#hardcover #nonfiction #christmas #santa #holidays #advent 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Michigan

A Biography

A critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author explores the Christmas holiday, from the original festival through present day traditions. Christmas has always been a magical time. Or has it? Thirty years after the first recorded Christmas, the Pope was already warning that too many people were spending the day, not in worship, but in partying and eating to excess. By 1616, the playwright Ben Jonson was nostalgically remembering Christmas in the old days, certain that it had been better then. Other elements of Christmas are much newer – who would have thought gift-wrap is a novelty of the twentieth century? That the first holiday parade was neither at Macy’s, nor even in the USA? Some things, however, never change. The first known gag holiday gift book, The Boghouse Miscellany, was advertised in the 1760s ‘for gay Gallants, and good companions’, while in 1805, the leaders of the Lewis and Clark expedition exchanged – what else? – presents of underwear and socks. Christmas is all things to all people: a religious festival, a family celebration, a period of eating and drinking. In Christmas: A Biography, bestselling author and acclaimed social historian Judith Flanders casts a sharp eye on myths, legends and history, deftly moving from the origins of the holiday in the Roman empire, through Christmas trees in central Europe, to what might be the first appearance of Santa Claus – in Switzerland – to draw a picture of the season as it has never been seen before.

Christmas

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#paperback #Vermont #LakeChamplian #NewYork #chesterVT #VT #Lake

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Vermont

New York-Vermont Festival Year celebrating the 350th Anniversary of the discovery of Lake Champlain 

Vermont Historical Souvenir 

#paperback #newengland #Vermont #smalltown

New England Town Affairs

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Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

New York

The German Army in the Third Reich

A penetrating study of the German army's military campaigns, relations with the Nazi regime, and complicity in Nazi crimes across occupied Europe



For decades after 1945, it was generally believed that the German army, professional and morally decent, had largely stood apart from the SS, Gestapo, and other corps of the Nazi machine. Ben Shepherd draws on a wealth of primary sources and recent scholarship to convey a much darker, more complex picture. For the first time, the German army is examined throughout the Second World War, across all combat theaters and occupied regions, and from multiple perspectives: its battle performance, social composition, relationship with the Nazi state, and involvement in war crimes and military occupation.

 

This was a true people's army, drawn from across German society and reflecting that society as it existed under the Nazis. Without the army and its conquests abroad, Shepherd explains, the Nazi regime could not have perpetrated its crimes against Jews, prisoners of war, and civilians in occupied countries. The author examines how the army was complicit in these crimes and why some soldiers, units, and higher commands were more complicit than others. Shepherd also reveals the reasons for the army's early battlefield successes and its mounting defeats up to 1945, the latter due not only to Allied superiority and Hitler's mismanagement as commander-in-chief, but also to the failings--moral, political, economic, strategic, and operational--of the army's own leadership.

Hitler's Soldiers

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Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America

A 2018 FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE

The chilling, little-known story of the rise of Nazism in Los Angeles, and the Jewish leaders and spies they recruited who stopped it.

No American city was more important to the Nazis than Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, the greatest propaganda machine in the world. The Nazis plotted to kill the city's Jews and to sabotage the nation's military installations: plans existed for hanging twenty prominent Hollywood figures such as Al Jolson, Charlie Chaplin, and Samuel Goldwyn; for driving through Boyle Heights and machine-gunning as many Jews as possible; and for blowing up defense installations and seizing munitions from National Guard armories along the Pacific Coast.

U.S. law enforcement agencies were not paying close attention--preferring to monitor Reds rather than Nazis--and only Leon Lewis and his daring ring of spies stood in the way. From 1933 until the end of World War II, attorney Leon Lewis, the man Nazis would come to call "the most dangerous Jew in Los Angeles," ran a spy operation comprised of military veterans and their wives who infiltrated every Nazi and fascist group in Los Angeles. Often rising to leadership positions, this daring ring of spies uncovered and foiled the Nazi's disturbing plans for death and destruction.

Featuring a large cast of Nazis, undercover agents, and colorful supporting players, Hitler in Los Angeles, by acclaimed historian Steven J. Ross, tells the story of Lewis's daring spy network in a time when hate groups had moved from the margins to the mainstream.

Hitler in Los Angeles

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Interesting alternative look at historical events. #history

Texas

Close Calls, Plan B's, and Twists of Fate in America's Past

Now in paperback, and in the tradition of the bestselling What If--, the events and close calls that narrowly missed becoming true history. Alternative History Month (October) promotions.

Almost History

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Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Florida

Abridged Edition

Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945 is an abridged edition of Saul Friedländer's definitive Pulitzer Prize-winning two-volume history of the Holocaust: Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 and The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945.

The book's first part, dealing with the National Socialist campaign of oppression, restores the voices of Jews who were engulfed in an increasingly horrifying reality following the Nazi accession to power. Friedländer also provides the accounts of the persecutors themselves--and, perhaps most telling of all, the testimonies of ordinary German citizens who, in general, stood silent and unmoved by the increasing waves of segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, and violence.

The second part covers the German extermination policies that resulted in the murder of six million European Jews--an official program that depended upon the cooperation of local authorities and police departments, the passivity of the populations, and the willingness of the victims to submit in desperate hope of surviving long enough to escape the German vise.

A monumental, multifaceted study now contained in a single volume, Saul Friedländer's Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945 is an essential study of a dark and complex history.

Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945

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#The history of armored warfare since WW1. Spectacular photographs 

Huge Hardcover (6 to 8 lbs)

Using full-color photography and informative text, this amazing book tells the history of mechanized warfare.

Mechanized Warfare

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Oregon Trail souvenir book (paperback) #included #

Traces of the Oregon Trail

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#paperback #civilwar interesting facts see photo

Alabama

Fascinating Tales, Infamous Characters, and Strange Coincidences

More Civil War Curiosities contains strange but true stories from the four-year conflict that raged across a one-thousand-mile battle front with more than three million men in uniform. Anything could and often did happen. Webb Garrison recounts instances of friendly fire casualties, the unperfected art of spying, banishments and deportings, grisly tales of missing limbs, name changes for both people and ships, disguises that worked (and some that did not), and many "firsts" and "lasts."

Fragging, or purposely killing a fellow soldier, was the probable cause of the death of Thomas Wilson, a tyrannical Federal general. He died in action at the battle of Baton Rouge when, according to one account, he was seized by a group of his own men who held him in front of a cannon before it was fired at the enemy.

When Confederate Gen. Jubal Early marched on Frederick, Maryland, he offered not to torch the town for a payment of $200,000. It took the townspeople a day to borrow the money'and 87 years to pay it back. When Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, failed to raise a ransom of $500,000, Early's subordinate, Gen. John McCausland, burned the town to the ground.

The arm of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson was amputated when he was wounded at the battle of Chancellorsville. Following the operation, Jackson's corps chaplain gave the arm a respectful burial?complete with a gravestone?in his family's cemetery. When the general died a week later, the rest of him was buried in Lexington, Virginia.

Hiram Ulysses Grant was mistakenly listed as Ulysses Simpson Grant by the congressman appointing him to West Point. Grant did not protest, and the name stayed with him all the way to the presidency of the United States.

More Civil War Curiosities

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#hardcover #iraq #military back of dust cover has wrinkle, see photo otherwise like new

General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008

"Fiasco," Ricks's #1 "New York Times" bestseller, transformed the political dialogue on the war in Iraq. "The Gamble," the story of Gen. David Petraeus and the American military, reveals that many high-level officials were opposed to the 2003 invasion.

The Gamble

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#hardcover #nonfiction #princessdiana #royal 

The Heartbreaking Story of a Princess and Mother

Instant New York Times Bestseller! 



"She was the best mother in the world," said Princes William and Harry at Diana's 10-year memorial. "Entertaining and persuasive," (Publishers Weekly) this is the first big book about the private Diana, the mother of two princes.



"Royal fans will devour this well-paced biography that gives new insight into the House of Windsor. You'll tear through it by sundown and walk away thinking about the Princess of Wales and her two sons with new perspective ." -Men's Journal

 

From the moments William and Harry are born into the House of Windsor, they become their young mother's whole world. 

 

I've got two very healthy, strong boys. I realize how incredibly lucky I am, Diana reminds herself every morning. But even the Princess of Wales questions, Am I a good mother?  

 

Diana's faced with a seemingly impossible challenge: one son destined to be King of England and another determined to find his own way.  She teaches them to honor royal tradition, even while daring to break it. 

 

"Sometimes I'd like a time machine..." Diana says as William and Harry grow up, never imagining they'd have less than a lifetime together. Even after she's gone, her sons follow their mother's lead--and her heart. As the years pass and William and Harry grow into adulthood and form families of their own, they carry on Diana's name, her likeness, and her incomparable spirit.

 

"James Patterson applies his writerly skills to real-life history with novelistic style" (People) in this deeply personal and revealing biography of the world's most storied family, from the world's #1 bestselling author.

Diana, William, and Harry

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#paperback #harlemrenaissance #harlem #history #nyc

A finalist for the 1972 National Book Award, hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "brilliant" and "provocative," Nathan Huggins' Harlem Renaissance is a milestone in the study of African-American life and culture.A superb portrait of one of the signal episodes in African-American and American history, this volume offers a brilliant account of the creative explosion in Harlem during these pivotal years. Blending the fields of history, literature, music, psychology, and folklore, Huggins illuminates thethought and writing of such key figures as Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, and W.E.B. DuBois and provides sharp-eyed analyses of the poetry of Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. But the main objective for Huggins, throughout the book, is always to achieve a better understanding ofAmerica as a whole. As Huggins himself noted, he didn't want Harlem in the 1920s to be the focus of the book so much as a lens through which readers might see how this one moment in time sheds light on the American character and culture, not just in Harlem but across the nation. He strivesthroughout to link the work of poets and novelists not only to artists working in other genres and media but also to economic, historical, and cultural forces in the culture at large.

Harlem Renaissance

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#paperback #nativeamerican  #americanindian #indigenous #social-studies #folktales 

From Keepers of the Earth

Here is a collection of myths drawn from the native cultures of North America--from the Inuit in the north to the Zuni, Hopi, and Cherokee in the south.

Native American Stories

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#hardcover #columbus #history #authentic #1492 #global-studies #social-studies 

A stirring tale of adventure and tragedy

"They brought balls of spun cotton and parrots and javelins and other little things that it would be tiresome to write down, and they gave everything for anything that was given to them. I was attentive and labored to find out if there was any gold."

With these portentous words, Christopher Columbus described one of his first encounters with Native Americans on the island of Guanahani, which he had named San Salvador and claimed for Spain the day before. In Columbus in the Americas, bestselling author William Least Heat-Moon reveals that Columbus's subsequent dealings with the cultures he encountered not only did considerable immediate harm, but also set the pattern of behavior for those who followed him.

Based on the logbook of Columbus and numerous other firsthand accounts of his four voyages to the New World, this vividly detailed history also examines the strengths and weaknesses of Columbus as a navigator, explorer, and leader. It recounts dramatic events such as the destruction of Fortress Navidad, the very first European settlement in the New World; a pitched battle in northern Panama with the native Guaymi people; and an agonizing year Columbus and his men spent marooned on a narrow spit of land in southern Jamaica.

Filled with stories of triumph and tragedy, courage and villainy, Columbus in the Americas offers a balanced yet unflinching portrait of the most famous and controversial explorer in history.

Columbus in the Americas

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In this sweeping overview of life in the ancient Near East, Daniel Snell surveys the history of the region from the invention of writing five thousand years ago to Alexander the Great's conquest in 332 B.C.E. The book is the first comprehensive history of the social and economic conditions affecting ordinary people and of the relations between governments and peoples in ancient Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. To set Near East developments in a broader context, the author also provides brief contrasting views of India, China, Greece, and Etruscan Italy.

Snell organizes his book chronologically in time spans of about five hundred years and considers broad continuities. Drawing on the latest scholarship in many fields and in many languages, he sets forth a detailed picture of what is known about the demography, social groups, family, women, labor, land and animal management, crafts, trade, money, and government of the ancient Near East. For general readers with an interest in historical events that have influenced the development of Europe and the Middle East, for specialists seeking a broader understanding of early periods of Middle Eastern history, and for anyone with an interest in the Bible, this book offers a fascinating tour of life in ancient Western Asia.

Life in the Ancient near East, 3100-332 B. C. E.

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Written from a consciously anti-enthnocentric approach, this fascinating work is a survey of the civilizations of the modern world in terms of the broad sweep and continuities of history, rather than the "event-based" technique of most other texts.

A History of Civilizations

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Meet Benjamin Franklin

Iowa

Byron’s prisoner of Chillon 

Chillon 

English Edition 

All París 

Includes material on H.L. Hunt, Lone Wolf Gonzaullas, and Kilgore, Texas.

The Last Boom

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The R Document 

#paperback #nonfiction #fiction #historical #history #truecrime #crime #hhholmes 

California

Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

An account of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 relates the stories of two men who shaped the history of the event--architect Daniel H. Burnham, who coordinated its construction, and serial killer Herman Mudgett.

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Judith Flanders

Christmas

The National Survey

Vermont Historical Souvenir

Charles J. Lincoln

New England Town Affairs

Ben H. Shepherd

Hitler's Soldiers

Steven J. Ross

Hitler in Los Angeles

Roger Bruns; Douglas Brinkley

Almost History

Saul Friedlander

Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945

Simon Dunstan

Mechanized Warfare

Robert Priest

Traces of the Oregon Trail

Webb B. Garrison

More Civil War Curiosities

Thomas E. Ricks

The Gamble

James Patterson; Chris Mooney

Diana, William, and Harry

Nathan Irvin Huggins

Harlem Renaissance

Joseph Bruchac; Michael J. Caduto

Native American Stories

William Least Heat-Moon

Columbus in the Americas

Daniel C. Snell

Life in the Ancient near East, 3100-332 B. C. E.

Fernand Braudel; Richard Mayne (Translator)

A History of Civilizations

Maggie Scarf

Meet Benjamin Franklin

G Barry Gifford

Chillon

Giovanna Magi

All París

James Anthony Clark; Michel Thomas Halbouty

The Last Boom

Irving Wallace

The R Document

Erik Larson

The Devil in the White City

Charles Mercer

Enough Good Men