Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is one of the most famous works in American literature. He started it as a private collection of anecdotes for his son, but soon it was transformed into a work of history. This is a charming, self-portrait of one of America's greatest forefathers.
Price: $18.58
The Passage of Power follows Lyndon Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career — 1958 to 1964. It is a time that would see him trade the extraordinary power he had created for himself as Senate Majority Leader for what became the wretched powerlessness of a Vice President in an administration that disdained and distrusted him. Yet it was, as well, the time in which the presidency, the goal he had always pursued, would be thrust upon him in the moment it took an assassin’s bullet to reach its mark. For the first time, we see the Kennedy assassination through Lyndon Johnson’s eyes. We watch Johnson step into the presidency, inheriting a staff fiercely loyal to his slain predecessor; a Congress determined to retain its power over the executive branch; and a nation in shock and mourning. We see how within weeks — grasping the reins of the presidency with supreme mastery — he propels through Congress essential legislation that at the time of Kennedy’s death seemed hopelessly logjammed and seizes on a dormant Kennedy program to create the revolutionary War on Poverty. Caro makes clear how the political genius with which Johnson had ruled the Senate now enabled him to make the presidency wholly his own. This was without doubt Johnson’s finest hour, before his aspirations and accomplishments were overshadowed and eroded by the trap of Vietnam. It is an epic story told with a depth of detail possible only through the peerless research that forms the foundation of Robert Caro’s work, confirming Nicholas von Hoffman’s verdict that “Caro has changed the art of political biography.”
Price: $26.00
On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.
The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.
Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, 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.
In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit. Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.
From the Hardcover edition.
Price: $13.59
THE RECOLLECTION
It’s a winter’s day, perhaps the last day of an old man’s existence.
Matt “Tug” Cutugno has lived a good life, that of a hard working family man. He has earned the right to a happy ending; he wants a pat on the back for a job well done. But just where is his reward?
Tug’s wife and children are gone and his dreams of a future are now memories of his past – the war; getting married and raising a family; his days as a working man.
His present is filled by winter barbeques of grilled kielbasa for breakfast, grilled chicken for lunch and grilled zucchini and hot dogs for dinner.
As he sits on his lawn chair in the snow-covered backyard of the home that he built himself, a menagerie of wonderful people visits this extraordinary everyman who is not searching for himself, but who is seeking the meaning of what he accomplished in this life.
And with each visit from his wife, his children, his friends and neighbors, his war time buddies, the story of this brave and unsentimental man unfolds so that the past and present merge into something that can be called the truth of an entire generation of men who fought in World War II.
THE REVIEWS
“The Winter Barbeque is an exceptional work - a bittersweet journey of years, traversed in hours, while melting the boundaries between memory and reality.”
-- M.L. Martin
Editor-in-Chief, “The Hilltop Observer”
“The Winter Barbeque is an extraordinary and vivid memoir about the best that there is in a father. The author's honest and sympathetic style makes this an enormously rewarding work."
-- D.S Lliteras, author of “Thieves of Golgotha” and “The Master of Secrets”
THE AUTHOR
Matt Cutugno's plays have been produced in New York, Los Angeles, and in regional theaters. He is a frequent contributor to the short story anthology, “In Good Company,” and his essays have been featured in various literary publications. THE WINTER BARBEQUE is his first book. He lives in California with his wife Lily.
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This enlarged edition of the most significant and celebrated slave narrative completes the Jacobs family saga, surely one of the most memorable in all of American history. John Jacobs’s short slave narrative, A True Tale of Slavery, published in London in 1861, adds a brother’s perspective to Harriet Jacobs’s autobiography. It is an exciting addition to this now classic work, as John Jacobs presents further historical information about family life so well described already by his sister. Once more, Jean Yellin, who discovered this long-lost document, supplies annotation and authentication. This is the standard edition of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, reissued here in the John Harvard Library and updated with a new bibliography.
Price: $10.00
“Larson is a marvelous writer...superb at creating characters with a few short strokes.”—New York Times Book Review
Erik Larson has been widely acclaimed as a master of narrative non-fiction, and in his new book, the bestselling author of Devil in the White City turns his hand to a remarkable story set during Hitler’s rise to power.
The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.
A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.
Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.
Price: $25.10
Life as Kim and Krickitt Carpenter knew it was shattered beyond recognition on November 24, 1993. Two months after their marriage, a devastating car wreck left Krickitt with a massive head injury and in a coma for weeks.
When she finally awoke, she had no idea who Kim was. With no recollection of their relationship and while Krickitt experienced personality changes common to those who suffer head injuries, Kim realized the woman he had married essentially died in the accident.
And yet, against all odds, but through the common faith in Christ that sustained them, Kim and Krickitt fell in love all over again. Even though Kim stood by Krickitt through the darkest times a husband can ever imagine, he insists, “I’m no hero. I made a vow.”
Now available in trade paper with a new chapter and photo insert, The Vow is the true story that inspired the major motion picture of the same name starring Rachel McAdams (The Notebook), Channing Tatum (Dear John), Sam Neill (Jurassic Park), and Academy Award winner Jessica Lange.
Price: $7.85
An intimate and fascinating memoir by Clint Hill, who spent four years as First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s Secret Service agent.
Even today, decades after JFK’s presidency and Jackie’s death, the public continues to be fascinated with the former First Lady. Clint Hill will forever be remembered as the agent who jumped onto the car after President Kennedy was shot and clung to the sides of the car as it sped toward the hospital. Now, in Mrs. Kennedy and Me, he recounts those painful memories along with his fonder recollections of the First Lady’s strength, class, dignity, and beauty during the time he was assigned as her personal agent.
Hill was by Mrs. Kennedy’s side for some of the happiest moments in her life as well as the darkest. He was there for the birth of John, Jr. as well as for the birth and sudden death of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy on August 8, 1963. Hill was there for Jackie’s first meetings with men like Aristotle Onassis, Gianni Agnelli, and Andre Malraux; Jackie’s trips to Europe, Asia, and South America; Kennedy-family holidays in Hyannis Port; and the dark days following the assassination. They addressed each other as “Mrs. Kennedy” and “Mr. Hill,” even though they were often closer to each other than they were to their respective spouses—yet their relationship remained professional. An astonishing and intimate portrait, told for the first time, Mrs. Kennedy and Me is a remarkable and true story of heroism, heartbreak, and humanity.
Price: $13.98
The inside story of the world's most exclusive fraternity; how presidents from Hoover through Obama worked with--and sometimes, against--each other when they were in and out of power.
Price: $14.35
