Since the 1789 charter of the country's first state university, Chapel Hill has attracted people from all over who found that the village was the perfect place to put down roots. In this collection, local newspaper columnist Valarie Schwartz celebrates many of Chapel Hill's most notable residents, from the World War II veteran who came to law school after the war and ended up as president of the UNC system for thirty years to the couple from the Midwest who arrived in 1935 and spent their careers building the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra. Featuring stories of struggle and success from all walks of life, "Remembering Chapel Hill" is a tribute to the twentieth-century citizens who made the town what it is today: 'the Southern part of heaven.'

John Ashcroft's service as Attorney General began with turmoil: a loss to a deceased challenger in his Senate reelection campaign and a tumultuous confirmation battle. Then, on September 11, 2001, his job was transformed into the greatest leadership challenge an Attorney General has ever faced. What Ashcroft learned from highly classified intelligence briefings, secret surveillance of terror cells, and war councils with President Bush gave him a uniquely comprehensive--and uniquely chilling--view of the threats to America's security. What he did to prevent another terrorist attack on American soil is hotly debated to this day. In NEVER AGAIN, Ashcroft breaks his silence about historic events that transpired during his term of office--including the largest terrorist attack in U.S. history, the enactment and defense of the USA Patriot Act, the Robert Hanssen spy scandal, the execution of Timothy McVeigh, and the recently discovered domestic surveillance program authorized by President Bush. In this provocative book, readers will meet the man behind the title and hear his take on the dangers to and within America from outside forces, and what he did to repair the serious breaches in our country's security. A fascinating, probing look at what Ashcroft believes will make America ultimately safe.

The Sins of the Father is the definitive new biography of Joseph P. Kennedy. Based on extensive research and interviews with Kennedy family members and their intimates speaking on the record for the first time, it offers an outstanding personal history - and provides shocking revelations about one of the most influential figures of our time. To the mythmakers of his day, Joseph P. Kennedy, like his glamorous and doomed presidential son Jack, led a charmed existence. He was celebrated as the son of an East Boston saloonkeeper who rose to become one of the richest men in the country. He served as the wartime ambassador to Great Britain, the chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and the chairman of the United States Maritime Commission. He was also a major legitimate liquor distributor, a moviemaker in Hollywood, and a master manipulator of the stock market. Yet his fortune, estimated at $100 million, traced its beginnings to his career as a bootlegger in partnership with organized crime during the Prohibition era. Even more disturbing, he was a documented anti-Semite and an appeaser of Adolf Hitler. The beaming family portraits and admiring newsmagazine prose never portrayed any of his many mistresses - or hinted at his seemingly unlimited corruption and duplicity.

The towering figure who sought to transform America into a "Great Society" but whose ambitions and presidency collapsed in the tragedy of the Vietnam War

Few figures in American history are as compelling and complex as Lyndon Baines Johnson, who established himself as the master of the U.S. Senate in the 1950s and succeeded John F. Kennedy in the White House after Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963.

Charles Peters, a keen observer of Washington politics for more than five decades, tells the story of Johnson's presidency as the tale of an immensely talented politician driven by ambition and desire. As part of the Kennedy-Johnson administration from 1961 to 1968, Peters knew key players, including Johnson's aides, giving him inside knowledge of the legislative wizardry that led to historic triumphs like the Voting Rights Act and the personal insecurities that led to the tragedy of Vietnam.

Peters's experiences have given him unique insight into the poisonous rivalry between Johnson and Robert F. Kennedy, showing how their misunderstanding of each other exacerbated Johnson's self-doubt and led him into the morass of Vietnam, which crippled his presidency and finally drove this larger-than-life man from the office that was his lifelong ambition.

Month by month, Witcover re-creates 1968 as he travels with, and reports on, the political fortunes of Lyndon Johnson, Eugene McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Robert Kennedy, George Romney, and Hubert Humphrey. He conveys the actual words of national figures and commentary by rock artists, media people, economists, Vietnam veterans, and Haight-Ashbury hippies. That year Witcover crossed the country from New Hampshire to California; he was standing on the rioting streets of Washington with Robert Kennedy after King was shot; he was in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel the night Kennedy was gunned down. An eyewitness to history, he presents a unique perspective that captures the mood of a nation and the life of ordinary people as shattering news erupts from assassins' bullets and backroom deals. Witcover broadens our understanding of how that year sowed the seeds of liberalism's demise, the shame of Watergate, Reagan's long reign, and today's new Democratic agenda.

Esteemed journalism historian James Startt has crafted an intriguing case study of the relationship between political leadership and the mass media during its early days, using the political ascendancy of Woodrow Wilson as its focus. Wilson's emergence as a major political figure coincided with the arrival of a real mass media and a more independent, less partisan style of political coverage. While most nineteenth-century presidents remained aloof from the press, Wilson understood it could no longer be ignored: "The public man who fights the daily press won't be a public man very long."

Spartanburg County gave generously and selflessly to World War II. Local men and women participated in almost every significant engagement, in almost every imaginable capacity, and in every branch of service. Distinguishing themselves with bravery, dignity, and loyalty, county veterans received every commendation, including the Medal of Honor. At Pearl Harbor, Carpenter's Mate Wayne Alman Lewis and Seaman Vernon Russell White died on the USS Arizona and Fire Controlman First Class Hubert Paul Clement died on the USS Oklahoma. Such sacrifices continued from December 7, 1941, through 1945. At home, window banners displayed blue stars for each person who served in the military. Many of the stories of these heroes from Spartanburg County have never before been told.

A study of Eisenhower's policies during the second Berlin Crisis. The Soviet Berlin initiative marks an important epoch in the history of the Cold War. In 1958, it plunged the world into a crisis which at times evoked the danger of a global nuclear conflict. The author studies the diplomatic relationships with the American allies and the Soviet Union, together with the Western allies secret military contingency plans. The comparative approach allows the analysis to surmount the traditional barrier between military and diplomatic history and affords insights into the function of political and administrative institutions in the American government's decision-making process.

An intimate portrait of the first president of the 20th century
The American century opened with the election of that quintessentially American adventurer, Theodore Roosevelt. Louis Auchincloss's warm and knowing biography introduces us to the man behind the many myths of Theodore Roosevelt. From his early involvement in the politics of New York City and then New York State, we trace his celebrated military career and finally his ascent to the national political stage. Caricatured through history as the "bull moose," Roosevelt was in fact a man of extraordinary discipline whose refined and literate tastes actually helped spawn his fascination with the rough-and-ready worlds of war and wilderness.
Bringing all his novelist's skills to the task, Auchincloss briskly recounts the significant contributions of Roosevelt's career and administration. This biography is as thorough as it is readable, as clear-eyed as it is touching and personal.

At the height of WWI, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research and now revised to reflect the growing danger of the avian flu, "The Great Influenza" is ultimately a tale of triumph amid tragedy, which provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. John M Barry has written a new afterword for this edition that brings us up to speed on the terrible threat of the avian flu and suggests ways in which we might head off another flu pandemic.

There has been recent controversy in the African American community about youth and their lack of appreciation for the gains of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This stellar biography is a superb introduction to the foremost leader of the civil rights movement. The story and historical context will be eye-opening for students and a good refresher for others who are too young to have remembered the events. In a gripping narrative style, the biography traces the young Martin, the son and grandson of formidable preachers, to his calling as a minister too, but one who would take on the entrenched racism of the South, and North, through a nonviolent movement that changed the course of American history. There has been recent controversy in the African American community about youth and their lack of appreciation for the gains of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This stellar biography is a superb introduction to the foremost leader of the civil rights movement. The story and historical context will be eye-opening for students and a good refresher for others who are too young to have remembered the events. In a gripping narrative style, the biography traces the young Martin, the son and grandson of formidable preachers, to his calling as a minister too, but one who would take on the entrenched racism of the South, and North, through a nonviolent movement that changed the course of American history. King's story is compelling, starting from his early nurtured family life in an insular community of blacks in Atlanta. His education at Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary, and Boston University and courtship of Coretta Scott lead into the early days of the civil rights movement and King's leadership role in the major marches, demonstrations, boycotts, and sit-ins that took place, mainly in the South. Critical insight into the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations is given as King negotiates with the presidents for equal rights for blacks. The violent reactions against and hatred of many whites for those seeking racial justice are still shocking today. Against the backdrop of beatings, killings, bombings, threats, and imprisoning, King is portrayed as driven to lift up all Americans, even if it meant martyrdom.

This is the story of the friendships that defined one of America's most beloved Presidents. Chris Matthews, who has been following and studying the Kennedys most of his life, has interviewed President Kennedy's closest confidants - family, friends, and those who served with him--to create a moving portrait of a man many loved but few really understood. These friends were with Jack Kennedy as he took surprising risks, struggled with chronic illness, and repeatedly confronted "the thin membrane between life and death." As Matthews describes it, Jack Kennedy was a rebel, an adventurer, and a great enjoyer of life precisely because he understood its fragility. Being with Jack Kennedy was great fun for his friends. Now readers will share in that experience.

On the success of his two bestselling books about World War II, James Bradley began to wonder what the real catalyst was for the Pacific War. What he discovered shocked him.
In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Taft, his daughter Alice, and a gaggle of congressmen on a mission to Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea with the intent of forging an agreement to divide up Asia. This clandestine pact lit the fuse that would-decades later-result in a number of devastating wars: WWII, the Korean War, and the communist revolution in China.
In 2005, James Bradley retraced that epic voyage and discovered the remarkable truth about America's vast imperial past. Full of fascinating characters brought brilliantly to life, "The Imperial Cruise" will powerfully revise the way we understand U.S. history.

A history of the Armenian massacres of the 1890s and the genocide of 1915 also traces America's effort to assist the Armenian people, citing the contributions of such figures as Julia Ward Howe, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Mark Twain, and Clara Barton.