This fascinating pictorial history chronicles the vibrant development of the largest and most colorful fire service in the country -- the Fire Department of New York (FDNY). Beautifully illustrated, Badges of the Bravest tells the nostalgic story of the fire departments in New York City through a lavish collection of more than 900 badges -- the most time-honored of firefighters' symbols -- along with intriguing photographs and historical documents sure to captivate history buffs, firefighting enthusiasts, and collectors of fire memorabilia. Badges of the Bravest takes the reader through a vivid journey, from the early volunteer companies to the paid uniformed force, from bucket brigades to steam fire engines, from the hand-drawn to the horse-drawn to the motorized era! Badges punctuate the many important milestones in the FDNY's history and capture its most poignant events, including the tragic fires at the Brooklyn Theater, Triangle Shirtwaist factory and the Happyland Social Club. Often overlooked in other published histories of New York firefighting, Badges of the Bravest documents the important role of many specialized fire brigades protecting New York City's landmarks, including the World's Fair, United Nations, Grand Central Terminal, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Coney Island amusement parks, and the World Trade Center. Badges of the Bravest is the saga of a great city... of firefighting and firefighters... and the glorious badges that celebrate and pay fitting tribute to the bravest of American heroes. Book jacket.

The tragic events of September 11, 2001, forever altered the American landscape, both figuratively and literally. Immediately after the jets struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center, Dennis Smith, a former firefighter, reported to Manhattan’s Ladder Co. 16 to volunteer in the rescue efforts. In the weeks that followed, Smith was present on the front lines, attending to the wounded, sifting through the wreckage, and mourning with New York’s devastated fire and police departments. This is Smith’s vivid account of the rescue efforts by the fire and police departments and emergency medical teams as they rushed to face a disaster that would claim thousands of lives. Smith takes readers inside the minds and lives of the rescuers at Ground Zero as he shares stories about these heroic individuals and the effect their loss had on their families and their companies. “It is,” says Smith, “the real and living history of the worst day in America since Pearl Harbor.” Written with drama and urgency, Report from Ground Zero honors the men and women who—in America’s darkest hours—redefined our understanding of courage.

This stand-alone novel in the Valdemar series continues the story of prickly weapons-master Alberich. Once a heroic Captain in the army of Karse, a kingdom at war with Valdemar, Alberich becomes one of Valdemar's Heralds. Despite prejudice against him, he becomes the personal protector of young Queen Selenay. But can he protect her from the dangers of her own heart?

A groundbreaking history of how the decades-long war on terror changed virtually every aspect of American life, from the erosion of citizenship down to the cars we bought and TV we watched—by an acclaimed n+1 writer “Richard Beck, like many people alive today, has spent his adult life living in the shadow of 9/11, and Homeland is a devastating inquiry into the new world that day created.”—Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America For twenty years after September 11, the war on terror was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. With all of the military violence occurring overseas even as the threat of sudden mass death permeated life at home, Americans found themselves living in two worlds at the same time. In one of them, soldiers fought overseas so that nothing at home would have to change at all. In the other, life in the United States took on all kinds of unfamiliar shapes, changing people’s sense of themselves, their neighbors, and the strangers they sat next to on airplanes. In Homeland, Richard Beck delivers a gripping exploration of how much the war changed life in the United States and explains why there is no going back. Though much has been made of the damage that Donald Trump did to the American political system, Beck argues that it was the war on terror that made Trump’s presidency possible, fueling and exacerbating a series of crises that all came to a head with his rise to power. Homeland brilliantly isolates and explores four key issues: the militarism that swept through American politics and culture; the racism and xenophobia that boiled over in much of the country; an economic crisis that, Beck convincingly argues, connects the endurance of the war on terror to at least the end of the Second World War; and a lack of accountability that produced our “impunity culture”—the government-wide inability or refusal to face consequences that has transformed how the U.S. government relates to the people it governs. To see American life through the lens of Homeland’s sweeping argument is to understand the roots of our current condition. In its startling analysis of how the war on terror hollowed out the very idea of citizenship in the United States, Beck gives the most compelling explanation yet offered for the ongoing disintegration of America’s social, political, and cultural fabric.

FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE For most living Americans, September 11, 2001, is the darkest date in the nation’s history. But what exactly happened on 9/11? Could it have been prevented? And what remains unresolved? Here is the first panoramic, authoritative account of that tragic day—from the first brutal actions of the hijackers to our government’s flawed response; from the untruths told afterward by U.S. officials to the “elephant in the room” of the 9/11 Commission’s report—the clues that point to foreign involvement. New York Times bestselling authors Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan write with access to thousands of recently released official documents, raw transcripts, fresh interviews, and the perspective that can come only from a decade of research and evaluation. Riveting, revelatory, and thoroughly sourced, The Eleventh Day is updated for this edition—with new reporting on a development that the former cochairman of Congress’s 9/11 probe calls the most important in years. This is the essential one-volume work, required reading for us all. “Essential.”—The Wall Street Journal “Meticulous, comprehensive . . . an extraordinary synthesis.”—John Farmer, 9/11 Commission senior counsel “This wide-angle look . . . examines the personalities behind the terror plot, U.S. intelligence blunders, the toxic environmental impact on first responders, the march to war, [and] gray areas in the 9/11 Commission Report.”—The Washington Post “The best available general account of 9/11—soberly written, judiciously weighed, meticulously sourced.”—The Sunday Times

Decade of Fear is a darkly entertaining journey through the complicated, often bizarre world of national security since 9/11. On that night, Toronto Star journalist Michelle Shephard watched the remains of New York’s World Trade Center fall from the sky, wondering what much of the world was asking: “Why?” So began a ten-year search for answers that took her through the streets of Mogadishu and Karachi, into the mountains of Waziristan and behind the wire of Guantanamo Bay two dozen times. Shephard conducted hundreds of interviews worldwide, and with sharp insight and an appreciation for the absurd, she weaves together stories of warlords, presidents, spies, grieving widows and global terrorists, to describe the historic decade where often the West’s “solutions” for terrorism only served to exacerbate the problem. She cruises with former CIA bosses, runs alongside protestors in the streets of Sanaa to escape fire from Yemen’s security services during experience the Arab Spring, meets victims of terrorism who leave her devastated, and earns enough stamps on her Gitmo Starbucks card for a free latte. Gripping, heartbreaking and infuriating, Decade of Fear broadens our understanding of a decade that was all too often described through panicked rhetoric.

Marriage is not up for debate; marriage simply is. Today the meaning and purpose of marriage has been lost, and it is our fault. The prevalence of pornography, divorce, pre-marital sex, cohabitation, infidelity, and a thousand other mistakes have blurred our vision of God’s plan for sex, family, and society to the point of blindness. The task before us is not merely to argue against the lie of same-sex marriage. Though that it is necessary, ours is a much larger project. It is time to restore among our people a sense of the profound beauty, mystery, and holiness of faithful marital love. It is time to recognize the time for defending the institution of marriage has passed. Sadly, for far too many, the marriages they know are not worth defending. Instead, Christians must take up the mission to renew and rebuild a culture that values marriage and family. To do so, we must first understand what marriage is and why it matters.