biography

Explores the life of John Paul Stapp, hailed by "Time" magazine as "the Fastest Man on Earth" after his 1954 experiment to test how fast a human being could go on land--turns out, over six hundred miles an hour--and also how quickly he could come to a complete stop--just over a second.

Biography of Margaret Thatcher focusing on her years as Prime Minister of Great Britain, beginning with her landslide election in 1983 up through the attempt made on her life by the IRA and beyond to the legacy she left behind in working with American President Ronald Reagan and the U.S.S.R.'s Mikhail Gorbachev.

"Walter Stahr, award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller Seward, tells the story of Abraham Lincoln's indispensable Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, the man the president entrusted with raising the army that preserved the Union. Of the crucial men close to President Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (1814-1869) was the most powerful and controversial. Stanton raised, armed, and supervised the army of a million men who won the Civil War. He organized the war effort. He directed military movements from his telegraph office, where Lincoln literally hung out with him. He arrested and imprisoned thousands for "war crimes," such as resisting the draft or calling for an armistice. Stanton was so controversial that some accused him at that time of complicity in Lincoln's assassination. He was a stubborn genius who was both reviled and revered in his time. Stanton was a Democrat before the war and a prominent trial lawyer. He opposed slavery, but only in private. He served briefly as President Buchanan's Attorney General and then as Lincoln's aggressive Secretary of War. On the night of April 14, 1865, Stanton rushed to Lincoln's deathbed and took over the government since Secretary of State William Seward had been critically wounded the same evening. He informed the nation of the President's death, summoned General Grant to protect the Capitol, and started collecting the evidence from those who had been with the Lincolns at the theater in order to prepare a murder trial. Now with this worthy complement to the enduring library of biographical accounts of those who helped Lincoln preserve the Union, Stanton honors the indispensable partner of the sixteenth president. Walter Stahr's essential book is the first major biography of Stanton in fifty years, restoring this underexplored figure to his proper place in American history"--.

Tells the inspiring story of Sergeant Mike Dowling and his bomb-snifing dog, Rex, as they navigated the always-dangerous Triangle of Death region in Iraq in 2004.

Donald Stratton was a Seaman First Class on the USS Arizona on December 7, 1941 and shares his life story including his tale of survival.

Examines the life of female World War II pilot Gertrude "Tommy" Tompkins, the only one of thirty-eight confirmed or presumed dead "WASPs," female pilots serving to transport planes across the country so they could be shipped out to either the Pacific or European theaters of the war, whose body is still unfound. Tracks Gertrude's life from her early struggles with a stutter and the social shame that came with it, her marriage to a pilot that ended with his death in Holland, her decision to become a pilot, and her last-known location.

Explores the life of Dan Emmett and his experience in the U.S. Secret Service serving for both Bush presidents and Bill Clinton.

Presents the true story of former slave and United States Congressman Robert Smalls. In 1862, twenty-three-year-old Robert Smalls captured a heavily-armed Confederate steamer and delivered it to Union soldiers. Smalls was granted his freedom for this act, and through his bravery in numerous naval campaigns as a civilian he became the first black captain of an army ship, and eventually a United States Congressman.

Provides profiles of sixty nine of the best professional football players today arranged by position.