ePub Seabiscuit: An American Legend (Ballantine Reader's Circle) by Laura Hillenbrand in History

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The best book ever written about an American city; by the best journalist of his time.”— Jimmy BreslinNew edition of the classic story of the late Richard J. Daley; politician and self-promoter extraordinaire; from his inauspicious youth on Chicago’s South Side through his rapid climb to the seat of power as mayor and boss of the Democratic Party machine. A bare-all account of Daley’s cardinal sins as well as his milestone achievements; this scathing work by Chicago journalist Mike Royko brings to life the most powerful political figure of his time: his laissez-faire policy toward corruption; his unique brand of public relations; and the widespread influence that earned him the epithet of “king maker.” The politician; the machine; the city—Royko reveals all with witty insight and unwavering honesty; in this incredible portrait of the last of the backroom Caesars.New edition includes an Introduction in which the author reflects on Daley’s death and the future of Chicago._x000D_ It is said that in war heaven and earth change places not once; but many times. When Heaven and Earth Changed Places is the haunting memoir of a girl on the verge of womanhood in a world turned upside down. The youngest of six children in a close-knit Buddhist family; Le Ly Hayslip was twelve years old when U.S. helicopters langed in Ky La; her tiny village in central Vietnam. As the government and Viet Cong troops fought in and around Ky La; both sides recruited children as spies and saboteurs. Le Ly was one of those children.Before the age of sixteen; Le Ly had suffered near-starvation; imprisonment; torture; rape; and the deaths of beloved family members—but miraculously held fast to her faith in humanity. And almost twenty years after her escape to Ameica; she was drawn inexorably back to the devastated country and family she left behind. Scenes of this joyous reunion are interwoven with the brutal war years; offering a poignant picture of vietnam; then and now; and of a courageous woman who experienced the true horror of the Vietnam War—and survived to tell her unforgettable story._x000D_ The inspirational author behind the major motion picture Denial; starring Rachel WeiszThe denial of the Holocaust has no more credibility than the assertion that the earth is flat. Yet there are those who insist that the death of six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps is nothing but a hoax perpetrated by a powerful Zionist conspiracy. Forty years ago; such notions were the province of pseudohistorians who argued that Hitler never meant to kill the Jews; and that only a few hundred thousand died in the camps from disease; they also argued that the Allied bombings of Dresden and other cities were worse than any Nazi offense; and that the Germans were the true victims" of World War II. For years; those who made such claims were dismissed as harmless cranks operating on the lunatic fringe. But over the past decade they have begun to gain a hearing in respectable arenas; and now; in the first full-scale history of Holocaust denial; Deborah Lipstadt shows how - despite tens of thousands of living witnesses and vast amounts of documentary evidence - this irrational idea not only has continued to gain adherents but has become an international movement; with organized chapters; "independent" research centers; and official publications that promote a "revisionist" view of recent history. One sign of the movement's disturbing resonance is the rise of such figures as the Holocaust denier David Duke to national prominence. Holocaust deniers have also begun to make common cause with radical Afrocentrists such as Leonard Jeffries of New York's City University; who retails racist myths about the Jews; and a recent campaign of ads in college newspapers calling for "open debate" on "so-called facts" about the Holocaust suggests a bold new bid for mainstream intellectual legitimacy. Lipstadt shows how Holocaust denial thrives in the current atmosphere of value relativism; and argues that this chilling attack on the factual record not only threatens Jews but undermines the very tenets of objective scholarship that support our faith in historical knowledge.