For over half a century, Alistair Cooke entertained and informed millions of listeners around the world in his weekly BBC radio program Letter from America. An outstanding observer of the American scene, he became one of the world’s best-loved broadcasters, and a foreigner who helped Americans better understand themselves. Here, in print for the first time, is a collection of Cooke’s finest reports that celebrates the inimitable style of this wise and avuncular reporter. Beginning with his first letter in 1946, a powerful description of American GIs returning home, and ending with his last broadcast in February 2004, in which he expressed his views on the United States presidential campaign, the collection captures Cooke’s unique voice and gift for telling stories. Gathered in this volume are encounters with the many presidents Cooke knew, from Roosevelt to Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush, both Senior and Junior. His friends are warmly recollected–among them Leonard Bernstein, Philip Larkin, Humphrey Bogart, Charlie Chaplin, and Katharine Hepburn. We observe a variety of political landmarks–the Vietnam War, Watergate, Cooke’s remarkable eyewitness account of Robert Kennedy’s assassination, through to the scandals that surrounded Clinton and the conflict in Iraq. His moving evocation of the events of September 11 and its aftermath remains essential reading, while his recollections of holidays and sporting events remind us of Cooke’s delight in the pleasures of everyday life. Imbued with Alistair Cooke’s good humor, elegance, and understanding, Letter from America, 1946—2004 is a captivating insight into the heart of a nation and a fitting tribute to the man who was for so many the most reassuring voice of our times.

A fascinating story of an Israeli freedom fighter who held firm to his beliefs under the cruel British rule of Palestine at the time of the rebirth of the Israeli state. “NO one but Itzhak Gurion could have written this book. It took the sensitivity of a poet to describe the martyrdom of those who died so heroically to wrest back the ancient land of Israel from the unclean hands that have held it. Here are the images of these men and the fortitude of their souls. Here also is the picture of the henchmen and the weak-kneed lackeys of the British Government and the whole sordid business of holding a people in thraldom. “In fluent language that seems almost effortless, Gurion describes the last days of his fighting comrades in the death cells of British prisons in Israel, and I, for one, shall never again hear the HATIKVAH without thinking of the men who sang it on the way to the gallows—on which they died to make Israel live. “Here is irrefutable proof that the land of Israel would still be a dependence of its former usurpers were it not for the farsightedness and the heroism of those who realized that it could be won back by force, force of character and blood. Two thousand years of cruel oppression died at the end of the rope on which dangled the bodies of Dov Gruner and his fighting friends. If anyone can read Mr. Gurion’s book without feeling proud of belonging to the people he describes let him remove himself as far as he can from them; let him never again say that he is of the same ancestry.”—KONRAD BERCOVICI

Much more than a word list, the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus is a browsable source of inspiration as well as an authoritative guide to selecting and using vocabulary. This innovative thesaurus eatures real-life example sentences, usage notes, literary quotations, and thought-provoking reflections on favorite (and not-so-favorite) words by over two dozen renowned contemporary writers. The third edition revises and updates this innovative reference, enhancing it with new features and adding hundreds of new words, senses, and phrases to the more than 300,000 synonyms and 10,000 antonyms.

In the middle of World War II, Nazi military intelligence discovered a seemingly easy way to win the war for Adolf Hitler. The three heads of the Allied forces—Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Josef Stalin—were planning to meet in Tehran in October, 1943. Under Hitler's personal direction, the Nazis launched “Operation Long Jump,” an intricate plan to track the Allied leaders in Tehran and assassinate all three men at the same time. “I suppose it would make a pretty good haul if they could get all three of us,” Roosevelt later said. Historian Bill Yenne retells the incredible, globe-spanning story of the most ambitious assassination plot ever thwarted in Operation Long Jump.