Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Being George Washington: The Indispensable Man as You've Never Seen Him

["Being George Washington: The Indispensable Man as You
IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW GEORGE WASHINGTON THINK AGAIN.

This is the amazing true story of a real-life superhero who wore no cape and possessed no special powers—yet changed the world forever. It’s a story about a man whose life reads as if it were torn from the pages of an action novel: Bullet holes through his clothing. Horses shot out from under him. Unimaginable hardship. Disease. Heroism. Spies and double-agents. And of course the unmistakable hand of Divine Providence that guided it all.

Being George Washington is a whole new way to look at history. You won’t simply read about the awful winter spent at Valley Forge—you’ll live it right alongside Washington. You’ll be on the boat with him crossing the Delaware in the trenches with him at Yorktown and standing next to him at the Constitutional Convention as a new republic is finally born.

Through these stories you’ll not only learn our real history (and how it applies to today) you’ll also see how the media and others have distorted our view of it. It’s ironic that the best-known fact about George Washington—that he chopped down a cherry tree—is a complete lie. It’s even more ironic when you consider that a lie was thought necessary to prove he could not tell one.

For all of his heroism and triumphs Washington’s single greatest accomplishment was the man he created in the process: courageous and principled fair and just respectful to all. But he was also something else: flawed.

It’s those flaws that should give us hope for today. After all if Washington had been perfect then there would be no way to build another one. That’s why this book is not just about being George Washington in 1776 it’s about the struggle to be him every single day of our lives. Understanding the way he turned himself from an uneducated farmer into the Indispensable (yet imperfect) Man is the only way to build a new generation of George Washingtons that can take on the extraordinary challenges that America is once again facing.[]

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Sunday, December 25, 2011

The Art of War

[
If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself you will succumb in every battle....

These are the words of ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu whose now-classic treatise The Art of War was written more than 2500 years ago. Originally a text for victory on the battlefield the book has vastly transcended its original purpose.

Here is a seminal work on the philosophy of successful leadership that is as applicable to contemporary business as it is to war. Today many leading American business schools use the text as required reading for aspiring managers and even Oliver Stone's award-winning film Wall Street cites The Art of War as a guide to those who strive for success.

Now acclaimed novelist James Clavell for whom Sun Tzu's writing has been an inspiration gives us a newly edited Art of War. Author of the best-selling Asian saga consisting of Shogun Tai-Pan Gai-jin King Rat Noble House and Whirlwind Clavell first heard about Sun Tzu in Hong Kong in 1977 and since then The Art Of War has been his constant companion--he refers to it frequently in Noble House. He has taken a 1910 translation of the book and clarified it for the contemporary reader. This new edition of The Art Of War is an extraordinary book made even more relevant by an extraordinary editor.


From the Trade Paperback edition.[]

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Thursday, December 22, 2011

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

[
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great Nicholas and Alexandra and The Romanovs returns with another masterpiece of narrative biography the extraordinary story of an obscure young German princess who traveled to Russia at fourteen and rose to become one of the most remarkable powerful and captivating women in history.

Born into a minor noble family Catherine transformed herself into Empress of Russia by sheer determination. Possessing a brilliant mind and an insatiable curiosity as a young woman she devoured the works of Enlightenment philosophers and when she reached the throne attempted to use their principles to guide her rule of the vast and backward Russian empire. She knew or corresponded with the preeminent historical figures of her time: Voltaire Diderot Frederick the Great Empress Maria Theresa of Austria Marie Antoinette and surprisingly the American naval hero John Paul Jones.

Reaching the throne fired by Enlightenment philosophy and determined to become the embodiment of the “benevolent despot” idealized by Montesquieu she found herself always contending with the deeply ingrained realities of Russian life including serfdom. She persevered and for thirty-four years the government foreign policy cultural development and welfare of the Russian people were in her hands. She dealt with domestic rebellion foreign wars and the tidal wave of political change and violence churned up by the French Revolution that swept across Europe. Her reputation depended entirely on the perspective of the speaker. She was praised by Voltaire as the equal of the greatest of classical philosophers; she was condemned by her enemies mostly foreign as “the Messalina of the north.”

Catherine’s family friends ministers generals lovers and enemies—all are here vividly described. These included her ambitious perpetually scheming mother; her weak bullying husband Peter (who left her lying untouched beside him for nine years after their marriage); her unhappy son and heir Paul; her beloved grandchildren; and her “favorites”—the parade of young men from whom she sought companionship and the recapture of youth as well as sex. Here too is the giant figure of Gregory Potemkin her most significant lover and possible husband with whom she shared a passionate correspondence of love and separation followed by seventeen years of unparalleled mutual achievement.

The story is superbly told. All the special qualities that Robert K. Massie brought to Nicholas and Alexandra and Peter the Great are present here: historical accuracy depth of understanding felicity of style mastery of detail ability to shatter myth and a rare genius for finding and expressing the human drama in extraordinary lives.

History offers few stories richer in drama than that of Catherine the Great. In this book this eternally fascinating woman is returned to life.[]

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin & Selections from His Other Writings (Modern Library)

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Franklin’s Autobiography is one of the most famous works in American literature. He started it as a private collection of anecdotes for his son but soon it was transformed into a work of history both personal and national revealing Franklin as the man who as Herman Melville said possessed “deep worldly wisdom and polished Italian tact gleaming under an air of Arcadian unaffectedness.[]

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Mudbound

[
In Jordan's prize-winning debut prejudice takes many forms both subtle and brutal. It is 1946 and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm—a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan Laura's brother-in-law is everything her husband is not—charming handsome and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion.

The men and women of each family relate their versions of events and we are drawn into their lives as they become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale. As Kingsolver says of Hillary Jordan "Her characters walked straight out of 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy and anger and love reside leaving my heart racing. They are with me still."[]

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Monday, December 19, 2011

Dracula (Modern Library)

[
Of the many admiring reviews Bram Stoker's Dracula received when it first appeared in 1897 the most astute praise came from the author's mother who wrote her son: "It is splendid. No book since Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein or indeed any other at all has come near yours in originality or terror."

A popular bestseller in Victorian England Stoker's hypnotic tale of the bloodthirsty Count Dracula whose nocturnal atrocities are symbolic of an evil ages old yet forever new endures as the quintessential story of suspense and horror. The unbridled lusts and desires the diabolical cravings that Stoker dramatized with such mythical force render Dracula resonant and unsettling a century later.[]

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