By Andrew Marble General John Shalikashvili [shalli-kash-VEE-lee] served from 1993 to 1997 as Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. His thick European accent made people wonder about his heritage. Descended from a line of Tsarist Russian princes and born in Poland in 1936, he and his family had come to the United States […]
By S. C. Gwynne C. Gwynne tells the story of the final year of the American Civil War in Hymns of the Republic. From the first chapter, “The End Begins,” which puts the reader in the nation’s capital city at the beginning of 1864, he allows the reader to feel and understand events as they […]
By Rita Dragonette The Fourteenth of September is the debut novel of public relations executive Rita Dragonette, who recalls her personal experiences of fifty years ago in telling the story. She draws an excellent picture of the turmoil on college campuses as antiwar sentiment increased in 1969. The book opens with protagonist Judy Talton, a […]
By Catherine Whitlock & Rhodri Evans The remarkable scientists profiled in 10 Women Who Changed Science and The World include both famous and obscure, some rewarded with the Nobel Prize and others ignored. The authors, Dr. Catherine Whitlock and Dr. Rhodri Evans, who both hold PhDs, bring us ten minibiographies as a small sampling of […]
By Randy Travis with Ken Abraham Randy Travis, singer, songwriter, and Country Music Hall of Fame member, worked for ten years to become an overnight success. The son of an abusive alcoholic father and “a saint” of a mother, Travis was a teenager headed to jail when Lib Hatcher took him under her wing in […]
By Debra Gwartney Debra Gwartney’s memoir, I Am A Stranger Here Myself, opens with her driving away from her hometown of Salmon, Idaho, at age 55, after the funeral of her last remaining grandparent. She writes, “For reasons I have yet to decipher, I can’t seem to make peace with the place I’ve loved best […]
With Scot England Jimmy Capps has been a Grand Ole Opry guitarist since the early 1960s. “When I was a little boy, I would lie in my bed and dream about being on the Grand Ole Opry,” he says on the opening page of The Man In Back: Jimmy Capps, The Autobiography. “There was no […]
With Scot England Moe Bandy has been one of my favorite entertainers since his music first hit radio airwaves in the early 1970s. A genuine Texas cowboy, he sang songs that made me want to dance. So I was excited to receive a copy of Moe Bandy, Lucky Me. I looked forward to connecting his […]
By Jesse Jarnow Wasn’t That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of America is the story of a singing group that brought folk music to the pop charts in spite of having its own career derailed by the Red Scare following World War II. In his thoroughly researched book, […]
By Sam Kleiner Three years before the United States entered World War II, American pilots were already flying in a covert operation to defend China against Japan. Retired U.S. Army pilot Claire Chennault organized and led the group officially designated the American Volunteer Group (AVG)—better known as the Flying Tigers. The Flying Tigers: The Untold […]