The Longest Fight

Set in 1950s London amidst the gritty and violent world of boxing, this beautiful and brutal debut is the story of one man's struggle to overcome the mistakes and tragedies of his past. Jack Munday has been fighting all his life. His early memories are shaped by the thrill of the boxing ring. Since then he has grown numb, scarred by his bullying father and haunted by the tragic fate of his first love. Now a grafting boxing manager, Jack is hungry for change. So when hope and ambition appear in the form of Frank, a young fighter with a winning prospect, and Georgie, a new girl who can match him step for step, Jack seizes his chance for a better future, determined to win at all costs.

Many people came to Goldfield, Nevada, America's last gold-rush town, to seek their fortune. However, on a searing summer day in September 1906, they came not to strike it rich but to watch what would become the longest boxing match of the twentieth century—between Joe Gans, the first African American boxing champion, and "Battling" Nelson, a vicious and dirty brawler. It was a match billed as the battle of the races. In The Longest Fight, the longtime Washington Post sports correspondent William Gildea tells the story of this epic match, which would stretch to forty-two rounds and last two hours and forty-eight minutes. A new rail line brought spectators from around the country, dozens of reporters came to file blow-by-blow accounts, and an entrepreneurial crew's film of the fight, shown in theaters shortly afterward, endures to this day. The Longest Fight also recounts something much greater—the longer battle that Gans fought against prejudice as the premier black athlete of his time. It is a portrait of life in black America at the turn of the twentieth century, of what it was like to be the first black athlete to successfully cross the nation's gaping racial divide. Gans was smart, witty, trim, and handsome—with one-punch knockout power and groundbreaking defensive skills—and his courage despite discrimination prefigured the strife faced by many of America's finest athletes, including Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali. Inside the ring and out, Gans took the first steps for the African American athletes who would follow, and yet his role in history was largely forgotten until now. The Longest Fight is a reminder of the damage caused by the bigotry that long outlived Gans, and the strength, courage, and will of those who fought to rise above.

In "A Measureless Peril, " the historian Richard Snow captures all the drama of the merciless contest between the quickly built U.S. warships and the ever-more cunning and lethal U-boats that controlled the sea lanes of the Atlantic during WWII.

Joe Gans captured the world lightweight title in 1902, becoming the first black American world title holder in any sport. Gans was a master strategist and tactician, and one of the earliest practitioners of “scientific” boxing. As a black champion reigning during the Jim Crow era, he endured physical assaults, a stolen title, bankruptcy, and numerous attempts to destroy his reputation. Four short years after successfully defending his title in the 42-round “Greatest Fight of the Century,” Joe Gans was dead of tuberculosis. This biography features original round-by-round ringside telegraph reports of his most famous and controversial fights, a complete fight history, photographs, and early newspaper drawings and cartoons.

Winner of the Gold Medal in the 2016 Living Now Book Awards In the course of their lifetime, one out of two men and one out of three women will be diagnosed with cancer. Many of us watch in desperation as our friends and loved ones fight for their lives. But after seeing several of her patients and her dearest aunt engage in a battle with cancer, Dr. Christine Meyer decided to embark on a quest for hope—and through happenstance and love, a team of runners emerged that empowered a community to make a difference, not only in the lives of cancer patients, but in one another’s lives. Along the way, Meyer learned that the true measure of a doctor’s success is not the number of lives saved but the number of lives touched.

Set in 1950s London amid the gritty and violent world of boxing, this beautiful and brutal debut is the story of one man's struggle to overcome the mistakes and tragedies of his pastJack Munday has been fighting all his life. His early memories are shaped by the thrill of the boxing ring. Since then he has grown numb, scarred by his bullying father and haunted by the tragic fate of his first love. Now a grafting boxing manager, Jack is hungry for change. So when hope and ambition appear in the form of Frank, a young fighter with a winning prospect, and Georgie, a new girl who can match him step for step, Jack seizes his chance for a better future, determined to win at all costs. Inspired by the author's boxing grandfather, the novel is at once a startlingly poignant exploration of love and family loyalty, and a proud evocation of the strength of relationships formed in a violent, ambitious, male-dominated world.

At seven o'clock in the morning on February 21, 1916, the ground in northern France began to shake. For the next ten hours, twelve hundred German guns showered shells on a salient in French lines. The massive weight of explosives collapsed dugouts, obliterated trenches, severed communication wires, and drove men mad. As the barrage lifted, German troops moved forward, darting from shell crater to shell crater. The battle of Verdun had begun. In Verdun, historian Paul Jankowski provides the definitive account of the iconic battle of World War I. A leading expert on the French past, Jankowski combines the best of traditional military history-its emphasis on leaders, plans, technology, and the contingency of combat-with the newer social and cultural approach, stressing the soldier's experience, the institutional structures of the military, and the impact of war on national memory. Unusually, this book draws on deep research in French and German archives; this mastery of sources in both languages gives Verdun unprecedented authority and scope. In many ways, Jankowski writes, the battle represents a conundrum. It has an almost unique status among the battles of the Great War; and yet, he argues, it was not decisive, sparked no political changes, and was not even the bloodiest episode of the conflict. It is said that Verdun made France, he writes; but the question should be, What did France make of Verdun? Over time, it proved to be the last great victory of French arms, standing on their own. And, for France and Germany, the battle would symbolize the terror of industrialized warfare, "a technocratic Moloch devouring its children," where no advance or retreat was possible, yet national resources poured in ceaselessly, perpetuating slaughter indefinitely.

The true story, told minute by minute, of the soldiers who defeated Napoleon - from Brendan Simms, acclaimed author of Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy Europe had been at war for over twenty years. After a short respite in exile, Napoleon had returned to France and threatened another generation of fighting across the devastated and exhausted continent. At the small Belgian village of Waterloo two large, hastily mobilized armies faced each other to decide the future of Europe. Unknown either to Napoleon or Wellington the battle would be decided by a small, ordinary group of British and German troops given the task of defending the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte. This book tells their extraordinary story, brilliantly recapturing the fear, chaos and chanciness of battle and using previously untapped eye-witness reports. Through determination, cunning and fighting spirit, some four hundred soldiers held off many thousands of French and changed the course of history.