Potomac: 565 books

You can't play Major League Baseball and bet on a game; just ask Pete Rose. Don't try running a betting ring in the NHL, either. Want the surest ticket out of NCAA sports? Betting's the way to do it. In stark contrast, however, the United States Golf Association officially sanctions betting among players...

In Espionage's Most Wanted™, readers will learn that Americas first spymasters included Benjamin Franklin and John Jay. Otto von Bismarcks chief spy, Wilhelm Stieber, posed as an itinerant peddler and sold religious artifacts and pornography to enemy troops as a cover for collecting intelligence. During...

In 100 Missions North, Ken Bell recounts the harrowing sorties that he and his comrades flew in F-105 Thunderchiefs, the famous "Thud", in 1966-67, when pilots faced a 50 percent loss rate. What was it like to face these odds day after day? We learn that men sustained by faith in each other and joined...

From literary journalist Sara Mansfield Taber comes a deep and wondrous memoir of her exotic childhood as the daughter of a covert CIA operative. Born under an Assumed Name portrays the thrilling and confusing life of a girl growing up abroad in a world of secrecy and diplomacyùand the heavy toll it...

Established less than 200 years ago, Chicago has seen a lot of living in that short span of time. Burned to the ground early on, its been frozen and just recently flooded. Tucked away in the Midwest, it still rivals both coasts with its food, entertainment, and cultural venues. Chicagos Most Wanted™:...

The history of hockey is filled with the bizarre, the unexpected, and the hard to believe. Hockey's Most Wanted™ chronicles 700 of the most outrageous players, coaches, and owners in hockey history. In humorous detail, Floyd Conner describes hockeys top-ten strange plays, inept players, bizarre nicknames,...

Within hours of the September 11 attacks, Sean M. Maloney deciphered that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were the aggressors behind the despicable act. A war in Afghanistan then was inevitable. As a military historian, Maloney was determined to go there to study and record the events for posterity, if...

On December 15, 1944, Maj. Alton Glenn Miller, commanding officer of the Army Air Force Band (Special), boarded a plane in England bound for France with Lt. Col. Norman Francis Baessell. Somewhere over the English Channel the plane vanished. No trace of the aircraft or its occupants has ever been...

Its the rare bird that doesnt like Christmas. Sure there are Scrooges and, here and there, cries of "Bah, humbug," but Christmas is a time for celebrating, for giving, and for trying to be just a little nicer to your fellow man. As the song goes, "If every day could be just like Christmas what a wonderful...

In 1950, Vin Scully broadcast his first major league baseball game for the thenBrooklyn Dodgers. Nearly sixty years later he still invites a listener to pull up a chair, completing a record fifty-ninth consecutive year of play-by-play. Recruited and mentored by the legendary Red Barber, the New Yorkborn...

Most fans today know that gamblers and ballplayers conspired to ôfixö the 1919 World Seriesùthe Black Sox Scandal. It has been touched upon in classic works of sports history such as Eliot AsinofÆs Eight Men Out, referred to in literary classics like W. P. KinsellaÆs Shoeless Joe, and has been central...

At 3:17 p.m. on March 18, 1937, a natural gas leak beneath the London Junior-Senior High School in the oil boomtown of New London, Texas, created a lethal mixture of gas and oxygen in the schools basement. The odorless, colorless gas went undetected until the flip of an electrical switch triggered a...

Bernard Fall wrote the classics Street Without Joy and Hell in a Very Small Place, which detailed the French experience in Vietnam. One of the first (and the best-informed) Western observers to say that the United States could not win there either, he was killed in Vietnam in 1967 while accompanying...

This compact and accessible biography critically assesses the life and career of Dean Acheson, one of AmericaÆs foremost diplomats and strategists. As a top State Department official from 1941 to 1947 and as Harry S. TrumanÆs secretary of state from 1949 to 1953, Acheson shaped many of the key U.S....