Most Popular Books by Thomas Fleming

This book is a travel memoir of a journey around the Washington D.C. area, documented with numerous photographs. The author, Thomas Fleming, was an American author and historian who wrote extensively about American history and culture. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

For many people, Benjamin Franklin remains a puzzling figure in American history. This book tells Franklin's absorbing life story. In lively and informal style, Thomas Fleming presents a well-rounded account of probably the most versatile and accomplished man of his time-his boyhood in Boston...his career as a newspaperman and writer...his scientific pursuits and inventions...his years as statesman and diplomat...through his still productive old age until his death at 84. In Benjamin Franklin, Fleming not only gives a perceptive portrait of an extraordinary man, but he provides a rare glimpse into the forces that shaped the birth of a new nation.

Il est des aventures extraordinaires qui passent totalement inaperçues. Qui en France, et sans doute en Europe, connaît l’épopée du Detroit en 1912 ? Tout auréolé de sa gloire de la traversée de l’Atlantique à la voile l’année précédente, Thomas Fleming Day, le premier journaliste nautique spécialisé, est sollicité pour repartir… au moteur ! Mais les conditions météo ne sont pas les mêmes, le trajet plus long, le bateau inadapté… Personne depuis n’a été assez cinglé pour recommencer cette traversée par la route de l’Atlantique Nord. À l’occasion du centenaire de cette première au moteur en équipage sur un bateau de plaisance, traduit par un ancien skipper qui a parcouru, lui aussi, l’Océan dans les deux sens à moultes reprises, voici la première édition en langue française d’un voyage qui a été considérablement médiatisé à son époque en Amérique. Traduit de l'américain par Olivier Merbau

Historian Thomas Fleming brings to life the flawed and troubled FDR who struggled to manage WWII. Starting with the leak to the press of Roosevelt's famous Rainbow Plan, then spiralling back to FDR's inept prewar diplomacy with Japan, and his various attempts to lure Japan into an attack on the US Fleet in the Pacific, Fleming takes the reader inside the incredibly fractious struggles and debates that went on in Washington, the nation and the world as FDR strove to impose his will on the conduct of the War. Unlike the idealized FDR of Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time, here the reader encounters a Roosevelt in remorseless decline, battered by ideological forces and primitive hatreds which he could not handle - and frequently failed to understand - some of them leading to unimaginable catastrophe. Among FDR's most dismaying policies, Fleming argues, were an insistence on unconditional surrender for Germany (a policy that perhaps prolonged the war by as many as two years, leaving millions more dead) and his often uncritical embrace of and acquiescence to Stalin and the Soviets as an ally.

"All of the pieces in this volume first appeared in Chronicles: a magazine of American culture"--T.p. verso.

Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, William Sherman, George McClellan, George Armstrong Custer--these and many other great generals who fought on both sides of the Civil War had one thing in common: they were all graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. This is the fascinating story of friendships formed during cadet life that somehow endured through the bitter conflict that divided the nation. Through failure and triumph, West Point Blue and Gray reveals the skill, daring, and character displayed by the West Point graduates as they waged war against each other. The book continues beyond the last shot fired, and reveals their efforts in rebuilding the country.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

You will find this book very different from other works on the same subject. In the first place, I believe that all text-books should be written in a manner to please, as well as to instruct; that they should be agreeable reading; and, aside from their teaching value, have a certain excellence as a writing. Again, there is nothing in literature so interesting as the autobiography, real or fictional. Nearly all our great works of fiction are of this class. Robinson Crusoe's history from any other lips than those of the castaway would lose half its interest; Gil Blas in the third person would lack warmth and be wholly devoid of its peculiar zest. The flavor of the individual is lost when you speak for, and not as him. The puppet talks like a puppet. It is the difference between John Alden pleading the cause of Captain Standish and John Alden pleading the cause of Master John. Let a man talk to you and he will interest and amuse; let him write for you and he will prove trite and dull. Therefore, when imparting information, I like to talk, not write. I want to infuse into my words my person, to endeavor to give my ideas an I-am-with-you tone, so that it will be me and not the book that is present, and with whom you are in communion.But this method of handling a subject is apt to breed dogmatism, especially as the reader is unable to question or deny the statements made until they have been chilled into ink. So you will find in many of my chapters that I am exceedingly dogmatic. It is unintentional, simply being a manifestation of the spirit peculiar to this style of addressing an audience-one that must hear but cannot answer. Therefore let me warn you to question all my statements, and to accept only those that harmonize with your own conclusions, after you have carefully thought them over. Those that you cannot reconcile to your own knowledge and experience, lay on one side to be tried out at a future day.Never, no matter how high the authority, accept any man's coin by its minted face. It is as easy to strike a base as a sterling piece, and the king's head on the reverse and his arms on the obverse won't make lead silver, or copper gold. This in regard to statements made by those who set themselves up as authorities on a subject is particularly true, when the subject is one like this under discussion; one in which no fixed rules may be established, and where so much depends upon the man, the place and the means. I make a statement of practice; it was deduced from my personal experience, and in my case gave a perfect result; you follow it, but owing to certain complicating circumstances, in your case, it fails. For instance, I tell you, that when a vessel gets sternway on in a seaway to keep your helm amidships, and cast her with the headsails, and not to put your helm hard over. You accept my method as being the correct one, try it, and fail to cast your boat so as to fill away. This does not prove that I am wrong in making such a statement, but it shows that I am wrong in not having qualified it. It also shows that you are a lax thinker in not having questioned my method before putting it in practice. My error is the too frequent error of men who write on vessel handling; yours the too common error of men who study their books.The object of this book, of these talks, is not to fill you, parrot fashion, full of rules of action or methods of practice, but to furnish you with food for thought; to lay before you certain statements from which you must, to a large extent, deduce your own conclusions. Take what I say, mix it with your own knowledge and experience, and put into action the result.These talks are not intended for men who are what we may call seamen, men who are thoroughly versed in the art, nor are they intended for those who aspire to boats larger than forty feet over all. A boat above that size is too valuable to be trusted in the hands of an inexperienced or half-trained man.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Oh, what comes flowing over the seaIn the hush of the evening's cool?It is a mermaid singing to meAs she sits in a silver pool.As she sits in a silver pool and singsOf the world I never shall see, Where the dulse-weed clings, And the star-fish ringsThe red anemone;The world which liesWhere human eyesAre never allowed to seeThe gold and gemsAnd fluted stemsOf the crimson coral tre

"Living the Dream tells the history behind the establishment of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the battle over King's legacy that continued through the decades that followed. Creating the first national holiday to honor an African American was a formidable achievement and an act of resistance against conservative and segregationist opposition"--

What is the myth of 1776?To state it in its baldest terms: This was a time in American life when idealism was in full flower. Never have so many great men sprung from nowhere to lead a people in pursuit of liberty.In this book, New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming explodes this myth by examining all the dimensions of that year - particularly the least known aspects of the common, fallible humanity of the men and women of the American Revolution.The year 1776 ended with both the Americans and the British stripped of their illusions. Both sides had been forced to abandon the myth of their invincibility and to confront the realities of human nature on the battlefield and in the struggle for allegiance to their causes.For the Americans, it had been a shock to discover that it was easy to persuade people to cheer for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but it was another matter to convince them to take large risks, to make real sacrifices for these ideals. For the British, their goal of achieving proper subordination of America to England was frustrated forever.Seventeen seventy-six was a traffic year: Americans fighting in the name of liberty persecuted and sometimes killed fellow Americans who chose to remain loyal to the old order and its more circumscribed, yet sincere, commitment to freedom. Seventeen seventy-six was a year of heroes: It brought forth the leaders who had the courage to fight for freedom. Seventeen seventy-six was a disgraceful year: Americans revealed a capacity for cowardice, disorganization, and incompetence.Here, in this masterful book, is the true story of 1776.

So big was the leak that it might have caused us to lose World War II. So mysterious is the identity of the leaker that we can't be sure to this day who it was...or at least not entirely sure.