New Release Books by Erik Larson

"The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers a fresh and compelling portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz On Winston Churchill''s first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold the country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally-and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it''s also an intimate domestic drama set against the backdrop of Churchill''s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports-some released only recently-Larson provides a new lens on London''s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents'' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela''s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the cadre of close advisers who comprised Churchill''s "Secret Circle," including his lovestruck private secretary, John Colville; newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook; and the Rasputin-like Frederick Lindemann. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today''s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when-in the face of unrelenting horror-Churchill''s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together."--

A descent into poetic, photo and story-based madness.

#1 New York Times Bestseller From the bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger’s U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small—hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more—all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history. It is a story that many of us think we know but don’t, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President Woodrow Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster whose intimate details and true meaning have long been obscured by history.

Hazards to aircraft are a particular concern for the design of safe space vehicle operations. A valid risk mitigation strategy requires accurately computed risks, and the first section of this chapter discusses this. This is followed by a section on aircraft vulnerability modeling. A straightforward approach for managing aircraft risk, which is often sufficient for low-use airspace, is then discussed. Potential methods for reducing the impact on airspace, which may be useful in the absence of a real-time system, are then explored. Real-time management is covered in the subsequent section, and gives a potential architecture based on the used for management of the US National Air Space for Space Shuttle Orbiter re-entries after the Columbia accident.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, a great confidence suffused America. Isaac Cline was one of the era''s new men, a scientist who believed he knew all there was to know about the motion of clouds and the behavior of storms. The idea that a hurricane could damage the city of Galveston, Texas, where he was based, was to him preposterous, "an absurd delusion." It was 1900, a year when America felt bigger and stronger than ever before. Nothing in nature could hobble the gleaming city of Galveston, then a magical place that seemed destined to become the New York of the Gulf. That August, a strange, prolonged heat wave gripped the nation and killed scores of people in New York and Chicago. Odd things seemed to happen everywhere: A plague of crickets engulfed Waco. The Bering Glacier began to shrink. Rain fell on Galveston with greater intensity than anyone could remember. Far away, in Africa, immense thunderstorms blossomed over the city of Dakar, and great currents of wind converged. A wave of atmospheric turbulence slipped from the coast of western Africa. Most such waves faded quickly. This one did not. In Cuba, America''s overconfidence was made all too obvious by the Weather Bureau''s obsession with controlling hurricane forecasts, even though Cuba''s indigenous weathermen had pioneered hurricane science. As the bureau''s forecasters assured the nation that all was calm in the Caribbean, Cuba''s own weathermen fretted about ominous signs in the sky. A curious stillness gripped Antigua. Only a few unlucky sea captains discovered that the storm had achieved an intensity no man alive had ever experienced. In Galveston, reassured by Cline''s belief that no hurricane could seriously damage the city, there was celebration. Children played in the rising water. Hundreds of people gathered at the beach to marvel at the fantastically tall waves and gorgeous pink sky, until the surf began ripping the city''s beloved beachfront apart. Within the next few hours Galveston would endure a hurricane that to this day remains the nation''s deadliest natural disaster. In Galveston alone at least 6,000 people, possibly as many as 10,000, would lose their lives, a number far greater than the combined death toll of the Johnstown Flood and 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. And Isaac Cline would experience his own unbearable loss. Meticulously researched and vividly written, Isaac''s Storm is based on Cline''s own letters, telegrams, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the hows and whys of great storms. Ultimately, however, it is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets nature''s last great uncontrollable force. As such, Isaac''s Storm carries a warning for our time.

This devastating book illuminates America''s gun culture -- its manufacturers, dealers, buffs, and propagandists -- but also offers concrete solutions to our national epidemic of death by firearm. It begins with an account of a crime that is by now almost commonplace: on December 16, 1988, sixteen-year-old Nicholas Elliot walked into his Virginia high school with a Cobray M-11/9 and several hundred rounds of ammunition tucked in his backpack. By day''s end, he had killed one teacher and severely wounded another. In Lethal Passage Erik Larson shows us how a disturbed teenager was able to buy a weapon advertised as "the gun that made the eighties roar." The result is a book that can -- and should -- save lives, and that has already become an essential text in the gun-control debate. With a new afterword. "Touches on all aspects of the gun issue in this country. Gives great voice to that feeling...that something real must be done." --San Diego Union-Tribune "One of the most readable anti-gun treatises in years." --Washington Post Book World

Erik Larson, New York Times bestselling author of Devil in the White City, delivers a remarkable story set during Hitler’s rise to power. The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Nazi Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history. A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition. Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.

This is a compelling story about how a series of events led the author to stop letting circumstances control his life. He gained a purpose and a plan to take charge and strive to improve and be successful in every area of his life. Although this story is about the authors journey of intentional personal development, the most important thing is your journey. As you read, you will be inspired to take on your own journey of personal development to reach for your highest potential. This is a book not just to read but to use. Through evaluation exercises you will gain your own life''s purpose statement that you will use to put together a specific and deliberate plan to improve in every are of your life.Whatever the outcome, I can promise you will a more successful person after reading this book.

Project Management 1e provides a holistic, integrative view of project management with a focus on the above framework. It presents readers with a complete picture of project management – not only what to do and how to do it, but also why it is done. This international adaptation contains the valuable addition of local and regional cases and applications. Whether you are a student, a prospective project manager, a project management practitioner, an analyst, a manager or someone assigned to a project team; the generic approach ensures relevancy across all studies and industries.

When a little cat is taken captive by a pair of robbers it sets in motion not just a grand rescue operation but also the beginning of lasting friendships and adventures on the high seas. Join Fall Landon Sully as his journey to fulfill his destiny is begun when he crosses paths with the mysterious Pirate with a Heart of Gold!

An account of the Chicago World''s Fair of 1893 relates the stories of two men who shaped the history of the event--architect Daniel H. Burnham, who coordinated its construction, and serial killer Herman Mudgett.

A true story of love, murder, and the end of the world’s “great hush.” In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men—Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication—whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time. Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners; scientific advances dazzled the public with visions of a world transformed; and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, “the kindest of men,” nearly commits the perfect murder. With his unparalleled narrative skills, Erik Larson guides us through a relentlessly suspenseful chase over the waters of the North Atlantic. Along the way, he tells of a sad and tragic love affair that was described on the front pages of newspapers around the world, a chief inspector who found himself strangely sympathetic to the killer and his lover, and a driven and compelling inventor who transformed the way we communicate.

"Synaptic neurotransmission is a fundamental process which enables signaling between neurons. All voluntary animal behaviour relies on proper synaptic function, and many neurological diseases have their origins in synaptic disruptions. In particular, the neurodevelopmental disease fragile-X syndrome (FXS) has notable defects in synaptic transmission across the brain. FXS is the most common single gene cause of intellectual disability and autism, and is caused by interruptions in the expression or function of the protein FMRP. Like many neurodevelopmental diseases, FXS is characterized in part by an imbalance in excitation and inhibition in the brain. While there is a general consensus regarding the defects in FXS excitatory signaling, there is considerably less known about defects to inhibitory neurotransmission. In particular, there has been no comprehensive study on the synapses of the inhibitory cerebellar molecular layer interneurons (MLIs) in the pathophysiology of FXS. Accordingly, this thesis addresses this gap in our understanding FXS, while also uncovering novel plasticity mechanisms in MLI inhibitory neurotransmission. Neurotransmission is very dynamic and synapses regularly change their efficacy in a process known as synaptic plasticity. Most research into synaptic plasticity has focused on excitatory synapses, but there is a new interest in studying the mechanisms that lead to long term changes of inhibitory synaptic signaling. One of these mechanisms includes a novel role for reactive oxygen species (ROS) to potentiate inhibitory GABAergic signaling of MLIs. Given this, the first objective of this thesis was to identify the physiological signaling pathways of ROS-dependent inhibitory plasticity using an approach involving both pharmacological and genetic manipulations. I found that NMDA receptor activation generates physiological ROS through a nNOS-cGMP-NOX2 pathway. Furthermore, this pathway recruited [alpha]3-containing GABAA receptors to the synapse following PKC activation and GABARAP trafficking. The second half of this thesis was a study on the role of MLIs in the neurodevelopmental disease, FXS. In these chapters, I start by describing a novel defect in MLI NMDA receptor signaling. Consequently, this impacts multiple plasticity mechanisms which regulate inhibition in the CNS. First, MLIs are unable to modulate their firing properties in response to NMDA receptor activation. Second, there is an inability to potentiate inhibitory signaling onto MLIs. Inhibitory plasticity can be restored by the inclusion of a small molecule which potentiates the intracellular signaling pathway. Third, there is a significant impact on the regulation of blood flow through the cerebellum. Together, the lack of these plasticity mechanisms likely impacts the cerebellar circuit which I predict would have downstream consequences on motor learning. Finally, I have also found a defect in dendritic filtering of cerebellar MLIs in FXS. MLIs from FXS mice fire more action potentials following afferent stimulation, which is linked to a larger evoked postsynaptic potential (ePSP) amplitude. Moreover, acute reintroduction of the N-terminal fragment of FMRP reduces the ePSP amplitude in FXS mice. Taken together, this thesis presents original findings on GABAergic plasticity and multiple defects in inhibitory signaling of FXS mice in the cerebellum. Based on our new understanding of inhibitory signaling, this thesis also demonstrates mechanisms to overcome these defects in FXS which could lead to therapeutics in a future clinical setting"--