Smithsonian Dc (Over 8,700 results)

Hardback. Condition: Good. Phantom in Combat puts you in the cockpit with the missile-age aces as they fight for their lives in the skies of Vietnam and the Middle East. Starting with a brief account of the forging of this deadly weapon, Phantom in Combat moves to the wars, campaigns and single engagements in which it was used to such telling effect. Leading USAF ace Steve Ritchie speaks more in sorrow than anger of the politically inspired rules that so frustrated him and his comrades in Vietnam. The story of the gruelling dogfight that made Randy Cunningham and Willie Driscoll the U.S. Navys only aces is redolent of the sweat, toil and terror of high-speed air fighting. And combat reports from some of Israels anonymous aces speak laconically of victories, losses, hairs-breadth escapes, and, above all, the Phantoms ability to give and take enormous punishment. Providing a rich background to this testimony is a wealth of rare material, including: - Battle-damage and gun-camera photographs - Recently declassified U.S. Navy tactical diagrams - Photo-sequence showing the destruction of an F-4 by a North Vietnamese missile. - Official analysis of the USAFs most successful MiG-trapping operation, led by the famous General Robin Olds. - Complete listing of USAF and USN air-to-air victories in Vietnam. Here is the human face of modern air warfare, described by the commanders and crews who earned for the Phantom its reputation as the worlds finest fighting aircraft.…

Hardback. Condition: Good. Why We Fought is a timely and provocative analysis that examines why Americans really chose to sacrifice and commit themselves to World War I. Unlike other depictions of the patriotic greatest generation, Westbrook argues that, strictly speaking, Americans in World War I were not instructed to fight, work, or die for their country--above all, they were moved by private obligations. Finding political theory in places such as pin-ups of Betty Grable, he contends that more often than not Americans were urged to wage war as fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, lovers, sons, daughters, and consumers, not as citizens. The thinness of their own citizenship contrasted sharply with the thicker political culture of the Japanese, which was regarded with condescending contempt and even occasionally wistful respect. Why We Fought is a profound and skillful assessment of America's complex political beliefs and the peculiarities of its patriotism. While examining the history of American beliefs about war and citizenship, Westbrook casts a larger light on what it means to be an American, to be patriotic, and to willingly go to war.…

Hardback. Condition: Good. George Washington wrote an astonishing number of letters, both personal and professional. The majority--about 140,000 documents--are from his years as commander in chief during the Revolutionary War, from 1775 to 1783. This Glorious Struggle presents a selection of Washington's most important and interesting letters from that time, including many that have never been published.Washington's lively and often surprisingly candid notes to his wife and family, friends, Congress, fellow soldiers--and even the enemy--chronicle his most critical tactical and strategic decisions, while offering a rare glimpse of the extremes of depression and exultation into which he was cast by the fortunes of war. The letters are arranged chronologically and give a dramatic sense of the major phases of the war, from Boston, Trenton, and Valley Forge, to Monmouth and Yorktown. The more personal missives show us a Washington who worried about his wife's well-being and who appreciated a good joke and a well-laid table, not to mention the company of the ladies.This Glorious Struggle brings Washington to vivid life, offering a fresh and intimate sense of this most towering American figure and the critical role he played in the creation of our country.…

Hardback. Condition: Good. "Social history is, most elementally, food history. Jane Ziegelman had the great idea to zero in on one Lower East Side tenement building, and through it she has crafted a unique and aromatic narrative of New York's immigrant culture: with bread in the oven, steam rising from pots, and the family gathering round." -- Russell Shorto, author of The Island at the Center of the World 97 Orchard is a richly detailed investigation of the lives and culinary habits--shopping, cooking, and eating--of five families of various ethnicities living at the turn of the twentieth century in one tenement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. With 40 recipes included, 97 Orchard is perfect for fans of Rachel Ray's Hometown Eats; anyone interested in the history of how immigrant food became American food; and "foodies" of every stripe.…

Hardback. Condition: Fair. "Social history is, most elementally, food history. Jane Ziegelman had the great idea to zero in on one Lower East Side tenement building, and through it she has crafted a unique and aromatic narrative of New York's immigrant culture: with bread in the oven, steam rising from pots, and the family gathering round." -- Russell Shorto, author of The Island at the Center of the World 97 Orchard is a richly detailed investigation of the lives and culinary habits--shopping, cooking, and eating--of five families of various ethnicities living at the turn of the twentieth century in one tenement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. With 40 recipes included, 97 Orchard is perfect for fans of Rachel Ray's Hometown Eats; anyone interested in the history of how immigrant food became American food; and "foodies" of every stripe.…

Soft cover. Condition: Good. 216 pages including index and sources, illustrated. The cover corners are slightly bent. There is a faint spot on the rear cover. A sticker is attached to the reverse of the front cover. The text is clean and unmarked.

Soft cover. Condition: Very Good. 100 pages, illustrated. An address is printed on the front cover, else few signs of use.

Hardback. Condition: Good. Effer, Jim; Effler, James M. (illustrator).

Hardback. Condition: Very Good. Effer, Jim; Effler, James M. (illustrator).

Hardback. Condition: Good. An intimate portrait of Lincoln, so well-drawn that he seems to come alive on the page.--Charleston Post & Courier Lincoln's Men by Daniel Mark Epstein offers a fascinating close-up view of the Abraham Lincoln White House through the eyes of Lincoln's three personal secretaries: John Nicolay, William Stoddard, and John Hay. Like Doris Kearns Goodwin's monumental New York Times bestseller, Team of Rivals, Epstein's Lincoln's Men sheds a new light on the 16th U.S. president--his brilliance and vision in a time of national turmoil and Civil War--by focusing on his relationships with the men who worked closely by his side. USA Today writes, This is not your typical work of history. Epstein, a poet, employs a dreamy, novelistic tone in describing these young men and their tormented boss.…

Hardback. Condition: Good.

Hardback. Condition: Very Good.

Hardback. Condition: Very Good. She died mysteriously before she was forty. Yet in the last decade of her life Amelia Earhart soared from obscurity to fame as the best-known female aviator in the world. She set record after record--among them, the first trans-Atlantic solo flight by a woman, a flight that launched Earhart on a double career as a fighter for women's rights and a tireless crusader for commercial air travel. Doris L. Rich's exhaustively researched biography downplays the What Happened to Amelia Earhart? myth by disclosing who Amelia Earhart really was: a woman of three centuries, born in the nineteenth, pioneering in the twentieth, and advocating ideals and dreams relevant to the twenty-first.…

Hardback. Condition: Good. Was Roger Williams too pure for the Puritans, and what does that have to do with Rhode Island? Why did Augustine Herman take ten years to complete the map that established Delaware? How did Rocky Mountain rogues help create the state of Colorado? All this and more is explained in Mark Stein's new book. How the States Got Their Shapes Too follows How the States Got Their Shapes looks at American history through the lens of its borders, but, while How The States Got Their Shapes told us why, this book tells us who. This personal element in the boundary stories reveals how we today are like those who came before us, and how we differ, and most significantly: how their collective stories reveal not only an historical arc but, as importantly, the often overlooked human dimension in that arc that leads to the nation we are today.The people featured in How the States Got Their Shapes Too lived from the colonial era right up to the present. They include African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, women, and of course, white men. Some are famous, such as Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Daniel Webster. Some are not, such as Bernard Berry, Clarina Nichols, and Robert Steele. And some are names many of us know but don't really know exactly what they did, such as Ethan Allen (who never made furniture, though he burned a good deal of it).In addition, How the States Got Their Shapes Too tells of individuals involved in the Almost States of America, places we sought to include but ultimately did not: Canada, the rest of Mexico (we did get half), Cuba, and, still an issue, Puerto Rico. Each chapter is largely driven by voices from the time, in the form of excerpts from congressional debates, newspapers, magazines, personal letters, and diaries. Told in Mark Stein's humorous voice, How the States Got Their Shapes Too is a historical journey unlike any other you've taken. The strangers you meet here had more on their minds than simple state lines, and this book makes for a great new way of seeing and understanding the United States. From the Hardcover edition.…

Hardback. Condition: Fair.

Hardback. Condition: Good.

Hardback. Condition: Good. Ireland conjures up images of nature's majesty: sweeping coastlines, rolling green hills, and secluded peat bogs and marshlands. A place of legendary beauty, it is also a land with a rich natural history. Michael Viney invites us to discover the geologic forces that created the island, peer into the famous bone caves that hold unique clues about animals from long ago, and experience the dramatic scenes of the cliff-lined coast and tempestuous seas. Viney begins deep in the past, when rivers of molten rock and enormous glaciers stripped the land bare. Soon after the glaciers retreated, the island was transformed into a fresh, new landscape, home to an intriguing variety of plants and animals, and an environment that has cultivated a rich human history and inspired countless myths. Infused with the lyricism of Irish prose, Ireland: A Smithsonian Natural History is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand the natural beauty of the Emerald Isle.…

Hardback. Condition: Fair. Ireland conjures up images of nature's majesty: sweeping coastlines, rolling green hills, and secluded peat bogs and marshlands. A place of legendary beauty, it is also a land with a rich natural history. Michael Viney invites us to discover the geologic forces that created the island, peer into the famous bone caves that hold unique clues about animals from long ago, and experience the dramatic scenes of the cliff-lined coast and tempestuous seas. Viney begins deep in the past, when rivers of molten rock and enormous glaciers stripped the land bare. Soon after the glaciers retreated, the island was transformed into a fresh, new landscape, home to an intriguing variety of plants and animals, and an environment that has cultivated a rich human history and inspired countless myths. Infused with the lyricism of Irish prose, Ireland: A Smithsonian Natural History is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand the natural beauty of the Emerald Isle.…

Hardback. Condition: Very Good.

Hardback. Condition: Good.

Hardback. Condition: Fair.

Hardback. Condition: Good. The cat's pajamas, the bee's knees, and the whole nine yards rolled into one, this true feast for word lovers skewers commonly accepted word-origin myths and etymological folktales. Writing with flair and authority, word maven and Oxford English Dictionary contributor Michael Quinion shows us that the real story behind a word or phrase is often much stranger than the commonly accepted one. With this book in your arsenal, you'll have the last word in every word-lover's game of one-upmanship. So if you've ever wondered why we utter such oddities as raining cats and dogs, I couldn't care less, or twenty-three skidoo, this one's for you. No ballyhoo.…

Hardback. Condition: Good. Phantom in Combat puts you in the cockpit with the missile-age aces as they fight for their lives in the skies of Vietnam and the Middle East. Starting with a brief account of the forging of this deadly weapon, Phantom in Combat moves to the wars, campaigns and single engagements in which it was used to such telling effect. Leading USAF ace Steve Ritchie speaks more in sorrow than anger of the politically inspired rules that so frustrated him and his comrades in Vietnam. The story of the gruelling dogfight that made Randy Cunningham and Willie Driscoll the U.S. Navys only aces is redolent of the sweat, toil and terror of high-speed air fighting. And combat reports from some of Israels anonymous aces speak laconically of victories, losses, hairs-breadth escapes, and, above all, the Phantoms ability to give and take enormous punishment. Providing a rich background to this testimony is a wealth of rare material, including: - Battle-damage and gun-camera photographs - Recently declassified U.S. Navy tactical diagrams - Photo-sequence showing the destruction of an F-4 by a North Vietnamese missile. - Official analysis of the USAFs most successful MiG-trapping operation, led by the famous General Robin Olds. - Complete listing of USAF and USN air-to-air victories in Vietnam. Here is the human face of modern air warfare, described by the commanders and crews who earned for the Phantom its reputation as the worlds finest fighting aircraft.…

Hardback. Condition: Good. Storm Over Iraq is an incisive account of the Persian Gulf War, which marked a revolution in military history: the ascendancy of air power in warfare. This book - the first detailed analysis of why the Gulf War could be fought the way it was - examines the planning and preparation for war, showing how the success of Desert Storm was the product of two decades of profound changes in the American approach to defense, military doctrine, and combat operations. Richard P. Hallion argues that the development of radical military technologies, particularly those of stealth and precision-guided weapons, enabled military leaders to structure a campaign that shattered Iraq's military machine, completely fulfilling the promise that air power had held for more than seventy-five years. Hallion traces the history of air power, describing the rebuilding of the American military after Vietnam, the emergence of new doctrines and strategies for air and land warfare, and the various small wars of the 1970s and 1980s. In analyzing the onset of the Gulf crisis and the military operations in response to Saddam Hussein's aggression, he covers planning, strategy, and the conduct of the coalition air campaign and its impact on the Iraqi war machine. Finally, Hallion outlines the significance the war holds for national security planning, including the selection of appropriate forms of military force, the acquisition of new weapons, the pursuit of new technologies, and the effect of air power in confronting global crises. Detailed appendixes examine specific issues, including smart weapons, advanced electronic command and control, and the evolution of high-performance aircraft and missiles. The book ismeticulously documented and profusely illustrated with many photos not previously seen as well as detailed maps, tables, charts, and graphs.…

Hardback. Condition: Good. Why We Fought is a timely and provocative analysis that examines why Americans really chose to sacrifice and commit themselves to World War I. Unlike other depictions of the patriotic greatest generation, Westbrook argues that, strictly speaking, Americans in World War I were not instructed to fight, work, or die for their country--above all, they were moved by private obligations. Finding political theory in places such as pin-ups of Betty Grable, he contends that more often than not Americans were urged to wage war as fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, lovers, sons, daughters, and consumers, not as citizens. The thinness of their own citizenship contrasted sharply with the thicker political culture of the Japanese, which was regarded with condescending contempt and even occasionally wistful respect. Why We Fought is a profound and skillful assessment of America's complex political beliefs and the peculiarities of its patriotism. While examining the history of American beliefs about war and citizenship, Westbrook casts a larger light on what it means to be an American, to be patriotic, and to willingly go to war.…

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. Former library book; May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. Missing dust jacket; May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Missing dust jacket; Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. Former library book; May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Missing dust jacket; Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.