I am a retired professional engineer. I am seventy-seven years old. My first attempt at literary work was translating a Hungarian novel by Wass Albert to English three years ago. It gave me a helpful literary structure and encouraged me to write my own novel, Find a Place to Call Home.

The twenty-four-hour news cycle brings the issues facing America to the forefront every single day. Author Blair Stevens sees parallels between many of these issues and his own life experiences. He offers his unique take on them in "I Made My Choice-Have You?"

A husband, father, and businessman, Stevens discusses several of the most pressing concerns facing Americans today. He explains how working in Mexico City as part of his job shapes his observations on illegal immigration and reveals some possible solutions that America can take to stem the tide.

When Stevens' unwed daughter became pregnant, another hot-button issue-abortion-landed right on Stevens' front doorstep. With warmth and honesty, he shares how the family navigated his daughter's decision to keep the baby and opens up about his views on the right to life. In addition, Stevens discusses other important topics including drug abuse, teen suicide, education, and racism, all within the prism of his experiences.

Down-to-earth and engaging, "I Made My Choice-Have You?" seeks to help you look at today's current events in a different light.

Harry Rosenberg grew up near the hottest place on Earth-Death Valley-in a very unusual dwelling: a red caboose. His father repaired bridges for the Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad, which hauled ore from remote mines. During the Depression, the Rosenbergs traveled from washout to washout across a fiery land prone, paradoxically, to devastating floods of the Amargosa and Mojave Rivers. No other place on Earth was better suited to forge a curious boy into a metallurgist who would spend his life unlocking the vast potential of a difficult, new metal-titanium. In Fire and Forge, author Kathleen L. Housley tells Rosenberg's life story-working as a miner, having a chance meeting with a geologist studying Death Valley, earning a PhD from Stanford, gaining patents for aerospace alloys, and founding a company that manufactures the purest titanium in the world. This biography captures the essence of a man whose work as a metallurgist left an impact on the world, but it also communicates Rosenberg's love for his roots. No matter how far he traveled, no matter the number of his successes, he never really left the Mojave Desert and the Amargosa River-it still flows through his veins.

Boxes full of money in the trunk of the car, suitcases filled with fresh twenty-dollar bills, assassination plots against President John F. Kennedy and against his brother Bobby, then Attorney General of the United States, deals with the New Orleans mob, arms deals with Fidel Castro, fake passports and Mexican IDs, contracts on the lives of any who dared to oppose, violence against companies that refused to cooperate with union organizers, secret testimony against union boss Jimmy Hoffa, criminal indictments, trials, convictions and imprisonment ... these are all part of the story told by Douglas Wesley Partin, younger brother of Edward Grady Partin, ruthless boss of Teamsters Local #5 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for thirty years. Doug witnessed it all from the shadow of his older brother, and then he stepped in, succeeded his brother as principal officer of Teamsters Local #5, cleaned it up and led it for many more years. This is a story for the ages.

Adventurer, army officer, eccentric, humorist, practical joker and rake, George Hanger served as equerry to the Prince of Wales in the late eighteenth century and, as a member of the Prince's fast set, actively participated for over a decade in the dissolute life to which the coterie was accustomed. In doing so he added appreciably to his already notorious reputation. Eventually, says his obituary, "as the Prince advanced in life, the eccentric manners of the Colonel became somewhat too free and coarse for the royal taste" and he was dismissed. A rollicking account of his life, this work also includes his service as a British officer during the American Revolutionary War.

The Laird of Rideau Hall explores the life and times of Thomas Mackay, the chief founder of Bytown/Ottawa. Born and raised in Perth, Scotland, Mackay and his family emigrated to Montreal in 1817. Partnering with fellow mason John Redpath, he built the locks of the first Lachine Canal, did military construction work at Fort Lennox and St. Helen's Island, and supplied stone for Montreal's Notre Dame Basilica. Engaged by Colonel By of the Royal Engineers to build the Ottawa and Hartwell Locks of the Rideau Canal, Mackay used his profits to found the village of New Edinburgh and build a mill complex at Rideau Falls, as well as the residence his daughter named Rideau Hall. With his hefty canal profits-paid in Spanish silver pieces of eight-Mackay was a major financier of the Ottawa and Prescott Railway, and chief promoter of Ottawa as the capital of Canada. He served as Colonel of the Russell and Carleton militias, was MLA for Russell for seven years, and a member of the Legislative Council of Canada for fifteen. After Mackay's death in 1855, his son-in-law and estate manager Thomas Keefer sold Rideau Hall to the government to serve as a residence for Canada's Governor General. Keefer also developed a tract of land owned by the estate into the village of Rockcliffe Park, today home to over 70 diplomatic residences. Published in English.

"Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly's story is a reminder "of the power of true grit, the patience needed to navigate unimaginable obstacles, and the transcendence of love. Their arrival in the world spotlight came under the worst of circumstances. On January 8, 2011, while meeting with her constituents in Tucson, Arizona, Gabby was the victim of an assassination attempt that left six people dead and thirteen wounded. Gabby was shot in the head; doctors called her survival "miraculous."
As the nation grieved and sought to understand the attack, Gabby remained in private, focused on her againstall- odds recovery. Intimate, inspiring, and unforgettably moving, "Gabby "provides an unflinching look at the overwhelming challenges of brain injury, the painstaking process of learning to communicate again, and the responsibilities that fall to a loving spouse who wants the best possible treatment for his wife. Told in Mark's voice and from Gabby's heart, the book also chronicles the lives that brought these two extraordinary people together--their humor, their ambitions, their sense of duty, their longdistance marriage, and their desire for family.
A new, moving final chapter brings Gabby's story up to date, including the state of her health and her announcement that she would leave the House of Representatives.

The crack shots with the bucktails on their caps
This the first hand account of a young Pennsylvanian soldier who joined the Union Army to fight the Confederacy during the American Civil War. He originally joined the 11th Pennsylvania Infantry and campaigned with it until the Battle of the Wilderness when it became untenable as a unit and was merged with the renowned Pennsylvanian Bucktails-a unit principally made up of sharpshooter backwoodsmen who wore the famous bucktail upon their caps as a sign of their skill as hunters and marksmen. Together they formed the 190th Pennsylvania and became part of the Third Brigade, Third Division of the Fifth Army Corps. In honour of the their new comrades, who had become the largest part of the regiment, the 190th adopted the bucktail as their own insignia. McBride takes us on campaign with the 190th and its sister regiment the 191st. Much of McBride's experience was as a skirmisher where he found the battlefield of independent action both terrifying and liberating, so his is a different view-of the Union infantryman at war removed from the formality of the battle line. An excellent first hand account of these well regarded and distinctive troops, this will be a welcome addition to the library of any American Civil War enthusiast.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

Lionel Youst and William R. Seaburg recount the compelling life story of Coquelle Thompson, an Upper Coquille Athabaskan Indian little known except by the Siletz Reservation community and a handful of visiting academics. Thompson's life spanned nearly a century, from 1849 to 1946. During his lifetime, he worked along the Oregon coast as farmer, hunting/fishing guide, teamster, tribal policeman, and, perhaps most importantly, he served as an expert witness on Upper Coquille and reservation life and culture for anthropologists.

While captain of the tribal police, Thompson was assigned to investigate the Warm House Dance, the Siletz Indian Reservation version of the famous Ghost Dance, which had spread among the Indians of many tribes during the latter 1800s. Thompson became a proselytizer for the Warm House Dance, helping to carry its message and performance from Siletz along the Oregon coast as far south as Coos Bay.

Thompson lived through the conclusion of the Rogue River Indian War of 1855-56 and his tribe's subsequent removal from southern Oregon to the Siletz Reservation. During his lifetime, the Siletz Reservation went from one million acres to seventy-seven individual allotments and four sections of tribal timber. The reservation was legislated out of existence less than a decade after he died.

Youst and Seaburg also examine the works of six anthropologists who interviewed Thompson over the years: J. Owen Dorsey, Cora Du Bois, Philip Drucker, Elizabeth Derr Jacobs, Jack Marr, and John Peabody Harrington.

The recollections of a horse soldier in blue
Willard Glazier kept a detailed journal of his time as an officer in the 2nd New York Cavalry during the American Civil War, making immediate notes about his experiences in camp, around the campfire and even during lulls in the fighting. It was that carefully kept resource that is the basis of the two volumes included in this special Leonaur edition of Glazier's memoirs. In the first book he tells of his time on campaign with the Army of the Potomac in Virginia and describes many interesting scenes of action in cavalry skirmishes or full battle and camp life. The second volume continues Glazier's story to the pivotal conflict at Gettysburg and beyond. Shortly after an engagement with Confederate forces at Culpepper Courthouse and Liberty Mills, the good fortune that had seen him safely through the war up to that point abandoned him. In an ambush at Buckland's Mills in 1863, his horse was shot from under him and he was knocked senseless and trampled in an enemy charge. The action was a notable victory for Confederate forces under J. E. B Stuart commanding Wade Hampton's cavalry division and Fitzhugh Lee's division; Union forces under Judson Kilpatrick were routed in a debacle which became known as the Buckland Races. Glazier regained consciousness in Confederate hands as a prisoner of war. He spent nearly a year in prison camps and made a daring bid for freedom which is recorded here in detail.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

Told with humor, intrigue, and a shrewd eye for detail, this riveting short biography sheds much-needed light on the life of nineteenth-century Russian icon Grigory Rasputin.
Grigory Rasputin, a Siberian peasant turned mystic and court sage, was as fascinating as he was unfathomable. He played the role of the simple man, eating with his fingers and boasting, "I don't even know the ABC." But, as the only person able to relieve the symptoms of hemophilia in the Tsar's heir Alexei, he gained almost hallowed status within the Imperial court.
During the last decade of his life, Rasputin and his band of "little ladies" came to symbolize all that was decadent, corrupt, and remote about the Imperial Family, especially when it was rumored that he was not only shaping Russian policy during the First World War, but also enjoying an intimate relationship with the Empress...
Rasputin's role in the downfall of the tsarist regime is beyond dispute. But who was he really? Prophet or rascal? A "breath of rank air...who blew away the cobwebs of the Imperial Palace," as Beryl Bainbridge put it, or a dangerous deviant?
Writing for historical aficionados and curious readers alike, Frances Welch turns her inimitable wry gaze on one of the great mysteries of Russian history.