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Robert Oppenheimer: His Life and Mind
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Ray Monk
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Random House (2013, May 14th).
Pages: 848
Robert Oppenheimer was among the most brilliant and divisive of men. As head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, he oversaw the successful effort to beat the Nazis in the race to develop the first atomic bomb—a breakthrough that was to have eternal ramifications for mankind and that made Oppenheimer the “Father of the Atomic Bomb.” But with his actions leading up to that great achievement, he also set himself on a dangerous collision course with Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch-hunters. In Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center, Ray Monk, author of peerless biographies of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, goes deeper than any previous biographer in the quest to solve the enigma of Oppenheimer’s motivations and his complex personality. more
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The Shadow of a Year: The 1641 Rebellion in Irish History and Memory (History of Ireland & the Irish Diaspora)
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: John Gibney
Format: Paperback
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press; 1 edition (2013, Jan 15th).
Pages: 224
<DIV>In October 1641 a rebellion broke out in Ireland. Dispossessed Irish Catholics rose up against British Protestant settlers whom they held responsible for their plight. This uprising, the first significant sectarian rebellion in Irish history, gave rise to a decade of war that would culminate in the brutal re-conquest of Ireland by Oliver Cromwell. It also set in motion one of the most enduring and acrimonious debates in Irish history. Was the 1641 rebellion a justified response to dispossession and repression? Or was it an unprovoked attempt at sectarian genocide? John Gibney comprehensively examines three centuries of this debate. The struggle to establish and interpret the facts of the past was also a struggle over the present: if Protestants had been slaughtered by vicious Catholics, this provided an ideal justification for maintaining Protestant privilege. 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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A History of Weapons: Crossbows, Caltrops, Catapults & Lots of Other Things that Can Seriously Mess You Up
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: John O'Bryan
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Chronicle Books (2013, Apr 23rd).
Pages: 192
One day a prehistoric guy picked up a rock and threw it at something. And the history of weapons began. Comedy writer and weapon nerd John O'Bryan relays the freaky highlights of man's centuries-old obsession with weaponry. He hilariously explains the mace, the morning star, and the man catcher, while conveying factual information about each weapon: its history, uses, and badass potential. Flipping through history's highlights, readers will learn about Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, and the "peaceful" Shaolin monks. This ultimate compendium of awesome weapons delivers all the surprisingly true details sure to impress anybody who's ever made a gun with their fingers and said, "PEW-PEW-PEW!" more
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Portraits (Drawing Masterclass)
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Carole Massey
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Search Press (2012, Aug 1st).
Pages: 96
This high-level drawing series showcases the work of renowned artists and shares their expertise so that those committed to excellent drawing can hone their skills, and beginners can find inspiration and detailed advice. Each title includes beautiful step-by-step projects and the materials and techniques used.Providing a wealth of expert advice for portraiture enthusiasts, this complete, high-level guide is an in-depth course on the discipline of portrait drawing, from its history to step-by-step demonstrations and superb examples. Professional portrait artist Carole Massey examines the different techniques needed for portrait drawing, including practical instruction on shading, composition, resizing work, interacting with models, and drawing from reference material. more
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Monte Cassino: Ten Armies in Hell
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Peter Caddick-Adams
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (2013, Apr 1st).
Pages: 432
The most horrific battles of World War II ring in the popular memory: Stalingrad, the Bulge, Iwo Jima, to name a few. Monte Cassino should stand among them. Waged deep in the Italian mountains beneath a medieval monastery, it was an astonishingly brutal encounter, grinding up ten armies in conditions as bad as the Eastern Front at its worst. Now the battle has the chronicle it deserves. In Monte Cassino, military historian Peter Caddick-Adams provides a vivid account of how an array of men from across the globe fought the most lengthy and devastating engagement of the Italian campaign in an ancient monastery town. Not simply Americans, British, and Germans, but Russians, Indians, Georgians, Nepalese, Ukrainians, French, Slovaks, Armenians, New Zealanders, and Poles, among others, fought and died there. more
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Thumbs Up America, Americans At War 2010 - 2011 A Brief History: The Rise of the Machines
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Col. Dean Smittle
Format: Paperback
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (2011, Nov 9th).
Pages: 310
This is the second volume of a series of daily Military News Briefs prepared and presented live on 700 WLW AM radio broadcasts,M-F, from Cincinnati,Ohio. Each segment is of about 2-3 minutes in duration,and contain the latest current military and high-tech news from the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. The briefs have been formatted in military time,i.e., with day, month and year,for easy reference, and cover the latter half of 2010 and January through August of 2011 military news . Additional news briefs for 2011 are also included just prior to publication. This book is a short history of the current conflicts and is intended to give the reader a broad-overview of the war's progress during the specified time period. It also covers the latest high-tech weapons systems available to today's military commanders. more
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The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Adam Rome
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Hill and Wang; First Edition edition (2013, Apr 16th).
Pages: 368
The first Earth Day is the most famous little-known event in modern American history. Because we still pay ritual homage to the planet every April 22, everyone knows something about Earth Day. Some people may also know that Earth Day 1970 made the environmental movement a major force in American political life. But no one has told the whole story before. The story of the first Earth Day is inspiring: it had a power, a freshness, and a seriousness of purpose that are difficult to imagine today. Earth Day 1970 created an entire green generation. Thousands of Earth Day organizers and participants decided to devote their lives to the environmental cause. Earth Day 1970 helped to build a lasting eco-infrastructure—lobbying organizations, environmental beats at newspapers, environmental-studies programs, ecology sections in bookstores, community ecology centers. more
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Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Madeleine Albright
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Georgetown University Press (2013, Mar 15th).
Pages: 464
Jan Karski's Story of a Secret State stands as one of the most poignant and inspiring memoirs of World War II and the Holocaust. With elements of a spy thriller, documenting his experiences in the Polish Underground, and as one of the first accounts of the systematic slaughter of the Jews by the German Nazis, this volume is a remarkable testimony of one man's courage and a nation's struggle for resistance against overwhelming oppression. Karski was a brilliant young diplomat when war broke out in 1939 with Hitler's invasion of Poland. Taken prisoner by the Soviet Red Army, which had simultaneously invaded from the East, Karski narrowly escaped the subsequent Katyn Forest Massacre. He became a member of the Polish Underground, the most significant resistance movement in occupied Europe, acting as a liaison and courier between the Underground and the Polish government-in-exile. more
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Mortal Sins: Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Michael D'Antonio
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books (2013, Apr 9th).
Pages: 416
An explosive, sweeping account of the scandal that has sent the Catholic Church into a tailspin -- and the brave few who fought for justiceIn the mid-1980s a dynamic young monsignor assigned to the Vatican’s embassy in Washington set out to investigate the problem of sexually abusive priests. He found a scandal in the making, confirmed by secret files revealing complaints that had been hidden from police and covered up by the Church hierarchy. He also understood that the United States judicial system was eager to punish offenders and those who aided them. He presented all of this to the American bishops, warning that the Church could be devastated by negative publicity and bankrupted by its legal liability. They ignored him. more
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