Best Books

Books are a window to our world.

Archive for the ‘History’


Moon Metro San Francisco

Travelers will behold all that the city by the bay contains with the hip Moon Metro San Francisco. This sleek guide profiles the best of the city, combining selective listings of the hottest sights, shops, restaurants, amusements, and hotels with vivid color photos, graphics, and discreet, laminated, fold-out maps detailing all the must-see neighborhoods. Vacationers can bask in the luxury of the Mark Hopkins hotel and stroll through Golden Gate Park, dine on cuisine in North Beach, or catch a view of Alcatraz from Nob Hill. Moon Metro San Francisco leads the visitor to the city’s top sights as well as the places only the locals know about. Clean, concise, and compact, Moon Metro San Francisco is the definitive guide to the most-visited city in the U.S.

Lyndon Johnson’s War; America’s Cold War Crusade in Vietnam, 1945-1968

The Vietnam War, perhaps the mast controversial war Americans have ever fought, remains a source of pain and perplexity. Why did Lyndon Johnson commit the United States to fight? Why did he fail to act more decisively once he resolved on war? And why didn’t he take the American public into his confidence? These questions have troubled historians since the end of the war, but the answers have been buried in inaccessible documents. Now Michael H. Hunt uses newly available sources from both American and Vietnamese archives to reevaluate how and why the war started and then escalated. He examines the ideological, strategic, political, and institutional pressures that in the 1950s propelled the Truman and Eisenhower administrations toward intervention in Indochina; the reasons why Kennedy’s and Johnson’s policymakers believed that a limited war could be fought there; Johnson’s early position on Vietnam and his decision to intensify U.S. involvement in the war; and, finally, the tragic consequences of the Vietnam War both at home and abroad. Throughout, he discusses the values, choices, misconceptions, and miscalculations that shaped the long process of American intervention, thus rendering more comprehensible – if no less troubling – the tangled origins of the Vietnam War.

Alan Shrugged: Alan Greenspan, the World’s Most Powerful Banker

This biography of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan uncovers his personal life, especially his early years, revealing the defining incidents of his life and the major influences on his thinking. This is the first biography to treat his whole life and to portray Greenspan’s evolution from a shy, gawky musical protege to becoming one of the most powerful people in the world.

American Journey, The: Volume I

Written in a clear, engaging style with a straightforward chronological organization, ‘The American Journey’ introduces readers to the key features of American political, social, and economic history. This new edition focuses more closely on the theme of the American journey, showing that our attempt to live up to and with our ideals is an ongoing process that has become ever more inclusive of different groups and ideas. Covering the 1600s to the Civil War, prominent coverage is given to the West and the South, and the book highlights the importance of religion in American history. Hundreds of maps, graphs, and illustrations help readers absorb history and bring it to life. For those interested in a comprehensive study of U.S. history to the Civil War given in a flowing, lively narrative.

‘Fallen from the Symboled World’; Precedents for the New Formalism

A provocative and original analysis of figure and from in contemporary poetry, Fallen From the Symboled World will make an important contribution to the study of modern poetry and literature as well as to linguistics and literary criticism and analysis.