Wednesday, June 2, 2021

iTunes Store: Top 25 Books in History 2021-06-02

Bob Joseph - 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality artwork 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality
Bob Joseph
Genre: Americas
Price: $9.99
Publish Date: April 10, 2018
Publisher: Bob Joseph
Seller: Smashwords, Inc.

Since its creation in 1876, the Indian Act has dictated and constrained the lives and opportunities of Indigenous Peoples, and is at the root of many enduring stereotypes. Bob Joseph’s book comes at a key time in the reconciliation process, when awareness from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities is at a crescendo. Joseph examines how Indigenous Peoples can return to self-government, self-determination, and self-reliance—and why doing so would result in a better country for every Canadian. He dissects the complex issues around the Indian Act, and demonstrates why learning about its cruel and irrevocable legacy is vital for the country to move toward true reconciliation. * * * * * * * Bob Joseph, founder of Indigenous Corporate Training Inc., has provided training on Indigenous relations since 1994. As a certified Master Trainer, Bob has assisted both individuals and organizations in building Indigenous relations. His Canadian clients include all levels of government, Fortune 500 companies, financial institutions, including the World Bank, small and medium-sized corporate enterprises, and Indigenous Peoples. He has worked internationally for clients in the United States, Guatemala, Peru, and New Caledonia in the South Pacific. Bob Joseph is an Indigenous person, or more specifically a status Indian, and is a member of the Gwawaenuk Nation. The Gwawaenuk is one of the many Kwakwaka’wakw tribes located between Comox and Port Hardy on Vancouver Island and the adjacent mainland of British Columbia. He comes from a proud potlatch family and is an initiated member of the Hamatsa Society. As the son of a hereditary chief, he will one day, in accordance with strict cultural laws, become a hereditary chief. * * * * * * * Advance praise: “I have a deep hope for Canada that there can be reconciliation. I want every Canadian to imagine a Canada in which every person will live with dignity, value, and purpose. But to do that, there must be reflection on our shared history and the harmful periods and events that continue to haunt us as a nation. Understanding the Indian Act is fundamental to understanding why those harmful periods and events took place. Bob Joseph’s book is an invaluable tool for Canadians who want to understand the past in order to contribute to reconciliation in our country.” --Chief Dr. Robert Joseph, O.B.C., Ambassador, Reconciliation Canada “From declaring cultural ceremonies illegal, to prohibiting pool hall owners from granting Indigenous Peoples entrance, from forbidding the speaking of Indigenous languages, to the devastating policy that created residential schools, Bob Joseph reveals the hold this paternalistic act, with its roots in the 1800s, still has on the lives of Indigenous Peoples in Canada in the twenty-first century. This straightforward book is an invaluable resource. There is much for non-Indigenous people to learn and to do. But equally important, there is much to unlearn and to undo. The time is right for this book. Thank you, Bob Joseph. Gilakas’la.” --Shelagh Rogers, O.C., Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada “Increasing Canadians' knowledge about the terrible foundation this country has been built on is a critical part of reconciliation. Bob Joseph has highlighted some of the unbelievable provisions of the Indian Act and how they have impacted First Nations in Canada, and gives a brief overview of what we may replace it with going forward. His book provides helpful context to the dialogue that needs to take place in Canada.” --Kim Baird, O.C., O.B.C.; Owner, Kim Baird Strategic Consulting; Member of the Tsawwassen First Nation



Malcolm Gladwell - The Bomber Mafia artwork The Bomber Mafia
A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
Malcolm Gladwell
Genre: Military
Price: $18.99
Publish Date: April 27, 2021
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Seller: Hachette Digital, Inc.

An exploration of how technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war A  New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice In The Bomber Mafia , Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.   Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the “Bomber Mafia,” asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal?     In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion. In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, “Was it worth it?”   Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.



John S. Milloy - A National Crime artwork A National Crime
The Canadian Government and the Residential School System
John S. Milloy
Genre: History
Price: $24.99
Publish Date: March 29, 2017
Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
Seller: eBOUND Canada

“I am going to tell you how we are treated. I am always hungry.” — Edward B., a student at Onion Lake School (1923) "[I]f I were appointed by the Dominion Government for the express purpose of spreading tuberculosis, there is nothing finer in existance that the average Indian residential school.” — N. Walker, Indian Affairs Superintendent (1948) For over 100 years, thousands of Aboriginal children passed through the Canadian residential school system. Begun in the 1870s, it was intended, in the words of government officials, to bring these children into the “circle of civilization,” the results, however, were far different. More often, the schools provided an inferior education in an atmosphere of neglect, disease, and often abuse. Using previously unreleased government documents, historian John S. Milloy provides a full picture of the history and reality of the residential school system. He begins by tracing the ideological roots of the system, and follows the paper trail of internal memoranda, reports from field inspectors, and letters of complaint. In the early decades, the system grew without planning or restraint. Despite numerous critical commissions and reports, it persisted into the 1970s, when it transformed itself into a social welfare system without improving conditions for its thousands of wards. A National Crime shows that the residential system was chronically underfunded and often mismanaged, and documents in detail and how this affected the health, education, and well-being of entire generations of Aboriginal children.



Edna Fernandes - The Last Jews of Kerala artwork The Last Jews of Kerala
The Two Thousand Year History of India's Forgotten Jewish Community
Edna Fernandes
Genre: History
Price: $1.99
Publish Date: June 01, 2008
Publisher: Skyhorse
Seller: Simon & Schuster Canada

Two thousand years ago, trade routes and the fall of Jerusalem took Jewish settlers seeking sanctuary across Europe and Asia. One little-known group settled in Kerala, in tropical southwestern India. Eventually numbering in the thousands, with eight synagogues, they prospered. Some came to possess vast estates and plantations, and many enjoyed economic privilege and political influence. Their comfortable lives, however, were haunted by a feud between the Black Jews of Ernakulam and the White Jews of Mattancherry. Separated by a narrow stretch of swamp and the color of their skin, they locked in a rancorous feud for centuries, divided by racism and claims and counterclaims over who arrived first in their adopted land. Today, this once-illustrious people is in its dying days. Centuries of interbreeding and a latter-day Exodus from Kerala after Israel's creation in 1948 have shrunk the population. The Black and White Jews combined now number less than fifty, and only one synagogue remains. On the threshold of extinction, the two remaining Jewish communities of Kerala have come to realize that their destiny, and their undoing, is the same. The Last Jews of Kerala narrates the rise and fall of the Black Jews and the White Jews over the centuries and within the context of the grand history of the Jewish people. It is the story of the twilight days of a people whose community will, within the next generation, cease to exist. Yet it is also a rich tale of weddings and funerals, of loyalty to family and fierce individualism, of desperation and hope.



Scott Woolley - The Network artwork The Network
The Battle for the Airwaves and the Birth of the Communications Age
Scott Woolley
Genre: United States
Price: $11.99
Publish Date: April 26, 2016
Publisher: Ecco
Seller: Harper Collins Canada Limited

The astonishing story of America’s airwaves, the two friends—one a media mogul, the other a famous inventor—who made them available to us, and the government which figured out how to put a price on air. This is the origin story of the airwaves—the foundational technology of the communications age—as told through the forty-year friendship of an entrepreneurial industrialist and a brilliant inventor. David Sarnoff, the head of RCA and equal parts Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, and William Randolph Hearst, was the greatest supporter of his friend Edwin Armstrong, developer of the first amplifier, the modern radio transmitter, and FM radio. Sarnoff was convinced that Armstrong’s inventions had the power to change the way societies communicated with each other forever. He would become a visionary captain of the media industry, even predicting the advent of the Internet. In the mid-1930s, however, when Armstrong suspected Sarnoff of orchestrating a cadre of government officials to seize control of the FM airwaves, he committed suicide. Sarnoff had a very different view of who his friend’s enemies were. Many corrupt politicians and corporations saw in Armstrong’s inventions the opportunity to commodify our most ubiquitous natural resource—the air. This early alliance between high tech and business set the precedent for countless legal and industrial battles over broadband and licensing bandwidth, many of which continue to influence policy and debate today.



Truth and Reconcilation Commission of Canada - Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume One: Summary artwork Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume One: Summary
Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future
Truth and Reconcilation Commission of Canada
Genre: Americas
Price: $8.99
Publish Date: July 22, 2015
Publisher: James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Publishers
Seller: eBOUND Canada

This is the Final Report of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its six-year investigation of the residential school system for Aboriginal youth and the legacy of these schools. This report, the summary volume, includes the history of residential schools, the legacy of that school system, and the full text of the Commission's 94 recommendations for action to address that legacy. This report lays bare a part of Canada's history that until recently was little-known to most non-Aboriginal Canadians. The Commission discusses the logic of the colonization of Canada's territories, and why and how policy and practice developed to end the existence of distinct societies of Aboriginal peoples. Using brief excerpts from the powerful testimony heard from Survivors, this report documents the residential school system which forced children into institutions where they were forbidden to speak their language, required to discard their clothing in favour of institutional wear, given inadequate food, housed in inferior and fire-prone buildings, required to work when they should have been studying, and subjected to emotional, psychological and often physical abuse. In this setting, cruel punishments were all too common, as was sexual abuse. More than 30,000 Survivors have been compensated financially by the Government of Canada for their experiences in residential schools, but the legacy of this experience is ongoing today. This report explains the links to high rates of Aboriginal children being taken from their families, abuse of drugs and alcohol, and high rates of suicide. The report documents the drastic decline in the presence of Aboriginal languages, even as Survivors and others work to maintain their distinctive cultures, traditions, and governance. The report offers 94 calls to action on the part of governments, churches, public institutions and non-Aboriginal Canadians as a path to meaningful reconciliation of Canada today with Aboriginal citizens. Even though the historical experience of residential schools constituted an act of cultural genocide by Canadian government authorities, the United Nation's declaration of the rights of aboriginal peoples and the specific recommendations of the Commission offer a path to move from apology for these events to true reconciliation that can be embraced by all Canadians.



Noa Tishby - Israel artwork Israel
A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth
Noa Tishby
Genre: Middle East
Price: $17.99
Publish Date: April 06, 2021
Publisher: Free Press
Seller: Simon & Schuster Canada

“This is not your Bubbie’s history book.” —Bill Maher, host of Real Time with Bill Maher ​ “A fascinating—and very moving—book that should be read by anyone for whom Israel is a mystery.” —Aaron Sorkin, award-winning screenwriter of The West Wing and The Social Network A personal, spirited, and concise chronological timeline spanning from Biblical times to today that explores one of the most fascinating countries in the world—Israel. Israel. The small strip of arid land is 5,700 miles away but remains a hot button issue and a thorny topic of debate. But while everyone seems to have a strong opinion about Israel, how many people actually know the facts? Here to fill in the information gap is Israeli American Noa Tishby. Offering a fresh, 360-degree view, Tishby brings her straight-shooting, engaging, and slightly irreverent voice to the subject, creating an accessible and dynamic portrait of a tiny country of outsized relevance. Through bite-sized chunks of history and deeply personal stories, Tishby chronicles her homeland’s evolution, beginning in Biblical times and moving forward to cover everything from WWI to Israel’s creation to the real disputes dividing the country today. Tackling popular misconceptions with an abundance facts, Tishby provides critical context around headline-generating controversies and offers a clear, intimate account of the richly cultured country of Israel.



Yuval Noah Harari - Sapiens artwork Sapiens
A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari
Genre: History
Price: $16.99
Publish Date: October 28, 2014
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

NATIONAL BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Destined to become a modern classic in the vein of Guns, Germs, and Steel , Sapiens is a lively, groundbreaking history of humankind told from a unique perspective.      100,000 years ago, at least six species of human inhabited the earth. Today there is just one.      Us. Homo Sapiens .      How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations, and human rights; to trust money, books, and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables, and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?      In Sapiens , Dr. Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical -- and sometimes devastating -- breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural, and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, palaeontology, and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come?      Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power...and our future.



Jean Panneton - La politique québécoise: élections, scandales et réformes. 1950-1990 artwork La politique québécoise: élections, scandales et réformes. 1950-1990
Aujourd'hui l'histoire avec Jean-Charles Panneton
Jean Panneton
Genre: Americas
Price: $6.99
Publish Date: April 13, 2021
Publisher: Éditions du Septentrion
Seller: Diffusion Dimedia Inc.

Préface de Marc Laurendeau Comment Georges-Émile Lapalme a-t-il influencé le Parti libéral du Québec? Qui était réellement Pierre Laporte? Quels sont les secrets de la popularité de Robert Bourassa? Que s'est-il passé dans les coulisses du pouvoir lors de la nationalisation de l'électricité et de la fondation de la réforme de l'assurance automobile? Dans ce livre, Jean-Charles Panneton retrace des événements marquants de l'histoire contemporaine du Québec ainsi que le parcours de personnages qui ont considérablement influencé la politique québécoise. • Georges-Émile Lapalme et la Révolution tranquille • René Lévesque et la nationalisation de l'électricité • L'ascension au pouvoir de Robert Bourassa • Le journaliste et politicien Pierre Laporte • La réforme de l'assurance automobile • La protection des terres agricoles • Le référendum de 1980 • Le retour de Bourassa en politique en 1985



Dan Abrams & David Fisher - Kennedy's Avenger artwork Kennedy's Avenger
Assassination, Conspiracy, and the Forgotten Trial of Jack Ruby
Dan Abrams & David Fisher
Genre: United States
Price: $19.99
Publish Date: June 01, 2021
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Seller: Harlequin Enterprises Limited

New York Times bestselling authors Dan Abrams and David Fisher bring to life the incredible story of one of America’s most publicized—and most surprising—criminal trials in history. No crime in history had more eyewitnesses. On November 24, 1963, two days after the killing of President Kennedy, a troubled nightclub owner named Jack Ruby quietly slipped into the Dallas police station and assassinated the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Millions of Americans witnessed the killing on live television, and yet the event would lead to questions for years to come. It also would help to spark the conspiracy theories that have continued to resonate today. Under the long shadow cast by the assassination of America’s beloved president, few would remember the bizarre trial that followed three months later in Dallas, Texas. How exactly does one defend a man who was seen pulling the trigger in front of millions? And, more important, how did Jack Ruby, who fired point-blank into Oswald live on television, die an innocent man? Featuring a colorful cast of characters, including the nation’s most flamboyant lawyer pitted against a tough-as-Texas prosecutor, award-winning authors Dan Abrams and David Fisher unveil the astonishing details behind the first major trial of the television century. While it was Jack Ruby who appeared before the jury, it was also the city of Dallas and the American legal system being judged by the world.



Harold Evans & Phyllis Goldstein - A Convenient Hatred artwork A Convenient Hatred
The History of Antisemitism
Harold Evans & Phyllis Goldstein
Genre: History
Price: $18.99
Publish Date: December 06, 2011
Publisher: Facing History and Ourselves
Seller: Chicago Review Press, Inc. DBA Independent Publishers Group

A Convenient Hatred chronicles a very particular hatred through powerful stories that allow readers to see themselves in the tarnished mirror of history. It raises important questions about the consequences of our assumptions and beliefs and the ways we, as individuals and as members of a society, make distinctions between us and them, right and wrong, good and evil. These questions are both universal and particular.



Jean-Pierre Charland & Sabrina Moisan - L'histoire du Québec en 30 secondes artwork L'histoire du Québec en 30 secondes
Jean-Pierre Charland & Sabrina Moisan
Genre: History
Price: $16.99
Publish Date: April 07, 2021
Publisher: Éditions Hurtubise
Seller: De Marque, Inc.

La Conquête fut-elle une «heureuse calamité» ou une catastrophe? Quel a été le rôle des femmes dans la construction de la colonie? Et quel rôle a joué le FLQ sur le développement du mouvement national? La question «Quelle histoire faut-il apprendre?» n’est pas simple. Doit-on écrire l’unique récit de l’aventure historique des Québécois? Mais que faire de l’histoire des Amérindiens, des Noirs en Nouvelle-France et de tous les autres membres de cette société qui ne se reconnaissent pas dans le peuple canadien-français? Faut-il alors présenter l’histoire des différents groupes composant la société ou simplement se borner aux limites territoriales? Par des textes brefs rédigés dans un langage accessible, les deux auteurs relèvent le défi et livrent une extraordinaire synthèse du Québec à travers 55 événements importants de son histoire, depuis les premiers occupants avant même l’implantation de la colonie jusqu’aux accommodements raisonnables, en passant par la Nouvelle-France, les Patriotes, l’Expo 67, la Loi 101 et les référendums. L’ouvrage nous livre également le portrait de 8 personnalités importantes, plus ou moins connues, qui ont marqué l’histoire du pays. Le tout est magnifiquement illustré avec une iconographie vintage spectaculaire.



Benson Bobrick - Testament artwork Testament
A Soldier's Story of the Civil War
Benson Bobrick
Genre: United States
Price: $16.99
Publish Date: June 30, 2008
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Seller: Simon & Schuster Canada

The story of the author's great-grandfather's Civil War experience, based on a remarkable set of newly discoverd letters—a powerful, moving addition to the firsthand soldiers' accounts of the Civil War. Dear Mother, I was very glad to hear from home this morning. It is the first time since I left Otterville. We marched from Sedalia 120 miles....I almost feel anxious to be in a battle & yet I am almost afraid. I feel very brave sometimes & think if I should be in an engagement, I never would leave the field alive unless the stars & stripes floated triumphant. I do not know how it may be. If there is a battle & I should fall, tell with pride & not with grief that I fell in defense of liberty. Pray that I may be a true soldier. Not since Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage have the trials and tribulations of a private soldier of the Civil War been told with such beguiling force. The Red Badge of Courage, however, was fiction. This story is true. In Testament, Benson Bobrick draws upon an extraordinarily rich but hitherto untapped archive of material to create a continuous narrative of how that war was fought and lived. Here is virtually the whole theater of conflict in the West, from its beginnings in Missouri, through Kentucky and Tennessee, to the siege of Atlanta under Sherman, as experienced by Bobrick's great-grandfather, Benjamin W. ("Webb") Baker, an articulate young Illinois recruit. Born and raised not far from the Lincoln homestead in Coles County, Webb had stood in the audience of one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, become a staunch Unionist, and answered one of Abraham Lincoln's first calls for volunteers. The ninety-odd letters on which his story is based are fully equal to the best letters the war produced, especially by a common soldier; but their wry intelligence, fortitude, and patriotic fervor also set them apart with a singular and still-undying voice. In the end, that voice blends with the author's own, as the book becomes a poignant tribute to his great-grandfather's life -- and to all the common soldiers of the nation's bloodiest war.



Edward Dolnick - The Rescue Artist artwork The Rescue Artist
A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece
Edward Dolnick
Genre: History
Price: $11.99
Publish Date: November 16, 2010
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Seller: Harper Collins Canada Limited

In the predawn hours of a gloomy February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo and made off with one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's Scream. It was a brazen crime committed while the whole world was watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police turned to the one man they believed could help: a half English, half American undercover cop named Charley Hill, the world's greatest art detective. The Rescue Artist is a rollicking narrative that carries readers deep inside the art underworld -- and introduces them to a large and colorful cast of titled aristocrats, intrepid investigators, and thick-necked thugs. But most compelling of all is Charley Hill himself, a complicated mix of brilliance, foolhardiness, and charm whose hunt for a purloined treasure would either cap an illustrious career or be the fiasco that would haunt him forever.



Susan Williams - The People's King artwork The People's King
The True Story of the Abdication
Susan Williams
Genre: Europe
Price: $15.99
Publish Date: August 28, 2003
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Seller: Penguin Books Limited

In this candid and moving account Susan Williams tells the story of what really happened to King Edward, drawing on diaries, secret documents and thousands of letters sent to Edward by the public to re-create the tragic events that led to his abdication. She reveals a hugely popular, deeply loved monarch, one whose modern ideas and sympathy for the poor so unsettled the establishment that his devotion to Wallis Simpson provided the perfect excuse to force him off the throne.



Mitchell Zuckoff - Lost in Shangri-La artwork Lost in Shangri-La
A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II
Mitchell Zuckoff
Genre: Military
Price: $11.99
Publish Date: April 26, 2011
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Seller: Harper Collins Canada Limited

A New York Times bestseller and the winner of the Winship/PEN New England Award, Lost in Shangri-La is “a truly incredible adventure” ( New York Times Book Review ) about three brave survivors of a WWII plane crash in the jungle.   On May 13, 1945, twenty-four American servicemen and WACs boarded a transport plane for a sightseeing trip over “Shangri-La,” a beautiful and mysterious valley deep within the jungle-covered mountains of Dutch New Guinea. Unlike the peaceful Tibetan monks of James Hilton’s bestselling novel Lost Horizon , this Shangri-La was home to spear-carrying tribesmen, warriors rumored to be cannibals.   But the pleasure tour became an unforgettable battle for survival when the plane crashed. Miraculously, three passengers pulled through. Margaret Hastings, barefoot and burned, had no choice but to wear her dead best friend’s shoes. John McCollom, grieving the death of his twin brother also aboard the plane, masked his grief with stoicism. Kenneth Decker, too, was severely burned and suffered a gaping head wound.   Emotionally devastated, badly injured, and vulnerable to the hidden dangers of the jungle, the trio faced certain death unless they left the crash site. Caught between man-eating headhunters and enemy Japanese, the wounded passengers endured a harrowing hike down the mountainside—a journey into the unknown that would lead them straight into a primitive tribe of superstitious natives who had never before seen a white man—or woman.   Drawn from interviews, declassified U.S. Army documents, personal photos and mementos, a survivor’s diary, a rescuer’s journal, and original film footage, Lost in Shangri-La recounts this incredible true-life adventure for the first time. Mitchell Zuckoff reveals how the determined trio—dehydrated, sick, and in pain—traversed the dense jungle to find help; how a brave band of paratroopers risked their own lives to save the survivors; and how a cowboy colonel attempted a previously untested rescue mission to get them out. By trekking into the New Guinea jungle, visiting remote villages, and rediscovering the crash site, Zuckoff also captures the contemporary natives’ remembrances of the long-ago day when strange creatures fell from the sky. A riveting work of narrative nonfiction that vividly brings to life an odyssey at times terrifying, enlightening, and comic, Lost in Shangri-La is a thrill ride from beginning to end.   This ebook also includes an excerpt from Mitchell Zuckoff’s New York Times bestseller Frozen in Time .   About the Author: Mitchell Zuckoff is a professor of journalism at Boston University. He is the author of Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II , Robert Altman: An Oral Biography , Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend , J udgment Ridge: The True Story of the Dartmouth Murders , with Dick Lehr, Choosing Naia: A Family's Journey , and 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi . He was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting, and the winner of numerous national awards as a reporter for The Boston Globe . He lives outside Boston.



Selma van de Perre - My Name Is Selma artwork My Name Is Selma
The Remarkable Memoir of a Jewish Resistance Fighter and Ravensbrück Survivor
Selma van de Perre
Genre: History
Price: $17.99
Publish Date: May 11, 2021
Publisher: Scribner
Seller: Simon & Schuster Canada

An international bestseller, this powerful memoir by a ninety-eight-year-old Jewish Resistance fighter and Ravensbrück concentration camp survivor “shows us how to find hope in hopelessness and light in the darkness” (Edith Eger, author of The Choice and The Gift ). Selma van de Perre was seventeen when World War II began. She lived with her parents, two older brothers, and a younger sister in Amsterdam, and until then, being Jewish in the Netherlands had not presented much of an issue. But by 1941 it had become a matter of life or death. On several occasions, Selma barely avoided being rounded up by the Nazis. While her father was summoned to a work camp and eventually hospitalized in a Dutch transition camp, her mother and sister went into hiding—until they were betrayed in June 1943 and sent to Auschwitz. In an act of defiance and with nowhere else to turn, Selma took on an assumed identity, dyed her hair blond, and joined the Resistance movement, using the pseudonym Margareta van der Kuit. For two years “Marga” risked it all. Using a fake ID, and passing as non-Jewish, she traveled around the country and even to Nazi headquarters in Paris, sharing information and delivering papers—doing, as she later explained, what “had to be done.” But in July 1944 her luck ran out. She was transported to Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp as a political prisoner. Without knowing the fate of her family—her father died in Auschwitz, and her mother and sister were killed in Sobibor—Selma survived by using her alias, pretending to be someone else. It was only after the war ended that she could reclaim her identity and dared to say once again: My name is Selma . “We were ordinary people plunged into extraordinary circumstances,” Selma writes. Full of hope and courage, this is her story in her own words.



Ed Caesar - The Moth and the Mountain artwork The Moth and the Mountain
A True Story of Love, War, and Everest
Ed Caesar
Genre: History
Price: $17.99
Publish Date: November 17, 2020
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Seller: Simon & Schuster Canada

“An outstanding book.” — The Wall Street Journal * “Gripping at every turn.” — Outside * “A gem of a book.” — The Guardian * “A hell of a ride.” — The Times (London) An extraordinary true story about one man’s attempt to salve the wounds of war and save his own soul through an audacious adventure. In the 1930s, as official government expeditions set their sights on conquering Mount Everest, a little-known World War I veteran named Maurice Wilson conceives his own crazy, beautiful plan: he will fly a plane from England to Everest, crash-land on its lower slopes, then become the first person to reach its summit—all utterly alone. Wilson doesn’t know how to climb. He barely knows how to fly. But he has the right plane, the right equipment, and a deep yearning to achieve his goal. In 1933, he takes off from London in a Gipsy Moth biplane with his course set for the highest mountain on earth. Wilson’s eleven-month journey to Everest is wild: full of twists, turns, and daring. Eventually, in disguise, he sneaks into Tibet. His icy ordeal is just beginning. Wilson is one of the Great War’s heroes, but also one of its victims. His hometown of Bradford in northern England is ripped apart by the fighting. So is his family. He barely survives the war himself. Wilson returns from the conflict unable to cope with the sadness that engulfs him. He begins a years-long trek around the world, burning through marriages and relationships, leaving damaged lives in his wake. When he finally returns to England, nearly a decade after he first left, he finds himself falling in love once more—this time with his best friend’s wife—before depression overcomes him again. He emerges from his funk with a crystalline ambition. He wants to be the first man to stand on top of the world. Wilson believes that Everest can redeem him. This is the tale of an adventurer unlike any you have ever encountered: complex, driven, wry, haunted, and fully alive. He is a man written out of the history books—dismissed as an eccentric, and gossiped about because of rumors of his transvestism. The Moth and the Mountain restores Maurice Wilson to his rightful place in the annals of Everest and tells an unforgettable story about the power of the human spirit in the face of adversity.



Benoît Melançon - Les yeux de Maurice Richard artwork Les yeux de Maurice Richard
Benoît Melançon
Genre: History
Price: $9.99
Publish Date: October 01, 2012
Publisher: Groupe Fides
Seller: De Marque, Inc.

Maurice Richard n’est pas mort. Au Québec comme dans le reste du Canada, il est partout. Celui qui ne fut d’abord qu’un joueur de hockey est aujourd’hui un mythe national. Tous ont quelque chose à raconter sur lui. Comment en est-on arrivé là ? Pourquoi ? Le célèbre numéro 9 des Canadiens de Montréal a été l’objet de toutes sortes d’écrits : des articles de périodiques et des textes savants, des biographies et des recueils de souvenirs, des contes et des nouvelles, des romans et des livres pour la jeunesse, des poèmes et des pièces de théâtre. On lui a consacré des chansons, des bandes dessinées, des sculptures, des peintures, des films et des émissions de télévision. Son visage a orné des vêtements, des jouets, des publicités. On a donné son nom à des lieux publics. Pour comprendre l’évolution des représentations de Maurice Richard depuis le début de sa carrière, il fallait une histoire culturelle de celui qu’on a surnommé le Rocket. La voici.



Max Siollun - Soldiers of Fortune artwork Soldiers of Fortune
A History of Nigeria (1983-1993)
Max Siollun
Genre: Africa
Price: $17.99
Publish Date: September 02, 2013
Publisher: Cassava Republic Press
Seller: DIY Media Group DBA BookBaby

Soldiers of Fortune is a fast-paced and thrilling narrative of the major events of the Buhari and Babangida era (1983-1993). Historian Max Siollun gives an intimate, fly-on-the-wall portrait of the major events and dramatis personae of the period. Both gripping and informative, Soldiers of Fortune is a must-read for all Nigerians and Nigeria-watchers.



Raphael Cormack - Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring '20s artwork Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring '20s
Raphael Cormack
Genre: Middle East
Price: $20.99
Publish Date: March 09, 2021
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Seller: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

A vibrant portrait of the talented and entrepreneurial women who defined an era in Cairo. One of the world’s most multicultural cities, twentieth-century Cairo was a magnet for the ambitious and talented. During the 1920s and ’30s, a vibrant music, theater, film, and cabaret scene flourished, defining what it meant to be a “modern” Egyptian. Women came to dominate the Egyptian entertainment industry—as stars of the stage and screen but also as impresarias, entrepreneurs, owners, and promoters of a new and strikingly modern entertainment industry. Raphael Cormack unveils the rich histories of independent, enterprising women like vaudeville star Rose al-Youssef (who launched one of Cairo’s most important newspapers); nightclub singer Mounira al-Mahdiyya (the first woman to lead an Egyptian theater company) and her great rival, Oum Kalthoum (still venerated for her soulful lyrics); and other fabulous female stars of the interwar period, a time marked by excess and unheard-of freedom of expression. Buffeted by crosswinds of colonialism and nationalism, conservatism and liberalism, “religious” and “secular” values, patriarchy and feminism, this new generation of celebrities offered a new vision for women in Egypt and throughout the Middle East.



Thomas King - The Inconvenient Indian artwork The Inconvenient Indian
A Curious Account of Native People in North America
Thomas King
Genre: Americas
Price: $13.99
Publish Date: November 13, 2012
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

WINNER of the 2014 RBC Taylor Prize The Inconvenient Indian is at once a “history” and the complete subversion of a history—in short, a critical and personal meditation that the remarkable Thomas King has conducted over the past 50 years about what it means to be “Indian” in North America.   Rich with dark and light, pain and magic, this book distills the insights gleaned from that meditation, weaving the curiously circular tale of the relationship between non-Natives and Natives in the centuries since the two first encountered each other. In the process, King refashions old stories about historical events and figures, takes a sideways look at film and pop culture, relates his own complex experiences with activism, and articulates a deep and revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands.   This is a book both timeless and timely, burnished with anger but tempered by wit, and ultimately a hard-won offering of hope -- a sometimes inconvenient, but nonetheless indispensable account for all of us, Indian and non-Indian alike, seeking to understand how we might tell a new story for the future.



Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard - Killing the Mob artwork Killing the Mob
The Fight Against Organized Crime in America
Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard
Genre: United States
Price: $14.99
Publish Date: May 04, 2021
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Seller: Macmillan

Instant #1 New York Times , Wall Street Journal , and Publishers Weekly bestseller! In the tenth book in the multimillion-selling Killing series, Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard take on their most controversial subject yet: The Mob. Killing the Mob is the tenth book in Bill O'Reilly's #1 New York Times bestselling series of popular narrative histories, with sales of nearly 18 million copies worldwide, and over 320 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. O’Reilly and co-author Martin Dugard trace the brutal history of 20th Century organized crime in the United States, and expertly plumb the history of this nation’s most notorious serial robbers, conmen, murderers, and especially, mob family bosses. Covering the period from the 1930s to the 1980s, O’Reilly and Dugard trace the prohibition-busting bank robbers of the Depression Era, such as John Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby-Face Nelson. In addition, the authors highlight the creation of the Mafia Commission, the power struggles within the “Five Families,” the growth of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, the mob battles to control Cuba, Las Vegas and Hollywood, as well as the personal war between the U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and legendary Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. O’Reilly and Dugard turn these legendary criminals and their true-life escapades into a read that rivals the most riveting crime novel. With Killing the Mob , their hit series is primed for its greatest success yet.



Graham Hancock - America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization artwork America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Graham Hancock
Genre: Ancient
Price: $19.99
Publish Date: April 02, 2019
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Seller: Hachette Digital, Inc.

***THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER*** 'Hancock's books provide a fascinating, alternative version of prehistory. America Before, detailed and wide-ranging, turns what was myth and legend into a new story of the past.' Daily Mail Was an advanced civilization lost to history in the global cataclysm that ended the last Ice Age? Graham Hancock, the internationally bestselling author, has made it his life's work to find out -- and in America Before, he draws on the latest archaeological and DNA evidence to bring his quest to a stunning conclusion. We've been taught that North and South America were empty of humans until around 13,000 years ago - amongst the last great landmasses on earth to have been settled by our ancestors. But new discoveries have radically reshaped this long-established picture and we know now that the Americas were first peopled more than 130,000 years ago - many tens of thousands of years before human settlements became established elsewhere. Hancock's research takes us on a series of journeys and encounters with the scientists responsible for the recent extraordinary breakthroughs. In the process, from the Mississippi Valley to the Amazon rainforest, he reveals that ancient 'New World' cultures share a legacy of advanced scientific knowledge and sophisticated spiritual beliefs with supposedly unconnected 'Old World' cultures. Have archaeologists focussed for too long only on the 'Old World' in their search for the origins of civilization while failing to consider the revolutionary possibility that those origins might in fact be found in the 'New World'? America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilisation is the culmination of everything that millions of readers have loved in Hancock's body of work over the past decades, namely a mind-dilating exploration of the mysteries of the past, amazing archaeological discoveries and profound implications for how we lead our lives today.



Scott Ellsworth - The Ground Breaking artwork The Ground Breaking
The Tulsa Race Massacre and an American City's Search for Justice
Scott Ellsworth
Genre: History
Price: $12.99
Publish Date: May 20, 2021
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
Seller: Perseus Books, LLC

** Chosen by Oprah Daily as one of the Best Books to Pick Up in May 2021 ** ‘Fast-paced but nuanced … impeccably researched … a much-needed book’ The Guardian '‘[S]o dystopian and apocalyptic that you can hardly believe what you are reading. … But the story [it] tells is an essential one, with just a glimmer of hope in it. Because of the work of Ellsworth and many others, America is finally staring this appalling chapter of its history in the face. It’s not a pretty sight.' Sunday Times A gripping exploration of the worst single incident of racial violence in American history, timed to coincide with its 100th anniversary. On 31 May 1921, in the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a mob of white men and women reduced a prosperous African American community, known as Black Wall Street, to rubble, leaving countless dead and unaccounted for, and thousands of homes and businesses destroyed. But along with the bodies, they buried the secrets of the crime. Scott Ellsworth, a native of Tulsa, became determined to unearth the secrets of his home town. Now, nearly 40 years after his first major historical account of the massacre, Ellsworth returns to the city in search of answers. Along with a prominent African American forensic archaeologist whose family survived the riots, Ellsworth has been tasked with locating and exhuming the mass graves and identifying the victims for the first time. But the investigation is not simply to find graves or bodies – it is a reckoning with one of the darkest chapters of American history. ‘[A] riveting, painful-to-read account of a mass crime that, to our everlasting shame … has avoided justice. Ellsworth’s book presents us with a clear history of the Tulsa massacre and with that rendering, a chance for atonement … Readers of this book will fervently hope we take that opportunity.’ Washington Post