Books about Taranto from Amazon.com

Where Does Your Favorite President Rank?

Based on a completely new nationwide survey prepared exclusively for this edition of Presidential Leadership, two of America's most prominent institutions, The Wall Street Journal and the Federalist Society, explore just what it is that makes a president great and then rank each from best to worst. Now with updated chapters on Bush and "Leadership in the Midst of Controversy," a wide range of eminent scholars, journalists, and political leaders evaluate the competence of our nation's chief executives, including that of George W. Bush's first complete term in office.

From John McCain on Teddy Roosevelt to Kenneth Starr on Richard Nixon, editors James Taranto and Leonard Leo have collected a series of lively, provocative, and highly readable essays evaluating the terms of each of the forty-three U.S. presidents. Other contributors include Douglas Brinkley on James Polk, Melanie Kirkpatrick on Millard Fillmore, Jay Winik on Abraham Lincoln, and Lynne Cheney on James Madison. Fascinating and often surprising, the book reveals who was voted the most controversial and who was the most over- and underrated from the nationwide survey of liberal and conservative scholars, balanced to reflect the political makeup of the U.S. population as a whole. Presidential Leadership is a pleasure to read and an authoritative reference for every library.

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In 1855 Charlotte Brontë, pregnant and married less than a year, fell ill and died of tuberculosis—the same disease that had killed her sisters and brother. Two years after Charlotte’s death, her friend Elizabeth Gaskell, herself a well-known novelist, completed work on The Life of Charlotte Brontë, a biography that was met with immediate acclaim by readers curious to discover more about the enigmatic author of Jane Eyre.

Both a work of art and a well-documented interpretation of its subject, Gaskell’s biography is an extraordinarily vivid and sensitive account of Brontë’s outer and inner lives: her shyness and strangeness; her intense appreciation of the Bible, poetry, music, and the theater; her love of her family; and her fears of loneliness. Meant to be a defense and vindication of “a noble, true, and tender woman,” the book paints Brontë as an unforgettable figure careening between depression and exaltation. It also portrays her suffering. In her personal life, Brontë knew deprivation and loss, while in her artistic life, despite her fame, she had been taunted as coarse and had none of the advantages that a man might take for granted.

A powerful tribute from one writer to another, The Life of Charlotte Brontë remains one of the most evocative and perceptive biographies ever written.

Anne Taranto was educated at Columbia and Oxford Universities and at Yale University, where she earned a Ph.D. She has taught courses on the novel and on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature at Georgetown University and is currently at work on a study of Charlotte Bront?’s relationship to the literary marketplace.

In November 1940 Britain was isolated in its stand against Nazi Germany and its ally, Italy. We had no allies save the exiled governments of countries conquered by Germany; the USA was neutral and Russia had signed a pact with Hitler. Britain could not afford to lose control of the Mediterranean, but the Royal Navy was already overstretched by the U-boat war and the threat of invasion. Italy's fleet of modern battleships presented a grave threat to our communications with Egypt and the Suez Canal. On the night of 11 November 1940, 42 members of the Fleet Air Arm took off in 21 obsolete 'Swordfish' biplanes, launched from HMS Illustrious. Their target: the Italian fleet anchorage at Taranto. Pressing home their attack in the face of intense anti-aircraft fire and searchlights, they torpedoed and sank three battleships. Incredibly, all but two of the biplanes survived. The Italian fleet was crippled and the world took note that Britain was far from defeated. No-one was more impressed than the Japanese, who noted how a fleet in harbour could be demolished by air attack. In this new account of the Royal Navy's most daring operation of the Second World War, David Wragg reveals how the plan began as possible League of Nations response to Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. Drawing on British and Italian records as well as interviews with the aircrew, he tells the full story of a night that changed the course of the war..
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