Download or read book The Hardest Lot of Men written by Joseph C. Fitzharris and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2019-09-05 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outstanding in appearance, discipline, and precision at drill, the Third Minnesota Volunteer Infantry was often mistaken for a regular army unit. Rebel Colonel Ponder described the regiment as “the hardest lot of men he’d ever run against.” Betrayed by its higher commanders, the Third Minnesota was surrendered to Nathan Bedford Forrest on July 13, 1862, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Through letters, personal accounts of the men, and other sources, author Joseph C. Fitzharris recounts how the Minnesotans, prisoners of war, broken in spirit and morale, went home and found redemption and renewed purpose fighting the Dakota Indians. They were then sent south to fight guerrillas along the Tennessee River. In the process, the regiment was forged anew as a superbly drilled and disciplined unit that participated in the siege of Vicksburg and in the Arkansas Expedition that took Little Rock. At Pine Bluff, Arkansas, sickness so reduced its numbers that the Third was twice unable to muster enough men to bury its own dead, but the men never wavered in battle. In both Tennessee and Arkansas, the Minnesotans actively supported the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) and provided many officers for USCT units. The Hardest Lot of Men follows the Third through occupation to war’s end, when the returning men, deeming the citizens of St. Paul insufficiently appreciative, spurned a celebration in their honor. In this first full account of the regiment, Fitzharris brings to light the true story long obscured by the official histories illustrating aspects of a nineteenth-century soldier’s life—enlisted and commissioned alike—from recruitment and training to the rigors of active duty. The Hardest Lot of Men gives us an authentic picture of the Third Minnesota, at once both singular and representative of its historical moment.
Download or read book Behave written by Robert M. Sapolsky and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestseller • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • One of the Washington Post's 10 Best Books of the Year “It’s no exaggeration to say that Behave is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read.” —David P. Barash, The Wall Street Journal "It has my vote for science book of the year.” —Parul Sehgal, The New York Times "Immensely readable, often hilarious...Hands-down one of the best books I’ve read in years. I loved it." —Dina Temple-Raston, The Washington Post From the bestselling author of A Primate's Memoir and the forthcoming Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will comes a landmark, genre-defining examination of human behavior and an answer to the question: Why do we do the things we do? Behave is one of the most dazzling tours d’horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted. Moving across a range of disciplines, Sapolsky—a neuroscientist and primatologist—uncovers the hidden story of our actions. Undertaking some of our thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, and war and peace, Behave is a towering achievement—a majestic synthesis of cutting-edge research and a heroic exploration of why we ultimately do the things we do . . . for good and for ill.
Download or read book The Hardest Place written by Wesley Morgan and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: COLBY AWARD WINNER • “One of the most important books to come out of the Afghanistan war.”—Foreign Policy “A saga of courage and futility, of valor and error and heartbreak.”—Rick Atkinson, author of the Liberation Trilogy and The British Are Coming Of the many battlefields on which U.S. troops and intelligence operatives fought in Afghanistan, one remote corner of the country stands as a microcosm of the American campaign: the Pech and its tributary valleys in Kunar and Nuristan. The area’s rugged, steep terrain and thick forests made it a natural hiding spot for local insurgents and international terrorists alike, and it came to represent both the valor and futility of America’s two-decade-long Afghan war. Drawing on reporting trips, hundreds of interviews, and documentary research, Wesley Morgan reveals the history of the war in this iconic region, captures the culture and reality of the conflict through both American and Afghan eyes, and reports on the snowballing missteps—some kept secret from even the troops fighting there—that doomed the American mission. The Hardest Place is the story of one of the twenty-first century’s most unforgiving battlefields and a portrait of the American military that fought there.
Download or read book All That Man Is written by David Szalay and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2016 Man Booker Prize Winner of the 2016 Paris Review Plimpton Prize for Fiction A magnificent and ambitiously conceived portrait of contemporary life, by a genius of realism Nine men. Each of them at a different stage in life, each of them away from home, and each of them striving--in the suburbs of Prague, in an overdeveloped Alpine village, beside a Belgian motorway, in a dingy Cyprus hotel--to understand what it means to be alive, here and now. Tracing a dramatic arc from the spring of youth to the winter of old age, the ostensibly separate narratives of All That Man Is aggregate into a picture of a single shared existence, a picture that interrogates the state of modern manhood while bringing to life, unforgettably, the physical and emotional terrain of an increasingly globalized Europe. And so these nine lives form an ingenious and new kind of novel, in which David Szalay expertly plots a dark predicament for the twenty-first-century man. Dark and disturbing, but also often wickedly and uproariously comic, All That Man Is is notable for the acute psychological penetration Szalay brings to bear on his characters, from the working-class ex-grunt to the pompous college student, the middle-aged loser to the Russian oligarch. Steadily and mercilessly, as this brilliantly conceived book progresses, the protagonist at the center of each chapter is older than the last one, it gets colder out, and All That Man Is gathers exquisite power. Szalay is a writer of supreme gifts--a master of a new kind of realism that vibrates with detail, intelligence, relevance, and devastating pathos.
Download or read book A Little Life written by Hanya Yanagihara and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.
Download or read book Difficult Men written by Brett Martin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-07-29 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 10th anniversary edition, now with a new preface by the author "A wonderfully smart, lively, and culturally astute survey." - The New York Times Book Review "Grand entertainment...fascinating for anyone curious about the perplexing miracles of how great television comes to be." - The Wall Street Journal "I love this book...It's the kind of thing I wish I'd been able to read in film school, back before such books existed." - Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and co-creator of Better Call Saul In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the landscape of television began an unprecedented transformation. While the networks continued to chase the lowest common denominator, a wave of new shows on cable channels dramatically stretched television’s narrative inventiveness, emotional resonance, and creative ambition. Combining deep reportage with critical analysis and historical context, Brett Martin recounts the rise and inner workings of this artistic watershed - a golden age of TV that continues to transform America's cultural landscape. Difficult Men features extensive interviews with all the major players - including David Chase (The Sopranos), David Simon and Ed Burns (The Wire), David Milch (NYPD Blue, Deadwood), Alan Ball (Six Feet Under), and Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) - and reveals how television became a truly significant and influential part of our culture.
Download or read book The Gentlemen and the Roughs written by Lorien Foote and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A seminal work” on class divisions within the Union Army—“One of the best examples of . . . scholarship on the social history of Civil War soldiers” (The Journal of Southern History). During the Civil War, the Union army appeared cohesive enough to withstand four years of grueling war against the Confederates and to claim victory in 1865. But fractiousness bubbled below the surface of the North’s presumably united front. Internal fissures were rife within the Union army: class divisions, regional antagonisms, ideological differences, and conflicting personalities all distracted the army from quelling the Southern rebellion. In this highly original contribution to Civil War and gender history, Lorien Foote reveals that these internal battles were fought against the backdrop of manhood. Clashing ideals of manliness produced myriad conflicts, as when educated, refined, and wealthy officers (“gentlemen”) found themselves commanding a hard-drinking group of fighters (“roughs”)—a dynamic that often resulted in violence and even death. Based on extensive research into previously ignored primary sources, The Gentlemen and the Roughs uncovers holes in our understanding of the men who fought the Civil War and the society that produced them. Finalist for the 2011 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize
Download or read book The Great Partnership written by Christian B Keller and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why were Generals Lee and Jackson so successful in their partner- ship in trying to win the war for the South? What was it about their styles, friendship, even their faith, that cemented them together into a fighting machine that consistently won despite often overwhelming odds against them?The Great Partnership has the power to change how we think about Confederate strategic decision-making and the value of personal relationships among senior leaders responsible for organizational survival. Those relationships in the Confederate high command were particularly critical for victory, especially the one that existed between the two great Army of Northern Virginia generals.It has been over two decades since any author attempted a joint study of the two generals. At the very least, the book will inspire a very lively debate among the thousands of students of Civil War his- tory. At best, it will significantly revise how we evaluate Confederate strategy during the height the war and our understanding of why, in the end, the South lost.
Download or read book They Fought for Each Other written by Kelly Kennedy and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2010-03-02 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charlie 1-26 confronted one of the worst neighborhoods in Baghdad and lost more men than any battalion since Vietnam Based on "Blood Brothers", the Michael Kelly Awardnominated series that ran in Army Times, this is the remarkable story of a courageous military unit that sacrificed their lives to change Adhamiya, Iraq, from a lawless town where insurgents roamed freely, to a secure neighborhood with open storefronts and a safe populace. Army Times writer Kelly Kennedy was embedded with Charlie Company in 2007, went on patrol with the soldiers and spent hours in combat support hospitals. During that period, one soldier threw himself on a grenade to save his friends, a well-liked first sergeant shot himself to death in front of his troops, and a platoon staged a mutiny. The men of Charlie 1- 26 would earn at least 95 combat awards, including one soldier who would go home with three Purple Hearts and a lost dream. This is a timeless story of men at war and a heartbreaking account of American sacrifice in Iraq.
Download or read book The Hardest Fall written by Ella Maise and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the game of love you can't afford to drop the ball... Zoe’s always been shy. At college, to try to help her, her friend dares her to do the craziest thing she can think of… kiss a random guy. She follows Dylan into a room she thinks is a classroom and ends up seeing a little too much of him. She can hardly kiss him now… not when after their embarrassing encounter and certainly not after he tells her he has a girlfriend. But when he finds out about the dare, the two make a pact… if they ever cross paths again – and they’re both single – they’ll kiss. Two years later, fate intervenes, and they end up as accidental roommates. Now Zoe’s seeing a lot more of Dylan than she bargained for and it’s even harder to resist peeking the second time round.
Download or read book The Keillor Reader written by Garrison Keillor and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories, essays, poems, and personal reminiscences from the sage of Lake Wobegon When, at thirteen, he caught on as a sportswriter for the Anoka Herald, Garrison Keillor set out to become a professional writer, and so he has done—a storyteller, sometime comedian, essayist, newspaper columnist, screenwriter, poet. Now a single volume brings together the full range of his work: monologues from A Prairie Home Companion, stories from The New Yorker and The Atlantic, excerpts from novels, newspaper columns. With an extensive introduction and headnotes, photographs, and memorabilia, The Keillor Reader also presents pieces never before published, including the essays “Cheerfulness” and “What We Have Learned So Far.” Keillor is the founder and host of A Prairie Home Companion, celebrating its fortieth anniversary in 2014. He is the author of nineteen books of fiction and humor, the editor of the Good Poems collections, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Download or read book The Luminaries written by Eleanor Catton and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 822 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The winner of the Man Booker Prize, this "expertly written, perfectly constructed" bestseller (The Guardian) is now a Starz miniseries. It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to stake his claim in New Zealand's booming gold rush. On the stormy night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of 12 local men who have met in secret to discuss a series of unexplained events: a wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous cache of gold has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely ornate as the night sky. Richly evoking a mid-nineteenth-century world of shipping, banking, and gold rush boom and bust, The Luminaries is at once a fiendishly clever ghost story, a gripping page-turner, and a thrilling novelistic achievement. It richly confirms that Eleanor Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international literary firmament.
Download or read book All the Wrong Men and One Perfect Boy written by Spike Gillespie and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A frank and moving memoir of a lifetime of failed relationships with men--andthe redeeming power of motherhood--from the cyber celebrity who pioneered theon-line confessional.
Download or read book A Conspiracy of Tall Men written by Noah Hawley and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linus Owen is a young professor of conspiracy theory at a small college just outside San Francisco. His marriage is foundering and his wife, Claudia, has gone to Chicago to visit her mother. But if Claudia is in Chicago, how is it that two FBI agents show up at Linus' office and inform him that Claudia has been killed in a plane crash on her way from New York to Brazil? And why did a man named Jeffrey Holden, the vice president of a major pharmaceutical company, buy her ticket and die beside her? Enlisting the aid of two fellow conspiracy theorists, Linus heads across the country in search of answers. But as their journey progresses, it becomes frighteningly clear they've left the realm of the academic and are tangled up in a dangerous, multilayered cover-up. Finally, deep in the heart of the American desert, stunned by an ominous revelation, Linus sees he has a new mission: to try to stay alive. Part Don DeLillo, part Kurt Vonnegut, with writing that is electric, whip-smart and suspenseful at each turn, Noah Hawley draws us into a deliciously labyrinthine world of paranoia and plots.
Download or read book If I Was Your Girl written by Meredith Russo and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amanda Hardy only wants to fit in at her new school, but she is keeping a big secret, so when she falls for Grant, guarded Amanda finds herself yearning to share with him everything about herself, including her previous life as Andrew.
Download or read book The 48 Laws of Power written by Robert Greene and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum. Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.
Download or read book The Hardest Victory written by Jean Ellis Hudson and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clem and Susannah Brown and their three adult children, Thomas, age. 21, Ruth, age 20, and Jeff, age 18, in the year of 1912, have much love within their family, but life is not without trials. Clem and Susannah discover that Thomas has a lack of self-control and can even trace it back to childhood. There is anger and jealousy brewing in Thomas that he does not control and thus he strikes out at family members. Upon the death of George Brady, Susannahs father, each member of the family inherits a great deal which enables them to enlarge the farm and improve their lives. Ruth meets a fine young man and after a period of courting, they get married. Clyde Armour still works with Clem and is basically a partner by 1912, while he and his wife Lillian have two children. Another hired hand is added to the farm named Zeb Stuart. Their pastor Tim Hawthorne talks with Thomas a great deal about his problems, walking as a Christian, and staying out of certain establishments. Follow the route Thomas life takes as it intertwines with Jeffs.
