'The gripping memoir of a remarkable woman who rose to the top in a man's world. A compelling political story of courage and struggle, power and leadership, war and crisis - and the making of Israel. A classic of 20th century history' Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of JERUSALEM: THE BIOGRAPHY 'A remarkable, almost incredible personal history ... stimulating and fascinating' IRISH TIMES 'A rare and wholly unforgettable work' SATURDAY REVIEW WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY JULIA NEUBERGER Golda Meir was without doubt one of the most incredible women of her - and any - time. Born in 1898 in Kyiv, she was the daughter of an impoverished carpenter - and became the first (and only) female Prime Minister of Israel. Meir's earliest memory is of her father boarding up the front door in response to rumours of an imminent pogrom. The family emigrated to the US and for a while Meir lived with her sister, where she was exposed to debates on Zionism, women's suffrage, literature and socialism. She became a teacher, and after her marriage emigrated again to Palestine, settling on a kibbutz. Always politically active, she became Israel's first envoy to Moscow; was promoted to Foreign Minister and ultimately elected as Prime Minister, leader of Israel. In her autobiography she wrote: 'To me, being Jewish means and has always meant being proud to be part of a people that has maintained its distinct identity for more than 2,000 years, with all the pain and torment that has been inflicted upon it'

They were the Tiger FACs, the forward air controllers who flew fast-moving F-4E Phantoms over the deadly skies of Laos and North Vietnam in an air war that history forgot to mention. These are their stories, in their own words, of missions in AAA-filled skies with supersonic angels as their wingmen. They challenged the enemy down in the weeds, eyeball-to-eyeball; cutting the supply lines that plunged through the mountains and karst formations of Laos on their way to South Vietnam. The mission required flying sorties up to six hours long with four to six air-to-air refuelings. It demanded extraordinary teamwork and bravery, and this small group of men paid the price, suffering up to eighty percent of the combat damage of a seventy-two aircraft wing. Their stories are often irreverent and far from today's political correctness, yet they are filled with the reality of war. "The Tiger FACs" will take you back to experience the days and nights of these fighter crews at Korat Air Base in Thailand. It is a recantation of the life and times of the men who chose to fly and fight, and while you won't experience battle damage, you will feel what they lived, and know, without doubt, that you are on their wing.

The battlefield reputation of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, long recognized as a formidable warrior, has been shaped by one infamous wartime incident. At Fort Pillow in 1864, the attack by Confederate forces under Forrest's command left many of the Tennessee Unionists and black soldiers garrisoned there dead in a confrontation widely labeled as a "massacre." In "The River Was Dyed with Blood," best-selling Forrest biographer Brian Steel Wills argues that although atrocities did occur after the fall of the fort, Forrest did not order or intend a systematic execution of its defenders. Rather, the general's great failing was losing control of his troops.

A prewar slave trader and owner, Forrest was a controversial figure throughout his lifetime. Because the attack on Fort Pillow--which, as Forrest wrote, left the nearby waters "dyed with blood"--occurred in an election year, Republicans used him as a convenient Confederate scapegoat to marshal support for the war. After the war he also became closely associated with the spread of the Ku Klux Klan. Consequently, the man himself, and the truth about Fort Pillow, has remained buried beneath myths, legends, popular depictions, and disputes about the events themselves.

Wills sets what took place at Fort Pillow in the context of other wartime excesses from the American Revolution to World War II and Vietnam, as well as the cultural transformations brought on by the Civil War. Confederates viewed black Union soldiers as the embodiment of slave rebellion and reacted accordingly. Nevertheless, Wills concludes that the engagement was neither a massacre carried out deliberately by Forrest, as charged by a congressional committee, nor solely a northern fabrication meant to discredit him and the Confederate States of America, as pro-Southern apologists have suggested. The battle-scarred fighter with his homespun aphorisms was neither an infallible warrior nor a heartless butcher, but a product of his time and his heritage.

SIMON BOLI VAR --El Libertador--freed six countries from Spanish rule and is still the most revered figure in South America today. He traveled from Amazon jungles to the Andes mountains, engaged in endless battles and forged fragile coalitions of competing forces and races. He lived an epic life filled with heroism, tragedy (his only wife died young), and legend (he was saved from an assassination attempt by one of his mistresses). In Bolivar, Marie Arana has written a sweeping biography that is as bold and as passionate as its subject.
Drawing on a wealth of primary documents, Arana vividly captures the early nineteenth-century South America that made Bolivar the man he became: fearless general, brilliant strategist, consummate diplomat, dedicated abolitionist, gifted writer, and flawed politician. A major work of history, Bolivar not only portrays a dramatic life in all its glory, but is also a stirring declaration of what it means to be South American.

Growing up in Poland in the 1930s, Rita Braun had many hopes and dreams for the future. When she was nine years old, however, World War II touched her once-idyllic life, transforming paradise on earth into an indescribable hell. In Fragments of my Life, Braun tells her story--from her birth in 1930 to living in Brazil today, where she works to ensure no one forgets the more than six million Jewish people who lost their lives during the Holocaust.

Including many photos, Fragments of my Life provides firsthand insight into the horrors of the war. As a nine-year old on her school vacation, Braun watched as military aircraft streaked across the skies above her parents' farm. She never imagined they would leave behind much more than a trail of smoke. This memoir details what she experienced as a Jewish girl trying to stay alive during World War II. Braun describes watching the selection process and deportation of friends and family, living under both Russian and German rule, using a fake identity, surviving in a gated and guarded ghetto, escaping and hiding for her life, and witnessing the many tragedies of war.

Candid and detailed, Fragments of my Life chronicles one survivor's experiences from a woman of the final generation who can say, "I lived through the Holocaust."