In the farthest wilds of northeastern Minnesota, back in the Gunflint Range, the author of this book and her artist-husband have a two-room cabin home in the bush country. Beginning one Christmas Day when they first watched the starving deer they later named Peter, the Hoovers had many opportunities, a passionate inclination, and the nature skills to observe this whitetail buck—joined later by his mate, and finally by several of their offspring—through the changing seasons of four years. Close as their relationship was to the generations of beautiful animals, the Hoovers did not consider them pets but fellow inhabitants of that wild country. Their observations reveal the rewards of living close to wild creatures; but more than that, they add valuable information to our knowledge of the cycle of life of the deer and other creatures native to the same world. For although the deer are the chief characters of this book, they are by no means the only wild creatures Mrs. Hoover writes of. Her naturalist’s eye is just as sharp and her affection just as great for the antics of a curious chickadee or a flying squirrel. Mrs. Hoover’s identification with nature knows no favoritism. The Hoovers’ world—the bush country of the United States-Canadian border—is farther removed from civilization than “Mr. Emerson’s woodlot,” but the close relationship of The Gift of the Deer to Walden is evident for all to enjoy. Adrian Hoover’s drawings are from life, and they add another level of understanding to his wife’s vivid prose.

“Once an Eagle is simply the best work of fiction on leadership in print.” —General Martin E. Dempsey, 18th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Required reading for West Point and Marine Corps cadets, Once An Eagle is the story of one special man, a soldier named Sam Damon, and his adversary over a lifetime, fellow officer Courtney Massengale. Damon is a professional who puts duty, honor, and the men he commands above self-interest. Massengale, however, brilliantly advances by making the right connections behind the lines and in Washington's corridors of power. Beginning in the French countryside during the Great War, the conflict between these adversaries solidifies in the isolated garrison life marking peacetime, intensifies in the deadly Pacific jungles of World War II, and reaches its treacherous conclusion in the last major battleground of the Cold War—Vietnam. Now reissued with a new foreword by acclaimed historian Carlo D'Este, here is an unforgettable story of a man who embodies the best in our nation—and in us all.

From gripping survival tales to laugh-out-loud comedy to sweet love notes, The Best of Reader’s Digest, Volume 4 features some of the most memorable narratives published in America’s favorite magazine over the past 100 years. For more than a century, Reader’s Digest has been sharing stories of small miracles and unlikely friendships, steadfast courage and enduring love—stories that transcend time and place. Within these pages, you’ll find some of our most memorable narratives, including: •the hilarious tales of smart people doing the dumbest things •the heart-stopping story of two friends who get caught in a dangerous current and are swept out to sea •an intimate essay by Bishop Desmond Tutu on the value of forgiveness In addition, the book features hilarious jokes and cartoons, classic illustrations and photographs, true stories from readers and bonus content never published in the magazine.

“Women and Thomas Harrow is Grade A Marquand, spellbindingly readable, smooth as cream in its polished technical craftsmanship, sardonically witty and filled with a special sort of wry and melancholy worldly wisdom.” —The New York Times Playwright Thomas Harrow followed his first Broadway smash with Hollywood celebrity and became the toast of theaters from coast to coast. But the road to riches and fame has been anything but smooth. Now in his fifties, Thomas’s three unhappy marriages have caused significant emotional and financial damage, and the disastrous failure of his musical Porthos of Paris will now force him to sell the beloved Federalist house he bought in his hometown of Clyde, Massachusetts. Tom’s search for the causes of his current distress takes him back to his youth and through each decisive moment of his life: the literary successes, the hack work, the love affairs that turned sour. He married three charming, vivacious women—Rhoda, Laura, and Emily—yet never figured out how to share his thoughts and feelings with them. Partly the work was to blame, as the demands of his artistic life often ran counter to domestic arrangements. But with the wisdom of experience, Tom can also see that his character judgments were often mistaken, and that, despite his wit, charm, and intelligence, there is a fundamental part of himself that remains shrouded in mystery. Is there still time to unlock his heart, or has the window for love closed to him? An honest and moving portrait of a successful man’s never-ending quest for happiness, Women and Thomas Harrow is one of John P. Marquand’s most autobiographical novels.

The #1 New York Times bestseller and subject of the acclaimed major motion picture Bridge of Spies directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Hanks as James B. Donovan. Originally published in 1964, this is the “enthralling…truly remarkable” (The New York Times Book Review) insider account of the Cold War spy exchange—with a new foreword by Jason Matthews, New York Times bestselling author of Red Sparrow and Palace of Treason. In the early morning of February 10, 1962, James B. Donovan began his walk toward the center of the Glienicke Bridge, the famous “Bridge of Spies” which then linked West Berlin to East. With him, walked Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, master spy and for years the chief of Soviet espionage in the United States. Approaching them from the other side, under equally heavy guard, was Francis Gary Powers, the American U-2 spy plane pilot famously shot down by the Soviets, whose exchange for Abel Donovan had negotiated. These were the strangers on a bridge, men of East and West, representatives of two opposed worlds meeting in a moment of high drama. Abel was the most gifted, the most mysterious, the most effective spy in his time. His trial, which began in a Brooklyn United States District Court and ended in the Supreme Court of the United States, chillingly revealed the methods and successes of Soviet espionage. No one was better equipped to tell the whole absorbing history than James B. Donovan, who was appointed to defend one of his country’s enemies and did so with scrupulous skill. In Strangers on a Bridge, the lead prosecutor in the Nuremburg Trials offers a clear-eyed and fast-paced memoir that is part procedural drama, part dark character study and reads like a noirish espionage thriller. From the first interview with Abel to the exchange on the bridge in Berlin—and featuring unseen photographs of Donovan and Abel as well as trial notes and sketches drawn from Abel’s prison cell—here is an important historical narrative that is “as fascinating as it is exciting” (The Houston Chronicle).

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