Miracle at St. Anna ($2.70), by James McBrideBook Description
James McBride's memoir, The Color of Water, was a literary achievement that topped bestseller lists for more than two years. Now McBride turns his extraordinary gift for storytelling to fiction. Miracle at St. Anna is a tale of courage and redemption inspired by the famed Buffalo soldiers of the 92nd Division and a little-known historic event in a small Tuscan village at the end of World War II-the massacre at St. Anna di Stazzema.
The acclaimed novel is now a major motion picture directed by Spike Lee, coming to theaters Sept. 28.
The Raiders: Sons of Texas($4.79), by Elmer KeltonBook Description
In 1816, Mordecai Lewis, a veteran of Andrew Jackson's Indian campaigns and battles against the British, moves his family into the western Tennessee canebrakes. But Mordecai, a born wanderer, is not satisfied with farming, and with his sons Michael and Andrew and some other backwoodsmen, he leads a foray into Spanish-held Texas to hunt wild horses and return the mustang herd to sell in Tennessee.
Crossing the Sabine River, Mordecai's party encounters a Spanish patrol determined to repel all American invaders. After a bloody skirmish leaves their father dead, Michael and Andrew find their way back to their Tennessee farm.
Five years later, after the Spanish government in Mexico City has agreed to permit 300 American families to settle in Texas, the Lewis brothers have their opportunity to re-enter Texas. They ride to the frontier town of Natchitoches, Louisiana, where Michael falls in love with Marie Villaret, daughter of a wealthy French landowner, then cross the Sabine to find Stephen F. Austin, a Missouri entrepreneur in charge of the new American colony.
But the Lewises are considered interlopers and horse thieves and are dogged by a patrol led by the same ruthless Spanish offer who killed their father five years before.
Sons of Texas is the first volume in a trilogy that follows the lives and adventures of the Lewis family through the era of the Alamo and Texas Independence under Sam Houston.
The Warrior ($2.54), by FRANCES RICHEYBook Description
A heart-rending memoir-in-verse that speaks to a mother's love for her son. When Frances Richey's only child, Ben, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a Green Beret, went on the first of his two deployments to Iraq, she began to write the twenty-eight unflinching poems that make up The Warrior. This urgent and intensely personal collection describes the world of those who wait while their loved ones are in combat or perilous situations; it is universal in its expression of the longing, anguish, love, and hope that constitute close relationships.
Thugs: How History's Most Notorious Despots Transformed the World through Terror, Tyranny, and Mass Murder ($2.42), by Micah D. HalpernBook Description
From Hitler to Hussein, Napoleon to Pol Pot, Alexander the Great to Idi Amin, this is a trenchant look into the lives, politics, and horrible deeds of history's most notorious world leaders-and how they shaped our world for the worst.
Slavery, Resistance, Freedom ($3.54), by Gabor S. Boritt & Scott Hancock (Editors)Book Description
Americans have always defined themselves in terms of their freedoms--of speech, of religion, of political dissent. How we interpret our history of slavery--the ultimate denial of these freedoms--deeply affects how we understand the very fabric of our democracy.
This extraordinary collection of essays by some of America's top historians focuses on how African Americans resisted slavery and how they responded when finally free. Ira Berlin sets the stage by stressing the relationship between how we understand slavery and how we discuss race today. The remaining essays offer a richly textured examination of all aspects of slavery in America. John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger recount actual cases of runaway slaves, their motivations for escape and the strains this widespread phenomenon put on white slave-owners. Scott Hancock explores how free black Northerners created a proud African American identity out of the oral history of slavery in the south. Edward L. Ayers, William G. Thomas III, and Anne Sarah Rubin draw upon their remarkable Valley of the Shadow website to describe the wartime experiences of African Americans living on both borders of the Mason-Dixon line. Noah Andre Trudeau turns our attention to the war itself, examining the military experience of the only all-black division in the Army of the Potomac. And Eric Foner gives us a new look at how black leaders performed during the Reconstruction, revealing that they were far more successful than is commonly acknowledged--indeed, they represented, for a time, the fulfillment of the American ideal that all people could aspire to political office.
Wide-ranging, authoritative, and filled with invaluable historical insight, Slavery, Resistance, Freedom brings a host of powerful voices to America's evolving conversation about race.
SUMMER OF THE DRUMS ($0.92), by T. V. OlsenBook Description
An innocent family becomes embroiled in the turbulence of the Black Hawk War. Living in Wisconsin territory in the 1830's, fifteen-year-old Kevin and his family try to remain neutral in the increasingly violent war between the Sac Indians and the white settlers.
