A Red Line In The Sand

A longtime CNN columnist astutely combines history and global politics to help us better understanding the exploding number of military, political, and diplomatic crises around the globe. The riveting and illuminating behind-the-scenes stories of the world's most intense “red lines," from diplomatic and military challenges at particular turning points in history to the ones that set the tone of geopolitics today. Whether it was the red line in Munich that led to the start of the Second World War, to the red lines in the South China Sea, the Korean Peninsula, Syria and the Middle East. As we traverse the globe, Andelman uses original documentary research, previously classified material, and interviews with key players, to help us understand the growth, the successes and frequent failures that have shaped our world today. Andelman provides not just vivid historical context, but a political anatomy of these red lines. How might their failures be prevented going forward? When and how can such lines in the sand help preserve peace rather than tempt conflict? A Red Line in the Sand is a vital examination of our present and the future—where does diplomacy end and war begin? It is an object lesson of tantamount importance to every leader, diplomat, citizen, and voter. As America establishes more red lines than it has pledged to defend, every American should understand the volatile atmosphere and the existential stakes of the red web that encompasses the globe.

In late February and early March of 1836, the Mexican Army under the command of General Antonio López de Santa Anna besieged a small force of Anglo and Tejano rebels at a mission known as the Alamo. The defenders of the Alamo were in an impossible situation. They knew very little of the events taking place outside the mission walls. They did not have much of an understanding of Santa Anna or of his government in Mexico City. They sent out contradictory messages, they received contradictory communications, they moved blindly and planned in the dark. And in the dark early morning of March 6, they died. In that brief, confusing, and deadly encounter, one of America's most potent symbols was born. The story of the last stand at the Alamo grew from a Texas rallying cry, to a national slogan, to a phenomenon of popular culture and presidential politics. Yet it has been a hotly contested symbol from the first. Questions remain about what really happened: Did William Travis really draw a line in the sand? Did Davy Crockett die fighting, surrounded by the bodies of two dozen of the enemy? And what of the participants' motives and purposes? Were the Texans justified in their rebellion? Were they sincere patriots making a last stand for freedom and liberty, or were they a ragtag collection of greedy men-on-the-make, washed-up politicians, and backwoods bullies, Americans bent on extending American slavery into a foreign land? The full story of the Alamo -- from the weeks and months that led up to the fateful encounter to the movies and speeches that continue to remember it today -- is a quintessential story of America's past and a fascinating window into our collective memory. In A Line in the Sand, acclaimed historians Randy Roberts and James Olson use a wealth of archival sources, including the diary of José Enrique de la Peña, along with important and little-used Mexican documents, to retell the story of the Alamo for a new generation of Americans. They explain what happened from the perspective of all parties, not just Anglo and Mexican soldiers, but also Tejano allies and bystanders. They delve anew into the mysteries of Crockett's final hours and Travis's famous rhetoric. Finally, they show how preservationists, television and movie producers, historians, and politicians have become the Alamo's major interpreters. Walt Disney, John Wayne, and scores of journalists and cultural critics have used the Alamo to contest the very meaning of America, and thereby helped us all to "remember the Alamo."

Based on archival sources and oral history, this book reconstructs a border-building process in Namibia that spanned more than sixty years. The process commenced with the establishment of a temporary veterinary defence line against rinderpest by the German colonial authorities in the late nineteenth century and ended with the construction of a continuous two-metre-high fence by the South African colonial government sixty years later. This 1250-kilometre fence divides northern from central Namibia even today. The book combines a macro and a micro-perspective and differentiates between cartographic and physical reality. The analysis explores both the colonial state's agency with regard to veterinary and settlement policies and the strategies of Africans and Europeans living close to the border. The analysis also includes the varying perceptions of individuals and populations who lived further north and south of the border and describes their experiences crossing the border as migrant workers, African traders, European settlers and colonial officials. The Red Line's history is understood as a gradual process of segregating livestock and people, and of constructing dichotomies of modern and traditional, healthy and sick, European and African.

The events of 2003 in Texas were important to the political history of this country. Congressman Tom DeLay led a Republican effort to gerrymander the state's thirty-two congressional districts to defeat all ten of the Anglo Democratic incumbents and to elect more Republicans; Democratic state lawmakers fled the state in an effort to defeat the plan. The Lone Star State uproar attracted attention worldwide. The Republicans won this showdown, gaining six additional seats from Texas and protecting the one endangered Republican incumbent. Some of the methods used by DeLay to achieve this result, however, led to his criminal indictment and ultimately to his downfall. With its eye-opening research, readable style, and insightful commentary, Lines in the Sand provides a front-line account of what happened in 2003, often through the personal stories of members of both parties and of the minority activist groups caught in a political vortex. Law professor Steve Bickerstaff provides much-needed historical perspective and also probes the aftermath of the 2003 redistricting, including the criminal prosecutions of DeLay and his associates and the events that led to DeLay's eventual resignation from the U.S. House of Representatives. As a result, Bickerstaff graphically shows a dark underside of American politics—the ruthless use of public institutional power for partisan gain.

Advance Praise for A Shattered Peace "The peace settlements that followed World War I have recently come back into focus as one of the dominant factors shaping the modern world. The Balkans, the Middle East, Iraq, Turkey, and parts of Africa all owe their present-day problems, in part, to these negotiations. David Andelman brings it all back to life--the lofty ideals, the ugly compromises, the larger-than-life personalities who came to Paris in 1919. And he links that far-away diplomatic dance to present-day problems to illuminate our troubled times. A tremendous addition to this vitally important subject." --Ambassador Richard Holbrooke "The peace conference in Paris at the end of World War I was the first and last moment of pure hope for peace in the history of world affairs. Our president Woodrow Wilson was the sorcerer for this hope, and he kindled great expectations in people everywhere. David Andelman, a classic reporter and storyteller, tells this fascinating tale of hope falling finally and forever on the shoals of naivete and hard-headed cynicism." --Leslie H. Gelb, former columnist for the New York Times and President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations "The failed peace settlement following the Great War of 1914-1918 has been the subject of many fine books. In many respects, David Andelman's A Shattered Peace is the best of these. It is compact and compellingly written. Moreover, it explains more clearly than any other work how the failure of peacemaking in 1919 shaped later history and, indeed, shapes our own era." --Ernest R. May, Charles Warren Professor of American History, Harvard University "It is the power and fascination of David Andelman's new book, A Shattered Peace, that he shows us--with the clarity of a first-rate reporter and the drama and detail at the command of a first-rate novelist--that we are all still enmeshed in the loose ends of the Treaty of Versailles. Andelman brings us to Korea, to Vietnam, to the Persian Gulf, and to Iraq in our own vexed era. His story is alive with color, conflict, and interesting people. We could not find a better guide to this time." --Richard Snow, Editor in Chief, American Heritage

The most playful – and arguably most accessible – novel by the master of inventive science fiction. Humanity is not alone in the cosmos. The aliens have given a precious relic to the people of Earth: star-stone. But the harmony of the galaxy is endangered when they discover that the star-stone has disappeared. Likeable Fred Cassidy is an eternal undergraduate. All he thinks he knows about the star-stone is that it came to Earth in an interplanetary trade for the Mona Lisa and the British Crown jewels. When Fred is accused of stealing the cosmic artefact, he is pursued from Australia to Greenwich Village and beyond, by telepathic psychologists, extra-terrestrial hoodlums and galactic police in disguise. Follow him on his adventures as he enters multiple realities, flipping in and out of alien perspectives, through doorways in the sand. Praise for Doorways in the Sand: “A wonderful book from Zelazny’s best period – with a rollercoaster plot and some terrific jokes.” “If you've never read it, you really must. Come one – there’s a talking wombat. Need I say more?” “Doorways in the Sand is vintage Zelazny, which is to say it is like taking a course in philosophy while crawling about between the gargoyles on the cathedral of Life, dodging the slings and death-rays of outrageous villains, some of them bug-eyed monsters.” “If you don't like it I'm sorry to say there is something wrong with you, you may have to re-incarnate.” Editorial reviews: “Ingenious.” The New York Times “One of the highest tributes I have ever heard paid to a writer lies in the words of a young lady who said, ‘I knew, halfway through the second paragraph, that I was in good hands.’ Science fiction has produced many such hands, and I genuinely envy those who encounter Roger Zelazny.” Theodore Sturgeon, The New York Times Book Review “That rarest of creatures in science fiction, the original character, emerges in Roger Zelazny’s Doorways in the Sand.” Chicago Daily News

The untold history of the multiracial making of the border between Canada and the United States. Often described as the longest undefended border in the world, the Canada-US border was born in blood, conflict, and uncertainty. At the end of the American Revolution, Britain and the United States imagined a future for each of their nations that stretched across a continent. They signed treaties with one another dividing lands neither country could map, much less control. A century and a half later, Canada and the United States had largely fulfilled those earlier ambitions. Both countries had built nations that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific and had made an expansive international border that restricted movement. The vision that seemed so clear in the minds of diplomats and politicians never behaved as such on the ground. Both countries built their border across Indigenous lands using hunger, violence, and coercion to displace existing communities and to disrupt their ideas of territory and belonging. The border's length undermined each nation's attempts at control. Unable to prevent movement at the border's physical location for over a century, Canada and the United States instead found ways to project fear across international lines They aimed to stop journeys before they even began.

Sixteen-year-old Prince Oliver, who wants to break free of his fairy tale existence, and fifteen-year-old Delilah, a loner obsessed with Prince Oliver and the book in which he exists, work together to seek Oliver's freedom.