Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Death on a Distant Frontier - A...

  Charles Whiting

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  By September 1944 the Germany army in France had been decimated and survivors were streaming back to the Reich. The British SAS commanders were clearing the way for the American armies of George S. Patton, Alexander Patch, and Courtney Hodges. By the afternoon of September 11, 1944, men of the US 5th Armored Division penetrated the poorly defended Siegfried Line. Yet just when the Rhine was ripe for the taking General Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered all further advances to be halted. Could combination of American forces supported by the British SAS have crossed the Rhine and thrust into the heart of Germany in the autumn of 1944? Did Eisenhower's rigid adherence to his strategy delay the end of the war by several months and cause thousands of men to lose their lives during the Battle of the Bulge? 
   
   
   
  Death on a Distant Frontier is a hard-hitting reappraisal of Eisenhower's tactics. Through extensive research Charles Whiting shines a light on the conflicts between the various generals and explores how Eisenhower conducted the war to ensure that his insiders reaped the glory of being the first American army to cross the Rhine. As a veteran of this campaign, Whiting was a witness to the turmoil that reigned during this period, yet through his fast-paced narrative and informed analysis he is able to provide vivid insight into this much-overlooked period of WWII.

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  A Walker in the City

  Alfred Kazin

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  A literary icon's "singular and beautiful" memoir of growing up as a first-generation Jewish American in Brownsville, Brooklyn (The New Yorker). 
   
   
    
  A classic portrait of immigrant life in the early decades of the twentieth century, A Walker in the City is a tour of tenements, subways, and synagogues—but also a universal story of the desires and fears we experience as we try to leave our small, familiar neighborhoods for something new. 
   
   
    
  With vivid imagery and sensual detail—the smell of half-sour pickles, the dry rattle of newspapers, the women in their shapeless flowered housedresses—Alfred Kazin recounts his boyhood walks through this working-class community, and his eventual foray across the river to "the city," the mysterious, compelling Manhattan, where treasures like the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum beckoned. Eventually, he would travel even farther, building a life around books and language and literature and exploring all that the world had to offer.

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  The Lion of Round Top - The Life...

  Hans G. Myers

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  “This military biography clearly and informatively rescues from an undeserved obscurity one of the Union’s key commanders at the battle of Gettysburg.” —Midwest Book Review Citizen-soldier Strong Vincent was many things: Harvard graduate, lawyer, political speaker, descendent of pilgrims and religious refugees, husband, father, brother. But his greatest contribution to history is as the savior of the Federal left flank on the second day at Gettysburg, when he and his men held Little Round Top against overwhelming Confederate numbers. Forgotten by history in favor of his subordinate, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Vincent has faded into relative obscurity in the decades since his death. This book restores Vincent to his rightful place among the heroes of the battle of Gettysburg: presenting his life story using new, never-before-published sources and archival material to bring the story of one of the most forgotten officers of the American Civil War back to the attention of readers and historians.“This is a well-researched and well-written book, and the author makes a strong case for Colonel Vincent’s essential role in the union victory at Gettysburg.” —The Journal of America’s Military Past “Erie, Pennsylvania historian Hans G. Myers brings to life an overlooked Gettysburg hero . . . a good, well-researched biography certainly worth the read.” —Maine at War“Readers of battle history, in particular the voluminous literature on Gettysburg, will find interest in both the short life of Strong Vincent and the hereto unheralded role his decisions played in saving the Federal left flank at Little Round Top.” —Journal of MilitaryHistory

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  Is Ireland Neutral? - The Many...

  Conor Gallagher

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  Neutrality has, supposedly, long been a pillar of the Irish national identity – a policy that the country has proudly presented on the world stage. But, examining the concept reveals it to be a vague and elastic notion – one that, throughout history, various governments have been happy to stretch or, in some cases, abandon entirely.
  Today, warfare has expanded to include cyberattacks, environmental concerns, election interference and disinformation. If our traditional idea of warfare is changing, should our idea of neutrality change too?
  In this timely and thought-provoking examination of a core tenet of Irish society, Conor Gallagher explores the practical and ethical implications of choosing a side, asking: in the face of aggression, is it right to sit back and do nothing?

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  America’s Most Influential...

  Editors Charles River

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  By the golden age of the mountain man in the mid-19th-century, there were perhaps only 3,000 living in the West. Their origins were disparate, although they included many Anglo-Americans. A good number hailed from wilderness regions of Kentucky and Virginia and throughout the newly purchased Louisiana Territory, which occupied the entire central section of the continent. French Canadians traveled from the north to work in the fur trade, while Creole-Europeans represented approximately 15% of the men known to be living the isolated mountain life. Others were of Métis, Spanish, American, Black, Indian, and mixed-blood origin, most often Iroquois or Delaware. Most came to the West in their late adolescent years, the oldest learning the trade in their 30s. Many roamed the west for as long as their constitutions would hold up under constant attacks on their health and personal safety. Some stayed too long and failed to survive the experience. Among the most famous, Jim Bridger arrived at the age of 16, while Edward Robinson was eventually killed in his 60s by what were known as “bad snakes,” a reference to the Snake tribe in Idaho country. Jim Beckwourth left the mountains at 68 and Old Bill Williams died at the age of 62 when a band of Utes “made him to come.” 
  Most of the most notable frontiersmen traveled immense distances during their careers, and for many, only distant memories could recreate the routes taken. Few of the significant wilderness figures were experienced as cartographers to create accurate maps for industry, settlement, and the military. These American frontiersmen made first contact with numerous indigenous tribes in virtually every area of the west, but viable maps were few, and between such disparate cultures, relations could prove profitable or deadly at a moment’s notice.

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  Tremendous Trifles - "Perhaps...

  G K Chesterton

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  A wonderful and whimsical collection of short essays on everything from sketching on brown paper and building toy theatres to the nature of Englishness and faith."Tremendous Trifles contains simply some of the best essays Chesterton ever wrote. They originally appeared in the Daily News, which Chesterton contributed to from 1901 to 1913, and which explains why people bought that paper. Which is an idea so large it spills over into another essay, “A Piece of Chalk.” Here Chesterton describes how he has set out to do some drawing with his chalks, but is distressed to find that he has forgotten his white chalk. White is essential. White is a color. It is not merely the absence of color. It is “a shining and affirmative thing…it draws stars.” As white is to art, so is virtue to religion. Virtue is a positive thing; not merely “the absence of dangers or the avoidance of moral dangers…Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.”In this book, Chesterton looks at the ordinary, common things and asks us to see how extraordinary and uncommon they are. The things in his pockets, the objects in a railway station, the people in the street. With these simple, random things he can defend Christianity, Western Civilization and Democracy. “Whatever is it that we are all looking for?” he asks at the beginning of an essay entitled “A Glimpse of My Country.” He suggests that what we are looking for lies very close; we just don’t manage to see it. It is a theme throughout the book, and throughout Chesterton’s writings that what appears to be a trifle is actually tremendous. In the title essay Chesterton crystallizes this truth in a perfect sentence that would go on to be inscribed on buildings and quoted by popes: “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”-- Dale Ahlquist, lecture for Chesterton University

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