As a young girl growing up in Kansas, Martha Leiker always felt a pull toward Africa. She couldn’t explain why, but she dreamed of working in Africa with the African people. In From Silence to Secrecy, Leiker narrates the story of how she made that dream come true.

Leiker likens her life to that of a chameleon-changing easily from one lifestyle to another. This memoir follows those changes, beginning with her birth in 1940 in rural Kansas; her training as a nun with the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa in Pennsylvania; her work in Africa as a missionary for eight years; her twenty years of service with the CIA; and her current position with the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE) in Colorado.

Including many fascinating photos, From Silence to Secrecy demonstrates how one young girl with a dream accomplished her goals and lived a life full of rich experiences. Leiker’s story shows how her faith, hope, inner strength, and dreams carried her far.

A modern introduction, tracing the origins of “The Art of War” and its historical and cultural importance, firmly grounds the reader in the context with which this oldest of military treatises has survived the ages, as well as contemporary examples of its continued use.

The first part contains “The Art of War” in English, without notes or commentary. This allows the reader to understand the teachings of Sun Tzu, without the distraction of footnotes or excessive comments. This newly revised translation is succinct and very easy to read.

The second part contains the complete annotated translation by Lionel Giles, along with his definitive critical commentary and supplemental information from a broad range of sources. Written during the Victorian era, Giles’ 1910 “Introduction” has also been included, containing the legend of “Sun Tzu and The Army of Concubines”.

Although written in the 6th century BCE, the teachings of Sun Tzu are still found today in the martial arts, legal doctrine, military schools, management seminars and pervasively throughout popular culture.

Lavishly rendered for Kindle, this edition has a working and linked table of contents to each part of the collection, as well as each internal chapter. Book preview links included in the digital edition give the user a chance to take advantage of Kindle’s new web browsing capabilities.

This book is for those that believe in the preeminence of children, the vigorous expression of patriotism, and the power of clear-eyed optimism. Janie Johnson says ”The strength of our country resides in the minds of our children, and the future of our country will be found in their actions.”

There’s no question that our political system has become corrupt and politicians — on both sides of the aisle — are voting in favor of the special interests that donated to them instead of the citizens who elected them. They have all contributed to the abandonment of the Common Sense Conservative principles upon which our country was founded and under which we have prospered.

Don’t Take My Lemonade Stand : An American Philosophy is the book that tells where we came from, how out-of-control, big government/big spending policies are driving us to ruin, and exactly what we the people can do to take back our country right here, right now, and get it back on course to peace, prosperity, and opportunity.

Into this uncertainty, former White House insiders MichaelGerson and Peter Wehner seek to call evangelicals toward a new kindof political engagement — a kind that is better both for thechurch and the country, a kind that cannot be co-opted by eitherpolitical party, a kind that avoids the historic mistakes of boththe Religious Left and the Religious Right.

Incisive, bold, and marked equally by pragmatism and idealism,Gerson and Wehner’s new book has the potential to chart a newpolitical future not just for values voters, but for the nation asa whole.

Born in the boom-and-bust oil town of Midland, Texas, Laura Welch grew up as an only child in a family that lost three babies to miscarriage or infant death. She vividly evokes Midland’s brash, rugged culture, her close relationship with her father, and the bonds of early friendships that sustain her to this day. For the first time, in heart-wrenching detail, she writes about the devastating high school car accident that left her friend Mike Douglas dead and about her decades of unspoken grief.

When Laura Welch first left West Texas in 1964, she never imagined that her journey would lead her to the world stage and the White House. After graduating from Southern Methodist University in 1968, in the thick of student rebellions across the country and at the dawn of the women’s movement, she became an elementary school teacher, working in inner-city schools, then trained to be a librarian. At age thirty, she met George W. Bush, whom she had last passed in the hallway in seventh grade. Three months later, “the old maid of Midland married Midland’s most eligible bachelor.” With rare intimacy and candor, Laura Bush writes about her early married life as she was thrust into one of America’s most prominent political families, as well as her deep longing for children and her husband’s decision to give up drinking. By 1993, she found herself in the full glare of the political spotlight. But just as her husband won the Texas governorship in a stunning upset victory, her father, Harold Welch, was dying in Midland.

In 2001, after one of the closest elections in American history, Laura Bush moved into the White House. Here she captures presidential life in the harrowing days and weeks after 9/11, when fighter-jet cover echoed through the walls and security scares sent the family to an underground shelter. She writes openly about the White House during wartime, the withering and relentless media spotlight, and the transformation of her role as she began to understand the power of the first lady. One of the first U.S. officials to visit war-torn Afghanistan, she also reached out to disease-stricken African nations and tirelessly advocated for women in the Middle East and dissidents in Burma. She championed programs to get kids out of gangs and to stop urban violence. And she was a major force in rebuilding Gulf Coast schools and libraries post-Katrina. Movingly, she writes of her visits with U.S. troops and their loved ones, and of her empathy for and immense gratitude to military families.

With deft humor and a sharp eye, Laura Bush lifts the curtain on what really happens inside the White House, from presidential finances to the 175-year-old tradition of separate bedrooms for presidents and their wives to the antics of some White House guests and even a few members of Congress. She writes with honesty and eloquence about her family, her public triumphs, and her personal tribulations. Laura Bush’s compassion, her sense of humor, her grace, and her uncommon willingness to bare her heart make this story revelatory, beautifully rendered, and unlike any other first lady’s memoir ever written.

Drawing on the memories of his fellow agents, Jerry Blaine captures the energetic, crowd-loving young president, who banned agents from his car and often plunged into raucous crowds with little warning. He describes the careful planning that went into JFK’s Texas swing, the worries and concerns that agents, working long hours with little food or rest, had during the trip. And he describes the intensely private first lady making her first-ever political appearance with her husband, just months after losing a newborn baby.

Here are vivid scenes that could come only from inside the Kennedy detail : JFK’s last words to his tearful son when he left Washington for the last time; how a sudden change of weather led to the choice of the open-air convertible limousine that day; Mrs. Kennedy standing blood-soaked outside a Dallas hospital room; the sudden interruption of six-year-old Caroline’s long-anticipated sleepover with a friend at home; the exhausted team of agents immediately reacting to the president’s death with a shift to LBJ and other key governmental figures; the agents’ dismay at Jackie’s decision to walk openly from the White House to St. Matthew’s Cathedral at the state funeral.

Most of all, this is a look into the lives of men who devoted their entire beings to protecting the presidential family : the stress of the secrecy they kept, the emotional bonds that developed, the terrible impact on agents’ psyches and families, and their astonishment at the country’s obsession with far-fetched conspiracy theories and finger-pointing. A book fifty years in coming, The Kennedy Detail is a portrait of incredible camaraderie and incredible heartbreak—a true, must-read story of heroism in its most complex and human form.