Full AspenCat Catalog

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SELECTED BY THE ECONOMIST AS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
“A rambunctious book that is itself alive with the animal spirits of the marketplace.”—The Wall Street Journal
Freedom’s Forge reveals how two extraordinary American businessmen—General Motors automobile magnate  William “Big Bill” Knudsen and shipbuilder...

-- The From the Trade Paperback edition.

-- The Wager In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend. But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much...

"At the close of World War II, American soldiers had the shock of their lives. In this book, the true story of the liberation of a death train deep in the heart of Nazi Germany is chronicled, brought to life by the history teacher who discovered the little-known story and went on to reunite hundreds of Holocaust survivors all over the world with the actual American solders who saved them!"--Dust jacket flap

The definitive account of the 1945 Potsdam Conference: the historic summit where Truman, Stalin, and Churchill met to determine the fate of post-World War II Europe After Germany's defeat in World War II, Europe lay in tatters. Millions of refugees were dispersed across the continent. Food and fuel were scarce. Britain was bankrupt, while Germany had been reduced to rubble. In July of 1945, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin gathered...

Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality; she was the highest-paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all {28}negroes and Jews.

"Flying the notorious 'Hump' route between India and China in 1943, a twin engine Curtiss-Wright C-46 plane suffered engine failure and crashed over the mountainous, remote border country. Among the passengers and crew were celebrated CBS journalist Eric Sevareid, a Soviet double-agent posing as an OSS operative, and General 'Vinegar Joe' Stillwell's personal political adviser. Against the odds, all but one of the twenty-one people on the doomed aircraft...

"When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, college football was at the height of its popularity. As the nation geared up for total war, one branch of the service dominated the aspirations of college football stars: the United States Marine Corps. Which is why, on Christmas Eve of 1944, when the 4th and 29th Marine regiments found themselves in the middle of the Pacific Ocean training for what would be the bloodiest battle of the war - the invasion...

The Battle of Dunkirk, in May/June 1940, is remembered as a stunning defeat, yet a major victory as well. The Nazis had beaten back the Allies and pushed them across France to the northern port of Dunkirk. In the ultimate race against time, more than 300,000 Allied soldiers were daringly evacuated across the Channel. This moment of German aggression was used by Winston Churchill as a call to Franklin Roosevelt to enter the war. Now, historian Joshua...

On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared -- Lt. Louis Zamperini ... Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a floundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft and beyond, a trial even greater. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended...