THE UNTOLD STORY OF REAGAN, THATCHER, THE INVASION OF GRENADA AND THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE COLD WARHow Reagan reignited the foreign policy principles that made America a “shining city upon a hill.”On October 25th,1983 President Ronald Reagan launched one of the most successful invasions in modern American history. In four days, Operation Urgent Fury successfully liberated the Island of Grenada from communist forces and reinstated the...

John Bachman (1790–1874) was an internationally renowned naturalist and a prominent Lutheran minister. This is the first collection of his writings, containing selections from his three major books, his letters, and his articles on plants and animals, education, religion, agriculture, and the human species.Bachman was the leading authority on North American mammals. He was responsible for the descriptions of the 147 mammal species included in Viviparous Quadrupeds of North Amer...

Daniel Patterson and Eric Russell present a groundbreaking case for considering John James Audubon’s and John Bachman’s quadruped essays as worthy of literary analysis and redefine the role of Bachman, the perpetually overlooked coauthor of the essays. After completing The Birds of America (1826–38), Audubon began developing his work on the mammals. The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America volumes show an antebellum view of nature as fundamentally dynamic and simultaneo...

The #1 New York Times bestseller that charts America’s dangerous drift into a state of perpetual war.Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring Reagan's radica...

First published in 1871 and considered his other great work alongside “The Origin of Species,” Darwin’s “The Descent of Man” is a work that continues the scientist’s theories on evolution. Divided into three parts, this book’s purpose, as given in the introduction, is to consider whether or not man is descended from a pre-existing form, his manner of development, and the value of the differences between human races. Darwin goes on to systematically explore the evolution of man in terms of ...

Darwin also introduces the concept of sexual selection, which is the idea that certain traits, such as bright plumage or elaborate courtship displays, are favored by members of the opposite sex and therefore more likely to be passed on to future generations. He argues that sexual selection is responsible for many of the physical and behavioral differences between males and females in the animal kingdom.In Part I of the book, Darwin also explores the similarities and differences between hum...

The “crackling exposé” (New York Times Book Review) of the shadowy mercenary army that perpetrated horrific war crimes in America's nameOn September 16, 2007, machine gun fire erupted in Baghdad's Nisour Square, leaving seventeen Iraqi civilians dead, among them women and children. The shooting spree, labeled "Baghdad's Bloody Sunday," was neither the work of Iraqi insurgents nor U.S. soldiers. The shooters were private forces, subcontract...

In 1845 Henry David Thoreau, disdainful of America's growing commercialism and industrialism, left his home town of Concord, Massachusetts to begin a new life alone, in a rough hut on the north-west shore of Walden Pond. Walden is Thoreau's classic autobiographical account of this experiment in solitary living. This new edition of Walden traces the sources of Thoreau's reading and thinking and considers the author in the context of his birthplace and his sense of its history - social, econ...

The founder of Blackwater offers the gripping true story of the world’s most controversial military contractor.In 1997, former Navy SEAL Erik Prince started a business that would recruit civilians for the riskiest security jobs in the world. As Blackwater’s reputation grew, demand for its services escalated, and its men eventually completed nearly 100,000 missions for both the Bush and Obama administrations.It was a huge success except for one problem: Blac...

From the author of Boiling Point**,** Overthrow provides a fast-paced narrative history of the coups, revolutions, and invasions by which the United States has toppled fourteen foreign governments —not always to its own benefit"Detailed, passionate and convincing . . . [with] the pace and grip of a good thriller." —Anatol Lieven, The New York Times Book Review"Reg...

This edition features• illustrations• a linked Table of Contents, Footnotes,and IndexCONTENTSPREFACEI. FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE BIRDSCaution in Nest Hunting — Going Afield — Notebooks — Reporting Blanks — Bird Books — Movements of Birds — Artificial Cover in Hiding — The Umbrella Blind — Conclusion.II. THE LIFE ABOUT THE NESTNest Hunting — Behaviour when Nest Is Discovered — Lessons to Be Learned — Character of Material Used — Nes...

Applying his controversial theory of evolution to the origins of the human species, Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man was the culmination of his life's work.In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin refused to discuss human evolution, believing the subject too 'surrounded with prejudices'. He had been reworking his notes since the 1830s, but only with trepidation did he finally publish The Descent of Man in 1871. The book notoriously put...