On Hallowed Ground opens with the long-delayed funeral of four servicemen, brought home for final honors at Arlington National Cemetery almost forty years after they disappeared in Vietnam. To understand how this tradition of extraordinary care for our war dead began, Robert Poole traces the founding of Arlington Cemetery on what had been the family plantation of Robert E. Lee. After resigning his commission in the U.S. Army, Lee left Arlington to command the Army of Northern Virginia. Arlington, strategic to the defense of Washington, D.C., became a U.S. Army headquarters and a cemetery for indigent Civil War soldiers before Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton made it the new national cemetery. Initially, there was no honor attached to being buried at Arlington; this began to change after the war, as the Union gathered thousands of hastily-buried casualties from nearby battlefields and reinterred them at Arlington, where they received the honors of a grateful nation. But the rites, rituals, and reverence associated with Arlington evolved over the next hundred years, paid through the blood of those who fought in the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Cold War, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and Iraq and Afghanistan. Robert Poole paints an intimate, behind-the-scenes picture of the history and day-to-day operations of Arlington National Cemetery.

Contests the validity of Marxist and poststructuralist theory in a review of the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln.

After private-eye Willie Cuesta takes a job in Key Biscayne, Florida to protect the family of Carmen Vickers de Estrada from kidnappers, the former Miami Police Department detective finds himself facing four men with automatic weapons and a family situation that may not be as straightforward as it seemed.

After America's Iraq adventure devolved into a debacle, a chorus of commentators and analysts noted that the U.S. military had no plan to fight a counterinsurgency campaign. Given the failure of conventional tactics, America in the last two years has redoubled its efforts to develop a new strategy to fight the Iraqi insurgency, and has gone so far to place our leading counterinsurgency expert, General David Petraeus, in charge of the Iraq theater. In sum, there seems to be a growing consensus that for better or worse, counterinsurgency will be a core tactic in future American military campaigns. Iraq, of course, presents special problems to the U.S. because of the intensity of religious belief and sectarianism. How do we fight against an insurgency that so often strategically positions itself on 'hallowed ground'--mosques and shrines? Yet Iraq is not unique. As the contributors to Treading on Hallowed Ground show, counterinsurgency efforts on religiously contentious terrain is a widespread phenomenon in recent times, ranging from North Africa to Central and Southeast Asia. Here, C. Christine Fair and Sumit Ganguly have assembled an impressive group of experts to explore the most important counterinsurgency efforts in sacred spaces in our era: churches in Israel, mosques and shrines in Iraq, the Sikh Golden Temple in India, mosques and temples in Kashmir, the Krue Se Mosque in Thailand, and the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia. Taken together, the essays comprise the first comprehensive account of this increasingly pivotal component of contemporary war.

The kindergarten playground at Oakwood Elementary School looked just like any other - brightly colored swing sets, a sandpit, and a large open area marked with the familiar hopscotch grid painted on the asphalt in faded white lines. But this ground held a dark secret. When the school was built in the early 1960s, the land had been secured cheaply from the county after serving for decades as a potter's field and pauper's cemetery. To save money, the construction crews had merely paved over the old burial grounds rather than relocating the graves. So now, the echoes of past lives beneath the feet of innocent children as they played hopscotch, their shrill laughter a stark contrast to the solemn permanence of what lay beneath. Sarah Morton pushed open the chain link gate, her new saddle shoes leaving scuff marks on the soft asphalt as she hurried to the hopscotch court. She was running a little late this sunny Saturday morning after dawdling over her breakfast. Her best friend Janey was already there, tossing an old flat rock onto the chalked squares and hopping through nimbly. "Hey, no fair starting without me!" Sarah called out indignantly. Janey just grinned. "You snooze, you lose! But come on, I'll reset and we can start over."

The Immortal of Golf was born in humble circumstances in a weavers cottage. His father, John Morris (1777-1846), was a weaver and letter carrier as the family resided on North Street in the ancient city of St. Andrews. Tom, at the age of fifteen, was apprenticed to the renowned Allan Robertson, champion golfer, unbeaten in his lifetime, and continued his employment as a journeyman. Since being bred in the home of golf and also instructed in the ancient game it is not surprising that Morris began to acquire skillfulness in the sport and began earning distinction on the links. In one of the first public appearances of the young professional he was a partner with Robertson, and played in a match for 400 pounds against William and James Dunn, known as the Dunn Brothers of Musselburgh and Morris and Robertson succeeded on the last day of the match, after being four down with eighteen to play, in winning the match. A match for the ages.

An NYPD sergeant shares his experiences in the tragic aftermath of 9/11 and the tireless search for remains among the debris of the Twin Towers. The morning of September 11, 2001, began like any other Tuesday for police Sergeant Frank Marra. He woke up early, brewed his coffee, and got his son Anthony ready for kindergarten. Then a shocking image interrupted televised broadcasts nationwide: the South Tower of the World Trade Center was engulfed in flames and smoke. Sergeant Marra stared in shock at what would become the largest crime scene he would ever investigate. Marra spent months at the Staten Island Landfill, where the 1.6 million tons of debris was searched for any form of evidence that could help identify the victims, including the remains of those buried beneath. Officers and volunteers worked tirelessly, often at great cost to themselves, to bring closure for so many grieving families. This heartrending story gives readers a rare and intimate glimpse into the days and months following the attack on September 11, and the stories that echo from “The Hill”—the hallowed ground of those who perished on that fateful day.

“Brilliantly reveals the extraordinary courage of those who fought the final, bitter, bloody, costly days of the Korean War” (Gen. Jack I. Gregory, USAF Ret.). By the summer of 1953, the Korean War had long since reached a stalemate. As peace negotiations dragged on, units of the US 7th Infantry Division rebuilt the defenses of Hill 255, one of numerous outposts in front of the Main Line of Resistance extending across the peninsula. Better known by its nickname, Pork Chop Hill, the outpost had twice been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the spring. Now, the soldiers tasked with its rebuilding and defense hoped they would not be the last men to die in what had already become known as “the Forgotten War.” On the night of July 6th, under the cover of a heavy monsoon rainstorm, forces of the Chinese 23rd Army attacked. For five hellish days, the opposing forces engaged in devastating artillery assaults, brutal hand-to-hand fighting, and round-the-clock attacks and counterattacks. Less than three weeks after the smoke on Pork Chop Hill cleared, the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed. On Hallowed Ground is the riveting story of this epic battle. Drawing on previously classified documents, interviews, and letters from survivors, author Bill McWilliams details the strategy and tactics behind the conflict and pays stirring tribute to the heroic soldiers and medics who were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to hold “the Chop.”

In this fully illustrated edition of "Hallowed Ground," James M. McPherson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Battle Cry of Freedom," and arguably the finest Civil War historian in the world, walks readers through the Gettysburg battlefield-the site of the most consequential battle of the Civil War.