Unbroken

Unbroken
Author: Laura Hillenbrand
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2014-07-29
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0812974492

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943. When his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived, adrift on a foundering life raft. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will. Appearing in paperback for the first time—with twenty arresting new photos and an extensive Q&A with the author—Unbroken is an unforgettable testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit, brought vividly to life by Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand. Hailed as the top nonfiction book of the year by Time magazine • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography and the Indies Choice Adult Nonfiction Book of the Year award “Extraordinarily moving . . . a powerfully drawn survival epic.”—The Wall Street Journal “[A] one-in-a-billion story . . . designed to wrench from self-respecting critics all the blurby adjectives we normally try to avoid: It is amazing, unforgettable, gripping, harrowing, chilling, and inspiring.”—New York “Staggering . . . mesmerizing . . . Hillenbrand’s writing is so ferociously cinematic, the events she describes so incredible, you don’t dare take your eyes off the page.”—People “A meticulous, soaring and beautifully written account of an extraordinary life.”—The Washington Post “Ambitious and powerful . . . a startling narrative and an inspirational book.”—The New York Times Book Review “Magnificent . . . incredible . . . [Hillenbrand] has crafted another masterful blend of sports, history and overcoming terrific odds; this is biography taken to the nth degree, a chronicle of a remarkable life lived through extraordinary times.”—The Dallas Morning News “An astonishing testament to the superhuman power of tenacity.”—Entertainment Weekly “A tale of triumph and redemption . . . astonishingly detailed.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “[A] masterfully told true story . . . nothing less than a marvel.”—Washingtonian “[Hillenbrand tells this] story with cool elegance but at a thrilling sprinter’s pace.”—Time “Hillenbrand [is] one of our best writers of narrative history. You don’t have to be a sports fan or a war-history buff to devour this book—you just have to love great storytelling.”—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate
Author: Richard Condon
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2013-11-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0795335067

The classic thriller about a hostile foreign power infiltrating American politics: “Brilliant . . . wild and exhilarating.” —The New Yorker A war hero and the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Sgt. Raymond Shaw is keeping a deadly secret—even from himself. During his time as a prisoner of war in North Korea, he was brainwashed by his Communist captors and transformed into a deadly weapon—a sleeper assassin, programmed to kill without question or mercy at his captors’ signal. Now he’s been returned to the United States with a covert mission: to kill a candidate running for US president . . . This “shocking, tense” and sharply satirical novel has become a modern classic, and was the basis for two film adaptations (San Francisco Chronicle). “Crammed with suspense.” —Chicago Tribune “Condon is wickedly skillful.” —Time

Hoosiers and the American Story

Hoosiers and the American Story
Author: Madison, James H.
Publisher: Indiana Historical Society
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2014-10
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0871953633

A supplemental textbook for middle and high school students, Hoosiers and the American Story provides intimate views of individuals and places in Indiana set within themes from American history. During the frontier days when Americans battled with and exiled native peoples from the East, Indiana was on the leading edge of America’s westward expansion. As waves of immigrants swept across the Appalachians and eastern waterways, Indiana became established as both a crossroads and as a vital part of Middle America. Indiana’s stories illuminate the history of American agriculture, wars, industrialization, ethnic conflicts, technological improvements, political battles, transportation networks, economic shifts, social welfare initiatives, and more. In so doing, they elucidate large national issues so that students can relate personally to the ideas and events that comprise American history. At the same time, the stories shed light on what it means to be a Hoosier, today and in the past.

Citizen Tom Paine

Citizen Tom Paine
Author: Howard Fast
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2011-12-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1453234829

The New York Times bestseller that’s “so glowingly human a picture of Tom Paine and America in the revolutionary days” (The New York Herald). Thomas Paine’s voice rang in the ears of eighteenth-century revolutionaries from America to France to England. He was friend to luminaries such as Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and William Wordsworth. His pamphlets extolling democracy sold in the millions. Yet he died a forgotten man, isolated by his rough manners, idealistic zeal, and unwillingness to compromise. Howard Fast’s brilliant portrait brings Paine to the fore as a legend of American history, and provides readers with a gripping narrative of modern democracy’s earliest days in America and Europe. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.

South St. Paul

South St. Paul
Author: Lois A. Glewwe
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2015-12-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1625854137

Incorporated in 1887, South St. Paul grew rapidly as the blue-collar counterpart to the bright lights and sophistication of its cosmopolitan neighbors Minneapolis and St. Paul. Its prosperous stockyards and slaughterhouses ranked the city among America's largest meatpacking centers. The proud city fell on hard economic times in the second half of the twentieth century. Broad swaths of empty buildings were razed as an enticement to promised redevelopment programs that never happened. In 1990, South St. Paul began to chart out its own successful path to renewal with a pristine riverfront park, a trail system and a business park where the stockyards once stood. Author and historian Lois A. Glewwe brings the story of the city's revival to life in this history of a remarkable community.

The Old Cadet

The Old Cadet
Author: D. S. Cooper
Publisher: D. S. Cooper
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2015-02-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9780990974352

When a student vanishes from Ethan North Academy the nation's oldest military preparatory school is forced to close forever, unless a small band of Alumni can solve the mystery.Enter disabled ex-Boston cop Kevin O'Connor, discredited oceanographer Walter Weiss and Alaskan hunter Derek Yeager, who was expelled from Ethan North twenty years earlier, two weeks before graduation. Together with their former teacher Master Sergeant Rocky Chambers and school president Colonel 'Trip' Hammond, they join the missing boy's mother, Liu Chen, in the desperate quest to find her son in the misty Appalachian foothills of Parsons County Pennsylvania.