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On May 18, 1860, everyone waited for the results from the Republican National Convention. Lincoln won, Goodwin demonstrates, because of his extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men. It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the union and winning the war.
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Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labor. But historian Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What's more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind...
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Following 9/11, a small band of Special Forces soldiers secretly entered Afghanistan and rode to war on horseback against the Taliban. Outnumbered forty to one, they pursued the enemy across the mountainous terrain and captured the strategic city of Mazari-Sharif. The bone-weary Americans were welcomed as liberators, and overjoyed Afghans thronged the streets. Then the action took an unexpected turn: the Horse Soldiers were ambushed.
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Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro...
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The dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities. In this fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul,...
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Inside the CIA, Robert Baer was known as perhaps the best operative working the Middle East. But if his career was everything a spy might aspire to, his personal life was a brutal illustration of everything a spy is asked to sacrifice--he had few non-work friendships, his prolonged absences destroyed his marriage, and he felt intense guilt at spending so little time with his children. Dayna Williamson was just an ordinary California girl, but she...
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In the spring of 1865, America's Civil War finally comes to an end, In the midst of the patriotic celebrations in Washington, D.C., John Wilkes Booth - charismatic ladies' man and impenitent racist - murders Lincoln at Ford's Theatre. A furious manhunt ensues, ending in a fiery shootout and several court-ordered executions. With an unforgettable cast of characters, vivid historical detail, and page-turning action, this is history that reads like a...
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Citing costly memory-related inconveniences suffered by average individuals, a science journalist chronicles his own struggles with chronic forgetfulness and his life-changing year in memory training, as well as sharing historical lore and ancient memory techniques.
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From the bestselling author of "The Wordy Shipmates" comes an examination of Hawaii's emblematic and exceptional history, retracing the impact of New England missionaries who began arriving in the early 1800s to remake the island paradise into a version of New England.
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"Having sanctified himself in The Year of Living Biblically and sharpened his mind in The Know-It-All, A. J. Jacobs had one feat left in the self-improvement trinity: to become the healthiest man in the world. He didn't want just to lose weight, or finish a triathlon, or lower his cholesterol. His ambitions were far, far greater: Maximal health from head to toe.The task was massive. He had to tackle a complicated web of diet and exercise advice, much...
13) Elsewhere
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This work is the author's memoir of his life, his parents, and the upstate New York town they all struggled variously to escape. Anyone familiar with the author's fiction will recognize Gloversville, New York, once famous for producing that eponymous product and anything else made of leather. This is where the author grew up, the only son of an aspirant mother and a good-time, second-fiddle father who were born into this close-knit community. But...
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In 1960, Barbra Streisand was just a seventeen-year-old Jewish girl with plenty of talent and even more ambition. Four years later, she had taken over Broadway as the star of Funny Girl, and had three platinum albums. Everyone of a certain age remembers when the phenomenon of Barbra Streisand rewrote all the rules of stardom. In this intimate portrait, William Mann incisively illuminates the woman before she became the icon.
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Like her brother, Jane Franklin was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator. Unlike him, she was a mother of twelve. Making use of an amazing cache of little-studied material, Jill Lepore brings Jane Franklin to life in a way that illuminates not only this one woman but an entire world -- a world usually lost to history. Jane's is one of the great untold stories of American history and letters: a life...
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"The University of Washington's 1936 eight-oar crew transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the nine boys, in the depths of the Great Depression, showed the world what beating the odds really meant. They defeated elite rivals from California and eastern schools to earn the right to compete against the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic Games in Berlin....
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The first decade of the Progressive era was a tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air. The story is told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft -- a relationship that ruptured when they engaged in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination. It is also the story of the muckracking press, which aroused the spirit of reform that helped Roosevelt push the government to shed...
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From investigative journalist Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, comes an account of the management of nuclear weapons. Through accidents, near-misses, extraordinary heroism and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them?
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"In Cooked, Pollan explores the previously uncharted territory of his own kitchen. Here, he discovers the enduring power of the four classical elements--fire, water, air, and earth--to transform the stuff of nature into delicious things to eat and drink.In the course of his journey, he discovers that the cook occupies a special place in the world, standing squarely between nature and culture. Both realms are transformed by cooking, and so, in the...
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"A layabout mutt turned therapy dog leads her owner to a new understanding of the good life. At loose ends with her daughter leaving home and her husband on the road, Sue Halpern decided to give herself and Pransky, her under-occupied Labradoodle, a new leash--er, lease--on life by getting the two of them certified as a therapy dog team. Smart, spirited, and instinctively compassionate, Pransky turned out to be not only a terrific therapist but an...
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