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The Illustrated Directory of Guns: A Collector's Guide to Over 1500 Military, Sporting and Antique Firearms
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: David Miller
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Pepperbox Press Ltd. (2011, Apr 1st).
Pages: 512
The Illustrated Directory series provide readers with a fully illustrated, comprehensive, hardcover reference book packed with timelines, historical facts and images designed to inform and excite. At 512 pages packed with information and photographs, this book is a necessary addition to any enthusiast's library. The Illustrated Directory of Guns is the most ambitious and lavishly illustrated history of guns for the collector and enthusiast. It shows in clear, detailed photographs and text over 1500 guns with separate sections on Pistols, Revolvers, Rifles, Shotguns (military and sporting) Machine Guns, and Submachine guns. Organized A-Z by country and gunmaker's name, the book clearly shows the different types of gun which the world has used to hunt, wage war, break and defend its laws, hone its sharpshooting skills, and fire purely for the fun of it. more
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Civil War Weapons
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Graham Smith
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Chartwell Books, Inc.; First edition (2011, Aug 4th).
Pages: 256
War is a driver for technological change, and the evolution of weapons can be seen by studying the design of the Civil War weapons cataloged in this attractive full-color reference book. The Civil War was fought all over the United States, although mainly in the south. More than three million Americans fought in the Civil War and over six hundred thousand men, or two percent of the population, died in this deradful conflict.Studying the weapons used by both the Union army and Confderate forces tells an intriguing story of its own. The well-equipped Union army had access to the best of the industrial North's manufacturing output. By contrast, the South had to get by with imported arms and locally made copies of patented weapons. But whatever side he fought for, and whether the soldier wielded a saber, a smoothbore musket, a multi-shot revolver, a canon, or a repeating rifle, in the end was the courage and determination of the fighting man that really counted. more
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Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Nathaniel Philbrick
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Viking Adult (2013, May 7th).
Pages: 400
Nathaniel Philbrick, the bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea and Mayflower, brings his prodigious talents to the story of the Boston battle that ignited the American Revolution. Boston in 1775 is an island city occupied by British troops after a series of incendiary incidents by patriots who range from sober citizens to thuggish vigilantes. After the Boston Tea Party, British and American soldiers and Massachusetts residents have warily maneuvered around each other until April 19, when violence finally erupts at Lexington and Concord. In June, however, with the city cut off from supplies by a British blockade and Patriot militia poised in siege, skirmishes give way to outright war in the Battle of Bunker Hill. It would be the bloodiest battle of the Revolution to come, and the point of no return for the rebellious colonists. more
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Helga's Diary: A Young Girl's Account of Life in a Concentration Camp
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Helga Weiss
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (2013, Jan 21st).
Pages: 208
The remarkable diary of a young girl who survived the Holocaust—appearing in English for the first time.In 1939, Helga Weiss was a young Jewish schoolgirl in Prague. Along with some 45,000 Jews living in the city, Helga’s family endured the first wave of the Nazi invasion: her father was denied work; she was forbidden from attending regular school. As Helga witnessed the increasing Nazi brutality, she began documenting her experiences in a diary. In 1941, Helga and her parents were sent to the concentration camp of Terezín. There, Helga continued to write with astonishing insight about her daily life: the squalid living quarters, the cruel rationing of food, and the executions—as well as the moments of joy and hope that persisted in even the worst conditions. more
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Out of Order: Stories from the History of the Supreme Court
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Sandra Day O'Connor
Format: Deckle Edge]
Publisher: Random House (2013, Mar 5th).
Pages:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER“I called this book Out of Order because it reflects my goal, which is to share a different side of the Supreme Court. Most people know the Court only as it exists between bangs of the gavel, when the Court comes to order to hear arguments or give opinions. But the stories of the Court and the Justices that come from the ‘out of order’ moments add to the richness of the Court as both a branch of our government and a human institution.”—Justice Sandra Day O’Connor From Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court, comes this fascinating book about the history and evolution of the highest court in the land. Out of Order sheds light on the centuries of change and upheaval that transformed the Supreme Court from its uncertain beginnings into the remarkable institution that thrives and endures today. more
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The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Clare Mulley
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: St. Martin's Press (2013, Jun 11th).
Pages: 432
The Untold Story of Britain’s First Female Special Agent of World War II In June 1952, a woman was murdered by an obsessed colleague in a hotel in the South Kensington district of London. Her name was Christine Granville. That she died young was perhaps unsurprising; that she had survived the Second World War was remarkable. The daughter of a feckless Polish aristocrat and his wealthy Jewish wife, Granville would become one of Britain’s most daring and highly decorated special agents. Having fled to Britain on the outbreak of war, she was recruited by the intelligence services and took on mission after mission. She skied over the hazardous High Tatras into occupied Poland, served in Egypt and North Africa, and was later parachuted behind enemy lines into France, where an agent’s life expectancy was only six weeks. more
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Thieves of Book Row: New York's Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Travis McDade
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (2013, Jun 7th).
Pages: 240
No one had ever tried a caper like this before. The goods were kept in a secure room under constant scrutiny, deep inside a crowded building with guards at the exits. The team picked for the job included two old hands known only as Paul and Swede, but all depended on a fresh face, a kid from Pinetown, North Carolina. In the Depression, some fellows were willing to try anything--even a heist in the rare book room of the New York Public Library.In Thieves of Book Row, Travis McDade tells the gripping tale of the worst book-theft ring in American history, and the intrepid detective who brought it down. Author of The Book Thief and a curator of rare books, McDade transforms painstaking research into a rich portrait of Manhattan's Book Row in the 1920s and '30s, where organized crime met America's cultural treasures in dark and crowded shops along gritty Fourth Avenue. more
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The Amish
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Steven M. Nolt
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (2013, Apr 23rd).
Pages: 520
The Amish have always struggled with the modern world. Known for their simple clothing, plain lifestyle, and horse-and-buggy mode of transportation, Amish communities continually face outside pressures to modify their cultural patterns, social organization, and religious world view. An intimate portrait of Amish life, The Amish explores not only the emerging diversity and evolving identities within this distinctive American ethnic community, but also its transformation and geographic expansion.Donald B. Kraybill, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner, and Steven M. Nolt spent twenty-five years researching Amish history, religion, and culture. Drawing on archival material, direct observations, and oral history, the authors provide an authoritative and sensitive understanding of Amish society. more
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Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Michael Moss
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Random House (2013, Mar 12th).
Pages: 480
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFrom a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter at The New York Times comes the explosive story of the rise of the processed food industry and its link to the emerging obesity epidemic. Michael Moss reveals how companies use salt, sugar, and fat to addict us and, more important, how we can fight back. In the spring of 1999 the heads of the world’s largest processed food companies—from Coca-Cola to Nabisco—gathered at Pillsbury headquarters in Minneapolis for a secret meeting. On the agenda: the emerging epidemic of obesity, and what to do about it. Increasingly, the salt-, sugar-, and fat-laden foods these companies produced were being linked to obesity, and a concerned Kraft executive took the stage to issue a warning: There would be a day of reckoning unless changes were made. more
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Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Robert M. Edsel
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (2013, May 6th).
Pages: 464
New York Times Bestseller“A poignant, fascinating story, bringing to life the soldier-scholars who saved Italy’s treasures.”—Evan Thomas, best-selling author of Ike’s Bluff and Sea of ThunderWhen Hitler’s armies occupied Italy in 1943, they also seized control of mankind’s greatest cultural treasures. As they had done throughout Europe, the Nazis could now plunder the masterpieces of the Renaissance, the treasures of the Vatican, and the antiquities of the Roman Empire. On the eve of the Allied invasion, General Dwight Eisenhower empowered a new kind of soldier to protect these historic riches. In May 1944 two unlikely American heroes—artist Deane Keller and scholar Fred Hartt—embarked from Naples on the treasure hunt of a lifetime, tracking billions of dollars of missing art, including works by Michelangelo, Donatello, Titian, Caravaggio, and Botticelli. more
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