The relationship between Abraham Lincoln and his two most influential ancestors, his mother and "the Virginia planter," a slaveholder, a shadowy grandfather he likely never met, is rarely mentioned in Lincoln biographies or in history texts. However, Lincoln, forever linked to the cause of freedom and equality in America, spoke candidly of the planter to his law partner, Billy Herndon, who recalled his words, "My mother inherited his qualities and I hers. All that I am or ever hope to be I get from my mother-God bless her." This vital two-generation relationship was nonetheless problematic. In Lincoln's boyhood the planter was a figure he ridiculed while in his young manhood the planter evolved into a role model whom Lincoln revered and associated with Jefferson's overdue ideal that "all men are created equal." Thus galvanized "by blood" to educate himself, to stand for election and to oppose slavery, Lincoln quit farming at age 22. This book explains how he thus followed an inherited family dream.

Called "The Poet Laureate of Radio" by critics, Norman Corwin was the top writer at CBS when CBS reigned supreme in radio, and when radio itself dominated public attention. This biography tells the story of Norman's unlikely rise from a triple-decker tenement on Bremen Street in East Boston to the top rung of radio writers during the Golden Age of Radio. A self-taught writer who never graduated from high school, he learned what audiences craved, and he gave it to them. His nuanced "theater of the mind" dramas, tender love stories, and witty comedies were hits talked about long after they were broadcast, and, when his scripts were published, became bestsellers. The week after Pearl Harbor, Norman's show "We Hold These Truths" was broadcast to the largest radio audience ever. His V-E Day broadcast on May 8, 1945, "On a Note of Triumph," made a similarly enduring mark and still constitutes the gold standard for wartime drama.

In February, 1898, an explosion lit up the Havana night sky as the battleship Maine sank, killing over two hundred men and raising immediate suspicions of Spanish sabotage. The explosion and the famous later battle cry, "Remember the Maine " both obscure the fact that it was not a bomb on a battleship but a speech in the United States Senate that triggered the all-volunteer War of 1898.

In this book, Wayne Soini first tracks doughty Senator Redfield Proctor's eventful life, then follows Proctor's spur-of-the-moment trip to Havana after the Maine sank, a trip that turned into a far more extensive tour of Cuba and incidentally of the world's first concentration camps. Moved by what he saw to dedicate himself to relieving the reconcentrados, Proctor delivered his most important address on March 17, 1898. On that day, after several unplanned and unexpected encounters, Proctor stood before his colleagues and the country's press as an eyewitness to mass suffering and two-hundred-thousand civilian deaths. Stirred by Proctor's unemotional but honest report of a Caribbean Holocaust, Americans joined ranks for the first major American humanitarian military intervention overseas.

The Cuban Speech follows history's winding and twisting path as the United States went to war in early 1898 behind a Vermont Yankee of few words.

In February, 1898, an explosion lit up the Havana night sky as the battleship Maine sank, killing over two hundred men and raising immediate suspicions of Spanish sabotage. The explosion and the famous later battle cry, "Remember the Maine " both obscure the fact that it was not a bomb on a battleship but a speech in the United States Senate that triggered the all-volunteer War of 1898.

In this book, Wayne Soini first tracks doughty Senator Redfield Proctor's eventful life, then follows Proctor's spur-of-the-moment trip to Havana after the Maine sank, a trip that turned into a far more extensive tour of Cuba and incidentally of the world's first concentration camps. Moved by what he saw to dedicate himself to relieving the reconcentrados, Proctor delivered his most important address on March 17, 1898. On that day, after several unplanned and unexpected encounters, Proctor stood before his colleagues and the country's press as an eyewitness to mass suffering and two-hundred-thousand civilian deaths. Stirred by Proctor's unemotional but honest report of a Caribbean Holocaust, Americans joined ranks for the first major American humanitarian military intervention overseas.

The Cuban Speech follows history's winding and twisting path as the United States went to war in early 1898 behind a Vermont Yankee of few words.