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The astonishing saga of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton's survival for over a year on the ice-bound Antarctic seas, as "Time" magazine put it, "defined heroism". Alfred Lansing's scrupulously researched and brilliantly narrated book--with over 200,000 copies sold--has long been acknowledged as the definitive account of the "Endurance's" fateful trip. of photos and maps. Nationwide traveling museum exhibition..
Price: $4.19 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The story of Tzu Hsi is the story of the last Empress in China. In the novel Nobel Prize winner Pearl S. Buck recreates the life of one of the most intriguing rulers during a time of intense turbulence.

Tzu Hsi was born into one of the lowly ranks of the Imperial dynasty. According to custom, she moved to the Forbidden City at the age of seventeen to become one of hundreds of concubines. But her singular beauty and powers of manipulation quickly moved her into the position of Second Consort.

Tzu Hsi was feared and hated by many in the court, but adored by the people. The Empress's rise to power (even during her husband's life) parallels the story of China's transition from the ancient to the modern way.

Pearl S. Buck's knowledge of and fascination with the Empress's life are contagious. She reveals the essence of this self-involved and infamous last Empress, at the same time she takes the reader through China's struggle for freedom and democracy.

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Price: $8.06 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In August 1914, days before the outbreak of the First World War, the renowned explorer Ernest Shackleton and a crew of twenty-seven set sail for the South Atlantic in pursuit of the last unclaimed prize in the history of exploration: the first crossing on foot of the Antarctic continent. Weaving a treacherous path through the freezing Weddell Sea, they had come within eighty-five miles of their destination when their ship, Endurance, was trapped fast in the ice pack. Soon the ship was crushed like matchwood, leaving the crew stranded on the floes. Their ordeal would last for twenty months, and they would make two near-fatal attempts to escape by open boat before their final rescue.

Drawing upon previously unavailable sources, Caroline Alexander gives us a riveting account of Shackleton's expedition--one of history's greatest epics of survival. And she presents the astonishing work of Frank Hurley, the Australian photographer whose visual record of the adventure has never before been published comprehensively. Together, text and image re-create the terrible beauty of Antarctica, the awful destruction of the ship, and the crew's heroic daily struggle to stay alive, a miracle achieved largely through Shackleton's inspiring leadership.

The survival of Hurley's remarkable images is scarcely less miraculous: The original glass plate negatives, from which most of the book's illustrations are superbly reproduced, were stored in hermetically sealed cannisters that survived months on the ice floes, a week in an open boat on the polar seas, and several more months buried in the snows of a rocky outcrop called Elephant Island. Finally Hurley was forced to abandon his professional equipment; he captured some of the most unforgettable images of the struggle with a pocket camera and three rolls of Kodak film.

Published in conjunction with the American Museum of Natural History's landmark exhibition on Shackleton's journey, The Endurance thrillingly recounts one of the last great adventures in the Heroic Age of exploration--perhaps the greatest of them all..
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The Green Zone, Baghdad, 2003: in this walled-off compound of swimming pools and luxurious amenities, Paul Bremer and his Coalition Provisional Authority set out to fashion a new, democratic Iraq. Staffed by idealistic aides chosen primarily for their views on issues such as abortion and capital punishment, the CPA spent the crucial first year of occupation pursuing goals that had little to do with the immediate needs of a postwar nation: flat taxes instead of electricity and deregulated health care instead of emergency medical supplies.

In this acclaimed firsthand account, the former Baghdad bureau chief of The Washington Post gives us an intimate portrait of life inside this Oz-like bubble, which continued unaffected by the growing mayhem outside. This is a quietly devastating tale of imperial folly, and the definitive history of those early days when things went irrevocably wrong in Iraq..
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The Imperial Japanese Navy of World War 2 surpassed the Allied and Axis fleets in innovation and technology This title covers the 12 Japanese battleships that saw service between 1941-45. Each class is considered in turn in light of its design and construction, its armament and wartime modifications. The author, Mark Stille, also uses first-hand accounts and dramatic photographs to tell the story of these mighty battleships at war, including major engagements during the raid at Pearl Harbor and the battle of Midway. He also examines the wider context of Japanese battleship development by looking at the naval strategy and cult of the battleship. This title will fascinate any naval enthusiast, and the detailed color plates will make it essential for modelers of the period.

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Price: $11.69 [Notify me when price goes down.]

When Imperial Hubris first came out in 2004, the greatest danger for Americans confronting the Islamist threat was to believe—at the urging of U.S. leaders—that Muslims attack us for what we are and what we think rather than for what we do. The now-classic showed that a growing segment of the Islamic world strenuously disapproves of specific U.S. policies and their attendant military, political, and economic implications and demonstrated that they will go to any length, not to destroy our secular, democratic way of life, but to deter what they view as specific attacks on their lands, their communities, and their religion. Imperial Hubris remains a must read for an in-depth look at Al Qaeda and the War on Terror..
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The definitive history of World War I's forgotten front: Britain versus Germany in East Africa to secure the belly of a continent.

On August 7, 1914, Britain fired its first shots of World War I not in Europe but in the German colony of Togo. The campaign to eliminate the threat at sea posed by German naval bases in Africa would soon be won, but in the land war, especially in East Africa, British troops would meet far fiercer resistance from German colonial forces that had fully mastered the tactics of bush warfare. It was expected to be a "small war," over by Christmas, yet it would continue bloodily for more than four years, even beyond the signing of the Armistice in Europe.

Its costs were immense, its butchery staggering (in excess of100,000 British troops and 45,000 native recruits dead). Utmost among the tragic consequences, though, was the waste laid to the land and its indigenous peoples in what one official historian described as "a war of extermination and attrition without parallel in modern times." Imperialism had gone calamitously amok.

This eye-opening account of the Great War in East Africa does not flinch at the daily horrors of an ill-fated campaign—not just the combat but also a hostile climate, disease, the terrible loneliness—nor does it fail to recount tales of extraordinary courage and the kind of adventure that inspired fiction like C. S. Forester's The African Queen, William Boyd's An Ice-Cream War, and Wilbur Smith's Shout at the Devil. In all, it demonstrates dramatically why even the most hardened of Great War soldiers preferred the trenches of France to the trauma of East Africa..
Price: $17.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the physics of the photovoltaic cell. It is suitable for undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers new to the field. It covers: basic physics of semiconductors in photovoltaic devices; physical models of solar cell operation; characteristics and design of common types of solar cell; and approaches to increasing solar cell efficiency. The text explains the terms and concepts of solar cell device physics and shows the reader how to formulate and solve relevant physical problems. Exercises and worked solutions are included.

Contents: Photons In, Electrons Out: Basic Principles of PV; Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors; Generation and Recombination; Junctions; Analysis of the p n Junction; Monocrystalline Solar Cells; Thin Film Solar Cells; Managing Light; Over the Limit: Strategies for Higher Efficiency..
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Pocket book of the Imperial Guard styled in the form of an artefact of the 41st millennium. Contained within is a wealth of information describing tactics, combat, enemies, prayers and much more all couched in a tongue-in-cheek, pseudo-propagandist rhetoric. The book is filled with numerous sketches and diagrams to accompany the text. This second edition has additional sections on fighting in space and combating the alien Tau..
Price: $22.76 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Praised everywhere as a stunning work of reportage, TAKEOVER lays bare a hidden agenda, three decades in the making, to allow the White House to wield enormous powers, unchecked by Congres or the courts--an agenda that links warrantless wiretapping and Bush's judicial nominees, torture and Cheney's energy task force, the faith-based initiative and the imprisonment of citizens without trial. TAKEOVER tells the story of how a group of true believers, led by Cheney, set out to establish near-monarchical executive powers that, in the words of one conservative critic, "will lie around like a loaded weapon"for any future president..
Price: $8.03 [Notify me when price goes down.]