united states

How do you weigh a panda? Or check a sea lion's tooth? Or figure out why a llama is limping? These are just some of the many tasks veterinarians, technicians, and animal keepers at the Smithsonian s National Zoo are trained in. With full-color photos and lively, accessible text, this new title looks at the very busy to do list of zoo workers as they take care of their creatures large and small.

Uses contemporary documents to explore the development of the Cold War struggle, the consequences in the 1950s and 1960s, and the lasting effects on American social and cultural patterns.

A nearly four hundred-year-old Japanese white pine bonsai tree tells the story of its life, from its birth on the island of Miyajima through generations of love and training by the men of the Yamaki family in Hiroshima, Japan, to its current location in the United States National Arboretum, a gift to the United States from Japan and the Yamaki family. Based on a true story.

"... an intimate insider's portrait of how and why the Iraq adventure failed and contains a unique analysis of the course of the war. Highlighting how nothing that happened in Iraq after 2003 was inevitable, ... exposes the failures of the policies of both Republicans and Democrats, and the lessons that must be learned about the limitations of power."--Dust jacket.

Explores the historical event in 1803 in which Napoleon offered to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States, and then asks the reader if they would buy the territory.

In 2013, Americans learned that a former FBI agent turned private investigator, who disappeared in Iran in 2007, had been there on a mission for the CIA. Robert Levinson's mission was secret and the hunt to rescue him revealed the shadowlands between crime, business, espionage, and the law, where secrets are currency and betrayal is commonplace.

The story of political prisoners finally freed in December 2014, after being held captive by the United States since the late 1990s. Anti-Castro groups based in Florida carried out hundreds of military attacks on Cuba through the 1980s and 1990s, bombing hotels and shooting up Cuban beaches with machine guns. The Cuban government struck back with the Wasp Network--a dozen men and two women--sent to infiltrate those organizations. The Last Soldiers of the Cold War tells the story of those unlikely Cuban spies and their eventual unmasking and prosecution by U.S. authorities. Five of the Cubans received long or life prison terms on charges of espionage and murder.

Military contractor Carter Andress was the ultimate boots-on-the-ground "civilian" in Iraq. His company employed 10,000 Iraqis to haul supplies everywhere. He and his company played a vital role in rallying Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds to unite behind the Government of Iraq's fight against al-Qaeda. The United States won the war in Iraq, only to see the peace lost by the Obama administration's unwillingness to negotiate a new "Status of Forces Agreement". The consequence of this is that ISIS, the Syria-based terrorist group, could enter Iraq with a terrorist army.

In 1841, rescued by an American whaler after a terrible shipwreck leaves him and his four companions castaways on a remote island, fourteen-year-old Manjiro, who dreams of becoming a samurai, learns new laws and customs as he becomes the first Japanese person to set foot in the United States.