EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book These Happy Golden Years

Download or read book These Happy Golden Years written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eighth book in Laura Ingalls Wilder's treasured Little House series, and the recipient of a Newbery Honor—now available as an ebook! This digital version features Garth Williams's classic illustrations, which appear in vibrant full color on a full-color device and in rich black-and-white on all other devices. Fifteen-year-old Laura lives apart from her family for the first time, teaching school in a claim shanty twelve miles from home. She is very homesick, but she knows that her earnings can help pay for her sister Mary's tuition at the college for the blind. Only one thing gets her through the lonely weeks—every weekend, Almanzo Wilder arrives at the school to take Laura home for a visit. Friendship soon turns to love for Laura and Almanzo. The nine Little House books are inspired by Laura's own childhood and have been cherished by generations of readers as both a unique glimpse into America's frontier history and as heartwarming, unforgettable stories.

Book Lethal Ambition

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael Swiger
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2020-12-06
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : 204 pages

Download or read book Lethal Ambition written by Michael Swiger and published by . This book was released on 2020-12-06 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Politics. Power. Murder. If you want something bad enough, would you kill for it? Marcus Blanchard has worked for years to get to this night-to the eve of the Eleventh District Congressional race in Cleveland. He's determined to oust long-reigning, crooked politicians Julius McGee and William McLaughlin, and has asked his favorite law-school professor, Edward Mead, to witness the victory. But just as the results are about to be announced, Marcus disappear and a woman is murdered. Worse, Alontay Johnson is his old girlfriend, and he's caught crouching over her body. Did he strangle her, or was he framed? And who will believe him? It's up to the quirky, arthritic Ed Mead, who hasn't been in a courtroom in years, to defend his friend and client while the State of Ohio seeks the death penalty.

Book The White Tiger

    Book Details:
  • Author : Aravind Adiga
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2008-04-22
  • ISBN : 1416562737
  • Pages : 320 pages

Download or read book The White Tiger written by Aravind Adiga and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-04-22 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE The stunning Booker Prize–winning novel from the author of Amnesty and Selection Day that critics have likened to Richard Wright’s Native Son, The White Tiger follows a darkly comic Bangalore driver through the poverty and corruption of modern India’s caste society. “This is the authentic voice of the Third World, like you've never heard it before” (John Burdett, Bangkok 8). The white tiger of this novel is Balram Halwai, a poor Indian villager whose great ambition leads him to the zenith of Indian business culture, the world of the Bangalore entrepreneur. On the occasion of the president of China’s impending trip to Bangalore, Balram writes a letter to him describing his transformation and his experience as driver and servant to a wealthy Indian family, which he thinks exemplifies the contradictions and complications of Indian society. Recalling The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, The White Tiger is narrative genius with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation—and a startling, provocative debut.

Book Ambition and Survival

Download or read book Ambition and Survival written by Christian Wiman and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2013-06-14 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "That calling, at once religious, ethical, and aesthetic, is one that only a genuine poet can hear—and very few poets can explain it as compellingly as Mr. Wiman does. That gift is what makes Ambition and Survival, not just one of the best books of poetry criticism in a generation, but a spiritual memoir of the first order." —New York Sun "This weighty first prose collection should inspire wide attention, partly because of Wiman's current job, partly because of his astute insights and partly because he mixes poetry criticism with sometimes shocking memoir ... The collection's greatest strength comes in general ruminations on the writing, reading and judging poetry." —Publishers Weekly "[Wiman is] a terrific personal essayist, as this new collection illustrates, with the command and instincts of the popular memoirist ... This is a brave and bracing book." —Booklist “Blazing high style” is how The New York Times describes the prose of Christian Wiman, the young editor transforming Poetry, the country’s oldest literary magazine. Ambition and Survival is a collection of stirring personal essays and critical prose on a wide range of subjects: reading Milton in Guatemala, recalling violent episodes of his youth, and traveling in Africa with his eccentric father, as well as a series of penetrating essays on writers as diverse as Thomas Hardy and Janet Lewis. The book concludes with a portrait of Wiman’s diagnosis of a rare form of incurable and lethal cancer, and how mortality reignited his religious passions. When I was twenty years old I set out to be a poet. That sounds like I was a sort of frigate raising anchor, and in a way I guess I was, though susceptible to the lightest of winds. . . . When I read Samuel Johnson’s comment that any young man could compensate for his poor education by reading five hours a day for five years, that’s exactly what I tried to do, practically setting a timer every afternoon to let me know when the little egg of my brain was boiled. It’s a small miracle that I didn’t take to wearing a cape. Christian Wiman is the editor of Poetry magazine. His poems and essays appear regularly in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and The New York Times Book Review.

Book Necessary Dreams

Download or read book Necessary Dreams written by Anna Fels and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2013-07-17 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking book about how women perceive, are prepared for, and cope with ambition and achievement, psychiatrist Anna Fels examines ambition at the deepest psychological level. Cutting to the core of what ambition can provide—the essential elements of a fulfilling life—Fels describes why, for women but not for men, ambition still remains fraught with often painful conflict. Fels draws on case studies, research, interviews, and autobiographies of accomplished and celebrated women past and present—writers, artists, architects, politicians, actors—to explore the ways in which women are brought up to avoid recognition and visibility in favor of traditional feminine values and why they often choose to nurture and defer to rather than compete with men. She poses invaluable questions: What is the nature of ambition and how important is it in a woman’s life? What are the forces that promote or impede its development? To what extent does ambition go against a woman’s very nature? And she challenges currently held theories about the state of mind and the needs of men. Incisive and highly readable, Necessary Dreams is a unique exploration of the options and obstacles women face in the pursuit of their goals. It is a book that every woman will want—and need—to read.

Book Dangerous Ambition

Download or read book Dangerous Ambition written by Susan Hertog and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2011-11-08 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in the 1890s on opposite sides of the Atlantic, friends for more than forty years, Dorothy Thompson and Rebecca West lived strikingly parallel lives that placed them at the center of the social and historical upheavals of the twentieth century. In Dangerous Ambition, Susan Hertog chronicles the separate but intertwined journeys of these two remarkable women writers, who achieved unprecedented fame and influence at tremendous personal cost. American Dorothy Thompson was the first female head of a European news bureau, a columnist and commentator with a tremendous following whom Time magazine once ranked alongside Eleanor Roosevelt as the most influential woman in America. Rebecca West, an Englishwoman at home wherever genius was spoken, blazed a trail for herself as a journalist, literary critic, novelist, and historian. In a prefeminist era when speaking truth to power could get anyone—of either gender—ostracized, blacklisted, or worse, these two smart, self-made women were among the first to warn the world about the dangers posed by fascism, communism, and appeasement. But there was a price to be paid, Hertog shows, for any woman aspiring to such greatness. As much as they sought voice and power in the public forum of opinion and ideas, and the independence of mind and money that came with them, Thompson and West craved the comforts of marriage and home. Torn between convention and the opportunities of the new postwar global world, they were drawn to men who were as ambitious and hungry for love as themselves: Thompson to the brilliant, volatile, and alcoholic Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis; West to her longtime lover H. G. Wells, the lusty literary eminence whose sexual and emotional demands doomed any chance they may have had at love. Tragically, both arrangements produced troubled sons, whose anger and jealousy at their mothers’ iconic fame eroded their sense of personal success. Brimming with fresh insights obtained from previously sealed archives, this penetrating dual biography is a story of twinned lives caught up in the crosscurrents of world events and affairs of the heart—and of the unique trans-Atlantic friendship forged by two of the most creative and complex women of their time.

Book Edge of Eternity

    Book Details:
  • Author : Ken Follett
  • Publisher : Penguin
  • Release : 2014-09-16
  • ISBN : 0698160576
  • Pages : 1122 pages

Download or read book Edge of Eternity written by Ken Follett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 1122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ken Follett's extraordinary historical epic, the Century Trilogy, reaches its sweeping, passionate conclusion. In Fall of Giants and Winter of the World, Ken Follett followed the fortunes of five international families—American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh—as they made their way through the twentieth century. Now they come to one of the most tumultuous eras of all: the 1960s through the 1980s, from civil rights, assassinations, mass political movements, and Vietnam to the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, presidential impeachment, revolution—and rock and roll. East German teacher Rebecca Hoffmann discovers she’s been spied on by the Stasi for years and commits an impulsive act that will affect her family for the rest of their lives. . . . George Jakes, the child of a mixed-race couple, bypasses a corporate law career to join Robert F. Kennedy's Justice Department and finds himself in the middle of not only the seminal events of the civil rights battle but a much more personal battle of his own. . . . Cameron Dewar, the grandson of a senator, jumps at the chance to do some official and unofficial espionage for a cause he believes in, only to discover that the world is a much more dangerous place than he'd imagined. . . . Dimka Dvorkin, a young aide to Nikita Khrushchev, becomes an agent both for good and for ill as the United States and the Soviet Union race to the brink of nuclear war, while his twin sister, Tanya, carves out a role that will take her from Moscow to Cuba to Prague to Warsaw—and into history.

Book Ambition  A History

    Book Details:
  • Author : William Casey King
  • Publisher : Yale University Press
  • Release : 2013-01-29
  • ISBN : 0300189842
  • Pages : 326 pages

Download or read book Ambition A History written by William Casey King and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is “ambitious” a compliment? It depends: “[A] masterpiece of intellectual and cultural history.”—David Brion Davis, author of Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World From rags to riches, log house to White House, enslaved to liberator, ghetto to CEO, ambition fuels the American Dream. Yet at the time of the nation's founding, ambition was viewed as a dangerous vice, everything from “a canker on the soul” to the impetus for original sin. This engaging book explores ambition’s surprising transformation, tracing attitudes from classical antiquity to early modern Europe to the New World and America’s founding. From this broad historical perspective, William Casey King deepens our understanding of the American mythos and offers a striking reinterpretation of the introduction to the Declaration of Independence. Through an innovative array of sources and authors—Aquinas, Dante, Machiavelli, the Geneva Bible, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, and many others—King demonstrates that a transformed view of ambition became possible the moment Europe realized that Columbus had discovered not a new route but a new world. In addition the author argues that reconstituting ambition as a virtue was a necessary precondition of the American republic. The book suggests that even in the twenty-first century, ambition has never fully lost its ties to vice and continues to exhibit a dual nature—positive or negative depending upon the ends, the means, and the individual involved.

Book Ambition

    Book Details:
  • Author : Natalie Keller Reinert
  • Publisher : Natalie Keller Reinert
  • Release : 2022-05-04
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : 354 pages

Download or read book Ambition written by Natalie Keller Reinert and published by Natalie Keller Reinert. This book was released on 2022-05-04 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Wild Ride Through Florida's Horse Country Jules came to Ocala one year ago, with only one goal on her mind: becoming a top Three-Day Event rider and trainer. She's young, hungry, and driven by demons only she knows about. To Jules, being fiercely ambitious is simply the fuel she needs to achieve her dreams. But to the rest of the Ocala equestrian set, Jules Thornton is a nasty know-it-all who deserves whatever comeuppance she gets. Jules doesn't get the hate. What’s a hard-knocking horsewoman supposed to do when no one likes her, everyone is whispering behind her back, and the same pretty rich boy keeps beating her at every event? It will take a hurricane to blow some sense into Jules, and even then, she won't be quick to accept help. If Jules is going to succeed, she has to learn to let go of her past and embrace a different version of the world she's built for herself: one in which people can be just as trustworthy as horses, and everyone deserves a fair shake. With deepening friendships, a budding romance, and a fresh start, Jules could be on the road to recovery. If she doesn't mess it up for herself. Take a journey like no other, as you explore the gorgeous Florida horse country with Jules and her horses, working students, and friends in Ambition. The first in a bestselling series which has captivated thousands of readers, Ambition is a deep dive into the tough, unglamorous world of professional equestrians - and the ways this challenging industry molds its future stars. It’s the perfect escape for anyone seeking equestrian fiction or horse books for adults. In this seven-book series, you can join Jules Thornton and a cast of horses and equestrians on an intensely realistic and relatable ride through Three-Day Eventing, as Jules learns not just about becoming a better horsewoman, but a better human. Read the entire series! Bold: A Prequel to the Eventing Series Book 1: Ambition Book 2: Pride Book 3: Courage Book 4: Luck Book 5: Forward Book 6: Prospect Book 7: Home Reviews for Ambition "Natalie weaves the story of Jules, her horses, and their uncertain road to the upper levels of eventing with realism and detail." - The Equine Insider "'Ambition' is one of the good ones." - Susannah St. Clair (Vine Voice Reviewer) "This all felt very real to me." - Karen McGoldrick, author of The Dressage Chronicles "I loved watching her story unfold -- the good, the bad, and the ugly were highly entertaining." - Brittney Joy, author of the Red Rock Ranch Series "In Jules Natalie Keller Reinert has created a barbed wire heroine who still, despite her arrogance, and her pathetic inability to see the good in people, still has something about her that catches at your heart." - Jane Badger, Editor and Equestrian Writer "I was sucked in from the very first page." - BassetMom (Amazon Reviewer) "This book shows the hard work, drudgery and living-on-the-edge aspects that come long before the jumps. The Florida setting provides the big action sequence that dominates the final third of the book. Trust me - you'll blast through the book then and won't put it down." - R. Maners (Amazon Reviewer) Perfect for fans of equestrian fiction and readers of books like The Horsewoman (James Patterson), Riders (Jilly Cooper), Dark Horse (Dick Francis), Riding Lessons (Sarah Gruen), The Horse Whisperer (Monty Roberts) and The Lady (Anne McCaffery. Great for fans of three-day eventing, dressage, show jumping, horse racing, and horse showing!

Book In  But Not Of

    Book Details:
  • Author : Hugh Hewitt
  • Publisher : Thomas Nelson Inc
  • Release : 2012
  • ISBN : 1595554823
  • Pages : 284 pages

Download or read book In But Not Of written by Hugh Hewitt and published by Thomas Nelson Inc. This book was released on 2012 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In, But Not Of provides readers with valuable insights, wisdom, personal experiences, and advice on how to rise in the world and achieve the kind of radical success that honors God.

Book Right Back Where We Started From

Download or read book Right Back Where We Started From written by Joy Lanzendorfer and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If misfortune hadn’t gotten in the way, Sandra Sanborn would be where she belongs—among the rich and privileged instead of standing outside a Hollywood studio wearing a sandwich board in the hope of someone discovering her. It’s tough breaking into the movies during the Great Depression, but Sandra knows that she’s destined for greatness. After all, her grandmother Vira crossed the country during the Gold Rush and established the Sanborns as one of San Francisco’s most prominent families, and her mother Mabel grew up in a lavish mansion and married into an agricultural empire. Success, Sandra feels, is in her blood. She just needs a chance to prove it. In between failed auditions, Sandra receives a letter from a man claiming to be her father, which calls into question everything she believes about her family—and herself. As she tries to climb the social ladder, family secrets lurk in the background, pulling her down. Until Sandra confronts the truth about how Vira and Mabel gained and lost their fortunes, she will always end up right back where she started from. Right Back Where We Started From is a sweeping, multigenerational work of fiction that explores the lust for ambition that entered into the American consciousness during the Gold Rush and how it affected our nation’s ideas of success, failure, and the pursuit of happiness. It is a meticulously layered saga—at once historically rich, romantic, and suspenseful—about three determined and completely unforgettable women.

Book The Meaning of Night

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael Cox
  • Publisher : McClelland & Stewart
  • Release : 2011-05-18
  • ISBN : 1551993856
  • Pages : 607 pages

Download or read book The Meaning of Night written by Michael Cox and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2011-05-18 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn’s for an oyster supper.” So begins an extraordinary story of betrayal and treachery, of delusion and deceit narrated by Edward Glyver. Glyver may be a bibliophile, but he is no bookworm. Employed “in a private capacity” by one of Victorian London’s top lawyers, he knows his Macrobius from his First Folio, but he has the street-smarts and ruthlessness of a Philip Marlowe. And just as it is with many a contemporary detective, one can’t always be sure whether Glyver is acting on the side of right or wrong. As the novel begins, Glyver silently stabs a stranger from behind, killing him apparently at random. But though he has committed a callous and brutal crime, Glyver soon reveals himself to be a sympathetic and seductively charming narrator. In fact, Edward Glyver keeps the reader spellbound for 600 riveting pages full of betrayal, twists, lies, and obsession. Glyver has an unforgettable story to tell. Raised in straitened circumstances by his novelist mother, he attended Eton thanks to the munificence of a mysterious benefactor. After his mother’s death, Glyver is not sure what path to take in life. Should he explore the new art of photography, take a job at the British Museum, continue his travels in Europe with his friend Le Grice? But then, going through his mother’s papers, he discovers something that seems unbelievable: the woman who raised him was not his mother at all. He is actually the son of Lord Tansor, one of the richest and most powerful men in England. Naturally, Glyver sets out to prove his case. But he lacks evidence, and while trying to find it under the alias “Edward Glapthorn,” he discovers that one person stands between him and his birthright: his old schoolmate and rival Phoebus Rainsford Daunt, a popular poet (and secret criminal) whom Lord Tansor has taken a decidedly paternal interest in after the death of his only son. Glyver’s mission to regain his patrimony takes him from the heights of society to its lowest depths, from brothels and opium dens to Cambridge colleges and the idylls of Evenwood, the Tansor family’s ancestral home. Glyver is tough and resourceful, but Daunt always seems to be a step ahead, at least until Glyver meets the beguilingly beautiful Emily Carteret, daughter of Lord Tansor’s secretary. But nothing is as it seems in this accomplished, suspenseful novel. Glyver’s employer Tredgold warns him to trust no one: Is his enigmatic neighbour Fordyce Jukes spying on him? Is the brutal murderer Josiah Pluckthorn on his trail? And is Glyver himself, driven half-mad by the desire for revenge, telling us the whole truth in his candid, but very artful, “confession”? A global phenomenon, The Meaning of Night is an addictive, darkly funny, and completely captivating novel. Meticulously researched and utterly gripping, it draws its readers relentlessly forward until its compelling narrator’s final revelations.

Book Poetry and Ambition

Download or read book Poetry and Ambition written by Donald Hall and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling collection of essays on the state of contemporary poetry

Book Macbeth

    Book Details:
  • Author : William Shakespeare
  • Publisher : Start Classics
  • Release : 2024-05-08
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : 0 pages

Download or read book Macbeth written by William Shakespeare and published by Start Classics. This book was released on 2024-05-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Murder mayhem and magic.Pushed by his wife to seize the throne Macbeth kills his rightful liege and then tries desperately to hold onto the kingdom that he has wrongfully usurped. Prophesy and magic abound in this dark moody and atmospheric play.Out damned spot! Out I say!One- two -why then 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky. Fie my lord fie! A soldier and afeard? What need we fear who knows it when none can call ourpower to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

Book A Ladder to the Sky

    Book Details:
  • Author : John Boyne
  • Publisher : Hogarth
  • Release : 2018-11-13
  • ISBN : 1984823035
  • Pages : 400 pages

Download or read book A Ladder to the Sky written by John Boyne and published by Hogarth. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A satire of writerly ambition wrapped in a psychological thriller . . . An homage to Patricia Highsmith, Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe, but its execution is entirely Boyne’s own.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for fame. The one thing he doesn’t have is talent—but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own. Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful – but desperately lonely – older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice’s first novel. Once Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall. . . . Sweeping across the late twentieth century, A Ladder to the Sky is a fascinating portrait of a relentlessly immoral man, a tour de force of storytelling, and the next great novel from an acclaimed literary virtuoso. Praise for A Ladder to the Sky “Boyne's mastery of perspective, last seen in The Heart's Invisible Furies, works beautifully here. . . . Boyne understands that it's far more interesting and satisfying for a reader to see that narcissist in action than to be told a catchall phrase. Each step Maurice Swift takes skyward reveals a new layer of calumny he's willing to engage in, and the desperation behind it . . . so dark it seems almost impossible to enjoy reading A Ladder to the Sky as much as you definitely will enjoy reading it.”—NPR “Delicious . . . spins out over several decades with thrilling unpredictability, following Maurice as he masters the art of co-opting the stories of others in increasingly dubious ways. And while the book reads as a thriller with a body count that would make Highsmith proud, it is also an exploration of morality and art: Where is the line between inspiration and thievery? To whom does a story belong?”—Vanity Fair

Book Dangerous Laughter

    Book Details:
  • Author : Steven Millhauser
  • Publisher : Vintage
  • Release : 2008-02-12
  • ISBN : 030726873X
  • Pages : 256 pages

Download or read book Dangerous Laughter written by Steven Millhauser and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-02-12 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirteen darkly comic stories, Dangerous Laughter is a mesmerizing journey that stretches the boundaries of the ordinary world.

Book Colossal Ambitions

    Book Details:
  • Author : Adrian Brettle
  • Publisher : University of Virginia Press
  • Release : 2020-07-16
  • ISBN : 0813944384
  • Pages : 424 pages

Download or read book Colossal Ambitions written by Adrian Brettle and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2020-07-16 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading politicians, diplomats, clerics, planters, farmers, manufacturers, and merchants preached a transformative, world-historical role for the Confederacy, persuading many of their compatriots to fight not merely to retain what they had but to gain their future empire. Impervious to reality, their vision of future world leadership—territorial, economic, political, and cultural—provided a vitally important, underappreciated motivation to form an independent Confederate republic. In Colossal Ambitions, Adrian Brettle explores how leading Confederate thinkers envisioned their postwar nation—its relationship with the United States, its place in the Americas, and its role in the global order. Brettle draws on rich caches of published and unpublished letters and diaries, Confederate national and state government documents, newspapers published in North America and England, conference proceedings, pamphlets, contemporary and scholarly articles, and more to engage the perspectives of not only modern historians but some of the most salient theorists of the Western World in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. An impressive and complex undertaking, Colossal Ambitions concludes that while some Confederate commentators saw wartime industrialization as pointing toward a different economic future, most Confederates saw their society as revolving once more around coercive labor, staple crop production, and exports in the war’s wake.