Hardcover Nonfiction

by Robert Dallek · Little, Brown

Explores the life of John F Kennedy.

by David Halberstam · Hyperion

"In early October 2001, Dominic DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky begin a 1,300-mile trip by car to visit their beloved teammate Ted Williams, knowing that he is dying. Bobby Doerr, the fourth member of this close group - "my guys," Williams used to call them - is unable to be with them because he is back in Oregon tending to his wife of sixty-three years, Monica, who has suffered her second stroke." "At the core of the book is the friendship of these four very different but extraordinary men, the key players in a remarkable Boston Red Sox team, who stayed close to each other for more than sixty years." "The Teammates is the story of two trips: the final one that DiMaggio and Pesky are taking to see Williams, and another, a flight back in time, as they and Bobby Doerr recall the wonders of their years together and reminisce about a magical era."--BOOK JACKET.

by Caroline Kennedy · Hyperion

Presents a selection of patriotic speeches, poems, song lyrics, and historical documents, including the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution, the Pledge of Allegiance, and other writings emblematic of American pride and spirit.

by Michael Lewis · Norton

"One of the best baseball—and management—books out.... Deserves a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame."—Forbes Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. Following the low-budget Oakland Athletics, their larger-than-life general manger, Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts, Michael Lewis has written not only "the single most influential baseball book ever" (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what "may be the best book ever written on business" (Weekly Standard). I wrote this book because I fell in love with a story. The story concerned a small group of undervalued professional baseball players and executives, many of whom had been rejected as unfit for the big leagues, who had turned themselves into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. But the idea for the book came well before I had good reason to write it—before I had a story to fall in love with. It began, really, with an innocent question: how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games? With these words Michael Lewis launches us into the funniest, smartest, and most contrarian book since, well, since Liar's Poker. Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the front offices of major league teams, and the dugouts, perhaps even in the minds of the players themselves. Lewis mines all these possibilities—his intimate and original portraits of big league ballplayers are alone worth the price of admission—but the real jackpot is a cache of numbers—numbers!—collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers and physics professors. What these geek numbers show—no, prove—is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information has been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics. Billy paid attention to those numbers —with the second lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to—and this book records his astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. Moneyball is a roller coaster ride: before the 2002 season opens, Oakland must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players, is written off by just about everyone, and then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win... how can we not cheer for David?

by Bill Bryson · Broadway

In this book Bill Bryson attempts to understand everything that has transpired from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization.

by Queen Noor · Miramax

B & T Local 06-10-2003 $25.95.

by Rick Reilly · Doubleday

by Robert (Buzz) Patterson · Regnery

Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson exposes the terrifying, behind-the-scenes story of the years when the most irresponsible President in our history had his finger on the nuclear trigger. Dereliction of Duty is the inside story of the damage Bill Clinton did to the U.S. military and how he compromised our national security. From his laughable salutes, to his arrogant, anti-military staffers, the message came through loud and clear: the Clinton Administration had nothing but contempt for America’s men and women in uniform. For two years, Patterson was the White House military aide who carried the “nuclear football,” which provides the President with remote nuclear strike capabilities. What he witnessed is shocking. Dereliction of Duty is the book every American concerned about our national security has been waiting for—written by a military man who was an eyewitness inside the Clinton White House, and who can no longer in good conscience keep silent.

by George Crile · Atlantic Monthly Press

"In a little over a decade, two events have transformed the world we live in: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of militant Islam. Charlie Wilson's War is the untold story behind the last battle of the Cold War and how it fueled the new jihad. George Crile tells how Charlie Wilson, a maverick congressman from east Texas, conspired with a roque CIA operative to launch the biggest, meanest, and most successful covert operation in the Agency's history." "In the early 1980s, after a Houston socialite turned Wilson's attention to the ragged band of Afghan "freedom fighters" who continued, despite overwhelming odds, to fight the Soviet invaders, the congressman became passionate about their cause. At a time when Ronald Reagan faced a total cutoff of funding for the Contra war, Wilson, who sat on the all-powerful House Appropriations Committee, managed to procure hundreds of millions of dollars to support the mujahideen. The arms were secretly procured and distributed with the aid of an out-of-favor CIA operative, Gust Avrakotos, whose working-class Greek-American background made him an anomaly among the Ivy League world of American spies. Nicknamed "Dr. Dirty," the blue-collar James Bond was an aggressive agent who served on the front lines of the Cold War where he learned how to stretch the Agency's rules to the breaking point." "Avrakotos handpicked a staff of CIA outcasts to run his operation: "Hilly Billy," the logistics wizard who could open an unnumbered Swiss bank account for the U.S. government in twelve hours when others took months; Art Alper, the grandfatherly demolitions expert from the Technical Services Division who passed on his dark arts to the Afghans; Mike Vickers, the former Green Beret who created a systematic plan to turn a rabble of shepherds into an army of techno holy warriors."--BOOK JACKET.

by Po Bronson · Random House

"Brimming with stories of sacrifice, courage, commitment and, sometimes, failure, the book will support anyone pondering a major life choice or risk without force-feeding them pat solutions." --"Publishers Weekly "What should I do with my life? It's a question many of us have pondered with frequency. Author Po Bronson was asking himself that very question when he decided to write this book--an inspiring exploration of how people transform their lives and a template for how we can answer this question for ourselves. Bronson traveled the country in search of individuals who have struggled to find their calling, their true nature--people who made mistakes before getting it right. He encountered people of all ages and all professions--a total of fifty-five fascinating individuals trying to answer questions such as: Is a career supposed to feel like a destiny? How do I tell the difference between a curiosity and a passion? Should I make money first, to fund my dream? If I have a child, will my frustration over my work go away? Should I accept my lot, make peace with my ambition, and stop stressing out? Why do I feel guilty for thinking about this? From their efforts to answer these questions, the universal truths in this book emerge. Each story in these pages informs the next, and the result is a journey that unfolds with cumulative power. Reading this book is like listening in on an intimate conversation among people you care about and admire. Even if you know what you should do with your life, you will find wisdom and guidance in these stories of people who found meaningful answers by daring to be honest with themselves. Among them: -the Pittsburgh lawyer whodecided to become a trucker so he could savor the moment and be closer to his son. -the toner-cartridge queen of Chicago, who realized that her relationships with men kept sabotaging her career choices. -the Cuban immigrant who overcame the strong dis-approval of her parents and quit her high-paying job to pursue social-service work in Miami. -the chemistry professor who realized, quite late in life, that he would rather practice law. -the mother torn between an Olympic career and her adolescent daughter. -the seventeen-year-old boy who received a letter from the Dalai Lama and was called to a life of spiritual leadership. -the creator of "St. Elmo's Fire, who wasn't sure he could quit his successful Hollywood life for the deeper artistic life he had always wanted to pursue. -the author himself. Po Bronson has worked as a bus-boy, cook, janitor, sports-medicine intern, bus-lift assembly-line technician, aerobics instructor, litigation consultant, greeting-card designer, bond salesman, political-newsletter editor, high school teacher, and book publisher. Since then, he has written three books: Bombardiers, The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest, and The Nudist on the Late Shift. But none of those experiences compared to what he learned by writing this book. "We all have passions if we choose to see them," he writes. "Most of us don't get epiphanies. We don't get clarity. Our purpose doesn't arrive neatly packaged as destiny. We only get a whisper. A blank, nonspecific urge. That's how it starts." With humor, empathy, and insight, Po Bronson probes the depths of people who learned how to hear the whisper, who overcame fear and confusion to find a largertruth about their lives. A meditation, a journey, and a triumph of story-telling, What Should I Do with My Life? is a life-changing book by a writer who brilliantly tackles the big questions.

by John Feinstein · Little, Brown

by Simon Winchester · HarperCollins

Considers the global impact of the 1883 eruption of the Krakatoa volcano, documenting its cause of an immense tsunami that killed some 40,000 people, its impact on the weather for several years, and its role in anti-Western Islamic fundamentalism. 200,000 first printing. $200,000 ad/promo.

by Eric Schlosser · Houghton Mifflin

Reports on America's "shadow" economy of illegal drugs, pornography, and illegal migrant workers, arguing that these underground industries continue to grow with government intervention.

by Sidney Blumenthal · Farrar, Straus & Giroux

"[With] a reporter's keen eye for telling detail" a former advisor reconstructs the political turmoil of the Clinton presidency. "Powerful. . . . Persuasive" (Robert Dallek, The New York Times Book Review ). When in 1997 Bill Clinton appointed Sidney Blumenthal as a senior advisor, the former journalist was catapulted into the front lines of the Clinton wars. From his first day in the White House until long after his appearance as the only presidential aide ever to testify in an impeachment trial, Blumenthal acted in or witnessed nearly all the battles of the Clinton years. The Clinton Wars begins in 1987, when Blumenthal first met Bill and Hillary Clinton. His chronicle of Clinton's first presidential campaign and first term draws on his experiences as confidant to both the President and the First Lady, and is enriched with previously unpublished revelations about both. This remarkable personal interpretation goes far in explaining the polarizing nature of Clinton's presence on the national scene. The narrative of Clinton's second term is even more dramatic. Blumenthal takes special note of the battle that was waged within the media between the President's detractors and defenders, which he expands into a vivid picture of Washington society torn apart by warring factions. But he does not neglect the wars fought on other fronts—in Kosovo, against Congress, and for economic prosperity. Every page of this authoritative book attests to Blumenthal's unique perspective on crucial events of America's recent political past. The Clinton Wars is a lasting contribution to American history. "Riveting. . . . Blumenthal's account of the 'right wing conspiracy' which sought to annihilate Clinton is both chilling and irrefutable." —Adrienne Miller, Esquire "Brutally revealing." —Andrew Sullivan, The New York Observer

by Elaine Pagels · Random House

In Beyond Belief, renowned religion scholar Elaine Pagels continues her groundbreaking examination of the earliest Christian texts, arguing for an ongoing assessment of faith and a questioning of religious orthodoxy. Spurred on by personal tragedy and new scholarship from an international group of researchers, Pagels returns to her investigation of the “secret” Gospel of Thomas, and breathes new life into writings once thought heretical. As she arrives at an ever-deeper conviction in her own faith, Pagels reveals how faith allows for a diversity of interpretations, and that the “rogue” voices of Christianity encourage and sustain “the recognition of the light within us all.”