"FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS brings readers into the lives of the six young men--boys, really--who marched up the side of Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima & raised a flag. That moment, captured for all time in an iconic photograph, is only a part of their stories; author Bradley reveals what each man's life was before, & after, that moment. Teenagers when the war struck, each soldier's odyssey is recounted, & the whole is a stunningly powerful tribute...

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro...

"For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant. It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University...

When an eighty-two-year-old rabbi from Albom's old hometown asks him to deliver his eulogy, Albom goes back to his nonfiction roots and becomes involved with a Detroit pastor--a reformed drug dealer and convict--who preaches to the poor and homeless in a decaying church with a hole in its roof. A timely, moving, and inspiring look at faith: not just who believes, but why.

"From the New York Times bestselling authors of The First Conspiracy and The Lincoln Conspiracy, The Nazi Conspiracy tells the little-known true story of a Nazi plot to kill FDR, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill at the height of the second World War. In 1943, as the war against Nazi Germany raged abroad, President Franklin Roosevelt wanted one thing: a face-to-face meeting with his allies Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. This meeting of the...

Drawing on numerous interviews and never-before-revealed documents, acclaimed biographer Sally Bedell Smith pulls back the curtain to show in intimate detail the public and private lives of Queen Elizabeth II, who has led her country and Commonwealth through the wars and upheavals of the last sixty years with unparalleled composure, intelligence, and grace.

In 1819, the 238-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, the unthinkable happened: in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, the Essex was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, decided instead to sail their three tiny boats for the distant South American coast. They would eventually travel over 4,500 miles. The next three months...

A collection of essays in which Nora Ephron shares her thoughts on middle-age and being a woman.

This work presents a meticulously researched biography of Jesus that draws on biblical and historical sources to place his achievements and influence against the turbulent backdrop of his time. Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, the author sheds new light on one of history's most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus Christ through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived: first-century Palestine, an age awash in apocalyptic...

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made of flesh rather than marble. In this authoritative and engrossing full-scale biography, Walter Isaacson shows how the most fascinating of America's founders helped national character. In a sweeping narrative that follows Franklin's life from Boston to Philadelphia, to London and Paris and back, Isaacson chronicles the adventures of the spunky runaway apprentice who became,...