Other books that might interest you

• 

  A Few Lawless Vagabonds - Ethan...

  David Bennett

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  This surprising true story of Vermont’s collusion with the British “may be the best American Revolutionary War era book to come out in years” (Military Review).   This riveting work of political and military history provides an account of the three-way relationship between Ethan Allen, the Republic of Vermont (1777–1791), and the British in Canada during the American Revolution. Ethan Allen was a prime mover in the establishment of the Republic, then led the fight to maintain its independence from the “predatory states” of New Hampshire, New York, and Massachusetts; from the American Continental Congress; and from British attacks on the new state. In order to defend Vermont’s independence, Ethan Allen even went so far as engaging in secret, unlawful negotiations with the British in Canada, aimed at turning Vermont into a “separate Government under the Crown.”   The attempts of the Allen family to maintain Vermont’s independence from its neighbors were unsuccessful: Vermont became the fourteenth state in 1791. A Few Lawless Vagabonds is the first systematic attempt, using archival sources, to show that the Allens were utterly serious in their aim to turn Vermont into a Crown colony, a project which came close to success in late 1781. The portrait of Ethan Allen that emerges in this book is not of a warrior hero of the American Revolution but of a successful Vermont nationalist who is justly celebrated as the principal founder of the State of Vermont—a rare combination of patriot and betrayer of the public trust.

  Show book

• 

  Endpapers - A Family Story of...

  Alexander Wolff

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  “A powerfully told story of family, honor, love, and truth . . . the beautiful and haunting stories told in this book transcend policy and politics.” —Beto O’Rourke 
   
  A literary gem researched over a year the author spent living in Berlin, Endpapers excavates the extraordinary histories of the author’s grandfather and father: the renowned publisher Kurt Wolff, dubbed “perhaps the twentieth century’s most discriminating publisher” by the New York Times Book Review, and his son Niko, who fought in the Wehrmacht during World War II before coming to America. 
   
  Born in Bonn into a highly cultured German-Jewish family, Kurt became a publisher at twenty-three, setting up his own firm and publishing Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, Karl Kraus, and many other authors whose books would soon be burned by the Nazis. After fleeing Germany in 1933, Kurt and his second wife, Helen, founded Pantheon Books in a small Greenwich Village apartment. Pantheon would soon take its own place in literary history with the publication of Nobel laureate Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago, and as the conduit that brought major European works to the States. But Kurt’s taciturn son Niko, offspring of his first marriage to Elisabeth Merck, was left behind in Germany, where despite his Jewish heritage he served the Nazis on two fronts. As Alexander Wolff visits dusty archives and meets distant relatives, he discovers secrets that never made it to the land of fresh starts, including the connection between Hitler and the family pharmaceutical firm E. Merck. 
   
  With surprising revelations from never-before-published family letters, diaries, and photographs, Endpapers is a moving and intimate family story, weaving a literary tapestry of the perils, triumphs, and secrets of history and exile.

  Show book

• 

  Summary of Henry Marsh's Do No Harm

  Falcon Press

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Summary of Henry Marsh's Do No Harm is neurosurgeon Henry Marsh’s memoir, with a particular focus on his mistakes and regrets.  
  Marsh admits that he grew up privileged. He began his college career studying English, but quit school due to an unrequited love. He took a job working in a mining town hospital, an experience that inspired him to become a surgeon. He returned to Oxford to finish his degree and then attended the Royal Free Medical School in London, the only medical school at the time that did not require him to have any scientific qualifications.  
  As a medical student, Marsh worked as a nursing assistant on the psycho-geriatric ward of a long term psychiatric hospital. There he saw many patients who had been given lobectomies at the hospital where he would later train. Lobectomies were an accepted method of treating severe mental disorders, but would often leave the patient worse off than they were before…

  Show book

• 

  Thomas Telford - Master Builder...

  Anthony Burton

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Thomas Telford's life was extraordinary: born in the Lowlands of Scotland, where his father worked as a shepherd, he ended his days as the most revered engineer in the world, known punningly as The Colossus of Roads. He was responsible for some of the great works of the age, such as the suspension bridge across the Menai Straits and the mighty Pontcysyllte aqueduct. He built some of the best roads seen in Britain since the days of the Romans and constructed the great Caledonian Canal, designed to take ships across Scotland from coast to coast. He did as much as anyone to turn engineering into a profession and was the first President of the newly formed Institution of Civil Engineers. All this was achieved by a man who started work as a boy apprentice to a stonemason. rn He was always intensely proud of his homeland and was to be in charge of an immense programme of reconstruction for the Highlands that included building everything from roads to harbours and even designing churches. He was unquestionably one of Britain's finest engineers, able to take his place alongside giants such as Brunel. He was also a man of culture, even though he had only a rudimentary education. As a mason in his early days he had worked alongside some of the greatest architects of the day, such as William Chambers and Robert Adams, and when he was appointed County Surveyor for Shropshire early in his career, he had the opportunity to practice those skills himself, designing two imposing churches in the county and overseeing the renovation of Shrewsbury Castle. Even as a boy, he had developed a love of literature and throughout his life wrote poetry and became a close friend of the Poet Laureate, Robert Southey. He was a man of many talents, who rose to the very top of his profession but never forgot his roots: he kept his old masons' tools with him to the end of his days. rn There are few official monuments to this great man, but he has no need of them: the true monuments are the structures that he left behind that speak of a man who brought about a revolution in transport and civil engineering.

  Show book

• 

  Britain's Last Tommies - Final...

  Richard van Emden

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  This oral history presents the firsthand stories and memories of Britain’s last living WWI veterans—complete with then and now photographs. 
   
  Historian Richard van Emden has spent decades interviewing and carefully recording the memories of over 270 veterans who served in the First World War. He now presents this extraordinary record in Britain’s Last Tommies. 
   
  Alongside stories told by the veterans themselves, van Emden includes his own poignant, moving—sometimes funny—memories of these remarkable men. The book also features photographs of the veterans as soldiers during the war, together with recent images of them at home, back on the Western Front, or at the final veterans' reunion. 
   
  Britain's Last Tommies is the author’s personal tribute to a unique group of veterans, each of whom held the distinction of being the last Gallipoli veteran, the last Royal Flying Corps veteran, the last Distinguished Conduct Medal holder, the last cavalryman and the last Prisoner of War.

  Show book

• 

  Rodgers and Hammerstein - Part 1

  Wink Martindale

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II joined forces to create the most consistently successful partnership in the American theater. Included among the seemingly endless list of their work are legendary works such as Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The King & I, The Sound of Music and many more.In the first part of this two-part series exploring their groundbreaking career, Wink Martindale speaks with the duo to explore the early days of their partnership. Many of their contemporaries also provide thoughts and discussion on the pair’s work and the lasting effect they had on the world of theater.

  Show book