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#Post#: 57--------------------------------------------------
Upcoming None-Fiction Releases - January 2018
By: TheFantastical Date: January 3, 2018, 8:19 am
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I have to admit that I have added a few of these titles to my
TBR pile, they just seemed so interesting!
The Stowaway: A Young Man’s Extraordinary Adventure to
Antarctica by Laurie Gwen Shapiro
Release date - 16, January, 2018
Synopsis -
The spectacular, true story of a scrappy teenager from New
York’s Lower East Side who stowed away on the Roaring Twenties’
most remarkable feat of science and daring: an expedition to
Antarctica.
It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth,
of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over and American
optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to
launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet’s final frontier?
This was the moon landing before the 1960s. Everyone wanted to
join the adventure. Rockefellers and Vanderbilts begged to be
taken along as mess boys, and newspapers across the globe
covered the planning’s every stage.
The night before the expedition’s flagship launched, Billy
Gawronski—a skinny, first generation New York City high schooler
desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery
business—jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard.
Could he get away with it?
From the grimy streets of New York’s Lower East Side to the
rowdy dance halls of sultry Francophone Tahiti, all the way to
Antarctica’s blinding white and deadly freeze, Laurie Gwen
Shapiro’s The Stowaway takes you on the unforgettable voyage of
a gutsy young stowaway who became an international celebrity, a
mascot for an up-by-your bootstraps age.
Link -
HTML https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35297606-the-stowaway?ac=1&from_search=true
[hr]
The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in
Vietnam by Max Boot
Release date - 9, January, 2018
Synopsis -
In chronicling the adventurous life of legendary CIA operative
Edward Lansdale, The Road Not Taken definitively reframes our
understanding of the Vietnam War.
In this epic biography of Edward Lansdale (1908– 1987), the man
said to be the fictional model for Graham Greene’s The Quiet
American, best-selling historian Max Boot demonstrates how
Lansdale pioneered a “hearts and mind” diplomacy, first in the
Philippines, then in Vietnam. It was a visionary policy that, as
Boot reveals, was ultimately crushed by America’s giant military
bureaucracy, steered by elitist generals and blueblood diplomats
who favored troop build-ups and napalm bombs over winning the
trust of the people. Through dozens of interviews and access to
neverbefore-seen documents―including long-hidden love
letters―Boot recasts this cautionary American story,
tracing the bold rise and the crashing fall of the roguish “T.
E. Lawrence of Asia” from the battle of Dien Bien Phu to the
humiliating American evacuation in 1975. Bringing a tragic
complexity to this so-called “ugly American,” this “engrossing
biography” (Karl Marlantes) rescues Lansdale from historical
ignominy and suggests that Vietnam could have been different had
we only listened. With reverberations that continue to play out
in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Road Not Taken is a biography of
profound historical consequence.
Link -
HTML https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35187192-the-road-not-taken?ac=1&from_search=true
[hr]
How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
Release date - 16, January, 2018
Synopsis -
A bracing, revelatory look at the demise of liberal democracies
around the world--and a road map for rescuing our own
Donald Trump's presidency has raised a question that many of us
never thought we'd be asking: Is our democracy in danger?
Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent
more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in
Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes.
Democracy no longer ends with a bang--in a revolution or
military coup--but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of
critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and
the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good
news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to
authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we
have already passed the first one.
Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical
and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary,
Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow,
Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die--and how ours can
be saved.
Link -
HTML https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35356384-how-democracies-die?ac=1&from_search=true
[hr]
The Gambler: How a Penniless Dropout Became One of the Greatest
Deal Makers in Capitalist History by William C Rempel
Release date - 23, January, 2018
Synopsis -
Kirk Kerkorian, one of America's wealthiest and least-known
financial giants, combined the courage of a World War II pilot,
the fortitude of a scrappy boxer, the cunning of an inscrutable
poker player and an unmatched genius for making deals. He never
put his name on a building, but when he died he owned almost
every major hotel and casino in Las Vegas. He envisioned and
fostered a new industry-the leisure business. Three times he
built the biggest resort hotel in the world.
Three times he bought and sold the fabled MGM Studios, forever
changing the way Hollywood does business.His early life began as
far as possible from a place on the Forbes List of Billionaires
when he and his Armenian immigrant family lost their farm to
foreclosure. He was four. They arrived in Los Angeles penniless
and moved often, staying one step ahead of more evictions. Young
Kirk learned English on the streets of LA, made pennies hawking
newspapers, and dropped out after eighth grade. How he went on
to become one of the richest and most generous men in
America-his net worth as much as $20 billion-is a story largely
unknown to the world. That's because what Kerkorian valued most
was his privacy.
His very private life turned to tabloid fodder late in life when
a former professional tennis player falsely claimed that the
eighty-five-year-old billionaire fathered her child.In this
engrossing biography, investigative reporter William C. Rempel
digs deep into Kerkorian's long-guarded history to introduce a
man of contradictions-a poorly educated genius for deal-making,
an extraordinarily shy man who made the boldest of business
ventures, a careful and calculating investor who was willing to
bet everything on a single roll of the dice.Unlike others of his
status and importance, Kerkorian made few public appearances and
strenuously avoided personal publicity. His friends and
associates, however, were some of the biggest names in business,
entertainment, and sports-among them Howard Hughes, Ted Turner,
Steve Wynn, Michael Milken, Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Barbra
Streisand, Elvis Presley, Mike Tyson, and Andre Agassi.When he
died in 2015, two years shy of the century mark, Kerkorian had
outlived many of his closest friends and associates.
Now, William C. Rempel meticulously pieces together revealing
fragments of Kerkorian's life, collected from diverse
sources-war records, business archives, court documents, news
clippings, and the recollections and recorded memories of
longtime pals and relatives. In The Gambler, Rempel illuminates
this unknown, self-made man and his inspiring legacy as never
before.
Link -
HTML https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36025630-the-gambler?ac=1&from_search=true
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