American Memorial Park - Books

One Thousand Paper Cranes: Story of Sadako and the Children’s Peace Statue Ishii Takayuki From the Publisher: The inspirational story of the Japanese national campaign to build the Children’s Peace Statue honoring Sadako and hundreds of other children who died as a result of the bombing of Hiroshima.Ten years after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Sadako Sasaki died as a result of atomic bomb disease. Sadako’s determination to fold one thousand paper cranes and her courageous struggle with her illness inspired her classmates. After her death, they started a national campaign to build the Children’s Peace Statue to remember Sadako and the many other children who were victims of the Hiroshima bombing. On top of the statue is a girl holding a large crane in her outstretched arms. Today in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, this statue of Sadako is beautifully decorated with thousands of paper cranes given by people throughout the world. From The Critics: KLIATTThis story of a little girl named Sadako Sasaki and her death from what is called the Atomic Bomb Disease will tug at your heart and also terrify you, as it makes clear the horrible toll war takes on families. Sadako was two years old when an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Her family suffered terribly but they managed to survive. Nine years later Sadako was an active girl who loved to run and go to school, but then she developed symptoms of leukemia and went downhill rapidly. While in the hospital she started folding paper cranes, wishing on them for better health. When she died at 12, she had folded over a thousand of these cranes. Her classmates sponsored a national campaign to build a memorial, and today in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park there is a statue with a girl on top holding a large crane. It is a memorial to all the children who died from the bombing at Hiroshima. This book about Sadako, a tribute to a little girl and her friends, is a reminder to all of us that war is a terrible thing. KLIATT Codes: J—Recommended for junior high school students. 1997, Random House-Dell Laurel-Leaf, 97p, illus, 18cm, $4.99. Ages 13 to 15. Reviewer: Barbara Jo McKee; Libn-Media Dir. Streetsboro H.S. Stow, OH, May 2001 (Vol. 35 No. 3) Our Price: $4.99

American Revolutionary War Sites, Memorials, Museums and Library Collections: A State-by-State Guidebook to Places Open to the Public Doug Gelbert From the Publisher: Up-to-date information on over 700 sites in 28 states dedicated to the American Revolution, including battlefields, memorial markers, statues, museums, cemeteries, other landmarks, and library collections. Arranged by state, each entry provides a descriptive profile, address and telephone number, admission fees (if any) and policies, hours open, and other pertinent information. For each state, there is a profile of its role and a timeline of events. About the Author Doug Gelbert is a writer and lecturer in Montchanin, Delaware. He also wrote Film and Television Locations (2002), Civil War Sites, Memorials, Museums and Library Collections (1997, $39.95) and Company Museums, Industry Museums and Industrial Tours (1994, $49.95). From The Critics: Reference Reviewsvery useful..Rettig on Referenceuseful.Reference and User Services QuarterlyCharming informative anecdotes...extensive set of sites (approximately eight hundred)...a good introduction to persons, places, and actions of the Revolutionary period.BooknewsThe author of a similarly named guide to Civil War sites considers the American Revolution to have been akin to that war in that neighbor was often pitted against neighbor. Some 700 locales are featured, including ones in the District of Columbia and Canada. Sites include preserved battlefields, undeveloped sites of action, gravesites, and buildings. Sections on each of the 28 states represented profiles its role in the war for independence, relevant visiting information, and an index to people and places. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or. Our Price: $35.00

World War II Sites in the United States: A Tour Guide and Directory Richard E. Osborne From the Publisher: Part guidebook to the past, part directory of everything having to do with World War II, this book is a fascinating collection of sites and informational tidbits that will satisfy even the most hardcore military enthusiast. From the General Patton Memorial Museum in Chiriaco Summit, California, to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., individual states, museums, relocation camps, enemy attack sites and more are listed. Our Price: $19.95

November: Lincoln’s Elegy at Gettysburg Kent Gramm From the Publisher: "It begins with the search for hallowed ground, the exact place from which Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. In bleak November, Kent Gramm makes a pilgrimage to the most famous battleground in American history and over the course of a month transforms his search into a discovery of the meaning of Lincoln’s elegy for America’s identity." For Gramm, the century that began with Lincoln’s address and ended with the assassinations of the 1960s saw the destruction of the "modern" world and with it America’s sense of purpose. The book reflects on the November anniversaries of public events such as the Armistice that ended World War I, Kristallnacht, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the death of C. S. Lewis, the first major battle of the Vietnam War, and the publication of Robert F. Kennedy’s To Seek a Newer World, and also on private events in Gramm’s family history. These provide the occasions for Gramm’s meditations on public and private heroism, on modernism’s hopes and postmodern despair. In November, he asks us to seek a path toward the "new birth of freedom" that Lincoln envisioned at Gettysburg. Our Price: $29.95

Mastering McKim’s Plan: Columbia’s First Century on Morningside Heights Barry Bergdoll From the Publisher: Drawing on an abundance of materials from Columbia’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, this book charts the architectural trajectory of this famed institution and celebrates the centennial of architect Charles Follen McKim’s enduring vision of a spatially unified, architecturally integrated urban university. From The Critics: BooknewsCommemorates Columbia University’s 100th year at its current campus with a discussion of the genesis and legacy of McKim, Mead, and White’s master plan; a photographic essay of the construction of the Low Memorial Library; and a catalogue of centennial exhibitions held at Columbia in 1997 and 1998. The exhibition celebrates the first day of classes held on Morningside Heights on October 4th, 1897, andin the tradition of a research universityis as much a moment of self-examination and discovery as of commemoration. Many color and bandw photographs and architectural drawings are included. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or. Our Price: $49.00

America’s National Battlefield Parks: A Guide Joseph E. Stevens Synopsis: From Lexington to Gettysburg and from the Little Bighorn to Pearl Harbor, America’s national battlefield parks preserve the scenes and interpret the events of struggles that have shaped our hisotry. This book features the sites of American battlefields administered by the National Park Service and presents self-guided tours of each park. BandW photos and maps. From The Critics: Library JournalThis Baedeker of America’s 38 battlefield parks, from Bunker Hill to Pearl Harbor and Guam, is a lively tribute to U.S. military heritage. One hears the crack of muskets in the capsule battle summaries. With 52 tactical maps of varying quality, sketches of principal figures, and many illustrations, this is an excellent introduction to the ``great battles’’ on U.S. soil. Stevens’s attention to smaller sites gives partisan and Indian warfare a due they rarely receive elsewhere, though the absence of maps for these misses a chance to compare irregular warfare with conventional movements. Likewise, the thin preface says nothing about the history and significance of the selection, establishment, and maintenance of the parks. Civil War buffs will prefer Emory Thomas’s more trenchant but selective Travels to Hallowed Ground (Univ. of South Carolina Pr., 1987) and the U.S. Army College’s series (on Antietam and Gettysburg to date); casual visitors will be content with Park Service literature and American Automobile Association guides. But for those who want to feel as well as understand the battles, this is the best source.-- Randall Miller, St. Joseph’s Univ., Philadelphia BooknewsEach of the 38 chapters (one for each battlefield park administered by the National Park Service) tells the story of a particular battle and presents self-guided walking and automobile tours keyed to National Park Service numbered tour maps. Fifty-two maps portray battlefield troop movements and depict present-day roads, trails and visitor facilities. The text is further illustrated with drawings, paintings, and modern and historic photographs. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Our Price: $24.95

Colt: The Making of an American Legend William Hosley From the Publisher: This book recounts the story of gun manufacturer Samuel Colt and his wife, Elizabeth, who together turned a company into an empire and a name into a legend. It is a tale of two lives caught up in profound social and economic change, of a great fortune amassed and expended, of the rise of a new industry, and the transformation of an American city. Beginning with an account of Sam Colt’s early failures as both inventor and businessman, William Hosley traces the development in the pre-Civil War years of the notorious Colt revolver - "The Gun That Won the West" - into the first truly global manufacturing export in U.S. history. At their peak, Colt armories in Hartford and London produced as many as 50,000 guns a year - part of a thriving, technologically advanced arms industry that made the Connecticut River Valley the "Silicon Valley" of the Victorian Age. Although Sam became an international celebrity and symbol of American enterprise, it was Elizabeth who made sure the Colt legacy would endure. Following her husband’s premature death in 1862 and the subsequent destruction of the Hartford armory by fire, she rebuilt the factory and launched a forty-year campaign of civic memorialization. A patron of the arts, she endowed parks, museums, public statuary, and other memorials that glorified her family and earned her the status of "first lady" of Connecticut. From The Critics: Publishers WeeklyThis companion to the Wadsworth Atheneum’s exhibit of Colt miscellany in Hartford, Conn., is a rich social and political history of 19th-century America. It is also a joint biography of Samuel Colt, an enigmatic inventor and industrialist, and Elizabeth, the strong, resolute wife who carried on his dreams and life’s work. Hosley, the Koopman Curator at the Atheneum, follows Colt’s life from his strange beginnings, successes and failures, to the ultimate perfection of the firearm that would be adopted by the U.S. Army. In exploring the personal lives and excesses of this wealthy 19th-century couple, Hosley presents a particularly colorful history of the times. After Samuel’s death in 1862, Elizabeth Colt’s ongoing efforts to immortalize her husband’s accomplishments and their name led her to build memorials and statues and to create a philanthropic legacy for the city of Hartford. Elizabeth’s taste often went to the extreme, as seen in their mansion, Armsmear. "Armsmear’s reception room epitomizes the kind of blunt ostentation that was the trademark of America’s Eurocentric nouveau riche during the 1880’s." On a larger scale, Hosley also shows how Colt fit into the culture of war and violence that would be so beneficial to his fiscal concerns. "The good people of this wirld [sic] are very far from being satisfied with each other," wrote Colt, "and my arms are the best peacemakers." Rich in illustrations and photographs (204 images, 72 in color) of the Colts’ firearms and art collections, Hosley creates a fascinating story that far exceeds the simple history of that famous gun. BOMC dividend; History Book Club alternate.(Dec.) WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYINGHosley has written a superb book that should be of interest to anyone studying the history of American culture, technology, and philanthropy. — Kathleen D. McCarthy, Graduate School CUNYA remarkable accomplishment. Hosley has captured the energy, excitement, complexity, and pervasive hyperbole of Victorian America in this engaging biography of two of its most remarkable figures. Guns, violence, American expansion and militarism, the doctrine of progress, wealth, art, religion, good works - they are all part of this fascinating tale of Sam and Elizabeth Colt and the city of Hartford they made their own. — Kenneth L. Ames, The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts Our Price: $29.95