Our Man in Charleston


Book Description

"The little-known story of a British diplomat who serves as a spy in South Carolina at the dawn of the Civil War, posing as a friend to slave-owning aristocrats when he was actually telling Britain not to support the Confederacy"--




Our Man in Charleston


Book Description

Between the Confederacy and recognition by Great Britain stood one unlikely Englishman who hated the slave trade. His actions helped determine the fate of a nation. When Robert Bunch arrived in Charleston to take up the post of British consul in 1853, he was young and full of ambition, but even he couldn’t have imagined the incredible role he would play in the history-making events to unfold. In an age when diplomats often were spies, Bunch’s job included sending intelligence back to the British government in London. Yet as the United States threatened to erupt into Civil War, Bunch found himself plunged into a double life, settling into an amiable routine with his slavery-loving neighbors on the one hand, while working furiously to thwart their plans to achieve a new Confederacy. As secession and war approached, the Southern states found themselves in an impossible position. They knew that recognition from Great Britain would be essential to the survival of the Confederacy, and also that such recognition was likely to be withheld if the South reopened the Atlantic slave trade. But as Bunch meticulously noted from his perch in Charleston, secession’s red-hot epicenter, that trade was growing. And as Southern leaders continued to dissemble publicly about their intentions, Bunch sent dispatch after secret dispatch back to the Foreign Office warning of the truth—that economic survival would force the South to import slaves from Africa in massive numbers. When the gears of war finally began to turn, and Bunch was pressed into service on an actual spy mission to make contact with the Confederate government, he found himself in the middle of a fight between the Union and Britain that threatened, in the boast of Secretary of State William Seward, to “wrap the world in flames.” In this masterfully told story, Christopher Dickey introduces Consul Bunch as a key figure in the pitched battle between those who wished to reopen the floodgates of bondage and misery, and those who wished to dam the tide forever. Featuring a remarkable cast of diplomats, journalists, senators, and spies, Our Man in Charleston captures the intricate, intense relationship between great powers on the brink of war.




A Tangled Mercy


Book Description

2015: After the sudden death of her troubled mother, struggling Harvard grad student Kate Drayton walks out on her lecture-- and her entire New England life. She flees to Charleston, South Carolina, the place where her parents met, convinced it holds the key to understanding her fractured family and saving her career in academia. Her mother was researching a failed 1822 slave revolt-- and Kate will continue her work. 1822: Tom Russell, a gifted blacksmith and slave, grappled with a terrible choice: arm the uprising spearheaded by members of the fiercely independent African Methodist Episcopal Church or keep his own neck out of the noose and protect the woman he loves.




Our Man in Washington


Book Description

Roy Hoopes is a career journalist in Washington, DC, and the author of Cain, the Edgar Award-winning standard biography of James M. Cain. His first novel is an historical detective novel featuring James M. Cain and H. L. Mencken as detectives, two Baltimore journalists investigating the deaths and sex scandals in 1923 Harding-administration Washington, DC, in the season before the big Teapot Dome scandal breaks. There is a remarkable relevance of 1920s scandals to todays political environment, but that remains behind the book as two bright literary men playing Holmes and Watson, Mencken and Cain, take the train to DC to get the real scoop. They drink a lot, meet a mysterious sexy redhead named Roxy, a rogue named Gaston B. Means, and get a lot more than they bargained for. They don't solve a crime, but with hard-boiled enthusiasm they expose some of the roots of the malaise of our capitol. All the speaking roles are real historical characters. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Our Man Elsewhere


Book Description

A world-famous Australian writer, an inspiration to Robert Hughes and Clive James, a legendary war correspondent who also wrote bestselling histories of exploration and conservation . . . and yet forgotten? In this dazzling book, Thornton McCamish delves into the past to reclaim a remarkable figure, Alan Moorehead. As a reporter, Moorehead witnessed many of the great historical events of the mid-20th century: the Spanish Civil War and both world wars, Cold War espionage, and decolonisation in Africa. He debated strategy with Churchill and Gandhi, fished with Hemingway, and drank with Graham Greene, Ava Gardner and Truman Capote. As well as being a regular contributor to the New Yorker, in 1956 Moorehead wrote the first significant book about the Gallipoli campaign. With its countless adventures, its touch of jet-set glamour and its tragic arc, Moorehead’s story is a beguiling one. Thornton McCamish tells it as a quest – intimate, perceptive and superbly entertaining. His funny, ardent book reveals an extraordinary Australian and takes its place in a fresh tradition of contemporary biography. Winner of the 2017 Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Shortlisted for the 2017 Prime Minister's Literary Awards and the 2018 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature Longlisted in the 2016 Walkley Book Awards ‘[McCamish] succeeds beautifully: Our Man Elsewhere is crammed with anecdote and shrewd observation, with the kind of detail and ruminative digression that conventional biographers might consider trivial or irrelevant ... [it] is such a good book that I’m hard put to find anything wrong with it.’ —Inside Story ‘This is one of those rare biographies that will keep you transfixed right to the very last pages, even though in this instance, they are scorchingly sad.’ —Country Style ‘McCamish’s triumph is to apply Moorehead’s own relentless curiosity to his subject, and add a modern prism to the man and his work. McCamish’s writing is elegant, frosted in fresh insights ... marvellous.’ —Herald Sun ‘A detailed, involving and very readable look at the life of a flawed man with a large appetite for life.’ —Books+Publishing ‘Full-hearted, free-striding – this is a book that sings.’ —Helen Garner




Studies Intelligence


Book Description




How to Become an American


Book Description

An odyssey from pre–Civil War Charleston to post–World War II Minneapolis through Jewish immigrants' eyes The histories of US immigrants do not always begin and end in Ellis Island and northeastern cities. Many arrived earlier and some migrated south and west, fanning out into their vast new country. They sought a renewed life, fresh prospects, and a safe harbor, despite a nation that was not always welcoming and not always tolerant. How to Become an American begins with an abandoned diary—and from there author Daniel Wolff examines the sweeping history of immigration into the United States through the experiences of one unnamed, seemingly unremarkable Jewish family, and, in the process, makes their lives remarkable. It is a deeply human odyssey that journeys from pre–Civil War Charleston, South Carolina, to post–World War II Minneapolis, Minnesota. In some ways, the family's journey parallels that of the nation, as it struggled to define itself through the Industrial Age. A persistent strain of loneliness permeates this story, and Wolff holds up this theme for contemplation. In a country that prides itself on being "a nation of immigrants," where "all men are created equal," why do we end up feeling alone in the land we love?




The Union Prison at Fort Delaware


Book Description

Located on Pea Patch Island at the entrance to the Delaware River, Fort Delaware was built to protect Wilmington and Philadelphia in case of an attack by sea. When the Civil War broke out, Fort Delaware's purpose changed dramatically--it became a prisoner of war camp. By the fall of 1863, about 12,000 soldiers, officers, and political prisoners were being held in an area designed to hold only 4,000--and known as the Andersonville of the North, a place where terrible sickness and deprivation were a way of life despite the commanding general's efforts to keep the prison clean and the prisoners fed. Many books have been written about the Confederacy's Andersonville and its terrible conditions, but comparatively little has been written about its counterparts in the North. The conditions at Fort Delaware are fully explored, contemplating what life was like for prisoners and guards alike.




The War of the Rebellion: v. 1-53 [serial no. 1-111] Formal reports, both Union and Confederate, of the first seizures of United States property in the southern states, and of all military operations in the field, with the correspondence, order and returns relating specially thereto. 1880-1898. 111 v


Book Description

Official records produced by the armies of the United States and the Confederacy, and the executive branches of their respective governments, concerning the military operations of the Civil War, and prisoners of war or prisoners of state. Also annual reports of military departments, calls for troops, correspondence between national and state governments, correspondence between Union and Confederate officials. The final volume includes a synopsis, general index, special index for various military divisions, and background information on how these documents were collected and published. Accompanied by an atlas.




No Second Wind


Book Description

A harsh winter and a heated land dispute make for a deadly combination in this gripping installment of A. B. Guthrie Jr.’s acclaimed mystery series It’s forty degrees below zero in Midbury, Montana, and the cattle are dying. Not from the frigid temperatures, but under bizarre circumstances that stir up rumors of blood cults and UFOs. As if that weren’t bad enough, a strip-mining company has moved into town with plans to tear apart the land in search of coal. Sheriff Chick Charleston and his loyal sidekick, Jason, try to keep tensions between the outsiders and the locals from boiling over, but when a murder occurs at the Chicken Shack, the miners’ local hangout, the situation threatens to spin out of control. To save a community and a way of life that mean everything to them, the sheriff and Jase must track down a killer whose blood runs as cold as a Great Plains winter.