New Releases by Thomas Fleming

From The Louisiana Purchase Like many other major events in world history, the Louisiana Purchase is a fascinating mix of destiny and individual energy and creativity. . . . Thomas Jefferson would have been less than human had he not claimed a major share of the credit. In a private letter . . . the president, reviving a favorite metaphor, said he "very early saw" Louisiana was a "speck" that could turn into a "tornado." He added that the public never knew how near "this catastrophe was." But he decided to calm the hotheads of the west and "endure" Napoleon''s aggression, betting that a war with England would force Bonaparte to sell. This policy "saved us from the storm." Omitted almost entirely from this account is the melodrama of the purchase, so crowded with "what ifs" that might have changed the outcome-and the history of the world. The reports of the Lewis and Clark expedition . . . electrified the nation with their descriptions of a region of broad rivers and rich soil, of immense herds of buffalo and other game, of grassy prairies seemingly as illimitable as the ocean. . . . From the Louisiana Purchase would come, in future decades, the states of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and large portions of what is now North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, Colorado, and Louisiana. For the immediate future, the purchase, by doubling the size of the United States, transformed it from a minor to a major world power. The emboldened Americans soon absorbed West and East Florida and fought mighty England to a bloody stalemate in the War of 1812. Looking westward, the orators of the 1840s who preached the "Manifest Destiny" of the United States to preside from sea to shining sea based their oratorical logic on the Louisiana Purchase. TURNING POINTS features preeminent writers offering fresh, personal perspectives on the defining events of our time.

Perhaps more than even Washington, Jefferson, or Adams, Ben Franklin is the Founding Father who best exemplifies the authentic American spirit and values. Eminent historian Thomas Fleming paints a lively portrait of this self-made man blessed with a wealth of talents: a best-selling author, the most important newspaper publisher in America, and a world-renowned scientist and inventor before he took on the task of becoming the true "Father” of American independence. Fleming’s remarkable story of how Franklin worked behind the scenes to ensure the success of the American Revolution will inspire readers of all ages.

A novel that crowns Thomas Fleming''s forty-year career, Conquerors of the Sky takes readers on a gripping insider''s journey into the lives and loves, the hopes and heartbreaks of the men and women who make America''s planes. When Adrian Van Ness, the enigmatic chairman of Buchanan Aircraft, dies of a heart attack, a struggle for control of the aerospace giant erupts between burly Dick Stone, the tough-talking money man from New York, and Californian Cliff Morris, CEO and supersalesman. Sarah Morris, Cliff''s estranged English-born wife, knows all the company''s secrets. With her at the controls, Conquerors of the Sky becomes a time trip to the early years of the twentieth century, when flight was seen as spiritual ascent and idealistic Frank Buchanan began designing planes. New York aristocrat Adrian Van Ness is equally fascinated by these new machines--as a financial bonanza. In 1930, Adrian''s amoral business genius and Frank''s visions of ever swifter sleeker planes form a precarious alliance. Soon Buchanan Aircraft is competing with Lockheed and Boeing and Northrop for contracts to build airliners and bombers and fighters. As corrupt connections between generals and congressmen and presidents multiply, Frank sees some of his greatest planes scuttled by dirty political deals. He watches Adrian grow rich and powerful preaching the gospel of air power in the century''s wars. When Dick Stone joins Buchanan he sees Adrian as his American father. But he soon shifts his spiritual allegiance to Frank Buchanan. Cliff Morris''s flamboyant style conceals a ruinous moral collapse in the deadly skies over World War II Germany. His fear of discovery is worsened by the sardonic shadow of his stepbrother, Billy McCall, the supreme pilot Cliff will never become. Sarah loves all three men and ultimately has to choose between them, knowing that in the macho world of Buchanan Aircraft, women are objects to be enjoyed -- or used to sell the latest bomber or airliner. For women like Amanda Van Ness, Adrian''s wife (and Frank Buchanan''s lover), this leads to madness. For Sarah it leads to power -- at a terrible price. Spanning the history of flight from the clumsy fabric planes of 1911 to the whizzing stealth fighters of today, Conquerors of the Sky is a page-turning drama of the struggle to mesh aerodynamic visions with the harsh realities of cashflow and profits -- and with the desires and dreams of the men and women who inhabit this unique world. Told by a master of the historical imagination, it is a must-read book that will launch America into the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of flight. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

From Lexington and Concord to Yorktown, Bruce Lancaster''s classic, The American Revolution, covers the story of America''s fight for independence in vivid detail. With an introduction by the critically acclaimed author Bruce Catton, and a new foreword by Thomas Fleming, The American Revolution is a highly readable and engaging volume.

In 1912 Thomas Fleming Day, editor of The Rudder, decided to demonstrate the reliability of the internal combustion engine by taking a 35-foot double-ended powerboat from New York to St. Petersburg, Russia. The trip was an adventure: the vessel''s freeboard was only 21/2 feet so she was usually awash and always rolling; the engine noise was deafening; and the boat caught fire and nearly blew up. After completing the rugged North Sea leg, Day writes, "...The last thing I did was to visit the engine room and kiss the motor good-bye..."

Portrays the history of Montenegro from the Middle Ages to the present. Predominantly Serbian since the ninth century, Montenegrins adopted clan organization for survival which fostered local loyalties but did not unify them against outside aggressors.

They called themselves Sons of Liberty--a revolutionary conspiracy that intended to form a new confederacy in the American heartland--and put an end to the American Civil War. Backed by the South, the Sons launch guerilla attacks against Union troops. The year is 1864, the place Indiana and Kentucky. A time of ruthless censorship, conscription, and a seemingly endless war that has left a half a million Americans dead. Union Major Paul Stapleton falls in love with Janet Todd, courier and evangelist for the Sons of Liberty. Another admirer, Colonel Adam Jameson, readies his Confederate cavalry division to support the Sons'' revolt. The battle for the future of America is about to begin. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Paradise Beach, New Jersey. The perfect place for Dick O''Gorman and Billy Kilroy to smuggle ashore Cuban missiles to be used in the Irish Republican Army''s war against England. Paradise Beach is an Irish American enclave, one that has no idea about the violent upheaval into which it will soon be thrown. It is 1984. Irish Americans, preoccupied with a loss of political power in the cities, have little sympathy for Ireland and the IRA. This is especially true of Mick O''Day, an ex-marine whose moral failure in Vietnam haunts him still. It is a combustible mix, as a British secret agent disguised as a priest sows suspicion between the Irish Americans and the IRA men that could ignite into a physical and spiritual explosion and could tear the community apart at its very seams. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The story of the Stapleton clan continues in this sequel to Remember the Morning. The Wage of Fame takes place between 1827 and the start of the Civil War. We follow George Stapleton, Hugh Stapleton''s grandson, and his circle of powerful friends through their romantic and political adventures. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

1776 was a pivotal year for the American colonists, the British and for the whole world. This book explores the reality of the year 1776, a reality long shrouded in myth and misconceptions. 1776 was the one time in American life when idealism was truly in flower. Illustrated in B&W.

Examines the growth of the conservative movement from a small band of dissidents after World War II to the dominant force in American politics in the 1980s. Clearly distinguishes between the old Right, the religious Right, the New Right, libertarians, and neoconservatives.

Whether it is tracking down a wayward major who has taken a deadly secret with him to the Caribbean or identifying a top Russian agent secretly bidding for a Fabergé egg in a Sotheby''s auction room, Bond always closes the case-with extreme prejudice. This new Penguin edition comprises four stories, including Fleming''s little-known story "007 in New York," showcasing Bond''s taste for Manhattan''s special pleasures-from martinis at the Plaza and dinner at the Grand Central Oyster Bar to the perfect anonymity of the Central Park Zoo for a secret rendezvous.

When members of the colonial assembly warned Governor Philip Carteret in 1668 that he should abandon any expectations "that things must go according to your opinions," they struck a keynote for the New Jersey experience and suggested to author Thomas Fleming what perhaps should have been the state''s motto: "Divided We Stand." Ethnic diversity made New Jersey an early testing ground for the melting pot, as Yankees, Irish, Italians, and blacks strove for a chance at the good life. To many, that meant a job in the factories that made the state an industrial pioneer; to others, it meant life on the farms that made New Jersey truly the "Garden State."Mr. Fleming concludes that today New Jersey may be in the vanguard of a new American way of life, "the first metropolitan state with equally convenient access to cities and to countryside." He foresees an "equally-oriented New Jersey, honestly and efficiently governed," reminding the nation that divisiveness and acrimony can have more than one outcome. After all, New Jerseyites may have voted repeatedly for the "Boss of Bosses," Frank Hague, but they also once chose as their governor a Princeton professor named Woodrow Wilson.