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History and Current Events December 2018
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| LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by P.W. Singer and Emerson T. BrookingTwo defense experts explore the collision of war, politics, and social media, where the most important battles are now only a click away.
Through the weaponization of social media, the internet is changing war and politics, just as war and politics are changing the internet. Terrorists livestream their attacks, “Twitter wars” produce real‑world casualties, and viral misinformation alters not just the result of battles, but the very fate of nations. The result is that war, tech, and politics have blurred into a new kind of battlespace that plays out on our smartphones.
P. W. Singer and Emerson Brooking tackle the mind‑bending questions that arise when war goes online and the online world goes to war. They explore how ISIS copies the Instagram tactics of Taylor Swift, a former World of Warcraft addict foils war crimes thousands of miles away, internet trolls shape elections, and China uses a smartphone app to police the thoughts of 1.4 billion citizens. What can be kept secret in a world of networks? Does social media expose the truth or bury it? And what role do ordinary people now play in international conflicts? |
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The Husband Hunters: American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy
by Anne De Courcy
A deliciously told group biography of the young, rich, American heiresses who married into the impoverished British aristocracy at the turn of the twentieth century – The real women who inspired Downton Abbey.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century and for the first few years of the twentieth, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, fifty years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. From 1874 - the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known 'Dollar Princess', married Randolph Churchill - to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage, bringing with them all the fabulous wealth, glamour and sophistication of the Gilded Age.
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On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle
by Hampton Sides
On October 15, 1950, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of UN troops in Korea, convinced President Harry Truman that the Communist forces of Kim Il-sung would be utterly defeated by Thanksgiving. The Chinese, he said with near certainty, would not intervene in the war.
As he was speaking, 300,000 Red Chinese soldiers began secretly crossing the Manchurian border. Led by some 20,000 men of the First Marine Division, the Americans moved deep into the snowy mountains of North Korea, toward the trap Mao had set for the vainglorious MacArthur along the frozen shores of the Chosin Reservoir. What followed was one of the most heroic--and harrowing--operations in American military history, and one of the classic battles of all time. Faced with probable annihilation, and temperatures plunging to 20 degrees below zero, the surrounded, and hugely outnumbered, Marines fought through the enemy forces with ferocity, ingenuity, and nearly unimaginable courage as they marched their way to the sea.
Hampton Sides' superb account of this epic clash relies on years of archival research, unpublished letters, declassified documents, and interviews with scores of Marines and Koreans who survived the siege.
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Presidents of War
by Michael Beschloss
Ten years in the research and writing, Presidents of War is a fresh, magisterial, intimate look at a procession of American leaders as they took the nation into conflict and mobilized their country for victory. It brings us into the room as they make the most difficult decisions that face any President, at times sending hundreds of thousands of American men and women to their deaths.
From James Madison and the War of 1812 to recent times, we see them struggling with Congress, the courts, the press, their own advisors and antiwar protesters; seeking comfort from their spouses, families and friends; and dropping to their knees in prayer. We come to understand how these Presidents were able to withstand the pressures of war—both physically and emotionally—or were broken by them.
Beschloss’s interviews with surviving participants in the drama and his findings in original letters, diaries, once-classified national security documents, and other sources help him to tell this story in a way it has not been told before.
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| The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King --The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea by Walter R. BornemanThe first -- and so far, only -- five star fleet admirals in United States Navy history (Chester Nimitz, William Halsey, William Leahy, and Ernest King) and how their accomplishments during World War II made the U.S. a dominant sea power.
Each commander played a key role in rebuilding the U.S. Naval fleet after the attack on Pearl Harbor and, despite persistent rivalry, all four worked together to destroy the Axis fleets. |
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| Brilliant Beacons: A History of the American Lighthouse by Eric Jay DolinAn engaging history of lighthouses, the "national treasures" that have served as the sites of numerous political, economic, military, and technological developments since the first American lighthouse was built in 1716 in Boston.
Featuring stories of heroic lighthouse keepers, including Ida Lewis (1842-1911), who saved 18 people during her 54-year tenure as keeper of Lime Rock in Newport, Rhode Island. |
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| The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World by Greg GrandinIn 1804, Amasa Delano, a sea captain with abolitionist sympathies, found the slave ship Tryal in distress off the coast of Chile. Discovering that the 70 enslaved West Africans aboard had revolted (killing many of the crew and taking the ship's captain hostage), Delano reacted with swift violence against the mutineers.
Dramatic and thought-provoking, this gripping history examines the disturbing hypocrisy of the newly "free" Colonial America. |
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| Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History by Brian Kilmeade and Don YaegerCovers the beginning of the Barbary Wars, instigated in 1801 when the newly elected President Thomas Jefferson refused to pay ransom to the Barbary States for captured American merchant ships.
Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaegar's lively, suspenseful prose offers a page-turning adventure.
For another accessible history of the First Barbary War, check out The Pirate Coast by Richard Zacks. |
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| The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World by Lincoln PaineAn ambitious expedition along the earth's oceans, lakes, and rivers that illuminates the remarkable ways in which world history has been shaped by waterways.
Topics include how Viking expeditions impacted cultural exchange; the influence of religion on maritime law.
Reviewers say: "an invaluable resource for salty dogs and landlubbers alike" (Publishers Weekly). |
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