Other books that might interest you

• 

  Regulations for the order and...

  Baron von Steuben Friedrich...

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  More commonly know as "The Blue Book" written by "Baron von Steuben" this publication was key to organizing the young American military in the Revolutionary War with England. This book served both as a regulation and a how-to manual.  Each officer was required to: purchase a copy upon being commissioned, carry it at all times, read it, and use it. (Summary by David Olson)

  Show book

• 

  A Rare Recording of Joseph...

  Joseph Kennedy

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Joseph Patrick Kennedy (September 6, 1888 - November 18, 1969) was an American businessman, philanthropist, and politician. He was the patriarch of the Irish-American Kennedy family, which included President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and longtime Senator Ted Kennedy. He served as the first head of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1934-1935 and United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom under FDR from 1938 to 1940. The following recording includes three audio clips: Kennedy's arrival in Britain (1938), his praise for the resiliency of the British people (1940), and a speech he gave in favor for keeping America out of World War II (1941).

  Show book

• 

  Family Declassified - Uncovering...

  Katherine Fennelly

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  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.

  Show book

• 

  Vietnam War The: The History of...

  Editors Charles River

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The Vietnam War could have been called a comedy of errors if the consequences weren’t so deadly and tragic. In 1951, while war was raging in Korea, the United States began signing defense pacts with nations in the Pacific, intending to create alliances that would contain the spread of Communism. As the Korean War was winding down, America joined the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, pledging to defend several nations in the region from Communist aggression. One of those nations was South Vietnam.  
  	Before the Vietnam War, most Americans would have been hard pressed to locate Vietnam on a map. South Vietnamese President Diệm’s regime was extremely unpopular, and war broke out between Communist North Vietnam and South Vietnam around the end of the 1950s. Kennedy’s administration tried to prop up the South Vietnamese with training and assistance, but the South Vietnamese military was feeble. A month before his death, Kennedy signed a presidential directive withdrawing 1,000 American personnel, and shortly after Kennedy’s assassination, new President Lyndon B. Johnson reversed course, instead opting to expand American assistance to South Vietnam. 
  	The post-analysis of war is a complicated and process that benefits from hindsight, and the involvement of the United States in Vietnam over about a decade was no exception. Never formally declared as a “war,” the Vietnam War was not fought in clean lines or with clear missions. Viewers of the evening news listening to the “box score” of killed and wounded each night had at best a hazy notion of what was happening a world away in Southeast Asia. If anything, their leaders were both attentive to reelection and on a certain level were themselves unsure of what was truly taking place. A military draft that sent over 50,000 American soldiers to their deaths was triggered by a resolution sought by President Lyndon B. Johnson in a decision to contain communism in a distant Asian land. 

  Show book

• 

  Thirteenth: Greatest of Centuries

  James Joseph Walsh

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  It cannot but seem a paradox to say that the Thirteenth was the greatest of centuries. To most people the idea will appear at once so preposterous that they may not even care to consider it. A certain number, of course, will have their curiosity piqued by the thought that anyone should evolve so curious a notion. Either of these attitudes of mind will yield at once to a more properly receptive mood if it is recalled that the Thirteenth is the century of the Gothic cathedrals, of the foundation of the university, of the signing of Magna Charta, and of the origin of representative government with something like constitutional guarantees throughout the west of Europe. The cathedrals represent a development in the arts that has probably never been equaled either before or since. The university was a definite creation of these generations that has lived and maintained its usefulness practically in the same form in which it was then cast for the seven centuries ever since. The foundation stones of modern liberties are to be found in the documents which for the first time declared the rights of man during this precious period. (Summary from Preface)

  Show book

• 

  The Drive for Dollars - How...

  Eric A. Morris, Brian D. Taylor,...

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The story of the interplay between finance, freeways, and urban form in the twentieth century and their enduring impact on American cities and neighborhoods in the twenty-first. 
   
   
   
  American cities are distinct from almost all others in the degree to which freeways and freeway travel dominate urban landscapes. In The Drive for Dollars, Brian D. Taylor, Eric A. Morris, and Jeffrey R. Brown tell the largely misunderstood story of how freeways became the centerpiece of US urban transportation systems, and the crucial, though usually overlooked, role of fiscal politics in bringing freeways about. The authors chronicle how the ways that we both raise and spend transportation revenue have shaped our transportation system and the lives of those who use it, from the era before the automobile to the present day. They focus on how the development of one revolutionary type of road—the freeway—was inextricably intertwined with money. With the nation's transportation finance system at a crossroads today, this book sheds light on how we can best fund and plan transportation in the future. The authors draw on these lessons to offer ways forward to pay for transportation more equitably, provide travelers with better mobility, and increase environmental sustainability and urban livability.

  Show book