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More women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan than in any other conflict in our nation's history, and today they compose about 15 percent of the armed services. Soldier Girls follows the experiences of three women in the Indiana National Guard -- one a young college student, one a single mother, and one a grandmother -- who chose to enlist for different reasons, never expecting they would go to war. Though quite far apart in age and in their political...

"Chronicles the events of 1944 to reveal how nearly the Allies lost World War II, citing the pivotal contributions of FDR, Churchill, and Stalin,"--Novelist. It was not inevitable that World War II would end as it did, or that it would even end well. 1944 was a year that could have stymied the Allies and cemented Hitler's waning power. Instead, it saved those democracies--but with a fateful cost. 1944 witnessed a series of titanic events: FDR at...

"For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him--most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear ... In [this book], Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings--moments when he discovered some new truth...

"While getting into his car on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA's Moscow station was handed an envelope by an unknown Russian. Its contents stunned the Americans: details of top-secret Soviet research and development in military technology that was totally unknown to the United States. From 1979 to 1985, Adolf Tolkachev, an engineer at a military research center, cracked open the secret Soviet military research establishment,...

"One of the most acclaimed travel writers of our time turns his unflinching eye on an American South too often overlooked. Paul Theroux has spent fifty years crossing the globe, adventuring in the exotic, seeking the rich history and folklore of the far away. Now, for the first time, in his tenth travel book, Theroux explores a piece of America--the Deep South. He finds there a paradoxical place, full of incomparable music, unparalleled cuisine, and...

"'I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea.' Yeonmi Park was not dreaming of freedom when she escaped from North Korea. She didn't even know what it meant to be free. All she knew was that she was running for her life, that if she and her family stayed behind they would die--from starvation, or disease, or even execution. This book is the story of Park's struggle to survive in the darkest,...

"Rosenfelt's latest work of nonfiction has a slightly misleading title; although Tara, the author's first dog, takes center stage, other dogs--a handful of the hundreds the author and his wife have taken in over the years--do make some appearances. The book's theme is pretty straightforward: here are some of the things I've learned about myself through my dogs. Grieving after Tara's death, for example, allowed Rosenfelt to open up a more emotional...

Once Upon a Time in Russia is the untold true story of the larger-than-life billionaire oligarchs who surfed the waves of privatization to reap riches after the fall of the Soviet regime: "Godfather of the Kremlin" Boris Berezovsky, a former mathematician whose first entrepreneurial venture was running an automobile reselling business, and Roman Abramovich, his dashing young protégé who built a multi-billion-dollar empire of oil and aluminum. ...

Spanning 2,000 miles and traversing six states from Missouri to the Pacific Ocean, the Oregon Trail is the route that made America. In the fifteen years before the Civil War, when 400,000 pioneers used it to emigrate West, the trail united the coasts, doubled the size of the country, and laid the groundwork for the railroads. The trail years also solidified the American character: our plucky determination in the face of adversity, our impetuous cycle...

Traces the efforts of four American athletes from disparate backgrounds to win the gold medal for bobsledding during the 1932 Olympics, profiling how the American public, deep in the grip of the Great Depression, rallied around their achievements. --Publisher's description.