Western Wars

It was early afternoon on October 26, 1881. In the mining town of Tombstone, Arizona, the well-armed lawmen Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp, along with their friend Doc Holliday, wore long, dark coats as they strode to an alley near the O.K. Corral. Here, the four of them found five cattle rustlers who had threatened them repeatedly. The unarmed Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne were allowed to leave. The remaining three, Billy Clanton, and Frank and Tom McLaury, were shot dead while Virgil, Morgan, and Doc Holliday were all injured. In the following months, the feud continued. Virgil was ...

She found love in the West but no peace. He found forgiveness but no rest. Now a new adversary threatens their future together: a proud Lakota warrior named Crazy Horse. Southern war widow Annabelle is eager to start a new life in a Montana gold rush town with Union cavalryman Josey Angel. But the infamous gunman has one last debt to repay. Then a band of warriors seizes Annabelle in a bloody raid, placing her at the center of the deadliest Indian war America has ever seen. Her captor, Crazy Horse, seeks to kill the white men who have trespassed on his people’s land, even as he’s ...

Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States and commander of the Union forces in the Civil War, tells the story of his life in his own words. In this opening volume, Grant covers his early years, including his time at the U.S. military academy at West Point and his service during the Mexican War under Zachary Taylor. Grant wrote his memoirs in order to rescue his family from debt and they were published as he lay dying of throat cancer. Today, they are an American classic.

Raised by the Shawnee, Jamie Ian MacCallister fought his way to manhood on an odyssey that took him from the Alamo to Colorado to the goldfields of California. Now, the United States is divided against itself—North against South, brother against brother, father against son. With his own sons fighting on opposing sides, MacCallister leads his Confederate Marauders into battle from Georgia to Tennessee, from Bull Run to Shiloh. When the guns of war finally fall silent, a vengeful enemy vows to add another chapter to the bloodstained pages of history.

Why are the best leaders the ones who are most adept at following? What should we expect of those who have the privilege of leading? And what may leaders expect of those who follow them? Drawing upon a military career spanning more than four decades, General Martin Dempsey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, examines the limits of loyalty, the necessity of sensible skepticism, and the value of responsible rebelliousness, and explains why we actually should sweat the small stuff.

Business. Violence. Concerns about profits. Questions of conscience. This is the untold story of the dealings between a US tire giant and Liberia’s Charles Taylor, the man who would become the first head of state convicted of crimes against humanity since the Nazi era.

One night in April 2014, members of the terrorist organization Boko Haram raided the small town of Chibok in northeast Nigeria and abducted 276 young girls from the local boarding school. The event caused massive, international outrage. Using the hashtag "Bring Back Our Girls", politicians, activists, and celebrities from all around the world - among them First Lady Michelle Obama and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai - protested.

History offers few records of war as vivid, haunting, and evocative as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. As enthralling to twenty-first century audiences as it was to those who first encountered the book in 1928, Remarque’s landmark tells the story of a young German volunteer who, with his comrades, moves from idealism to fatalism witnessing the horrors of mass killing and the intimate deaths of friends or the disfiguring survival of young men languishing in field hospitals.

A Southern war widow seeking to reinvent herself in the West. A Union cavalryman haunted by his deeds. Can they survive a thousand-mile journey beset by bandits and warring Sioux to discover a life together? After losing everything in the war, Annabelle sets out with her extended family on a wagon train for the goldfields in Montana. Helping to lead the way is Josey Angel, whose reputation as a notorious killer is belied by a thoughtful manner and wounded soul. A bond grows as they tend to the settlers’ needs—until secrets from Annabelle’s past provoke new dangers and the frontier ...

Lust for Life is Irving Stone's biographical novel about the life of the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh. Largely based on the letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo, the novel details the artist's difficult life, as well as describing the origins of many of his famous paintings, such as The Potato Eaters, Sunflowers, and others.

The untold story of how Russia refined the art and science of targeted assassination abroad—while Western spies watched in horror as their governments failed to guard against the threat. Unflinchingly documenting the growing web of death on British and American soil, Heidi Blake bravely exposes the Kremlin's assassination campaign as part of Putin's ruthless pursuit of global dominance—and reveals why Western governments have failed to stop the bloodshed.

The weeks since Jewel Markess ATerafin has been acclaimed ruler of her House have not been peaceful; four assassination attempts have been made on her life, and one of the most important members of her House Council has been forced to retire, leaving a seat empty at a time when she requires trusted allies. The war in the distant South has ended; the armies, victorious, have returned to Averalaan. During the victory parade of the Kings' armies, the fifth assassination attempt occurs - in full view of the Ten, the Kings, and thousands of spectators.

Missie Pickard is dead. Main street has burned. And the outlaw that pulled the trigger has disappeared into the scorched Arizona desert. The townspeople demand justice. When young miner Miles McLean returns home to find his town in ruins, he wants justice as much as anybody. Miles must find Willy Helm, the murderous bank robber seen fleeing the scene of the crime… Willy Helm. He’ll kill for money and he’ll kill for fun. Nobody has come close enough to collect the bounty on his head. As Miles searches alone in the sweltering desert, he finds himself entangled in bloody Apache wars and ...

In this dramatic account of the 1944-45 winter of war in Bastogne, historian Peter Schrijvers offers the first full story of the German assault on the strategically located town. From the December stampede of American and Panzer divisions racing to reach Bastogne first, through the bloody eight-day siege from land and air, and through three more weeks of unrelenting fighting even after the siege was broken, events at Bastogne hastened the long-awaited end of WWII.

The European continent was devastated in the wake of World War II, and the conflict left the Soviet Union and the United States as uncontested superpowers. This ushered in over 45 years of the Cold War, and a political alignment of Western democracies against the Communist Soviet bloc that produced conflicts pitting allies on each sides fighting, even as the American and Soviet militaries never engaged each other.

The Austro-Hungarian army that marched east and south to confront the Russians and Serbs in the opening campaigns of World War I had a glorious past but a pitiful present. Speaking a mystifying array of languages and lugging outdated weapons, the Austrian troops were hopelessly unprepared for the industrialized warfare that would shortly consume Europe.

The Wild West has made legends out of many men after their deaths, but like Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James was a celebrity during his life. However, while Hickok was (mostly) a lawman, Jesse James was and remains the most famous outlaw of the Wild West, with both his life of crime and his death remaining pop culture fixtures. James and his notorious older brother Frank were Confederate bushwhackers in the lawless region of Missouri during the Civil War.

The Battle of Dunkirk, in May/June 1940, is remembered as a stunning defeat yet a major victory as well. The Nazis had beaten back the Allies and pushed them across France to the northern port of Dunkirk. In the ultimate race against time, more than 300,000 Allied soldiers were daringly evacuated across the Channel. This moment of German aggression was used by Winston Churchill as a call to Franklin Roosevelt to enter the war.

Art looting is commonly recognized as a central feature of Nazi expropriation. After the war, the famed Monuments Men (and women) recovered several hundred thousand pieces from the Germans' makeshift repositories. Well-publicized restitution cases, such as that of Gustav Klimt's luminous painting featured in the film Woman in Gold, illustrate the legacy of Nazi looting in the art world today. But what happened to looted art that was never returned to its rightful owners?

“…I don’t have much patience and my hands are sweaty. I’d hate to shoot you by accident, that would upset me for a day or two, but I could live with it. You couldn’t”“Now there’s no need….”“I won’t say it again mister.” I cocked the hammer on the second barrel.Just when you think the adventure is over, you find it just began. Luke, Joe Ray, and Jack aren’t finished righting wrongs. The Civil War was tearing America apart and renegade Confederate soldiers were wreaking havoc in Texas. The outlaw soldiers made the mistake of thinking Luke was still a boy. He ...