Kirjahaku

A fresh new look at the Enlightenment intellectual who became the most controversial of America's founding fathers Despite his being a founder of both the United States and the French Republic, the creator of the phrase "United States of America," and the author of Common Sense, Thomas Paine is the least well known of America's founding fathers. This edifying biography by Craig Nelson traces Paine's path from his years as a London mechanic, through his emergence as the voice of revolutionary fervor on two continents, to his final days in the throes of dementia. By acquainting us as never before with this complex and combative genius, Nelson rescues a giant from obscurity-and gives us a fascinating work of history.

A New York Times Bestseller "Celebrates a bold era when voyaging beyond the Earth was deemed crucial to national security and pride." -The Wall Street Journal Restoring the drama, majesty, and sheer improbability of an American triumph, this is award-winning historian Craig Nelson's definitive and thrilling story of man's first trip to the moon. At 9:32 a.m. on July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 rocket launched in the presence of more than a million spectators who had gathered to witness a truly historic event. Through interviews, 23,000 pages of NASA oral histories, and declassified CIA documents on the space race, Rocket Men presents a vivid narrative of the moon mission, taking readers on the journey to one of the last frontiers of the human imagination.

Craig Nelson has experienced places most people only dream about. He has walked the Great Wall of China; taught New Guinea cannibals how to dance; communed with a sign-language-speaking orangutan in Borneo; gotten into an altercation with the People's Liberation Army in Tiananmen Square; and taken psychoactive pharmaceuticals with a male witch in the depths of the Amazon jungle. In this vastly entertaining, often hilarious, and sometimes poignant book, he shares his global jaunts and haunts with armchair travelers everywhere.

18 April 1942. Sixteen planes take off from a US Navy carrier in the mid-Pacific. A squadron of young, barely trained flyers under a famous daredevil, Jimmy Doolittle, they are America's first retaliation towards Japan since Pearl Harbor. Their mission: to bomb Japan's 's five main cities including Tokyo. Critically compromised by the discovery of the US fleet by Japanese spies, they are not expected to come back.Having successfully delivered their bombs, most of the squadron run out of fuel and are forced to crash land in Japan, China and the Soviet Union. The stories of their journeys home are as heroic as that of the raid itself. Incredibly of the 80 flyers who left the USS ... 90% eventually returned alive to the US. The First Heroes tells the extraordinary story of the daring raid and shows for the first time the real story of what was to be the turning point in the war against Japan.

On 20 July 1969, man set foot on the moon. Motivated by politics, faith, science and wonder, the Apollo 11 mission was the greatest technical achievement of all time. It was the culmination of over a decade's worth of money and effort from more than 400,000 staff and crew.Rocket Men follows the astounding story of the lunar project, beginning at its inception at the start of the Cold War and tracing it through to its finest hour with the first moon landing and the astronauts' safe return. Through extensive interviews with astronauts, NASA staff and their families and never-before published documents, Craig Nelson presents an awe-inspiring human account of the voyage that changed the course of history. He takes us behind the scenes at Mission Control to describe every detail of the mission, from the astronauts' moon excursion suits, which had five hundred parts and weighed no less than fifty pounds, to terrifying revelations, such as how Armstrong and Aldrin could have been left stranded on the moon when a vital switch snapped on the landing craft.Rocket Men is the inside story of one of the most perilous and rewarding undertakings in history.

"A valuable reexamination" (Booklist, starred review) of the event that changed twentieth-century America--Pearl Harbor--based on years of research and new information uncovered by a New York Times bestselling author.The America we live in today was born, not on July 4, 1776, but on December 7, 1941, when an armada of 354 Japanese warplanes supported by aircraft carriers, destroyers, and midget submarines suddenly and savagely attacked the United States, killing 2,403 men--and forced America's entry into World War II. Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness follows the sailors, soldiers, pilots, diplomats, admirals, generals, emperor, and president as they engineer, fight, and react to this stunningly dramatic moment in world history. Beginning in 1914, bestselling author Craig Nelson maps the road to war, when Franklin D. Roosevelt, then the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, attended the laying of the keel of the USS Arizona at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Writing with vivid intimacy, Nelson traces Japan's leaders as they lurch into ultranationalist fascism, which culminates in their scheme to terrify America with one of the boldest attacks ever waged. Within seconds, the country would never be the same. Backed by a research team's five years of work, as well as Nelson's thorough re-examination of the original evidence assembled by federal investigators, this page-turning and definitive work "weaves archival research, interviews, and personal experiences from both sides into a blow-by-blow narrative of destruction liberally sprinkled with individual heroism, bizarre escapes, and equally bizarre tragedies" (Kirkus Reviews). Nelson delivers all the terror, chaos, violence, tragedy, and heroism of the attack in stunning detail, and offers surprising conclusions about the tragedy's unforeseen and resonant consequences that linger even today.

On 7 December 1941, an armada of 354 Japanese warplanes launched a surprise attack on the United States, killing 2,403 people and forcing America's entry into the Second World War. With vivid prose and astonishing detail, Craig Nelson combines thrilling historical drama with individual concerns and experiences, following an ensemble of sailors, soldiers, pilots, diplomats, admirals, generals, the emperor and the president.Unmatched in breadth and depth, Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness in a portrait of the terror, chaos, violence and tragedy of the attack that would prove to be a turning point of the war.

Pulp and Papermakers Fiction is a wild ride back to Australian Manufacturing in the 1980's. So hop into my 1977 LX SS Torana Hatchback and hold on as I introduce you to the Larrikins that made this crazy place so much fun. You will ride the highs and lows of my work as a Papermaking Shiftworker and discover a world that is gone forever. The ride starts with me navigating the potholes of my youth, then onto life as a young Industrial Tyre fitter on the Melbourne Wharves, before being catapulted into the crazy world of a Papermaker. Fortunately I come out the other side sane and intact, but the journey is one that I will never forget.So buckle up for a totally different story that is lightly informative but dominantly comical, due to its amazing cast of Pulp and Papermaking Aussie Larrikins

Pulp and Papermakers Fiction is a wild ride back to Australian Manufacturing in the 1980's. So hop into my 1977 LX SS Torana Hatchback and hold on as I introduce you to the Larrikins that made this crazy place so much fun. You will ride the highs and lows of my work as a Papermaking Shiftworker and discover a world that is gone forever.The ride starts with me navigating the potholes of my youth, then onto life as a young Industrial Tyre fitter on the Melbourne Wharves, before being catapulted into the crazy world of a Papermaker. Fortunately I come out the other side sane and intact, but the journey is one that I will never forget.So buckle up for a totally different story that is lightly informative but dominantly comical, due to its amazing cast of Pulp and Papermaking Aussie Larrikins

Pulp and Papermakers Fiction is a wild ride back to Australian Manufacturing in the 1980's. So hop into my 1977 LX SS Torana Hatchback and hold on as I introduce you to the Larrikins that made this crazy place so much fun. You will ride the highs and lows of my work as a Papermaking Shiftworker and discover a world that is gone forever. The ride starts with me navigating the potholes of my youth, then onto life as a young Industrial Tyre fitter on the Melbourne Wharves, before being catapulted into the crazy world of a Papermaker. Fortunately I come out the other side sane and intact, but the journey is one that I will never forget.So buckle up for a totally different story that is lightly informative but dominantly comical, due to its amazing cast of Pulp and Papermaking Aussie Larrikins

"Belongs in the library alongside the histories and biographies of Martin Gilbert, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and David McCullough." --Doug Stanton, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Horse Soldiers In this epic and definitive history of the American home front during World War II, New York Times bestselling historian Craig Nelson reveals how FDR won the support of a nation antagonistic to war in Europe and pushed both government and industry to build "the arsenal of democracy"--the secret weapon that won the war. In 1938, the United States was so politically isolationist and pacifist that its defense forces were smaller than Portugal's. That same year, Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered the federal government to spark a dramatic expansion in domestic airplane production, and this minor effort--three years before the attack on Pearl Harbor--would in time become what Roosevelt called "the arsenal of democracy," the full-throttle unleashing of American enterprise and ingenuity that was the secret weapon for victory in World War II. Signaled by Roosevelt's public fight with Lindbergh--known as the Great Debate--victory at land, sea, and air across the globe began at home. In this "richly detailed, highly readable account of presidential leadership in perilous times" (New York Journal of Books), Craig Nelson traces how under FDR, the United States rose from poverty and solitude to defeat the greatest evils of the 20th century. By transforming what Americans thought they could achieve, FDR's efforts ended the Great Depression; conquered the fascists of Germany, Italy, and Japan; birthed America's middle-class affluence and consumer society; led to jet engines, computers, radar, the military-industrial complex, Big Science, and nuclear weapons; triggered a global economic boom; and turned the U.S. military into a worldwide titan--with America the undisputed leader of world affairs. While the arsenal of democracy has come to mean this miracle of American industry, when Roosevelt said it, he meant the miracle of the American people. Revealing an era when Detroit was Silicon Valley; Ford was Apple; and Sears, Roebuck was Amazon, while filled with reflections on our own time, V Is for Victory draws on five years of research to create a powerful and essential narrative largely overlooked in conventional histories of the war but which, in Nelson's skilled, authoritative hands, becomes an illuminating and important work destined to become an American history classic.