Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Vietnam: The War Nobody Won (Headline Series)

Vietnam: The War Nobody Won (Headline Series)

by Stanley Karnow

Provides a comprehensive look at both sides of the Vietnam War through a collection of personal tales and delves into the political and military events in the United States and elsewhere that originally caused the war and the brought it to an end. Reprint. TV tie-in."

Polio: An American Story

by David M. Oshinsky

Here David Oshinsky tells the gripping story of the polio terror and of the intense effort to find a cure, from the March of Dimes to the discovery of the Salk and Sabin vaccines--and beyond. Drawing on newly available papers of Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin and other key players, Oshinsky paints a suspenseful portrait of the race for the cure, weaving a dramatic tale centered on the furious rivalry between Salk and... (more)

A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York Review Books Classics)

A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York Review Books Classics)

by Alistair Horne

The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It brought down six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, returned de Gaulle to power, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict and as many European settlers were driven into exile. Above all, the war was marked by an unholy marriage of revolutionary terror and repressive... (more)

The Great Influenza

The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

by John M. Barry

At the height of WWI, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of... (more)

Gulag

A History

by Anne Applebaum

The Gulag--a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners--was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its... (more)

Lenin: A New Biography

by Dmitrii? Antonovich Volkogonov, Dmitri Volkogonov

The special assistant to Boris Yeltsin radically alters the traditional image of Lenin with a biography based on secret Soviet archives, revealing the Founding Father as a cruel, totalitarian leader who was responsible for the worst excesses of the Soviet state.

America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 with Poster

America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 with Poster

by George C. Herring

Comprehensive yet concise, America's Longest War provides a complete and balanced history of the Vietnam War. It is not mainly a military history, but seeks to integrate military, diplomatic, and political factors in order to clarify America's involvement and ultimate failure in Vietnam. While it focuses on the American side of the equation, it provides sufficient consideration of the Vietnamese side to make the... (more)

Events That Shaped the Century (Our American Century)

Events That Shaped the Century (Our American Century)

by Richard B. Stolley

Gr 7 Up-Filled with outstanding, poignant photographs that, in themselves, make it worth purchasing, this volume takes readers through 125 events that have transformed and shaped America since 1900. What unfolds is not only a timeline, but also a story of how these moments have effected all aspects of American life, from our government and our role in the world to technology, science, music, art, women's and civil... (more)

The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia

The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia

by Mike Dash

Before the notorious Five Families who dominated U.S. organized crime for a bloody half century, there was the one-fingered criminal genius Giuseppe Morello–known as “The Clutch Hand”–and his lethal coterie of associates. In The First Family , historian, journalist, and New York Times bestselling author Mike Dash brings to life this little-known story, following the rise of the Mafia in America from the 1890s... (more)

Dawn of the Century: 1900-1910 (Our American Century)

Dawn of the Century: 1900-1910 (Our American Century)

Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia

Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia

by Yegor Gaidar

In today's Russia, nostalgia for the Soviet era is growing. Many Russians reflect wistfully on the passing of an era when the Soviet Union was a superpower, commanding international respect, and they blame its demise on external enemies and foolish changes in policy. In an address to the Russian Federal Assembly, President Vladimir Putin called the breakup of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical catastrophe... (more)

The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States

The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States

by Jorge Duany

Puerto Ricans maintain a vibrant identity that bridges two very different places--the island of Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland. Whether they live on the island, in the States, or divide time between the two, most imagine Puerto Rico as a separate nation and view themselves primarily as Puerto Rican. At the same time, Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917, and Puerto Rico has been a U.S. commonwealth... (more)

Solidarity's Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland

Solidarity's Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland

by Shana Penn

"This important book explores one of the most pivotal periods in Polish history and deals with a topic nearly everyone else overlooked. Shana Penn's study begins with a simple question I wish I had thought more about myself: once the leadership of Solidarity had been arrested during the 1981 military coup, who kept the movement alive over the following months and years? The answer will surprise you, as Penn delves... (more)

Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China and Cuba, 1928-1978

Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China and Cuba, 1928-1978

by Paul Hollander

In this major study, Paul Hollander seeks to understand why so many distinguished Western intellectuals of the 20th century admired the various communist systems, o ften in their most repressive historical phases. '

Hitler's Empire

by Mark Mazower

Drawing on an unprecedented variety of sources, Mark Mazower reveals how the Nazis designed, maintained, and ultimately lost their European empire and offers a chilling vision of the world Hitler would have made had he won the war . Germany’s forces achieved, in just a few years, the astounding domination of a landmass and population larger than that of the United States. Control of this vast territory was meant... (more)

The Elephant and the Tiger: The Full Story of the Vietnam War

The Elephant and the Tiger: The Full Story of the Vietnam War

by Wilbur H. Morrison

"If the tiger ever stands still, the elephant will crush him with his mighty tusks. But the tiger will not stand still. He will leap upon the back of the elephant, tearing huge chunks from his side, and then he will leap back into the dark jungle. And slowly the elephant will bleed to death. Such will be the war in Indochina."--Ho Chi Minh The Elephant and the Tiger (originally published in 1990 by Hippocrene... (more)

The Opium of the Intellectuals

by Raymond Aron

First published in 1955, this political reflection seeks to show how noble ideas can slide into the tyranny of "secular religion". It stresses how political thought has the responsibility of telling the truth about social and political reality - in all its imperfections and complexities.

The hoaxers: plain liars, fancy liars, and damned liarsMorris Kominsky

The hoaxers: plain liars, fancy liars, and damned liars

by Morris Kominsky

Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer

Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer

by James L. Swanson

The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history -- the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin led Union cavalry and detectives on a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia, while the nation, still reeling from the just-ended Civil War, watched in... (more)

The Assassination of Lumumba

by Ludo de Witte

Patrice Lumumba, first prime minister of the Republic of Congo and a pioneer of African unity, was murdered on 17 January 1961. Lumumba was at the center of the country's popular defiance towards the relentless exploitation of its Belgian colonizer. When independence was finally won in June 1960, his unscheduled speech at the official ceremonies in Kinshasa, which described Belgian rule as 'a humiliating slavery... (more)

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Tags: history-20th century