H. W. Brands

Great composition on the early development of partisanship in America. A book that proves all of today’s problems have been experienced before. 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Iowa

Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics

From bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H.W. Brands, a revelatory history of the shocking emergence of vicious political division at the birth of the United States. Founding Partisans is a lively narrative of the early years of the republic as the Founding Fathers fought one another with competing visions of what our nation would be. To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were an existential threat to republican virtues. They had suffered the consequences of partisan politics in Britain before the American Revolution, and they wanted nothing similar for America. Yet parties emerged even before the Constitution was ratified, and they took even firmer root in the following decade. The first party, the Federalists, formed around Alexander Hamilton and his efforts to overthrow the Articles of Confederation. Thomas Jefferson and the opposition organized as the Antifederalists, the precursor to the Republicans. The two factions wrestled as George Washington tried to remain above the fray. John Adams, however, our second president, was an avowed Federalist, and very much in the scrum. The country's first years unfolded in a contentious spiral of ugly elections and blatant violations of the Constitution. Still, peaceful transfers of power continued, and the nascent country made its way towards global dominance, against all odds. Founding Partisans is a powerful reminder that fierce partisanship is a problem as old as the republic, one we've survived time and time again.

Founding Partisans

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Steven Levitsky

Daniel Ziblatt

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Social Studies

Fateful alliances -- Gatekeeping in America -- The great Republican abdication -- Subverting democracy -- The guardrails of democracy -- The unwritten rules of American politics -- The unraveling -- Trump against the guardrails -- Saving democracy

How Democracies Die

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America’s End in Afghanistan 

The Fifth Act

The Great Gatsby

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The Bedford Boys 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A History from Colonial Times to the Present

Spanning nearly 500 years, The American Catholic Experience describes the Catholic experience from the arrival of Columbus and the other European explorers to the present day. Jay P. Dolan discusses Catholicism as it spread across the New World, transforming--and being transformed by--the land and its people. The book traces the evolution of the urban ethnic communities by examining the vital contributions of the immigrant church to Catholicism. Finally, Dolan examines the controversy of the modern church and the extraordinary changes in the Catholic consciousness as it comes to grips with such contemporary social and theological issues as war and peace, the arms race, abortion, social justice, the ordination of women, and a married clergy.

American Catholic Experience

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Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

The American Soldier in Combat at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima

In the grand tradition of John Keegan's enduring classic The Face of Battle comes a searing, unforgettable chronicle of war through the eyes of the American soldiers who fought in three of our most iconic battles: Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima.

This is not a book about how great generals won their battles, nor is it a study in grand strategy. Men of War is instead a riveting, visceral, and astonishingly original look at ordinary soldiers under fire.

Drawing on an immense range of firsthand sources from the battlefield, Alexander Rose begins by re-creating the lost and alien world of eighteenth-century warfare at Bunker Hill, the bloodiest clash of the War of Independence--and reveals why the American militiamen were so lethally effective against the oncoming waves of British troops. Then, focusing on Gettysburg, Rose describes a typical Civil War infantry action, vividly explaining what Union and Confederate soldiers experienced before, during, and after combat. Finally, he shows how in 1945 the Marine Corps hurled itself with the greatest possible violence at the island of Iwo Jima, where nearly a third of all Marines killed in World War II would die. As Rose demonstrates, the most important factor in any battle is the human one: At Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima, the American soldier, as much as any general, proved decisive.

To an unprecedented degree, Men of War brings home the reality of combat and, just as important, its aftermath in the form of the psychological and medical effects on veterans. As such, the book makes a critical contribution to military history by narrowing the colossal gulf between the popular understanding of wars and the experiences of the soldiers who fight them.

Praise for Men of War

"A tour de force . . . strikingly vivid, well-observed, and compulsively readable."--The Daily Beast

"Military history at its best . . . This is indeed war up-close, as those who fought it lived it--and survived it if they could. Men of War is deeply researched, beautifully written."--The Wall Street Journal

"A brilliant, riveting, unique book . . . Men of War will be a classic."--General David H. Petraeus, U.S. Army (Retired)

"The fact is that Men of War moves and educates, with the reader finding something interesting and intriguing on virtually every page."--National Review

"This is a book that has broad value to a wide audience. Whether the reader aims to learn what actually happens in battle, draw on the military lessons within, or wrestle with what actually defines combat, Men of War is a valuable addition to our understanding of this all-too-human experience."--The New Criterion

"A highly recommended addition to the literature of military history . . . [Rose] writes vividly and memorably, with a good eye for the telling detail or anecdote."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Using the firsthand accounts of brave soldiers who fought for freedom, Rose sheds new light on viewpoints we haven't heard as widely before. It's a welcome perspective in an era where most people have no military experience to speak of."--The Washington Times

"Rose poignantly captures the terror and confusion of hand-to-hand combat during the battle."--The Dallas Morning News

"If you want to know the meaning of war at the sharp end, this is the book to read."--James McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The War That Forged a Nation

Men of War

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#paperback #spanishcivilwar #historicalfiction #spanish 

El Segundo Hijo

A GI's True Story of the War in Vietnam

A classic, must-read Vietnam war memoir
The classic Vietnam war memoir, ...and a hard rain fell is the unforgettable story of a veteran's rage and the unflinching portrait of a young soldier's odyssey from the roads of upstate New York to the jungles of Vietnam. Updated for its 20th anniversary with a new afterword on the Iraq War and its parallels to Vietnam, John Ketwig's message is as relevant today as it was twenty years ago.
"A magnetic, bloody, moving, and worm's-eye view of soldiering in Vietnam, an account that is from the first page to last a wound that can never heal. A searing gift to his country."--Kirkus Reviews
"Solidly effective. He describes with ingenuous energy and authentic language that time and place."--Library Journal
"Perhaps as evocative of that awful time in Vietnam as the great fictions...a wild surreal account, at its best as powerful as Celine's darkling writing of World War One."--Washington Post

...And a Hard Rain Fell

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#paperback #history #vietnam #nonfiction 

The Hopeless to Hardcore Transformation of U. S. Army, 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry, Vietnam

In January 1969, one of the most promising young lieutenant colonels the US Army had ever seen touched down in Vietnam for his second tour of duty, which would turn out to be his most daring and legendary.

David H. Hackworth had just completed the writing of a tactical handbook for the Pentagon, and now he had been ordered to put his counterguerilla-fighting theories into action. He was given the morale-drained 4/39th--a battalion of poorly led draftees suffering the Army's highest casualty rate and considered its worst fighting battalion. Hackworth's hard-nosed, inventive and inspired leadership quickly turned the 4/39th into Vietnam's valiant and ferocious Hardcore Recondos.

Drawing on interviews with soldiers from the Hardcore Battalion conducted over the past decade by his partner and coauthor, Eilhys England, Hackworth takes readers along on their sniper missions, ambush actions, helicopter strikes and inside the quagmire of command politics. With Steel My Soldiers' Hearts, Hackworth places the brotherhood of the 4/39th into the pantheon of our nation's most heroic warriors.

Steel My Soldiers' Hearts

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The classic Vietnam memoir, as relevant today as it was almost thirty years ago.

In March of 1965, Marine Lieutenent Philip J. Caputo landed at Da Nang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history's ugliest wars, he returned home--physically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone.
A Rumor of War is more than one soldier's story. Upon its publication in 1977, it shattered America's indifference to the fate of the men sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. In the years since then, it has become not only a basic text on the Vietnam War but also a renowned classic in the literature of wars throughout history and, as Caputo explains, of "the things men do in war and the things war does to men."

"A singular and marvelous work." --The New York Times

A Rumor of War

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#greatest #history #nonfiction #paperback 

Focuses on the generation of Americans who were born in the 1920s, came of age during the Depression, fought in World War II, and came home to build a new America during the postwar era.

The Greatest Generation

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#paperback #fiction #historicalfiction #history #historical #adult #nonfiction #vietnam 

The Things They Carried

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Douglas Southall Freeman's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Robert E. Lee was greeted with critical acclaim when it was first published in 1935. This reissue chronicles all the major aspects and highlights of the general's military career, from his stunning accomplishments in the Mexican War to the humbling surrender at Appomattox.

More than just a military leader, Lee embodied all the conflicts of his time. The son of a Revolutionary War hero and related by marriage to George Washington, he was the product of young America's elite. When Abraham Lincoln offered him command of the United States Army, however, he choose to lead the confederate ranks, convinced that his first loyalty lay with his native Virginia. Although a member of the planter class, he felt that slavery was "a moral and political evil." Aloof and somber, he nevertheless continually inspired his men by his deep concern for their personal welfare.

Freeman's biography is the full portrait of a great American--a distinguished, scholarly, yet eminently readable classic that has linked Freeman to Lee as irrevocably as Boswell to Dr. Johnson.

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Arguing that Grant has been underrated by historians, the author seeks to correct the record with this new assessment of the celebrated Civil War general and Reconstruction-era president.

Grant

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#nonfiction #newyorktimesbestseller #paperback 

A masterful work by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Herbert Donald, Lincoln is a stunning portrait of Abraham Lincoln's life and presidency.

Donald brilliantly depicts Lincoln's gradual ascent from humble beginnings in rural Kentucky to the ever-expanding political circles in Illinois, and finally to the presidency of a country divided by civil war. Donald goes beyond biography, illuminating the gradual development of Lincoln's character, chronicling his tremendous capacity for evolution and growth, thus illustrating what made it possible for a man so inexperienced and so unprepared for the presidency to become a great moral leader. In the most troubled of times, here was a man who led the country out of slavery and preserved a shattered Union--in short, one of the greatest presidents this country has ever seen.

Lincoln

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The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero

New York Timesbestseller "Without a shadow of a doubt this is one of the finest Irish American books ever written." --Niall O'Dowd,Irish America "Egan has a gift for sweeping narrative . . . This is masterly work." --New York Times Book Review The Irish American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. But six months later, he was "back from the dead" in New York, instantly the most famous Irishman in America. Meagher's rebirth in America included his leading the newly formed Irish Brigade from New York in many of the fiercest battles of the Civil War. Twice shot from his horse while leading charges, left for dead in the Virginia mud, Meagher dreamt that Irish American troops, seasoned by war, would return to Ireland and liberate their homeland from British rule. In this "irresistible story, irresistibly retold . . . with an Irishman's flair for the tragic, poetic anddramatic" (Wall Street Journal), National Book Award winner Timothy Egan delivers a story, both rollicking and haunting, of one of the most famous Irish Americans of all time.

The Immortal Irishman

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The perfect introduction to the Irish story-a story wrapped in mythology and legend.

Since its very origins, Ireland has become the home for a successive series of invaders-the Celts, Christians, Vikings, and Normans. And despite deprivation, desperation, and suppression, Ireland has developed an unwavering sense of purpose and place.

In this lucid and fascinating introduction to the island's story, Richard Killeen separates the history from the myths. Ranging from Ireland's pre-Gaelic origins to the present day, it emphasizes the island's uniqueness as well as it close ties to English and European culture. The tangled and often violent relationship between Ireland and the English crown is a key part of the story, as are nationalism, religious allegiances, and the island's internal conflicts.

Killeen locates Ireland in a European and Atlantic world and explores the nation's remarkable contribution internationally: through its literature, its diaspora, and its genius for popular politics.

A Brief History of Ireland

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#paperback #harrypotter #book3 #fiction #ya #series #azkaban 

During his third year at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter must confront the devious and dangerous wizard responsible for his parents' deaths. Reprint. 2,500,000 first printing.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

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#paperback #harrypotter #fiction #fantasy #book2 #chamberofsecrets #jkrowling #rowling 

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone 

With Essays on Conservation from Round River

Approaches the prevalent issues in ecology from an aesthetic viewpoint, stressing the beauty and balance of nature.

A Sand County Almanac

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One Month to a More Life Giving Relationship

In 31 Creative Ways To Love And Encourage Her Jefferson and Alyssa Bethke lay out simple ways to bring the beauty, joy, and vibrancy back to a relationship. Each day brings a new adventure that can range from being serious to whimsical to humorous.

31 Creative Ways to Love and Encourage Her

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This Memorial Edition commemorates the 100th anniversary of the infamous massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on December 29, 1890. The author has condensed into very readable form the history leading up to & including that fateful event. Essentially, the confrontation marked the end of the major "battles" between U.S. government forces & the Indian nations. Wounded Knee became a milestone in U.S.-Indian history. Indian involvement in the ghost dance religion provided the U.S. military an excuse for killing Chief Sitting Bull & then subduing the Indians at Wounded Knee. All who have an interest in American Indian history will find this account compelling. The booklet is illustrated with two maps & six historical photographs courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. Orders may be placed directly with National Woodlands Publishing Company, 8846 Green Briar Road, Lake Ann, MI 49650; Phone (616) 275-6735.

Browse by categories

H. W. Brands

Founding Partisans

Steven Levitsky; Daniel Ziblatt

How Democracies Die

Elliot Ackerman

The Fifth Act

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby

Alex Kershaw

The Bedford Boys

Jay Dolan

American Catholic Experience

Alexander Rose

Men of War

Jonathan Rabb

El Segundo Hijo

John Ketwig

...And a Hard Rain Fell

David H. Hackworth

Steel My Soldiers' Hearts

Philip Caputo; Kevin Powers (Foreword by)

A Rumor of War

Tom Brokaw

The Greatest Generation

Tim O'Brien

The Things They Carried

Douglas Southall Freeman

Lee

Jean Edward Smith

Grant

David Herbert Donald; David Herbert Donald

Lincoln

Timothy Egan

The Immortal Irishman

Richard Killeen

A Brief History of Ireland

J. K. Rowling; Mary GrandPré (Illustrator)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

J. K. Rowling; Mary GrandPré (Illustrator)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac

Jefferson Bethke; Alyssa Bethke (As told to)

31 Creative Ways to Love and Encourage Her

Jack Utter

Wounded Knee and the Ghost Dance Tragedy

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