Gives advice on selecting gear, sails, tackle, and instruments, and discusses boating safety, hydraulics, plumbing, wiring, and storage

The Optimum Sailboat: Racing the Cruiser and Cruising the Racer

Science & Math

Florence, Ronald

Technology

Harpercollins

On the conception, design, finance, construction, and operation of what was for decades the largest reflecting telescope. A lively story engagingly told. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

The Perfect Machine: Building the Palomar Telescope

Astronomy & Space Science

Almost a half-century after is completion, the 200-inch Palomar telescope remains an unparalleled combination of vast scale and microscope detail. As huge as the Pantheon of Rome and as heavy as the Statue of Liberty, this magnificent instrument is so precisely built that its seventeen-foot mirror was hand-polished to a tolerance of 2/1,000,000 of an inch. The telescope's construction drove some to the brink of madness, made others fearful that mortals might glimpse heaven, and transfixed an entire nation. Ronald Florence weaves into his account of the creation of "the perfect machine" a stirring chronicle of the birth of Big Science and a poignant rendering of an America mired in the depression yet reaching for the stars.

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Harper-perennial

The rivalry that presaged the world's most tenacious conflict As the Arab-Israeli conflict continues to plague the Middle East, historian Ronald Florence offers extraordinary new insights on its origins. This is the story of T. E. Lawrence, the young British officer who became famous around the world as Lawrence of Arabia, Aaron Aaronsohn, an agronomist from Palestine, and the antagonism that divided them over the fate of the dying Ottoman Empire during World War I--a clash of visions that set Arab nationalism and Zionism on a direct collision course that reverberates to this day.

Lawrence and Aaronsohn: T. E. Lawrence, Aaron Aaronsohn, and the Seeds of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Penguin??Books

In Damascus in February 1840, a Capuchin monk and his servant disappear without a trace. By the end of the day, rumors point at the local Jewish community, a tiny minority in the city. Within weeks, the rumors turn to accusations of ritual murder—the infamous “blood libel.” Torture, coerced confessions, manufactured evidence, and the fury of the crowds are enough to convict the accused Jews. By the time the rest of the world learns of the events in Damascus, the entire leadership of the Jewish community is awaiting execution. Blood Libel is a story of unexpected history. If the charges of ritual murder seem familiar—similar accusations have been heard in Europe for centuries and are heard in the Middle East today—nothing in Damascus happened as we, or contemporaries, might have anticipated. The accusers of the Jews were not the Muslim majority. The French consul, the representative of the nation that had given the world the Rights of Man and had been the first to grant Jews the full right of citizenship, was the chief prosecutor. The British consul, serving under the enlightened Lord Palmerston and the new Queen, aided the prosecution. The American consul supported the charges. The Sultan, famed for the excesses of his court and his arbitrary rule of the vast Ottoman empire, and the Austrians, who tightly restricted the rights of Jews in their own empire, defended the accused Jews. The venerable London Times printed reports that defied its liberal reputation, while conservative Austrian and French newspapers took the equally unexpected opposite stand. As news of the Damascus accusations spread, diplomacy and confused loyalties made for strange bedfellows. Misperceptions, mutual fears, and isolation fueled the passions in Damascus. When the affair and the implications for the perceptions of world Jewry became a cause célèbre in Europe and the Americas, the priorities of diplomacy intervened: a rescue mission forgot the real victims in Damascus, and the fabric of a society that had once stretched to tolerate minorities finally burst in an outrage of fears turned to fury. The legacies of that torn fabric are the divisions of the Middle East today and the continuing myths that feed and sustain the fervor of anti-Semitism.

Blood Libel: The Damascus Affair of 1840

History

Middle East

University of Wisconsin Press

The Last Season

In the last halcyon days before Pearl Harbor, Sera, a beautiful Portugese woman from Connecticut falls in love with Russell, a Naval officer from a wealthy Newport family, becoming troubled by Russell's penchant for borrowing secret papers to raise money. 20,000 first printing.

Literature & Fiction

United States

Forge

The Gypsy Man

Genre Fiction

Ballantine Books

New York lawyer Jill Ashton becomes obsessed with Ral, a gypsy man she meets in France, who becomes the accused in the murder of Eva Ritter, a former Nazi whom Ral believes responsible for the deaths of thousands of gypsies

Villard Books

The Gypsy Man is a novel of the gypsy holocaust, a story of obsession, love, revenge, the story of the gypsies unique experiences in the Nazi extermination camps, one of mans decision to avenge those experiences and to make his story heard, and of one womans decision to help him."Only when you read two or three books a week for five or six years do you realize how truly rare a novel like this is." -- Carolyn See, Los Angeles Times 

Contemporary

iUniverse

The official little known WWII story of a desperate attempt to save Hungary's Jewish population When Nazi troops invaded in March 1944, Hungary contained the largest intact Jewish population in Europe. Until then, stories of Auschwitz and other "resettlement camps" were still treated as unconfirmed rumors inside Hungary and among the Allied powers. With the arrival of Adolf Eichmann-and reports from the first escapees from Auschwitz confirming the most horrifying rumors about the camps-the 850,000 Jews of Hungary faced annihilation. Emissary of the Doomed is the riveting and heartbreaking account of the heroic attempt to save Hungary's Jewish population. Learning that Eichmann and Himmler were willing to bargain for the lives of as many as one million Jews, Joel Brand and the Jewish rescue committee in Budapest took up the German offer and embarked on a desperate race across Europe and the Middle East to persuade the reluctant Allies to trade funds and matériel for Jewish lives. Against the backdrop of the Normandy invasion, the Soviet advance across Eastern Europe, and the American advances up the Italian peninsula, Brand and his colleagues tried to stop the final push of the Nazis to destroy the Jews of Europe. This untold chapter will appeal to all readers of World War II literature.

Emissary of the Doomed: Bargaining for Lives in the Holocaust

World

Viking Adult

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Florence, Ronald. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Florence, Ronald

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Florence, Ronald. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Optimum Sailboat: Racing the Cruiser and Cruising the Racer

The Perfect Machine: Building the Palomar Telescope

The Perfect Machine: Building the Palomar Telescope

Lawrence and Aaronsohn: T. E. Lawrence, Aaron Aaronsohn, and the Seeds of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Blood Libel: The Damascus Affair of 1840

The Last Season

The Gypsy Man

The Gypsy Man

The Gypsy Man

Emissary of the Doomed: Bargaining for Lives in the Holocaust