Product Description: When young Theodore Roosevelt was appointed police commissioner of New York City, he had the astounding gall to try to shut down the brothels, gambling joints, and after-hours saloons. This is the story of how TR took on Manhattan vice ...read more

Product Description: Captain Kidd has gone down in history as America's most ruthless buccaneer, fabulously rich, burying treasure up and down the eastern seaboard. But it turns out that most everyone, from novelists to scholars, has the story all wrong...read more

Describes the 1805 secret mission, reluctantly sanctioned by Thomas Jefferson and led by William Eaton, to stop the Barbary pirates of North Africa from hijacking American ships, revealing how a ragtag group of men, aided by a band of European mercenaries, Arab cavalry, and Bedouin warriors, brought down the government of Tripoli. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

Describes the 1805 secret mission, reluctantly sanctioned by Thomas Jefferson and led by William Eaton, to stop the Barbary pirates of North Africa from hijacking American ships.

Captain Kidd has gone down in history as America's most ruthless buccaneer, fabulously rich, burying treasure up and down the eastern seaboard. But it turns out that most everyone, from novelists to scholars, has the story all wrong. Captain William Kidd was no career cutthroat; he was a tough, successful New York sea captain who was hired to chase pirates in the 1690s. His three-year odyssey aboard the aptly named Adventure Galley would pit him against arrogant Royal Navy commanders, jealous East India Company captains, storms, starvation, angry natives, and, above all, flesh-and-blood pirates. Captain Kidd found himself facing a long-forgotten rogue by the name of Robert Culliford, who lured Kidd's crew to mutiny not once but twice.Through painstaking research, author Richard Zacks has pieced together the never-before-told story of Kidd versus Culliford, of pirate hunter versus pirate, as they fought each other in an unscripted duel across the oceans of the world. One man would hang in the harbor; the other would walk away with the treasure. The Pirate Hunter delivers something rare: an authentic pirate story for grown-ups.

A compendium of odd facts, stories, photographs, and images

A compendium of odd and fascinating facts, stories, photographs, and images covering every field of human endeavor, from art to zoology, includes such tidbits as the fact that Pope Leo XIII advertised cocaine-laced wine in the 1880s. (view table of contents)

Product Description: A large number of famous artists, writers, philosophers, statesmen, scientists, and even saints recorded their thoughts about sex in diary entries, memoirs, love letters, poems and jokes. In History Laid Bare, Zacks unearths scores of these intimate writings...read more