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The Millionaires' Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented American Air Power
The Millionaires' Unit is the story of a gilded generation of young men from the zenith of privilege: a Rockefeller, the son of the head of the Union Pacific Railroad, several who counted friends and relatives among presidents and statesmen of the day. They had it all and, remarkably by modern standards, they were prepared to risk it all to fight a distant war in France. Driven by the belief that their membership in the American elite required certain sacrifice, schooled in heroism and the nature of leadership, they determined to be first into the conflict, leading the way ahead of America's declaration that it would join the war. At the heart of the group was the Yale flying club, six of whom are the heroes of this book. They would share rivalries over girlfriends, jealousies over membership in Skull and Bones, and fierce ambition to be the most daring young man over the battlefields of France, where the casualties among flyers were chillingly high. One of the six would go on to become the principal architect of the American Air Force's first strategic bomber force. Others would bring home decorations and tales of high life experiences in Paris. Some would not return, having made the greatest sacrifice of all in perhaps the last noble war. For readers of Flyboys, The Greatest Generation, or Flags Of Our Fathers, this patriotic, romantic, absorbing book is narrative military history of the best kind. .
Price: $9.10
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The Age of Innocence
"The Age of Innocence" (1920) is a novel by Edith Wharton, which won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize. The story occurs among New York City's upper class in the 1870s, before electricity, telephone, and automobiles; when there was a small cluster of old, "aristocratic" Revolutionary War-stock families who ruled New York's social life; when being was better than doing; when occupation and abilities were secondary to blood connections (heredity and family); when reputation and appearances excluded everything and everyone not of one's caste; and when Fifth Avenue was so deserted by nightfall that it was possible to follow Society's comings and goings, by spying who went to what house..
Price: $0.99
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The Titled Americans: Three American Sisters and the British Aristocratic World into Which They Married
The Titled Americans is a family saga spanning three generations, chronicling the glamorous lives of Leonard Jerome, his daughters, and their children Raven-haired Jennie ("the beautiful') married Randolph Churchill, younger son of the Duke of Marlborough and was Winston's mother. Dreamy, blonde Clara ("the good") was romanced by the dashing Moreton Frewen, a penniless younger son who unsuccessfully but relentlessly tried to parlay his immense charm into a fortune even though, one after the other, all his speculations failed, while quiet Leonie ("the witty") married into the Leslies, a distinguished Irish family who were disappointed by their son's bride. Although full of princely lovers, balls, and diamond broaches, the story's heart is the intensely supportive and laughter-filled relationship between the sisters. Waves of grave financial hardship afflicted them all, but they always rallied to rescue one another. Beginning in 1840s America and ending in the middle of World War II when Britain was under the leadership of Jennie's son, Winston Churchill, The Titled Americans is an epic story of family and fortune encompassing both the apogee and the twilight of the British Empire..
Price: $2.00
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The Magnificent Ambersons
"The Magnificent Ambersons" is a 1918 novel by Booth Tarkington which won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize. The novel and trilogy traces the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in a fictional Mid-Western town, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new-money families, which did not derive power from family names but by "doing things". As George Amberson's friend says, "don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?".
Price: $0.99
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Law, Land, and Family: Aristocratic Inheritance in England, 1300 to 1800 (Studies in Legal History)
Eileen Spring presents a fresh interpretation of the history of inheritance among the English gentry and aristocracy In a work that recasts both the history of real property law and the history of the family, she finds that one of the principal and determinative features of upper-class real property inheritance was the exclusion of females. This exclusion was accomplished by a series of legal devices designed to nullify the common-law rules of inheritance under which—had they prevailed—40 percent of English land would have been inherited or held by women. Current ideas of family development portray female inheritance as increasing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but Spring argues that this is a misperception, resulting from an incomplete consideration of the common-law rules. Female rights actually declined, reaching their nadir in the eighteenth century. Spring shows that there was a centuries-long conflict between male and female heirs, a conflict that has not been adequately recognized until now..
Price: $23.95
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The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia
In this groundbreaking work, social anthropologist David Sneath aggressively dispels the myths surrounding the history of steppe societies and proposes a new understanding of the nature and formation of the state. Since the colonial era, representations of Inner Asia have been dominated by images of fierce nomads organized into clans and tribes-but as Sneath reveals, these representations have no sound basis in historical fact. Rather, they are the product of nineteenth-century evolutionist social theory, which saw kinship as the organizing principle in a nonstate society. Sneath argues that aristocratic power and statelike processes of administration were the true organizers of life on the steppe. Rethinking the traditional dichotomy between state and nonstate societies, Sneath conceives of a "headless state" in which a configuration of statelike power was formed by the horizontal relations among power holders and was reproduced with or without an overarching ruler or central "head." In other words, almost all of the operations of state power existed at the local level, virtually independent of central bureaucratic authority. Sneath's research gives rise to an alternative picture of steppe life in which aristocrats determined the size, scale, and degree of centralization of political power. His history of the region shows no clear distinction between a highly centralized, stratified "state" society and an egalitarian, kin-based "tribal" society. Drawing on his extensive anthropological fieldwork in the region, Sneath persuasively challenges the legitimacy of the tribal model, which continues to distort scholarship on the history of Inner Asia. .
Price: $32.99
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