What My Mother Gave Me

Author: Elizabeth Benedict

Category: History, Politics & Culture

Regular price: $17.99

Deal price: $0.50

Deal starts: November 08, 2025

Deal ends: November 08, 2025

Description:

New York Times Bestseller: "A winning collection" of essays by daughters including Elinor Lipman, Margo Jefferson, Jean Hanff Korelitz, Lisa See, and more (Kirkus Reviews).
Each of these thirty-one "beautifully crafted" essays (Publishers Weekly) is a story about a mother's gift to a daughter—one that touched her, taught her something, or symbolized a unique bond. Whether a gift was meant to keep a daughter warm, instruct her in the ways of womanhood, encourage her talents, or just remind her of a mother's love, each story gets to the heart of a relationship.
Rita Dove recalls the box of polish that inspired her to paint her nails in the stripes and polka dots she wears to this day. Lisa See writes about the gift of writing from her mother, Carolyn See. Cecilia Muñoz remembers the wok her mother gave her and a lifetime of family meals. Judith Hillman Paterson revisits the year of sobriety her mother bequeathed to her when Paterson was nine, the year before her mother died of alcoholism. Abigail Pogrebin describes her middle-aged bat mitzvah, for which her mother provided flowers after a lifetime of guilt for skipping her daughter's religious education. Margo Jefferson writes about her mother's gold dress from the posh department store where they could finally shop as black women.
Collectively, the pieces have a force that feels as elemental as the tides: outpourings of lightness and darkness; love and rage; joy and grief. From literary prize winners, bestselling authors, and other celebrated women, they are "as varied and unexpected and eloquent and moving as mother love itself" (Cathleen Schine, New York Times-bestselling author of The Grammarians).
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The Gold Train

Author: Ronald Zweig

Category: History, Politics & Culture

Regular price: $4.99

Deal price: $0.99

Deal starts: October 31, 2025

Deal ends: October 31, 2025

Description:

In 1944, as the Soviet army closed in on Budapest, a mysterious train rolled out of the station. On that train were carriage after carriage of loot – gold, diamonds, furs, wedding rings – plundered in one of the most shameful crimes of the century. Commanded by Árpád Toldi, a key organizer of the Hungarian Holocaust, and harbouring a desperate group of fascist ideologues, soldiers and thieves, the gold train was destined for a Nazi stronghold in the Alps. It would never arrive.
Along its crazed journey the train’s contents were pilfered, fought over, hidden and scattered, until they became the stuff of legend, with legal claims unresolved even today. What is the truth of this mythical cargo?
In The Gold Train, Ronald Zweig reveals the full story of one of the most terrible mysteries of the Second World War.
Praise for The Gold Train: ‘An amazing saga...this page-turner will leave you sorrier and wiser’ - David Cesarani, The Independent ‘An excellent account: calm, dispassionate and well written...strips away the myth and exposes the real story in all its brutality and confused, naïve cupidity’ - Alan Judd, Daily Telegraph ‘Poignant... brilliantly told... makes compelling reading’ - Geoffrey Alderman, The Guardian Ronald Zweig is the Taub Chair of Israel Studies at New York University and Director of the Taub Center for Israel Studies.

Culture

Author: John Brockman

Category: History, Politics & Culture

Regular price: $9.99

Deal price: $0.99

Deal starts: October 01, 2025

Deal ends: October 01, 2025

Description:

"Theway Brockman interlaces essays about research on the frontiers of science withones on artistic vision, education, psychology and economics is sure to buzzany brain." —Chicago Sun-Times, on This Will Change Everything

Launchinga hard-hitting new series from Edge.org and Harper Perennial, editor JohnBrockman delivers this cutting-edge master class covering everything you needto know about Culture. With original contributions by the world'sleading thinkers and scientists, including Jared Diamond, Daniel C. Dennett,Brian Eno, Jaron Lanier,Nicholas Christakis, and others, Culture offers a mind-expanding primeron a fundamental topic. Unparalleled in scope, depth, insight and quality, Edge.org's Culture is not to be missed.

Eyewitness Hiroshima

Author: Adrian Weale

Category: History, Politics & Culture

Regular price: $3.99

Deal price: $0.99

Deal starts: September 26, 2025

Deal ends: September 26, 2025

Description:

A detailed account of one of the most destructive attacks in human history… The world changed with devastating effect on the morning of 6 August 1945, the day the first atomic bomb used in anger exploded above the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Days later, after a second bomb had destroyed Nagasaki, the war was over and a new and terrible chapter in human history had begun.
This book is about those events as they happened, and the deadly discoveries leading to them, in the words of those who were there. Their voices include the scientists who unleashed the awesome power of the atom, like Rutherford and Oppenheimer, those who ran the secret Manhattan Project, the US pilots who flew the nuclear missions to Japan, the survivors of the horrifying explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the generals and leaders who went on to run the world on the basis of Mutually Assured Destruction.
Adrian Weale is a British writer and journalist, as well as a former officer in the British Army Intelligence Corps.

Company Commander

Author: Charles B. MacDonald

Category: History, Politics & Culture

Regular price: $4.99

Deal price: $0.99

Deal starts: September 19, 2025

Deal ends: September 19, 2025

Description:

In this extraordinary book, Charles B. MacDonald recounts his personal, authentic story of the front-line during World War Two.As a newly commissioned captain of a veteran Army regiment, MacDonald’s first experience of combat was war at its most hellish — the Battle of the Bulge.In this eloquent narrative we live each minute at MacDonald’s side, sharing in combat’s misery, terror and drama. His stories are not pretty and his characters are not heroes. In his own words “they are cold, dirty, rough, miserable characters . . . but they win wars.”Company Commander is a stark but very human view of war. It speaks to younger generations with almost the same immediacy as it did to the Greatest Generation.How this green commander gains his men’s loyalty in the snows of war-torn Europe is one of the great, true, unforgettable war stories of all time.PRAISE FOR CHARLES MACDONALD:‘Nowhere is there a more honest, unassuming portrayal of the hopes and dreams and fears of a young infantry captain.’ Saturday Review‘Impressive.’ New York Times????? ‘A truly excellent read . . . I think this is the best description of the foot soldier’s war, nasty, brutish, and often short.’ Local Flyer 56.????? ‘Gripping and atmospheric account of one of the toughest battles in the Western European campaign.’ Jim T.Charles B. MacDonald was a Deputy Chief Historian for the United States Army. During the war, he rose to the rank of Captain of the 23rd Infantry of the 2nd Division and was awarded the Purple Heart and the Silver Star. He also wrote A Time for Trumpets among other books. He died in 1990.

Antigonus the One-Eyed

Author: Jeff Champion

Category: History, Politics & Culture

Regular price: $12.99

Deal price: $0.50

Deal starts: September 10, 2025

Deal ends: September 10, 2025

Description:

The author of Pyrrhus of Epirus "tells the exciting story of one of those competing to succeed Alexander the Great . . . Recommended." —Firetrench

 

Plutarch described Antigonus the One Eyed (382-301 BC) as "the oldest and greatest of Alexander's successors." Antigonus loyally served both Philip II and Alexander the Great as they converted his native Macedonia into an empire stretching from India to Greece. After Alexander's death, Antigonus, then governor of the obscure province of Phrygia, seemed one of the least likely of his commanders to seize the dead king's inheritance. Yet within eight years of the king's passing, through a combination of military skill and political shrewdness, he had conquered the Asian portion of the empire.

 

Antigonus' success caused those who controlled the European and Egyptian parts of the empire to unite against him. For another fourteen years he would wage war against a coalition of the other Successors, Ptolemy, Lysimachus, Seleucus and Cassander. In 301 he would meet defeat and death in the Battle of Ipsus. The ancient writers saw Antigonus' life as a cautionary tale about the dangers of hubris and vaulting ambition. Despite his apparent defeat, his descendants would continue to rule as kings and create a dynasty that would rule Macedonia for over a century. Jeff Champion narrates the career of this titanic figure with the focus squarely on the military aspects.

 

"It is far time that we have a biography of one of the greatest men of Hellenistic society . . . His rise from this backwater to almost becoming the king of the entire Macedonian empire is detailed by the author."—A Wargamers Needful Things.
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