The Forsaken: From the Great Depression to the Gulags - Hope and Betrayal in Stalin's Russia by Tim Tzouliadis

$35.00 AUD

Category: American | Reading Level: very good

Of all the great movements of population to and from the United States, the least heralded is the migration, in the depths of the Depression of the nineteen-thirties, of thousands of men, women and children to Stalin's Russia. Where capitalism had failed them, Communism promised dignity for the working man, racial equality, and honest labour. What in fact awaited them, however, was the most monstrous betrayal. In a remarkable piece of historical investigation that spans seven decades of political change, Tim Tzouliadis follows these thousands from Pittsburgh and Detroit and Los Angeles, as their numbers dwindle on their epic and terrible journey. Through official records, memoirs, newspaper reports and interviews he searches the most closely guarded archive in modern history to reconstruct their story - one of honesty, vitality and idealism brought up against the brutal machinery of repression. His account exposes the self-serving American diplomats who refused their countrymen sanctuary, it analyses international relations and economic causes but also finds space to retrieve individual acts of kindness and self-sacrifice. ...Show more

Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff

$32.99 AUD

Category: American

It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter started to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before nineteen men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death. The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated m en and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbours accused neighbours, parents accused children, husbands accused wives, children accused their parents, and siblings each other. Vividly capturing the dark, unsettled atmosphere of seventeenth-century America, Stacy Schiff's magisterial history draws us into this anxious time. She shows us how a band of adolescent girls brought the nascent colony to its knees, and how quickly the epidemic of accusations, trials, and executions span out of control. Above all, Schiff's astonishing research reveals details and complexity that few other historians have seen. Every detail of colonial life just decades after the first landing - family, farming, praying, housekeeping, dangers of life at wilderness's edge, estrangement from England, the pressures of a life dominated by Biblical thought - is rendered with a clarity that makes almost inconceivable events comprehensible. As psychologically thrilling as it is historically seminal, as magnificently written as it is deeply researched, THE WITCHES breathes new life into one of history's most enduring mysteries. ...Show more

One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson

$19.99 AUD

Category: American | Reading Level: very good

In summer 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest), a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and an unknown aviator named Charles Lindbergh who became the most famous man on earth. It was the summer tha t saw the birth of talking pictures, the invention of television, the peak of Al Capone's reign of terror, the horrifying bombing of a school in Michigan, the thrillingly improbable return to greatness of over-the-hill baseball player Babe Ruth, and an almost impossible amount more. In this hugely entertaining book, Bill Bryson spins a tale of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy. With the trademark brio, wit and authority that make him Britain's favourite writer of narrative non-fiction, he brings to life a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and changed the world. ...Show more

No Way But This: In Search of Paul Robeson by Jeff Sparrow

$32.99 AUD

Category: American

Film star. Icon. Agitator. Martyr. Paul Robeson was a prize-winning scholar and the greatest footballer of his era, even before he ascended to global superstardom as a singer, Hollywood actor, and activist. The son of an escaped slave, Robeson stunned audiences with 'Ol' Man River' and Othello, as his passion for social justice led him from Jazz Age Harlem to the mining towns of Wales, from the frontiers of the Spanish Civil War to Stalin's Russia. Charismatic, eloquent, and handsome, he had everything - and then lost it all for the sake of his principles. Jeff Sparrow traces Robeson's troubled life and stellar career, in a story that traverses the arc of the twentieth century and illuminates the fissures of today's fractured world. From Black Lives Matter to Putin's United Russia, Sparrow visits the places Robeson lived and worked, exploring race in America, freedom in Moscow, and the legacies of communism and fascism in Europe. Part travelogue, part biography, this is a tale of political ardour, heritage, and trauma - a luminous portrait of a remarkable man, and an urgent reflection on the crises that define us now. ...Show more

Wyoming Range War: The Infamous Invasion of Johnson County by John W Davis

$42.00 AUD

Category: American

Wyoming attorney John W. Davis retells the story of the West s most notorious range war. Having delved more deeply than previous writers into land and census records, newspapers, and trial transcripts, Davis has produced an all-new interpretation. He looks at the conflict from the perspective of Johnson County residents those whose home territory was invaded and many of whom the invaders targeted for murder and finds that, contrary to the received explanation, these people were not thieves and rustlers but legitimate citizens. The broad outlines of the conflict are familiar: some of Wyoming s biggest cattlemen, under the guise of eliminating livestock rustling on the open range, hire two-dozen Texas cowboys and, with range detectives and prominent members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, invade north-central Wyoming to clean out rustlers and other undesirables. While the invaders kill two suspected rustlers, citizens mobilize and eventually turn the tables, surrounding the intruders at a ranch where they intend to capture them by force. An appeal for help convinces President Benjamin Harrison to call out the army from nearby Fort McKinley, and after an all-night ride the soldiers arrive just in time to stave off the invaders annihilation. Though taken prisoner, they later avoid prosecution.The cattle barons powers of persuasion in justifying their deeds have colored accounts of the war for more than a century. "Wyoming Range War" tells a compelling story that redraws the lines between heroes and villains." ...Show more

This is America: A National Treasury by Miroslav Sasek; Hutton Wilkinson (Foreword by)

$37.99 AUD

Category: American

After the overwhelming success of the first collection of abridged versions of M. Sasek's most popular children's travel guides, This is the World, this new volume will focus on all of the most important cities and sites within the United States. With their mid-century modern, retro illustration s, Sasek's books make the perfect gift for travel and art aficionados alike. Culled from the pages of M. Sasek's renowned series of illustrated children's books, This Is Americais a witty, urbane, and child-friendly introduction to some of the United States', and the world's most popular destinations. An inspirational travelogue that introduces readers to the art, architecture, music, food and traditions of multiple cities and places, This Is Americais the perfect gift for travelers, children, and anyone in between. ...Show more

President Lincoln Assassinated!!: The Firsthand Story of the Murder, Manhunt, Trial and Mourning by Harold Holzer

$35.00 AUD

Category: American

For the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's assassination, Harold Holzer (The Civil War in 150 Objects) presents an unprecedented first hand chronicle of one of the most pivotal moments in American history. The fateful story is told in more than 80 original documents, eyewitness reports, medical records, tri al transcripts, newspaper articles, speeches, letters, diary entries and poems, by more than 75 participants and observers, including the assassin John Wilkes Booth and Boston Corbett, the soldier who shot him. ...Show more

Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504 (American Remainders) by Laurence Bergreen

$24.99 AUD

Category: American

He knew nothing of celestial navigation or of the existence of the Pacific Ocean. He was a self-promoting and ambitious entrepreneur. His maps were a hybrid of fantasy and delusion. When he did make land, he enslaved the populace he found, encouraged genocide, and polluted relations between people. He e nded his career in near lunacy. But Columbus had one asset that made all the difference, an inborn sense of the sea, of wind and weather, and of selecting the optimal course to get from A to B. Laurence Bergreen's energetic and bracing book gives the whole Columbus and most importantly, the whole of his career, not just the highlight of 1492. Columbus undertook three more voyages between 1494 and 1504, each designed to demonstrate that he could sail to China within a matter of weeks and convert those he found there to Christianity. By their conclusion, Columbus was broken in body and spirit, a hero undone by the tragic flaw of pride. If the first voyage illustrates the rewards of exploration, this book shows how the subsequent voyages illustrate the costs - political, moral, and economic. ...Show more

The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon by ADLER, WILLIAM M

$29.99 AUD

Category: American

Lost Gold of the Dark Ages: War, Treasure, and the Mystery of the Saxons by Caroline Alexander

$65.00 AUD

Category: American

The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick

$19.95 AUD

Category: American | Reading Level: good

"The Untold History of the United States" is filmmaker Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick's riveting landmark account of the rise and decline of the American empire - the most powerful and dominant nation the world has ever seen. Probing the dark corners of the administrations of 17 presidents, fr om Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama, they dare to ask just how far the US has drifted from its founding democratic ideals. Beginning with the bloody suppression of the Filipino struggle for independence and spanning the two World Wars, it documents how US administrations have repeatedly intervened in conflicts on foreign soil, taking part in covert operations and wars in Latin American, Asia and the Middle East. At various times it has overthrown elected leaders in favour of right-wing dictators, for both economic and political gain. Examining America's atomic history, Stone and Kuznick argue that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were militarily unnecessary and morally indefensible. They show how the United States has repeatedly brandished nuclear threats and come terrifyingly close to war. They expose how US presidents have trampled on the US constitution and international law and lay bare the recent transformation of the United States into a national security state. Using the latest research and recently declassified records, "The Untold History" builds a meticulously documented and shocking picture of the American empire, showing how it has determined the course of world events for the interests of the few across the twentieth century and beyond. ...Show more

The Hunter Killers: The Extraordinary Story of the First Wild Weasels, the Band of Maverick Aviators Who Flew the Most Dangerous Missions by Dan Hampton

$32.99 AUD

Category: American

A gripping chronicle of the band of maverick aviators who signed on for the suicidal, dangerous top-secret "Wild Weasel" missions during the Vietnam War - which used controversial and revolutionary tactics to combat Soviet missile technology - from New York Times bestselling author Dan Hampton. On July 24, 1965, Soviet advisors to North Vietnam launched an SA-2 surface-to-air missile (SAM), blowing an American F-4 Phantom out of the sky - the first of several kills using this menacing system. To counter this new weaponry, stunned Pentagon officials created a classified program - 'Wild Weasel I' - pairing experimental equipment with a highly select group of electronic warfare officers and fighter pilots to combat this deadly threat. The men who did this became the 'Hunter Killers'- and it is time to know their names. Fifty years later, Dan Hampton provides a cockpit view of this highly classified military program that was a radical departure from conventional fighter jet tactics - and carried with it a fifty-percent casualty rate. Yet despite the odds, these courageous, daring, and skilled warriors risked their lives to fight the SAMs and save their brother aviators. Using first-hand accounts, declassified documents from both sides of the conflict, and featuring unpublished photographs, The Hunter Killers takes readers into the skies, and up close to the bloody duels that left half the Weasels dead or captured. At its center are the men who risked everything to fight the most dangerous anti-aircraft weapons the world had seen. Hampton brings them into focus, exploring their lives and personalities, and the characteristics - a combination of ego, bravery, heroism, and duty - that motivated them. He also looks at their legacy, which continues to influence the military today. ...Show more