By Malcolm X with the assistance of Alex Haley

“This is the absorbing personal story. of the man who rose from hoodlum, thief, dope peddler, and pimp to become the most dynamic leader of the Black Revolution. It is, too, a testament of great emotional power from which every American can learn much: But, above all, this book shows the Malcolm X that very few people knew, the man behind the stereotyped image of the hate-preacher-a sensitive, proud, highly intelligent man whose plan to move into the mainstream of the Negro Revoltition was cut short by a hail of assassins' bullets, a man who felt certain he would not live long enough to see this book…”

NY. Grobe Press. 1964. 482p.

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Mary Gordon

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “…March 14, 1999. The city of Rouen, the province of Normandy, the country of France, the continent of Europe. It is 5 p.M. on an unseasonably warm spring day. People have flung their jackets over their shoulders. They are sitting outside in cafés, reckless from the sunlight, which seems miraculous, unearned, suggestive of improvidence. We are in the marketplace, the place where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. An attempt has been made to make this a viable city center; there is an open space for a market and, next to it, a cathedral. It is one of those good ideas that didn't work; it might have worked had there been a genius to design it, but it was not designed by a genius. The church is in the shape of an overturned boat, and the motif is meant to be nautical: Rouen is a seafaring city. But the idea fails; it provides us only with the always dispiriting spectacle of over- strained originality. The church has the sad, earnest quality of mediocre modern architecture, and we are left with a sense of betrayal, because we think that plainmaterials and an abundance of light ought to equal beauty, and when they don't, not only art, but nature as well, has let us down…”

London. Orion Books. Phoenix. 2000. 187p.

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By Joseph J. Ellis

FROM THE PREFACE: “No Event in American history which was so improbable at the time has seemed so inevitable in retrospect as the American Revolution. On the inevitability side, it is true there were voices back then urging prospective patriots to regard American independence as an early version of manifest destiny. Tom Paine, for example, claimed that it was simply a matter of common sense that an island couldnot rule a continent. And Thomas Jefferson's lyrical rendering of the reasons for the entire revolutionaryenterprise emphasized the self-evident character of the principles at stake. Several other prominent American revolutionaries also talked as if they were actors in a historical drama whose script had already been written by the gods. In his old age, John Adams recalled his youthful intimations of the providential forces at work….”

NY. Vintage. 2002. 307p.

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By Joseph J. Ellis

FROM THE PREFACE: “My own relationship with George Washington began early. I grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, and attended St. Mary's grade school, about eight miles down Mount Vernon Boulevard from the estate where the great man once walked the earth. Because my school was so prox- imate to Mount Vernon, my teachers-all nuns--forced us to make frequent pilgrimages to the historic site where the spirit of America's greatest secular saint resided. Back then the tour was less historically informed than it is now. I don't recall slavery being mentioned at all. I do recall being told that the story of Washington's wooden teeth was a myth--my first encounter with the notion that you could not always trust what you read in history books. I remember this clearly because the high point of the tour was Washington's dentures, which were encased in glass and looked to me like a really gross instrument of torture made of metal and bone. The only other thing I remember is the majestic view of the Potomac from the piazza on the east side of the mansion….”

NY. Vintage. 2005. 354p.

UXED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Joseph J. Ellis

FROM THE PREFACE: “ The idea for this book first came to me while listening to twenty-eight middle school boys recite the Gettysburg Address from memory in front of their classmates and proud parents. My son Scott was teaching science at the Greenwood School in Putney, Vermont, and had invited me to judge the annual oratorical contest. Idon't remember exactly when it happened, but at some point during the strenuous if repetitious effort to get Lincoln's words right, it dawned on me that the first clause in the first sentence of Lincoln's famous speech was historically incorrect. Lincoln began as follows: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this Continent a new Nation." No, not really. In 1776 thirteen American colonies declared themselves independent states that came together temporarily to win the war, then would go their separate ways…”

NY. Vintage. 2016. 305p.

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By David Hackett Fischer.

From the jacket: “In this sweeping, enthralling biography, acclaimed historian David Hackett Fischer brings to life the remarkable Samuel de Champlain-soldier, spy, master mariner, explorer, cartographer, artist, and Father ofNew France. Born on France's Atlantic coast, Champlain grew to manhood in a country riven by religious warfare. The historical record is unclear on whether Champlain was baptized Protestant or Catholic, but he fought in France's religious wars for the man who would become Henri IV, one of France's greatest kings, and like Henri, he was religiously tolerant in an age of murderous sectarianism. Champlain was also a brilliant navigator. He went to sea as a boy and over time acquired the skills that allowed him to make twenty-seven Atlantic crossings without losing a ship. But we remember Champlain mainly as a great explorer. On foot and by ship and canoe, he traveled through what are now six Canadian provinces and five American states. …”

NY. Simon and Schuster. 2008. 857p.

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by Frances Donaldson

FROM THE COVER FLAP: “ He was the Prince of Wales, the king of England, and the Duke of Windsor, yet greatness eluded him all his life. With his wistful good looks and boyish charm he captivated millions, yet privately he could be singularly boorish and insensitive to the feelings of others. Much has been written about this enigmatic man, but until now there has never been a fully researched biography of the entire life of Edward VIII, whose abdication for, in his own words, "the woman I love" has always been the focus of published accounts of him. Why did the handsome, affectionate English boy, the most popular Prince of Wales in history, turn into the embittered, sad-faced man living between Paris and New York-the Duke of Windsor? With unparalleled access to the written and spoken memoirs and letters of those who knew him and his circle intimately, com bined with the sensitivity of the skillful biographer, Lady Donaldson answers that and other difficult questions with objectivity, clarity, humor, and a certain legitimate skepticism.”

NY. J. B. Lippincott Company. 1975.496p.

By Moshe Lewin

FROM THE PREFACE:” The manuscript of this book was completed in February 1987. Naturally, events in the Soviet Union have continued to unfold, and phenomena barely visible in early 1987 are by now routinely covered in the world press. But historians are not in the business of chasing after each day's events, a domain rightly reserved for journalists and commentators. Nonetheless, current events need not be off-limits to scholars. There is a genre, attempted in this book, that can be called "the history of the present." What distinguishes such an account from a mere inventory of episodes and incidents--what makes it history-is that the events are observed as belonging to a process, a continuity that has some direction, passes through stages, and crosses some thresholds….”

Berkeley. University Of California Press. 1988. 186p. USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Robert Hutchinson

FROM THE PROLOGUE: “Early on the morning of Saturday, 10 June 1540, Thomas Howard, Third Duke of Norfolk, summoned Sir Anthony Wingfield, the Captain of the King's Guard, to the Parliament House at Westminster. He ordered him to arrest Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's all powerful Chief Minister, after dinner - then normally served around noon - later that day. The captain was astonished by the instruction, but Norfolk told him bluntly: 'You need not be surprised. The king orders it."

NY. St. Martn’s Press. 2007. 376p. USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Ian Mortimer

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “On 19 October 1330, at dusk, two dozen men gathered in the centre of Nottingham. They were mostly in their twenties, and all on horsback, ready to ride out of the town. But unlike merchants or pilgrims assem- bling to set out together, these men were silent and unsmiling. Beneath their riding cloaks they were all heavily armed. The reason for their gathering lay within the fortress which overlooked the town. Somewhere within those walls, high on the massive outcrop, was Roger Mortimer, the earl of March, who kept the young king, Edward III, within his power and ruled in his place.”

London. Published by Jonathan Cape. 2006. 571p. USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Malcolm Thomson

From Winston Churchill's speech made in the House of Commons on June 4th, 1940: “Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen, or may fall, into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail, we shal go on ot the end, we shal fight in France, we shallfight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and strength in the air, we shall defend our island whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island, or a large part of it, were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle until in God's good time the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and liberation of the Old.”

London. Odhams Press. 1945. 324p. USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP.

By Robin Bunce and Paul Field

 Darcus Howe: a Political Biography examines the struggle for racial justice in Britain, through the lens of one of Britain’s most prominent and controversial black journalists and campaigners. Born in Trinidad during the dying days of British colonialism, Howe became an uncompromising champion of racial justice. The book examines how Howe’s unique political outlook was inspired by the example of his friend and mentor C.L.R. James, and forged in the heat of the American civil rights movement, as well as Trinidad’s Black Power Revolution. The book sheds new light on Howe’s leading role in the defining struggles in Britain against institutional racism in the police, the courts and the media. It focuses on his part as a defendant in the trial of the Mangrove Nine, the high point of Black Power in Britain; his role in conceiving and organizing the Black People’s Day of Action, the largest ever demonstration by the black community in Britain; and his later work as one of a prominent journalist and political commentator.

London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. 305p.

By Harry King . As told to and edited by Bill Chambliss

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “From approximately 1910 until 1960 Harry King lived a life of crime. For the better part ofthose years he was a professional thief specializing in safe-cracking. This is his story. Through it we are provided a glimpse into a life style, a philosophy and a pattern of living that is ordinarily obscured from our vision. By coming to grips with Harry's life we learn a great deal more about America, Law, Order and Being.”

NY. Harper & Row. 1972. 186p. USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Erik H. Erikson

From the cover: Many of the methods of civil disobedience so widely and so sporadically used today have their origin in Mahatma Gandhi’s militant nonviolence. In order to eluci­date the nature of what Gandhi called his Truth in Action, Erikson sets out to retell in great detail a relatively little-known event in Gandhi’s middle years, namely, his assumption of leadership in a strike of textile workers in the city of Ahmedabad in 1918. Erikson explains Gandhi’s method of concentrating on local grievances of high symbolic value as a way of mobi­lizing the Indian masses both spiritually and politically — a method that distin­guished Gandhi from the charismatic fig­ures (Lenin, Wilson) of the post-World War I period…..Erikson counterpoints Freud’s insights into the nature of sexuality (and Gandhi’s disavowal of it) and Gandhi’s insights into the nature of armed violence (and Freud’s fatalism regarding it) and con­cludes that only a combination of these insights might give man some measure of mastery over his fatal alternation of re­pression and excess.

NY. W. W. Norton. 1969. 465p.