Rev. D. Thomas Ford, Jr.

Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the man make the times or do the times make the man? In Leadership, Goodwin draws upon four of the presidents she has studied most closely - Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson (in civil rights) - to show how they first recognized leadership qualities within themselves, and were recognized by others as leaders.

Teddy Roosevelt became a war hero, reformed the NYPD, busted the largest railroad and oil trusts, passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, created national parks and forests, won the Nobel Peace Prize, and built the Panama Canal - to name just a few. Yet it was the cause he championed the hardest - America's entry into WWI - that would ultimately divide and destroy him. His youngest son, Quentin, his favorite, would die in an air fight.

Leonardo da Vinci created the two most famous paintings in history, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. But in his own mind, he was just as much a man of science and engineering. With a passion that sometimes became obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry.

The first book of D Day Through German Eyes has fascinated listeners around the world with its insight into the German experience of June 6, 1944. Now, book 2 contains a completely different set of astonishing German testimonies from the same archive. These newly translated eyewitness statements by German veterans show the defenders to be determined but psychologically insecure, often deluded in their thinking, and all too human in their shock at the onslaught they faced.

From one of our finest military historians comes a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences. Remarkably informed and wide-ranging, Inferno is both elegantly written and cogently argued. Above all, it is a new and essential understanding of one of the greatest and bloodiest events of the 20th century.