James Bradley – författare

Oceans created, shaped, and sustain not just human life, but all life on Earth, and perhaps beyond it. Deep Water is a reckoning with humankind’s complex relationship with these oceans.In this thrilling work — a blend of history, science, nature, and environmental writing — acclaimed author James Bradley plunges into the unknown to explore the deepest recesses of the natural world, guiding readers through the atomic creation of the oceans to the wonders contained within, like the schools of fish who use electromagnetic sensing to migrate across the globe; describing how human populations have circumnavigated the world by boat; and interrogating the environmental catastrophe already impacting our lives. Deep Water celebrates the ocean’s glories and the extraordinary efforts of the scientists and researchers currently unlocking its secrets.Offering vital new ways of understanding humanity’s place on our planet, Bradley shows that the oceans might yet save us all.

FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS COMES PRECIOUS FREEDOM, A NOVEL OF THE WAR IN VIETNAM.   The Vietnam War was a tragedy for America—and for Vietnam. But for the Vietnamese, it was also a victory: they defeated the world’s wealthiest country and most powerful military.  James Bradley, the author of Flags of Our Fathers, began to wonder, How did they win?Precious Freedom explores this question in a powerful novel that is drawn from the pages of history. Informed by ten years of research and hundreds of interviews with US Marines, Viet Cong snipers, and Vietnamese fighters, politicians, and leaders, Precious Freedom is storytelling at its finest. In 1967, nineteen-year-old Chip Zobel enlists in the Marines, answering his government's call to defend democracy in South Vietnam. But what he finds on the ground shakes his faith: poisoned punji sticks, rotting uniforms, Agent Orange–tainted drinking water, constant ambushes, a brutal case of malaria—and the realization that many of the Viet Cong he’s fighting are actually South Vietnamese locals—the men and women he thought he was fighting to defend.Back home, Chip's mother, Betty, initially a staunch supporter of the war, begins to question its morality. His father, Hank, a former Navy corpsman who fought in the Battle of Saipan during World War II, grows skeptical as he begins to read US military reports that compare Ho Chi Minh to George Washington—a fierce patriot who leads his people to freedom.Meanwhile, in a quiet Vietnamese hamlet, fifteen-year-old May watches as a US Marine kills her father. She flees to the forest and joins a Viet Cong training camp. Three months later, she makes her first kill as a sniper—eventually, she will kill four more Americans with her rifle. Unbeknownst to her, her path will ultimately cross with that of the Marine who killed her father—Chip Zobel.James Bradley wrote Precious Freedom to honor all who served in Vietnam and to help a new generation understand the war’s complex truths.This is a story that America has never been told.“James Bradley journeyed to Iwo Jima and returned with Flags of Our Fathers and now ventures to Vietnam and brings us Precious Freedom, where he reveals that if we’d known what happened in the 1960s in Vietnam, American mothers would never have sent their children to Iraq and Afghanistan. The truth is the best vaccination against great lies.”—Oliver Stone

A new biography of the 8th president of the United States, the first chief executive not born a British citizen and the first to use the party system to chart his way from tavern-keeper's son to the pinnacle of power.Martin Van Buren was one of the most remarkable politicians not only of his time but in American presidential history. The principal architect of the party system and one of the founders of the Democratic Party, he came to dominate New York-then the most influential state in the Union-and was instrumental in electing Andrew Jackson president. Van Buren's skills as a political strategist were unparalleled (he was known as the "e;Little Magician"e;), winning him a series of high-profile offices: US senator, New York's governor, US secretary of state, US vice president, and finally the White House. In his rise to power, Van Buren sought consensus and conciliation, bending to the wishes of slave interests and complicit in the dispossession of America's Indigenous population--two of the darkest chapters in American history. This new biography of Van Buren -- the first full-scale portrait in four decades -- charts his ascent from a tavern in the Hudson Valley to the presidency, concluding with his late-career involvement in an antislavery movement. Offering vivid profiles of the day's leading figures (Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, DeWitt Clinton, James K. Polk), James Bradley's book depicts the struggle for power in the tumultuous decades leading up to the Civil War.

A new biography of the 8th president of the United States, the first chief executive not born a British citizen and the first to use the party system to chart his way from tavern-keeper's son to the pinnacle of power.Martin Van Buren was one of the most remarkable politicians not only of his time but in American presidential history. The principal architect of the party system and one of the founders of the Democratic Party, he came to dominate New York-then the most influential state in the Union-and was instrumental in electing Andrew Jackson president. Van Buren's skills as a political strategist were unparalleled (he was known as the "e;Little Magician"e;), winning him a series of high-profile offices: US senator, New York's governor, US secretary of state, US vice president, and finally the White House. In his rise to power, Van Buren sought consensus and conciliation, bending to the wishes of slave interests and complicit in the dispossession of America's Indigenous population--two of the darkest chapters in American history. This new biography of Van Buren -- the first full-scale portrait in four decades -- charts his ascent from a tavern in the Hudson Valley to the presidency, concluding with his late-career involvement in an antislavery movement. Offering vivid profiles of the day's leading figures (Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, DeWitt Clinton, James K. Polk), James Bradley's book depicts the struggle for power in the tumultuous decades leading up to the Civil War.

Now abridged for young people, Flags of Our Fathers is the unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history: the raising of the U. S. flag at Iwo Jima. Here is the true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America. In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima–and into history. The son of one of the flag raisers has written a powerful account of six very different men who came together in the heroic battle for the Pacific’s most crucial island.

In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Taft, his gun-toting daughter Alice and a gaggle of congressmen on a mission to Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. There, they would quietly forge a series of agreements that divided up Asia. At the time, Roosevelt was bully-confident about America's future on the continent. But these secret pacts lit the fuse that would, decades later, result in a number of devastating wars: WWII, the Korean War, and the communist revolution in China. One hundred years later, James Bradley retraces that epic voyage and discovers the remarkable truth about America's vast imperial past - and its world-shaking consequences. Full of fascinating characters and brilliantly told, THE IMPERIAL CRUISE will forever reshape the way we understand U.S. history.

London, 1826. Leaving behind his father's tragic failures, Gabriel Swift arrives to study with Edwin Poll, the greatest of the city's anatomists. It is his chance to find advancement by making a name for himself. But instead he finds himself drawn to his master's nemesis, Lucan, the most powerful of the city's resurrectionists and ruler of its trade in stolen bodies. Dismissed by Mr Poll, Gabriel descends into the violence and corruption of London's underworld, a place where everything and everyone is for sale, and where - as Gabriel discovers - the taking of a life is easier than it might seem.

London, 1826. Leaving behind his father's tragic failures, Gabriel Swift arrives to study with Edwin Poll, the greatest of the city's anatomists. It is his chance to find advancement by making a name for himself. But instead he finds himself drawn to his master's nemesis, Lucan, the most powerful of the city's resurrectionists and ruler of its trade in stolen bodies. Dismissed by Mr Poll, Gabriel descends into the violence and corruption of London's underworld, a place where everything and everyone is for sale, and where - as Gabriel discovers - the taking of a life is easier than it might seem.

Archaeologist David Norfolk is searching for a 400-year-old Portuguese shipwreck off the coast of New South Wales. Such a find would rewrite the history of Australia. But instead he unearths the body of a man murdered fifty years earlier, and begins to unravel a more personal kind of history. An elderly recluse, dying in a nearby shack, seems to know something of the corpse's identity - and also its connection to the shipwreck. He begins telling David about his own past, a story of a life marred by passion, rivalry and betrayal. But what does he know about the ship and the murder - and will he tell David before it is too late?