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|  | The O'Reilly Factor by Bill O'Reilly
These observations on politics and American life--from the popular television commentator--are terse, acerbic, and sometimes witty. Considered by some to be right-of-center, O`Reilly calls them the way he sees them, and he is no defender of the status quo. AUTHOR: Bill O'Reilly
PUBLISHER: Random House Audio Publishing Group
FORMAT: Audio
CATEGORY: History 
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 | Homo Sacer by Giorgio Agamben
The work of Giorgio Agamben, one of Italy's most important and original philosophers, has been based on an uncommon erudition in classical traditions of philosophy and rhetoric, the grammarians of late antiquity, Christian theology, and modern philosophy. Recently, Agamben has begun to direct his thinking to the constitution of the social and to some concrete, ethicopolitical conclusions concerning the state of society today, and the place of the individual within it. In Homo Sacer, Agamben aims to connect the problem of pure possibility, potentiality, and power with the problem of political and social ethics in a context where the latter has lost its previous religious, metaphysical, and cultural grounding. Taking his cue from Foucault's fragmentary analysis of biopolitics, Agamben probes with great breadth, intensity, and acuteness the covert or implicit presence of an idea of biopolitics in the history of traditional political theory. He argues that from the earliest treatises of political theory, notably in Aristotle's notion of man as a political animal, and throughout the history of Western thinking about sovereignty (whether of the king or the state), a notion of sovereignty as power over life is implicit. The reason it remains merely implicit has to do, according to Agamben, with the way the sacred, or the idea of sacrality, becomes indissociable from the idea of sovereignty. Drawing upon Carl Schmitt's idea of the sovereign's status as the exception to the rules he safeguards, and on anthropological research that reveals the close interlinking of the sacred and the taboo, Agamben defines the sacred person as one who can be killed and yet not sacrificed -- a paradox hesees as operative in the status of the modern individual living in a system that exerts control over the collective naked life of all individuals. AUTHOR: Giorgio Agamben
PUBLISHER: Stanford University Press
FORMAT: Paperback
CATEGORY: History
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 | Cat Mummies by Kelly Trumble, Laszlo Kubinyi
A look at the important role played by cats in the religious beliefs and practices of ancient Egypt. The book also covers the 19th-century archaeological discovery of thousands of mummified cats in an Egyptian desert near the town of Beni Hasan. Illustrated with watercolor paintings. AUTHOR: Kelly Trumble, Laszlo Kubinyi
PUBLISHER: Houghton Mifflin Company Trade & Reference Division
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: History
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 | Vicksburg by Mary Ann Fraser
The struggle for Vicksburg overlapped with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Battle of Gettysburg. This was the moment when the Civil War was decided. Illustrated with etchings drawn during the battle, and filled with quotations from people who fought and lived through it, here is the action-packed story of the battle that won the Civil War. AUTHOR: Mary Ann Fraser
PUBLISHER: Holt, Henry & Company, LLC
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: History
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 | Texas by Carol M. Highsmith, Ted Landphair
The stunning Photographic Tour series continues. Spectacular photography and compelling text and captions capture the essence of each particular destination. Each book includes an illustrated map, an Introduction with black-and-white archival photographs, and more than 100 vibrant, full-color photographs. AUTHOR: Carol M. Highsmith, Ted Landphair
PUBLISHER: Random House Value Publishing
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: History
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 | Scapegoats by Edward L. Beach
Since 1942 officials have condemned Adm. Husband E. Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short as inadequately alert, and therefore responsible for the catastrophe. With this book the highly respected naval officer and historian Capt. Edward L. Beach puts his own reputation on the line by challenging readers to overturn that judgment and right a wrong that has stood for half a century. Captain Beach does not go along with revisionists who damn Roosevelt for getting Americans into the war and accuse him of knowing about the attack beforehand. Beach dismisses such accusations as hold-overs from the discredited isolationist movement. But he does present ample proof that by early morning in Washington on December 7, authorities in the Army, Navy, and State Departments, as well as the White House, knew positively through special intelligence, that Japan was up to some devilment on that very day. Moreover, Beach says, they had seen it coming all week and were derelict in their duty to inform field commanders that things were rapidly coming to a head. Beach further argues that the official finding against the two men failed to take into account the budget-directed shortages in aircraft and anti-aircraft ordnance that, surprise or no surprise, made the outcome of the Japanese attack inevitable. In this impassioned but carefully reasoned plea for posthumous justice, Beach says what happened to Kimmel and Short was, for them, worse than death itself. For political and military expediency, the very country they had served so loyally condemned them to a lifetime of disgrace for a debacle that was not their fault - and did not even allow them to defend themselves. At the fiftieth anniversary of the war'send, Captain Beach's eloquent plea to set the record right may at last be heard. AUTHOR: Edward L. Beach
PUBLISHER: Naval Institute Press
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: History
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