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Summary of Mitchell Zuckoff's 13 Hours is a narrative recounting of the events surrounding the militant attacks on the Benghazi diplomatic compound and the nearby CIA annex on September 11 and 12, 2012. These attacks resulted in the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, State Department communications expert Sean Smith, and two CIA Global Response Staff (GRS) members, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.
A similar attack had occurred on June 5, 1967,...
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Buy now to get the main key ideas from Shomari Wills's Black Fortunes
Journalist Shomari Wills's great-great-uncle, John Mott Drew, was a millionaire. His father had been a slave, and his story made Shomari realize that African Americans' early achievements are often little known. At the time, it was revolutionary for an African American to become rich. In Black Fortunes (2018), Shomari tells the success stories of America's first black millionaires,...
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Summary of Adam Hochschild's Spain In Our Hearts is an account of the involvement of US citizens in the Spanish Civil War. It focuses on the experiences of a number of individual volunteers and reporters and provides a broad view of how the war affected Spain, the United States, and Europe.
The Spanish Civil War began as a conflict between a democratically elected left-wing government, the Spanish Republic, and right-wing military officers led by...
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Summary of Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee traces the gradual decimation and confinement of Native Americans during the second half of the nineteenth century. The narrative makes clear why the Native Americans grew increasingly distrustful of their white American conquerors, faced as they were with a heap of broken promises that ultimately fractured their spirits...
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Summary of Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers follows the lives and aspirations of residents of Annawadi, one of Mumbai's many densely inhabited slums. Boo, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, spent three years visiting and researching Annawadi, which was located near the Mumbai airport but hidden from travelers' view by a wall advertising Italian floor tiles that purportedly stayed "beautiful forever."…
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Buy now to get the main key ideas from Suraiya Faroqhi's The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It
The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It (2004) is a study of a vast Muslim empire that once controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa. Suraiya Faroqhi offers an extensive analysis of its political developments, military encounters, and cultural and religious connections with both Muslim and non-Muslim neighbors. She focuses...
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Summary of Rinker Buck's The Oregon Trail chronicles Rinker and his brother's experiences reliving the journey taken by the original nineteenth-century travelers of the Oregon Trail. At the same time, the author goes through his own mental and emotional journey and comes to grips with a variety of issues, such as being a pack rat and his relationship with his father…
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Summary of Erik Larson's Dead Wake is a non-fiction account of the German Unterseeboot, or U-boat, sinking of Lusitania, a British merchant vessel belonging to Cunard Line, on May 7, 1915 and its aftermath.
On the night of May 6, 1915, Captain William Thomas reassured the passengers in the first-class lounge as the ship approached the 'area of war' off the southern coast of Ireland.
The Great War, later known as World War I, had been raging in France...
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Summary of Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers is an expansive account of the days, months, and years leading up to World War I. Clark's central contention is that scholars' continuous preoccupation with the question of who was responsible for starting the war stems from an erroneous understanding of the events...
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Summary of Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard's Killing the Rising Sun relates episodes from the Pacific theater of World War II including the controversial US decision to develop and utilize atomic weapons. Fueled by confidence in their racial superiority, the Japanese exerted great effort to expand their empire throughout East Asia.
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Summary of Michael V. Hayden's Playing to the Edge considers the changing role of the US intelligence community from 1999 to 2015. The author, Michael Hayden, served as the head of both the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during this period.
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Summary of Sam Quinones's Dreamland documents the rise of opium-based addiction in the United States between the 1980s and the 2010s. Journalist Sam Quinones explains how an ideological shift within the medical community during the 1980s and 1990s led to an increase in the number of opiates prescribed to patients and fueled the modern-day opiate crisis...
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Buy now to get the key takeaways from Malcolm Gladwell's Bomber Mafia.
Sample Key Takeaways:
1) Carl L. Norden's legacy is largely unknown to the public, but his impact on World War II is undeniable. He was a Dutch-born inventor who worked with the US Navy to create the Norden bombsight, an early prototype that allowed planes to accurately drop bombs from high altitudes.
2) Norden was a consummate perfectionist with his work, which meant he was also...
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Buy now to get the main key ideas from Sonia Purnell's A Woman of No Importance
Learn about the woman who changed espionage forever in Sonia Purnell's A Woman of No Importance (2019). Virginia Hall was a real-life hero whose resilience was exceptional. Even though she was a human with flaws, fears, and insecurities, she used these so-called weaknesses to better understand her enemies. Purnell reveals how one woman helped turn the tides of history,...
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Buy now to get the main key ideas from Clint Smith's How the Word Is Passed
In How The Word Is Passed (2021), Clint Smith chronicles his journey to multiple monuments and sites, exploring the history of Black slavery in America through the stories and events each one of them represents. Clint reflects on the places he visited, and the stories he heard from multiple tour guides, highlighting the importance of keeping the history of Black people's...
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Sebastian Junger's Tribe is a scientific and journalistic consideration of the correlation between societies with egalitarian tribal structures and low rates of mental illness, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in soldiers returning home.
The sense of tribal belonging was documented in the eighteenth century among settlers in North America, who often joined Native American tribes even after those tribes held them as prisoners or waged...
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Buy now to get the main key ideas from Bradley Hope & Justin Scheck's Blood and Oil
Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, Saudi Arabia's crown prince and de facto ruler, is one of the most influential political figures in the world, yet much about him remains mysterious, even to those who are impressed by his groundbreaking economic and social decisions and unprecedented reforms.
In Blood and Oil (2020), journalists Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck immerse...
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