. In all of the battles that he fought in the skies with German Luftwaffe pilots, he was never shot down. In 1942 he was decorated with the DFM and Czech War Cross. Despite incident and injury Frank persevered, always driven by love for his country and for the planes he flew. He remained in England after the war and, now retired, lives in the West Country near the old RAF Harrowbeer airfield at Yelverton, Devon.

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