"A riveting tale told through personal accounts and sketches along the way - ultimately, a story of success against great odds. I enjoyed it enormously." - Tom Brokaw The Ghost Army of World War II is the first book to tell the full story of how a traveling road show of artists wielding imagination, paint, and bravado saved thousands of American lives - now updated with new material. In the summer of 1944, a handpicked group of young GIs - including such future luminaries such as Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, Arthur Singer, Victor Dowd, Art Kane, and Jack Masey - landed in France to conduct a secret mission. From Normandy to the Rhine, the 1,100 men of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, known as the Ghost Army, conjured up phony convoys, phantom divisions, and make-believe headquarters to fool the enemy about the strength and location of American units. Every move they made was top secret and their story was hushed up for decades after the war's end. Hundreds of color and black-and-white photographs illuminate how their creations supported the war tactics that helped open the way for the final drive to Germany. The stunning art created between missions offers a glimpse of life behind the lines during World War II. Collectors of World War II books will find The Ghost Army of World War II an essential addition to their library.

Did you know about: The ballet that sparked a riot? The rock star who became an astrophysicist? The song that saved Wheaties? The man killed by his own conducting? The controversy behind "Mary Had a Little Lamb"?

Prepare to be astonished, bewildered, and stupefied by the tantalizing tidbits of music history collected here: amazing stories about jazz, classical, country, rock 'n' roll, hip-hop, show tunes, composers, band names, song lyrics, instruments, technology, controversies, and more.

Learn how the FBI spent years trying to decode the lyrics of one rock song. Discover how Watergate provided the inspiration for A Chorus Line. Find out how one megahit was born in a history class, while another was dashed off in a fit of anger at actor Robert De Niro. Meet the monk behind solfege, the aviation pioneer who created Muzak, and the prisoner who literally sang himself out of jail. Then there's the most important person in rock 'n' roll history--chances are you've never heard of him

Continuing the successful Greatest Stories Never Told series, Rick Beyer has delivered another classic volume for history and music buffs alike.

History isn't always made by great armies colliding or by great civilizations rising or falling. Sometimes it's made when a chauffeur takes a wrong turn, a scientist forgets to clean up his lab, or a drunken soldier gets a bit rowdy. That's the kind of history you'll find in The Greatest Stories Never Told.

This is history candy -- the good stuff. Here are 100 tales to astonish, bewilder, and stupefy: more than two thousand years of history filled with courage, cowardice, hope, triumph, sex, intrigue, folly, humor, and ambition. It's a historical delight and a visual feast with hundreds of photographs, drawings, and maps that bring each story to life. A new discovery waits on every page: stories that changed the course of history and stories that affected what you had for breakfast this morning.

Consider:

• The Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock because they ran out of beer
• Some Roman officials were so corrupt that they actually stole time itself
• Three cigars changed the course of the Civil War
• The Scottish kilt was invented by an Englishman

Based on the popular Timelab 2000® history minutes hosted by Sam Waterston on The History Channel®, this collection of fascinating historical tidbits will have you shaking your head in wonder and disbelief. But they're all true. And you'll soon find yourself telling them to your friends.

The day was hot and sticky. The man in the rowboat was an impetuous hothead. His row across the choppy Hudson that morning led to a confrontation that has burned bright in the American mind for more than two hundred years. When the most notorious duel in American history took place, Alexander Hamilton was 49, a former Treasury Secretary whose meteoric political rise had flamed out in the wake of a humiliating sex scandal. Vice President Aaron Burr, was just a year younger than Hamilton, at the top of a meteoric rise of his own in the nation's fledgling government. Though the duel is famous, the fascinating three-decade dance that led to it is far less known. Rivals Unto Death will explore that dance, vividly sketching the key episodes that led to its violent end. It will start with the preliminaries of that fateful morning in 1804, then retrace the rivalry back to the earliest days of the American Revolution, when both men, brilliant, restless, and barely twenty years old, elbowed their way onto the staff of General George Washington. It will follow them as they launch their competitive legal practices in New York City, the new country's bustling commercial center of thirty thousand people, through the insanity of the election of 1800, when Hamilton threw his support behind Thomas Jefferson in an effort to knock Burr out of the running for president, and through countless surprising moments in their past, such as when Burr saved Hamilton from capture and possible death at the hands of the British. Sharply realized and compellingly written, Rivals Unto Death transports readers to the era of Hamilton and Burr and explores how what was once considered the New World ended up being too small for the both of them.