Norwegian journalist Jacobsen relates one of the most incredible tales of the Second World War, in which Royal Navy X-craft midget submarines attacked the German battleship Tirpitz in Norway. A daring plan was hatched by the Admiralty to sink Tirpitz using midget submarines to plant high explosive mines beneath the ship’s keel.

On 22 September 1943, six X-craft midget submarines set out from Scotland to sink the battleship at anchor in Norway. Three never reached the fjord and X5, commanded by Lt Henty-Creer, was presumed sunk by the Germans, so only X6 and X7 made the attack. Both Lt. Donald Cameron in X6 and Lt Godfrey Place in X7 placed their charges successfully, but were forced to surrender. Both were awarded the Victoria Cross. Although Tirpitz was not sunk she was put out of action until April 1944.

Lt. Henty-Creer, the commander of X5, and his crew were never seen again. Neither he nor any of his crew received any posthumous gallantry awards. Did X5 actually penetrate the anti-submarine defenses around Tirpitz and lay its explosive charges beneath the battleship? If it did, then Henty-Creer and his crew deserve to be honored for their bravery.

Starting in 1916, Texans built seventeen four- and five-masted sailing ships out of East Texas pine, making a significant contribution in World War I. The ships’ careers carried them to Europe, South America, both American coasts, and even eighty miles up the Danube River.

In Wooden Ships from Texas, Richard W. Bricker brings to light this fascinating, but little-known, period in Texas maritime history. Bricker has unearthed a considerable quantity of archival material, allowing him to describe the ships and make at least a partial track of the career of each vessel.

The first ship built was the City of Orange, and her irascible captain provided a memorable maiden voyage from Orange, Texas, to Genoa, Italy. Official documents told a story of events like those found in sea fiction: shanghaiing, cruelty to seamen, excessive drinking, and pistol waving. A rare story is told, too: an order to jettison part of the cargo with no apparent good cause.

Out of fourteen ships built at one shipyard, four burned and one was sunk by a U-boat off the coast of Spain. These losses did not spell total disaster for the fleet, however. Only three lives were lost, and a significant quantity of cargo had been delivered to Europe by some of these ships before tragedy struck. Only one of the other nine vessels burned after being transferred to the Italian flag. Two other vessels were lost at sea after leaving Texas registry.

For each vessel, Bricker provides a description; narratives of the ship’s career; and selected photographs of construction, launching, and anchored views. Because no known photographs of the vessels under sail survived, Bricker himself has painted these views.

Bricker’s engagingand informative text, which also covers a massive effort to build wooden steamships in Texas for the war, will interest Texas history, maritime history, and World War I enthusiasts.

Michael Korda’s brilliant work of history takes the reader back to the summer of 1940, when fewer than three thousand young fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force—often no more than nine hundred on any given day—stood between Hitler and the victory that seemed almost within his grasp.

Korda re-creates the intensity of combat in “the long, delirious, burning blue” of the sky above southern England, and at the same time — perhaps for the first time —traces the entire complex web of political, diplomatic, scientific, industrial, and human decisions during the 1930s that led inexorably to the world’s first, greatest, and most decisive air battle. Korda deftly interweaves the critical strands of the story — the invention of radar (the most important of Britain’s military secrets); the developments by such visionary aircraft designers as R. J. Mitchell, Sidney Camm, and Willy Messerschmitt of the revolutionary, all-metal, high-speed monoplane fighters the British Spitfire and Hurricane and the German Bf 109; the rise of the theory of air bombing as the decisive weapon of modern warfare and the prevailing belief that “the bomber will always get through” (in the words of British prime minister Stanley Baldwin).

As Germany rearmed swiftly after 1933, building up its bomber force, only one man, the central figure of Korda’s book, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the eccentric, infuriating, obstinate, difficult, creator and leader of RAF Fighter Command, did not believe that the bomber would always get through and was determined to provide Britain with a weapon few people wanted to believe was needed or even possible. Dowding persevered — despite opposition, shortage of funding, and bureaucratic infighting — to perfect the British fighter force just in time to meet  the German onslaught.

Korda brings to life the extraordinary men and women on both sides of the conflict, from such major historical figures as Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain, and Reichsmarschall Herman Göring to the British and German pilots, the American airmen who joined the RAF just in time for the Battle of Britain, the young airwomen of the RAF, the ground crews who refueled and rearmed the fighters in the middle of heavy German raids, and such heroic figures as Douglas Bader, Josef František, and the Luftwaffe aces Adolf Galland and his archrival Werner Mölders.

Winston Churchill memorably said about the Battle of Britain, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” Here is the story of “the few,” and how they prevailed against the odds and helped deprive Hitler of victory.

Wilderness of mirrors David C. Martin United States Central Intelligence Agency New York : Harper & Row, c 1980 Hardcover. 1st. ed. and printing. xiv, 236 p., [4] leaves of plates : ill. ; 25 cm. Includes index. How the Byzantine intrigues of the secret war between the CIA and the KGB seduced and devoured key agents James Jesus Angleton and William King Harvey. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text.  VG/VG

This book goes a long way toward explaining CIA’s intellectual and operational constipation in the 1950′s through the 1970′s. It follows James Jesus Angleton, who tied the Agency in knots and went so far as to privately tell the French that the CIA Station Chief in Paris was a Soviet spy, and William King Harvey, who literally carried two six-guns both in the US and overseas “because you never know when you might need them.”

Included in this book are some serious details about the operations against Cuba, a chapter appropriated titled “Murder Corrupts”, and a good account of how Harvey, in perhaps his most important achievement, smelled out the fact that Kim Philby was indeed a Soviet spy.

The concluding thought of the book is exceptional: “Immersed in duplicity and insulated by secrecy, they (Angleton and Harvey) developed survival mechanisms and behavior patterns that by any rational standard were bizarre. The forced inbreeding of secrecy spawned mutant deeds and thoughts. Loyalty demanded dishonesty, and duty was a thieves’ game. The game attracted strange men and slowly twisted them until something snapped. There were no winners or losers in this game, only victims.”

Lavery offers an account of two periods in British history when Britain faced invasion by armies camped on the French coast. Material is arranged in separate sections on each period and short linking passages. This organization allows the reader to follow one period chronologically, or to compare and contrast the two periods through major themes. Drawing on first-hand accounts, historical records, and other evidence, the author examines the strategies of leaders on both sides, and also examines the reactions of the British public to the threat of invasion, public support to the British military, and the creation of militia and volunteer units. A final chapter poses the question of what would have happened if either invasion were successful.

Brian Lavery, an established authority on the Napoleonic Wars and World War II, articulates the parallels and defining features of these tumultuous periods in  history. He looks at the style and competence of politicians and military commanders and the leadership and example of  men such as Horatio Nelson and Winston Churchill and examines unexplored official papers. He also considers the war situation as seen by such literary greats as Jane Austen and Evelyn Waugh, as well as the opinions of volunteers and servicemen. It provides a unique insight into two distinct periods during which the British national identity was created.

Washington, Adams, Henry, Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton: their ambitions, intrigues, and jealousies shaped the birth of the nation, but they overcame their foibles and imperfections to throw off the chains of tyranny and form a more perfect union. We think of them now as faces on money or statues on pedestals, and, as Burns illustrates in luminous prose, that’s exactly what they always wanted to be. They all possessed astonishing brilliance, but many had large egos and more than just a little vanity, especially John Adams, who never felt he received his public due and often complained in his letters about the unjust fame of his peers. History remembers Patrick Henry as the author of the patriotic call to arms, “give me liberty, or give me death!” but, at the beginning of his life in the public eye, he shamelessly traded integrity for renown.

Interest in the founding fathers has never been greater; Virtue, Valor, and Vanity presents all of these well-known and oft-quoted men with wisdom and candor. In this fresh, informative work, Burns brings the founding fathers down off their pedestals to reveal the flesh-and-blood men—vain and modest, sensitive and stubborn, brilliant and ambitious — who attempted to overcome their faults in order to establish a new nation that would be a paragon of governance. For the armchair historian, here is an exciting new look at our country’s origins.

On August 21, 1911, the unfathomable happened–Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa vanished from the Louvre. More than twenty-four hours passed before museum officials realized she was gone. The prime suspects were as shocking as the crime: Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, young provocateurs of a new art. As French detectives using the latest methods of criminology, including fingerprinting, tried to trace the thieves, a burgeoning international media hyped news of the heist.

The sensational disappearing act captured the world’s imagination. Crowds stood in line to view the empty space on the museum wall. Thousands more waited, as concerned as if Mona Lisa were a missing person, for news of the lost painting. For more than two years, Mona Lisa’s absence haunted the art world, provoking the question: Was she lost forever? A century later, questions still linger.

Part love story, part mystery, Vanished Smile reopens the case of the most audacious and perplexing art theft ever committed. R. A. Scotti’s riveting, ingeniously realized account is itself a masterly portrait of a world in transition. Combining her skills as a historian and a novelist, Scotti turns the tantalizing clues into a story of the painting’s transformation into the most familiar and lasting icon of all time.

A sweeping, magisterial biography of the man generally considered the greatest president of the twentieth century, admired by Democrats and Republicans alike. Traitor to His Class sheds new light on FDR’s formative years, his remarkable willingness to champion the concerns of the poor and disenfranchised, his combination of political genius, firm leadership, and matchless diplomacy in saving democracy in America during the Great Depression and the American cause of freedom in World War II.

Drawing on archival material, public speeches, correspondence and accounts by those closest to Roosevelt early in his career and during his presidency, H. W. Brands shows how Roosevelt transformed American government during the Depression with his New Deal legislation, and carefully managed the country’s prelude to war. Brands shows how Roosevelt’s friendship and regard for Winston Churchill helped to forge one of the greatest alliances in history, as Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin maneuvered to defeat Germany and prepare for post-war Europe.

Brands explores the powerful influence of FDR’s dominating mother and the often tense and always unusual partnership between FDR and his wife, Eleanor, and her indispensable contributions to his presidency. Most of all, the book traces in breathtaking detail FDR’s revolutionary efforts with his New Deal legislation to transform the American political economy in order to save it, his forceful — and cagey — leadership before and during World War II, and his lasting legacy in creating the foundations of the postwar international order.

If burying a child has a special poignancy, the tragedy at a Catholic elementary school in Chicago over forty years ago was an extraordinary moment of grief. One of the deadliest fires in American history, it took the lives of ninety-two children and three nuns at Our Lady of the Angels School, left many families physically and psychologically scarred for life, and destroyed a close-knit working-class neighborhood.

This is the moving story of the fire and its consequences written by two journalists who have been obsessed with the events of that terrible day in December 1958. It is a story of ordinary people caught up in a disaster that shocked the nation. In gripping detail, those who were there — children, teachers, firefighters — describe the fear, desperation, and panic that prevailed in and around the stricken school building on that cold Monday afternoon.

But beyond the flames, the story of the fire at Our Lady of the Angels became an enigma whose mystery has deepened with time: its cause was never officially explained despite speculation that it had been intentionally set by a troubled student at the school. The fire led to a complete overhaul of fire safety standards for American schools, but it left a community torn apart by grief and anger, and accusations that the city had shielded the truth. Messrs. Cowan and Kuenster have recreated this tragedy in a powerful narrative with all the elements of a first-rate detective story.

Sunk in a British ambush in 1708, the Spanish galleon San José was rumored to have one of the richest cargos ever lost at sea. Though treasure hunters have searched for the wreck’s legendary bounty, no one knows exactly how much went down with the ship or exactly where it sank. Here, Carla Rahn Phillips confronts the legend of lost treasure with documentary records of the San José’s final voyage and suggests that the loss of silver and gold en route to Spain paled in comparison to the loss of the six hundred men who went down with the ship.

Drawing from rich archival records, Phillips presents a biography of the ship and its crew. With vivid detail and meticulous scholarship, the author tells the stories of the officers, sailors, apprentices, and pages who manned the ship and explains the historical context in which the San José became prey to the British squadron.

But the story does not end with the sinking of the San José. While Phillips addresses the persistent question of how much treasure was on board when the ship went down, she focuses on the human dimensions of the tragedy as well. She recovers the accounts of British naval officers involved in the battle, and examines the impact of the ship’s loss on the Spanish government, the survivors, and the families of the men who perished. Original, comprehensive, and compelling, The Treasure of the San José separates popular myth from history and sheds light on the human lives associated with a “treasure” ship.