Fred Williams

A new captain must lead his crew to safety and face his own internal struggles as he works to overcome disrespect, insanity, and coming-of-age all while sailing on an unforgiving sea. There is an invisible line that divides life into a before and after-adolescence and adulthood. The unnamed narrator of The Shadow Line is painfully aware of this, but is unsure where the line lies in his life. He recalls a number of rash decisions he has made, some...

American author, critic, newspaper man, and iconoclast, H. L. Mencken maintained that women are smarter than men and cited numerous examples of the female's overwhelming skill and cunning to support his position. Originally published in 1922, this book considers topics that remain of vital interest to today's readers, including monogamy and polygamy, prostitution, the double standard, sexual harassment, and declining birth and marriage rates. Written...

"The Man Who Would be King and Other Stories" is a classic collection of some of the most loved short stories of Rudyard Kipling, one of the most important and accomplished English authors of the twentieth century. The youngest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature at age 42 in 1907, Kipling, who was born in India in 1865, captured in his writing the British Empire in all of its glory and contradiction in unparalleled detail and nuance. Contained...

This stirring sequel to The White Rhino Hotel is a historical novel of bold romance and grand adventure that sweeps from cosmopolitan Cairo to the wild highlands of East Africa. A nation sits at the brink of war; a city is fraught with conspiracy. It's 1935 in East Africa, and at the Cataract Café in Cairo, they gather: professional hunter Anton Rider; his estranged wife and her Italian lover; the pampered American twins, Bernadette and Harriet Mills;...

In burnished, driving prose, John Keegan chronicles the 1944 invasion of Normandy, from D-Day to the liberation of Paris. At the same time, he furthers his exploration of the “role which warfare and its institutions play in social life” by showing how each of the six armies, while resembling one another in purpose and authority, is a mirror of its own nation's values. Each army is shown at successive stages of the invasion in a battle sequence...

One hundred years ago, the mightiest "unsinkable" ship began her maiden voyage to cross the Atlantic. An engineering feat eleven stories high, the Titanic contained a list of passengers collectively worth $250 million when she left port on April 10, 1912, but she would never reach her destination. The Titanic collided with an iceberg on the night of April 14, and 1,500 people died in the freezing waters as the ship met her watery grave. Spectacular

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This is the story of Jason, the Argonauts, and their quest for the golden fleece. Along with Heracles and Theseus, Perseus and Atalanta, and the sorceress Medea, Jason travels on a wondrous journey in the ship Argo to strange lands populated by even stranger inhabitants. While they travel, Orpheus, the famous Greek storyteller, sings songs about the gods and goddesses and the creation of heaven and earth.

Latin America, an area of great economic potential, has long been in need of an authoritative and concise introduction. This history has been written by a specialist who was closely connected with Latin America for over forty years. His text emphasizes how many races and classes have contributed to the civilization of this great land-mass: Indians, European conquistadores, priests, planters, African slaves, caudillos, liberal intellectuals and commercial...

The diary of Samuel Pepys is like no other book in the world. One reason is that its writer had no idea of making a book at all. He never dreamed of human eyes falling upon his blessedly frank and naked page. The record was a secret between himself and his own soul. To those who love humanity and vivid, unconscious writing, it is infinitely delightful and precious.