Free Republic

1) Kentucky Long Rifle The Kentucky long rifle was effectively used as a sniping weapon during the Revolutionary War - allowing colonial soldiers to pick off officers at range due to its rifling and superior accuracy. 2) Spencer Repeating Rifle The Spencer repeating rifle put an unheard-of amount of firepower into the hands of the few Union soldiers who wielded them. 3) Cold Single-Action Army: 'The Peacemaker' The Colt Single Action Army was used by lawmen and outlaws alike in the Wild West. It garnered the nickname 'Peacemaker'. 4) Winchester Model 1873 The Winchester 1873 lever action rifle had the...

The Century 1914 On the book The Century 1914 by Dominique Venner (Pygmalion, 2006). The author answers the questions of the journalist Pauline Lecomte. In publishing The Age of 1914 , Dominique Venner offered an impressive historical synthesis which is a culmination of all his works, and proposed a new interpretation of the European history in the twentieth century. To summarize this book is impossible. Everyone will make their own interpretations. It provides a detailed analysis of the great revolutionary movements and major conflicts of the twentieth century. It contains a broad meditations on history, politics and great actors. It...

Hillary Rodham Clinton is the most polarizing figure in American politics.... Despite more than a dozen years in the national spotlight and more than a dozen unauthorized books about her, she has managed to keep many secrets from the public especially about her turbulent marriage and its impact on her career. There have been plenty of rumors about what Hillary and Bill Clinton did behind closed doors, but never a definitive book that exposes the truth.

The doors of New York’s Javits Center swung open wide this morning to welcome thousands of booksellers, publishers, librarians, authors and their agents at the annual jamboree known as BookExpo. Almost certainly, the event will resurrect the seemingly endless debate over e-books and the future of reading. While Barnes and Noble (NYSE: BKS) and its Nook e-book division may not be among this year’s exhibitors, the book industry headlines that likely will hit the papers in the coming days should prompt investors to consider the many risks that hover over the book retailing giant’s head, especially given that the stock...

John Steinbeck's 1942 novel The Moon is Down is about people of a small  village occupied by Nazi forces somewhere in Northern Europe. They become sullen and their obedience is bought at an increasingly high price. Free people cannot remain conquered.Re-reading The Moon is Down left me with nagging questions about the extent to which the People of the United States remain free. Those questions did not arise when I first read it, many years ago. It now seems obvious that we are less free than we once were; yet perhaps (one can at least hope that) there are still enough to make...

This time of year, as college students return home for the summer, many parents may notice how many politically correct ideas they have acquired on campus. Some of those parents may wonder how they can undo some of the brainwashing that has become so common in what are supposed to be institutions of higher learning. The strategy used by General Douglas MacArthur so successfully in the Pacific during World War II can be useful in this very different kind of battle. General MacArthur won his victories while minimizing his casualties — something that is also desirable in clashes of ideas...

Harper Lee, the author of To Kill A Mockingbird, has sued her literary agent for allegedly duping her into assigning him the copyright on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. In the lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, Lee says Samuel Pinkus, the son-in-law of Lee's long-time agent, Eugene Winick, took advantage of her failing hearing and eyesight to transfer the rights on the book, which has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and became an Oscar-winning film. The 87-year-old says she has no memory of agreeing to relinquish her rights or signing the agreement that cements the purported transfer.

A Philadelphia mother wants her son’s high school teacher fired after he bought the teen the novel Fifty Shades of Grey for in-class reading. Maya Ladson says she was shocked to find a copy of the racy read in her 14-year-old’s book bag back on March 9. That shock turned to outrage when she found out how he got the book. “The minute I found out about it, it raised concern,” the mother told NBC10.com Thursday. “This is not OK to me. This is major.” Ladson's son, who is a 9th grade student at Eastern University Academy Charter School in...

Ah, to know the mind of Aristotle, the man whom Dante called “the teacher of those who know.” How magnificent to commune with the intellect of Plato, of whom Alfred North Whitehead dared to say: “the European philosophical tradition consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” Many other ancient writers by their enduring works have bequeathed to us the gift of remarkable clarity on our unchanging human nature, a clarity which is conspicuously absent from most of the literature churned out in this Dark Age.Contrast the lasting classics of the Great Western Tradition with the divergent and self-conscious works...

Clarence Manion, the retired dean of the Notre Dame School of Law, became one of the most thoughtful conservatives from the mid-1950s through the 1970s. The “Manion Forum” began broadcasting in 1954 and continued until his death in 1979. In 1952, Manion would head the “Democrats for Eisenhower” organization. President Dwight D. Eisenhower named him as the chairman of a commission to study how to return to states the power that the federal government had taken away under the Roosevelt and Truman administration. When Manion did not back away from his support of something the administration opposed, Eisenhower fired him....

If you’re a regular Townhall reader, you’re familiar with Mike Adams’ columns. If you’re any other Townhall columnist (and competitive like me), always seeing him scattered among the “Top 10” most-read most-commented columns makes you want to finally give in and do a column on Mike Adams with the hopes of cracking the top 10. Adams graduated from high school with a GPA of 1.8. Despite his apparent fear of success, he still managed to get an Associate’s degree from San Jacinto College. He then got his B.A. with a more respectable 3.4 GPA and Master’s in psychology from Mississippi...

I have friends and relatives in Germany that just do not know the true story of Barack Hussein Obama. I go on Amazon.de and the only books about the guy are all lavish encomiums, books from the left, or his own two books written by Bill Ayres. Are there any conservative books written in German that anyone knows about? Is there a German version of Dinesh d"Souza's film or book? Appreciate your help. Thanks

There are hundreds of books that are considered classics and probably even more over-hyped ones on bestsellers lists. Which do you think are the three most overrated books?

Getting a literature Ph.D. will turn you into an emotional trainwreck, not a professor. Who wouldn’t want a job where you only have to work five hours a week, you get summers off, your whole job is reading and talking about books, and you can never be fired? Such is the enviable life of the tenured college literature professor, and all you have to do to get it is earn a Ph.D. So perhaps you, literature lover, are considering pursuing this path. Well, what if I told you that by “five hours” I mean “80 hours,” and by “summers off”...

At any book store in the country, you can find hundreds of titles from right-leaning authors — and they are selling like hotcakes. Over the past few years, the Tea Party groundswell and the presidency of Barack Obama has fueled a new and growing crop of conservative authors, as well as renewed interest in the canon of nonfiction works that have shaped conservative thought in American culture and politics. The following is a list of 13 books that are staples to any Republican bookshelf. While the list by no means comprehensive, its a good starter guide for any young conservative...

The digital age continues to confuse and confound a generation of adults who have learned to participate in it, but lack the ability for what Ethel Merman as Annie Oakley called "doin' what comes naturally." We still think a microwave is for heating coffee and thawing frozen food, never the name of a computer game. We weren't born to researching on Wikipedia or Googling for facts. Our fingers can text, but often strike two letters on the Android, making for some strange communications. We despair of catching up with the tools at hand and wonder what it all means...

I have been recovering from a stroke, so, to keep life interesting I have been reading a few novels. I have now read most of the novels by F. van Wyck Mason. He once was a military officer but I don't know if he is now alive. He really knows his early American History of around 1775 and the conflict between the rebels, Tories, and royalists. You will learn how the New Englanders fit in, Boston, Rhode Island, Norfolk, Virginia and Burmuda. They were brutal on each other as was never told in school history books. I'm reading 'Three Harbours'...

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<p>Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender literature are included in the California Department of Education's newest reading list for students,prompting complaints from critics who say a leftist agenda is being pushed on kids, the San Jose Mercury News reported.</p> <p>Controversial topics have been introduced to California students in the past, but this is the first time the state has put forth works celebrated by the Stonewall Book Awards, which since 1971 has recognized LGBT literature, according to the newspaper.</p>

Not since 1984 and the landslide victory of Ronald Reagan have the Republicans had a more winnable election than the 2012 presidential election. Yet the Republican Establishment managed to lose to the worst and most vulnerable President in modern history, with historically poor approval ratings, unemployment averaging over 8.7% during his entire first term, a stagnant economy and someone who ran the smallest and most absurd of all possible re-election campaigns. Why and how did this happen? In his new book WTF? How Karl Rove and the Establishment Lost...Again, C. Edmund Wright, a frequent contributor to the American Thinker website...