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Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington
by Ted WidmerAs a divided nation plunges into the deepest crisis in its history, Abraham Lincoln boards a train for Washington and his inauguration—an inauguration Southerners have vowed to prevent by any means necessary. Drawing on new research, this account reveals the President-Elect as a work in progress, showing him on the verge of greatness, foiling an assassination attempt, and forging an unbreakable bond with the American people. On the eve of his 52nd birthday, February 11, 1861, the President-Elect of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, walked onto a train, the first step of his journey to the White House, and his rendezvous with destiny. But as the train began to carry Lincoln toward Washington, it was far from certain what he would find there. Bankrupt and rudderless, the government was on the verge of collapse. To make matters worse, reliable intelligence confirmed a conspiracy to assassinate him as he passed through Baltimore. It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of the Republic hung in the balance. How did Lincoln survive this grueling odyssey, to become the president we know from the history books? Lincoln on the Verge tells the story of a leader discovering his own strength, improvising brilliantly, and seeing his country up close during these pivotal thirteen days. From the moment the Presidential Special left the station, a new Lincoln was on display, speaking constantly, from a moving train, to save the Republic. The journey would draw on all of Lincoln&’s mental and physical reserves. But the President-Elect discovered an inner strength, which deepened with the exhausting ordeal of meeting millions of Americans. Lincoln on the Verge tells the story of America&’s greatest president and the obstacles he overcame, well before he could take the oath of office and deliver his inaugural address.
Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy
by Ted WidmerIn July 1962, in an effort to preserve an accurate record of Presidential decision-making in a highly charged atmosphere of conflicting viewpoints, strategies and tactics, John F. Kennedy installed hidden recording systems in the Oval Office and in the Cabinet Room. The result is a priceless historical archive comprising some 265 hours of taped material. JFK was elected president when Civil Rights tensions were near the boiling point, and Americans feared a nuclear war. Confronted with complex dilemmas necessitating swift and unprecedented action, President Kennedy engaged in intense discussion and debate with his cabinet members and other advisors. Now, in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy presidency, the John F. Kennedy Library and historian Ted Widmer have carefully selected the most compelling and important of these remarkable recordings for release, fully restored and re-mastered onto two 75-minute CDs for the first time. Listening In represents a uniquely unscripted, insider account of a president and his cabinet grappling with the day-to-day business of the White House and guiding the nation through a hazardous era of uncertainty. Accompanied by extensively annotated transcripts of the recordings, and with a foreword by Caroline Kennedy, Listening In delivers the story behind the story in the unguarded words and voices of the decision-makers themselves. Listening In covers watershed events, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Space Race, Vietnam, and the arms race, and offers fascinating glimpses into the intellectual methodology of a circumspect president and his brilliant, eclectic brain trust. Just as the unique vision of President John F. Kennedy continues to resonate half a century after his stirring speeches and bold policy decisions, the documentary candor of Listening In imparts a vivid, breathtaking immediacy that will significantly expand our understanding of his time in office.
Martin Van Buren (The American Presidents Series)
by Ted Widmer Arthur M. SchlesingerThe first president born after America's independence ushers in a new era of no-holds-barred democracy The first "professional politician" to become president, the slick and dandyish Martin Van Buren was to all appearances the opposite of his predecessor, the rugged general and Democratic champion Andrew Jackson. Van Buren, a native Dutch speaker, was America's first ethnic president as well as the first New Yorker to hold the office, at a time when Manhattan was bursting with new arrivals. A sharp and adroit political operator, he established himself as a powerhouse in New York, becoming a U.S. senator, secretary of state, and vice president under Jackson, whose election he managed. His ascendancy to the Oval Office was virtually a foregone conclusion. Once he had the reins of power, however, Van Buren found the road quite a bit rougher. His attempts to find a middle ground on the most pressing issues of his day-such as the growing regional conflict over slavery-eroded his effectiveness. But it was his inability to prevent the great banking panic of 1837, and the ensuing depression, that all but ensured his fall from grace and made him the third president to be denied a second term. His many years of outfoxing his opponents finally caught up with him. Ted Widmer, a veteran of the Clinton White House, vividly brings to life the chaos and contention that plagued Van Buren's presidency-and ultimately offered an early lesson in the power of democracy.
Alone: A Widow's Search for Joy
by Katie F. WiebeKatie Wiebe's husband died of a rare disease, only two months after they moved to a new community, far from relatives. Katie was thirty-eight. She had to support her four children and her business skills were rusty. She was alone. This book is the story of how Katie Wiebe found strength to survive her loneliness and loss of identity, moving beyond widowhood into a new life, a new profession, and a new assurance that God wanted her to make a contribution to life.
of this earth: A Mennonite Boyhood In The Boreal Forest
by Rudy WiebeRudy Wiebe has written award-winning fiction for decades. He is recognized as one of Canada's finest literary treasures. Twice he has received Canada's most prestigious prize for fiction writing: The Governor-General's Award (equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize for fiction). Now comes new recognition for Wiebe's nonfiction writing. His recently released childhood memoir, Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest, has won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Nonfiction (considered to be the country's most prestigious literary nonfiction prize). The book holds Rudy's memoirs of growing up through age 12. His immigrant family cut a farm out of stony bushland in remote Saskatchewan. They hand-dug their well, climbed a ladder to their beds under the rafters, farmed with horses, and traveled by sleigh on the frontier. Stories and singing and food from their native Ukraine and Poland held them and filled their bodies and souls. Of This Earth is written with "spare and eloquent prose," say the jurors who chose the book for the Charles Taylor Prize. Wiebe "conveys the riches of a hardscrabble inheritance; a love of words, reading and music, a sustaining yet unsentimental faith, and a bond with the natural world, all of which have provided a compass for his writing life." One of the Taylor-Prize jurors reflected, "Rudy's book haunts you; it stays with you."
Stolen Life
by Rudy Wiebe Yvonne Johnson"Written with primal intensity, touched with redeeming compassion, Rudy Wiebe--has explored our history, our roots and the secrets of our hearts with moral seriousness and great feeling." - Governor General's Award for Fiction Citation, l994A powerful, major work of non-fiction, beautifully written, with the impact of Mikal Gilmore's Shot in the Heart, from the twice winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the great-great-granddaughter of Big Bear. This is a story about justice, and terrible injustices, a story about a murder, and a courtroom drama as compelling as any thriller as it unravels the events that put Yvonne Johnson behind bars for life, first in Kingston's Federal Prison for Women until the riot that closed it, and presently in the Okimaw Ochi Healing Lodge in the Cypress Hills. But above all it is the unforgettable true story of the life of a Native woman who has decided to speak out and break the silence, written with the redeeming compassion that marks all Rudy Wiebe's writing, and informed throughout by Yvonne Johnson's own intelligence and poetic eloquence.Characters and events spring to life with the vividness of fiction. The story is told sometimes in the first person by Rudy Wiebe, sometimes by Yvonne herself. He tracks down the details of Yvonne's early life in Butte, Montana, as a child with a double-cleft palate, unable to speak until the kindness of one man provided the necessary operations; the murder of her beloved brother while in police custody; her life of sexual abuse at the hands of another brother, grandfather and others; her escape to Canada - to Winnipeg and Wetaskiwin; the traumas of her life that led to alcoholism, and her slow descent into hell despite the love she found with her husband and three children.He reveals how she participated, with three others, in the murder of the man she believed to be a child abuser; he unravels the police story, taking us step by step, with jail-taped transcripts, through the police attempts to set one member of the group against the others in their search for a conviction - and the courtroom drama that followed. And Yvonne openly examines her life and, through her grandmother, comes to understand the legacy she has inherited from her ancestor Big Bear; having been led through pain to wisdom, she brings us with her to the point where she finds spiritual strength in passing on the lessons and understandings of her life. How the great-great-granddaughter of Big Bear reached out to the author of The Temptations of Big Bear to help her tell her story is itself an extraordinary tale. The co-authorship between one of Canada's foremost writers and the only Native woman in Canada serving life imprisonment for murder has produced a deeply moving, raw and honest book that speaks to all of us, and gives us new insight into the society we live in, while offering a deeply moving affirmation of spiritual healing.From the Hardcover edition.
Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Fall of WeWork
by Reeves Wiedeman**The Sunday Times Best Business Book of the Year 2020**'A satisfying ticktock of the company's rapid rise and crash, culminating in its disastrous I.P.O. in 2019 and Neumann's ouster.' New York Times'This absorbing book exposes the sheer madness of WeWork: not just its founder Adam Neumann's extreme hubris, but why so many wiser minds bought into the fairytale.' Sunday TimesThe inside story of the rise and fall of WeWork, showing how the excesses of its founder shaped a corporate culture unlike any other.__________In its earliest days, WeWork promised the impossible: to make the workplace cool.Adam Neumann, an immigrant determined to make his fortune in the United States, landed on the idea of repurposing surplus New York office space for the burgeoning freelance class. Over the course of ten years, WeWork attracted billions of dollars from some of the most sought-after investors in the world, while spending it to build a global real estate empire.Based on more than two hundred interviews, Billion Dollar Loser chronicles the breakneck speed at which WeWork's CEO built and grew his company. Culminating in a day-by-day account of the five weeks leading up to WeWork's botched IPO and Neumann's dramatic ouster, Reeves Wiedeman exposes the story of the company's desperate attempt to secure the funding it needed in the final moments of a decade defined by excess.With incredible access and piercing insight into the company, Billion Dollar Loser tells the full, inside story of WeWork and its CEO Adam Neumann who together came to represent the most audacious, and improbable, rise and fall in business.__________A Sunday Times Best Business Book of the YearFortune Best Book of the YearNew York Times' Books to Watch For in OctoberWIRED Books to Read This FallBloomberg's Nonfiction Title to Know this FallNewsweek's Must Read Fall NonfictionPublishers Weekly Top Ten for Business & EconomicsInsideHook's Best Books for OctoberLike John Carreyrou's Bad Blood and Mike Isaac's Super Pumped before it, Billion Dollar Loser traces the turmoil at a startup driven by a charismatic, arrogant founder.'A frisky dissection of how a rickety real-estate leasing company tricked the world into seeing it as an immensely valuable, society-shifting tech unicorn.' WIRED
Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork
by Reeves Wiedeman&“Vivid, carefully reported drama that readers will gulp down as if it were a fast-paced novel&” (Ken Auletta) ꟷ the inside story of WeWork and its CEO, Adam Neumann, which tells the remarkable saga of one of the most audacious, and improbable, rises and falls in American business history In its earliest days, WeWork promised the impossible: to make the American work place cool. Adam Neumann, an immigrant determined to make his fortune in the United States, landed on the idea of repurposing surplus New York office space for the burgeoning freelance class. Over the course of ten years, WeWork attracted billions of dollars from some of the most sought-after investors in the world, while spending it to build a global real estate empire that he insisted was much more than that: an organization that aspired to nothing less than "elevating the world's consciousness." Moving between New York real estate, Silicon Valley venture capital, and the very specific force field of spirituality and ambition erected by Adam Neumann himself, Billion Dollar Loser lays bare the internal drama inside WeWork. Based on more than two hundred interviews, this book chronicles the breakneck speed at which WeWork&’s CEO built and grew his company along with Neumann&’s relationship to a world of investors, including Masayoshi Son of Softbank, who fueled its chaotic expansion into everything from apartment buildings to elementary schools. Culminating in a day-by-day account of the five weeks leading up to WeWork&’s botched IPO and Neumann&’s dramatic ouster, Wiedeman exposes the story of the company&’s desperate attempt to secure the funding it needed in the final moments of a decade defined by excess. Billion Dollar Loser is the first book to indelibly capture the highly leveraged, all-blue-sky world of American business in President Trump&’s first term, and also offers a sober reckoning with its fallout as a new era begins.
Billion Dollar Loser: A Sunday Times Book of the Year
by Reeves WiedemanThe inside story of the rise and fall of WeWork, showing how the excesses of its founder shaped a corporate culture unlike any otherChristened a potential savior of Silicon Valley's startup culture, Adam Neumann was set to take WeWork, his office share company disrupting the commercial real estate market, public, cash out on the company's 47 billion dollar valuation, and break the string of major startups unable to deliver to shareholders. But as employees knew, and investors soon found out, WeWork's capital was built on promises that the company was more than a real estate purveyor, that in fact it was a transformational technology company.Veteran journalist Reeves Weideman dives deep into WeWork and it CEO's astronomical rise, from the marijuana and tequila-filled board rooms to cult-like company summer camps and consciousness-raising with Anthony Kiedis. Billion Dollar Loser is a character-driven business narrative that captures, through the fascinating psyche of a billionaire founder and his wife and co-founder, the slippery state of global capitalism.(P) 2020 Hachette Audio
Year of the Cock: The Remarkable True Account of a Married Man Who Left His Wife and Paid the Price
by Alan WiederFrom a powerful new voice in nonfiction comes this electrifying chronicle of a married man who leaves his wife to pursue a carefree bachelorhood - only to plunge into an abyss of shame, regret, and penis envy. Thirty-year-old Alan Wieder has everything a man could possibly want: a nice home in L.A. , a thriving Hollywood career, and to top it all off, a beautiful and adoring wife. Then one day in 2005 - the Year of the Rooster - he wakes up with questions:Have I settled down too soon? Am I consigned to a humdrum future of marriage, kiddies, home-cooked meals and hybrid SUVs? How the%&!did this happen to me? And just like that - after ten years in a committed relationship - Alan decides to walk out on his wife to pursue his fantasy of becoming a hardcore bachelor. Explaining very little, thinking even less, he dives into his exhilarating new single existence - buying a vintage Porsche, moving into a tastefully decorated bachelor pad, ignoring his wife, and bedding as many chicks as possible. However, to Alan's surprise and dismay, becoming a single dude also unleashes in him a torrent of crippling insecurities that he didn't even know he had. And soon, his would-be swingin' bachelorhood is cut short -veryshort - by a strange and shameful obsession that drives him to utter madness. Some men leave their wives only to discover that the grass isn't greener. What Alan Wieder discovers - about the perils of newfound freedom, and about his own fragile male psyche - is far more agonizing and wretched. In this riveting and brutally honest memoir, Alan recounts the true story of his impulsive, wild, and ultimately disastrous foray into bachelorhood. A tragicomic tale of betrayal, sexual (mis)adventure, and ultimately redemption,Year of the Cockmarks the debut of a remarkably talented new writer.
I'm the Man: The Story of That Guy from Anthrax
by Jon Wiederhorn Scott IanThe long-awaited and vastly entertaining autobiography of Scott Ian, guitarist and founder of groundbreaking and influential thrash metal legend Anthrax
Hunting the Unabomber: The FBI, Ted Kaczynski, and the Capture of America’s Most Notorious Domestic Terrorist
by Lis WiehlThe spellbinding account of the most complex and captivating manhunt in American history.On April 3, 1996, a team of FBI agents closed in on an isolated cabin in remote Montana, marking the end of the longest and most expensive investigation in FBI history. The cabin's lone inhabitant was a former mathematics prodigy and professor who had abandoned society decades earlier. Few people knew his name, Theodore Kaczynski, but everyone knew the mayhem and death associated with his nickname: the Unabomber.For two decades, Kaczynski had masterminded a campaign of random terror, killing and maiming innocent people through bombs sent in untraceable packages. The FBI task force charged with finding the perpetrator of these horrifying crimes grew to 150 people, yet his identity remained a maddening mystery. Then, in 1995, a "manifesto" from the Unabomber was published in the New York Times and Washington Post, resulting in a cascade of tips--including the one that cracked the case.Hunting the Unabomber includes:Exclusive interviews with key law enforcement agents who attempted to track down Kaczynski, correcting the history distorted by earlier films and streaming seriesNever-before-told stories of inter-agency law enforcement conflicts that changed the course of the investigationAn in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at why the hunt for the Unabomber was almost shut down by the FBINew York Times bestselling author and former federal prosecutor Lis Wiehl meticulously reconstructs the white-knuckle, tension-filled hunt to identify and capture the mysterious killer. This is a can&’t-miss, true crime thriller of the years-long battle of wits between the FBI and the brilliant-but-criminally insane Ted Kaczynski.
Hunting Charles Manson: The Quest for Justice in the Days of Helter Skelter
by Lis Wiehl Caitlin Rother"Hunting Charles Manson the best true crime book you will ever read....Lock your doors, keep the night lights on, and read this book." - Linda Fairstein, New York Times bestselling crime novelistIn the late summer of 1969, the nation was transfixed by a series of gruesome murders in the hills of Los Angeles. Newspapers and television programs detailed the brutal slayings of a beautiful actress--twenty six years old and eight months pregnant with her first child--as well as a hair stylist, an heiress, a businessman, and other victims. The City of Angels was plunged into a nightmare of fear and dread. In the weeks and months that followed, law enforcement faced intense pressure to solve crimes that seemed to have no connection.Finally, after months of dead-ends, false leads, and near-misses, Charles Manson and members of his "family" were arrested. The bewildering trials that followed once again captured the nation and forever secured Manson as a byword for the evil that men do.Drawing upon deep archival research and exclusive personal interviews--including unique access to Manson Family parole hearings--former federal prosecutor and Fox News legal analyst Lis Wiehl has written a propulsive, page-turning historical thriller of the crimes and manhunt that mesmerized the nation. And in the process, she reveals how the social and political context that gave rise to Manson is eerily similar to our own.
A View from a Tall Hill: Robert Ruark in Africa
by Terry Wielandafrica; hunting; short stories; sporting Robert Ruark was perhaps the most renowned safari writer of the twentieth century. As a respected columnist and author during his lifetime, his writings have influenced thousands of hunters to travel to Africa to see the places that Ruark immortalized in his writings. Despite his impact, Ruark only wrote for a period of fifteen years, but it was a time where he lived his life to its fullest potential. He travelled all across the world in order to see and do everything he could dream of, but it was in East Africa that he came to find a spiritual home. As the area became increasingly independent of colonial rule, Ruark predicted the economic, social, and political ruin that has since been the daily reality of the region. In this detailed account of Ruark&’s life, Terry Wieland has written a definitive book on Ruark, the restless traveler, and the times in which he lived, as well as his lifelong fascination with Africa.
Theoderic the Great: King of Goths, Ruler of Romans
by Hans-Ulrich WiemerThe first full-scale history of Theoderic and the Goths in more than seventy-five years, tracing the transformation of a divided kingdom into a great power &“A monumental exploration. . . . It is the most important treatment of its subject since Wilhelm Ensslin&’s 1947 biography, and since Mr. Wiemer&’s book (here in John Noël Dillon&’s fluid English translation) surpasses its predecessor in breadth and sophistication, the author can claim the laurel of having written the best profile of Theoderic we have.&”—Kyle Harper, Wall Street Journal In the year 493, the leader of a vast confederation of Gothic warriors, their wives, and children personally cut down Odoacer, the man famous for deposing the last Roman emperor in 476. That leader became Theoderic the Great (454–526). This engaging history of his life and reign immerses readers in the world of the warrior-king who ushered in decades of peace and stability in Italy as king of Goths and Romans. Theoderic transformed his roving &“warrior nation&” from the periphery of the Roman world into a standing army that protected his taxpaying Roman subjects with the support of the Roman elite. With a ruling strategy of &“integration through separation,&” Theoderic not only stabilized Italy but also extended his kingdom to the western Balkans, southern France, and the Iberian Peninsula. Using sources as diverse as letters, poetry, coins, and mosaics, Hans-Ulrich Wiemer brings readers into the world of Theoderic&’s court, from Gothic warriors and their families to the notables, artisans, and shopkeepers of Rome and Ravenna to the peasants and enslaved people who tilled the soil on grand rural estates. This book offers a fascinating history of the leader who brought peace to Italy after the disintegration of the Roman Empire.
An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America
by Henry WiencekWhen George Washington wrote his will, he made the startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves was his "only unavoidable subject of regret."
American Socialist Triptych: The Literary-Political Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Upton Sinclair, and W. E. B. Du Bois
by Van Wienen Mark W."A meticulously researched, highly informed, carefully argued, and very accessible account of American socialism, socialists, and socialistic thinking, from the late nineteenth century through the 1960s . . . challenges the intellectual and political legacy of Werner Sombart'sWhy Is There No Socialism in the United States?, whose spirit still hovers over animated discussions about the 'failures' of socialism in the United States. " ---James A. Miller, George Washington University "A valuable rethinking and reframing of the traditions of leftist literary scholarship in the U. S. " ---Sylvia Cook, University of Missouri, St. Louis American Socialist Triptych: The Literary-Political Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Upton Sinclair, and W. E. B. Du Boisexplores the contributions of three writers to the development of American socialism over a fifty--year period and asserts the vitality of socialism in modern American literature and culture. Drawing upon a wide range of texts including archival sources, Mark W. Van Wienen demonstrates the influence of reform-oriented, democratic socialism both in the careers of these writers and in U. S. politics between 1890 and 1940. While offering unprecedented in-depth analysis of modern American socialist literature, this book charts the path by which the supposedly impossible, dangerous ideals of a cooperative commonwealth were realized, in part, by the New Deal. American Socialist Triptychprovides in-depth, innovative readings of the featured writers and their engagement with socialist thought and action. Upton Sinclair represents the movement's most visible manifestation, the Socialist Party of America, founded in 1901; Charlotte Perkins Gilman reflects the socialist elements in both feminism and 1890s reform movements, and W. E. B. Du Bois illuminates social democratic aspirations within the NAACP. Van Wienen's book seeks to re-energize studies of Sinclair by treating him as a serious cultural figure whose career peaked not in the early success ofThe Junglebut in his nearly successful 1934 run for the California governorship. It also demonstrates as never before the centrality of socialism throughout Gilman's and Du Bois's literary and political careers. More broadly,American Socialist Triptychchallenges previous scholarship on American radical literature, which has focused almost exclusively on the 1930s and Communist writers. Van Wienen argues that radical democracy was not the phenomenon of a decade or of a single group but a sustained tradition dispersed within the culture, providing a useful genealogical explanation for how socialist ideas were actually implemented through the New Deal. American Socialist Triptychalso revises modern American literary history, arguing for the endurance of realist and utopian literary modes at the height of modernist literary experimentation and showing the importance of socialism not only to the three featured writers but also to their peers, including Edward Bellamy, Hamlin Garland, Jack London, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Claude McKay. Further, by demonstrating the importance of social democratic thought to feminist and African American campaigns for equality, the book dialogues with recent theories of radical egalitarianism. Readers interested in American literature, U. S. history, political theory, and race, gender, and class studies will all find inAmerican Socialist Triptycha valuable and provocative resource.
Uncanny Valley: A Memoir
by Anna WienerThe prescient, page-turning account of a journey in Silicon Valley: a defining memoir of our digital age <P><P>In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener—stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial--left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress. <P><P>Anna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building. Part coming-of-age-story, part portrait of an already-bygone era, Anna Wiener’s memoir is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. With wit, candor, and heart, Anna deftly charts the tech industry’s shift from self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment. <P><P>Unsparing and incisive, Uncanny Valley is a cautionary tale, and a revelatory interrogation of a world reckoning with consequences its unwitting designers are only beginning to understand.
Huaco retrato
by Gabriela WienerLa muerte de su padre y los fantasmas de su herencia marcan el retorno de Wiener con esta exploración memorable sobre el amor, el deseo, los celos y el racismo. Un huaco retrato es una pieza de cerámica prehispánica que buscaba representar los rostros indígenas con la mayor precisión posible. Se dice que capturaba el alma de las personas, un registro que ha sobrevivido oculto en el espejo roto de los siglos. Estamos en 1878, y el explorador judío-austriaco Charles Wiener se prepara para ser reconocido por la comunidad académica en la Exposición Universal de París, una gran feria de "progresos tecnológicos" que cuenta entre sus atracciones con un zoo humano, culmen del racismo científico y del proyecto imperialista europeo. Wiener ha estado cerca de descubrir Machu Picchu, ha escrito un libro sobre el Perú, se ha llevado cerca de cuatro mil huacos y también un niño. Ciento cincuenta años después, la protagonista de esta historia recorre el museo que acoge la colección Wiener para reconocerse en los rostros de los huacos que su tatarabuelo expolió. Sin más equipaje que la pérdida ni otro mapa que sus heridas abiertas, las íntimas y las históricas, persigue las huellas del patriarca familiar y las de la bastardía de su propia estirpe -que es la de muchos-, la búsqueda identitaria de nuestro tiempo: un archipiélago de abandonos, celos, culpas, racismo, vestigios fantasmales ocultos en las familias y la deconstrucción de un deseo tercamente anclado en un pensamiento colonial. Hay temblor y resistencia en estas páginas escritas con el aliento de quien recoge los pedazos de algo que se rompió hace tiempo, esperando que todo vuelva a encajar. La crítica ha dicho...«Con esa inteligencia tremenda y ese humor irreverente que la caracteriza, Wiener rescata del archivo familiar una historia íntima, que es también la historia infame de todo nuestro continente. La prosa a la vez sobria y desparpajada de Wiener es puro aire fresco, y bajo la claridad penetrante de su mirada podemos ser testigos de los ciclos de depredación y saqueo de América Latina.»Valeria Luiselli «¿Se imaginan un libro donde cabe la búsqueda de un ancestro europeo ladrón de cerámica peruana, un bisabuelo bastardo y blanqueado, el poliamor y sus desengaños, el duelo por la pérdida de un padre, la familia heterosexual y sus secretos inconfesables, los talleres de sexo anticolonial…? Poco a poco, lo que parece el encuentro fortuito de una máquina de coser y un paraguas sobre una mesa de disección se acaba convirtiendo en el mejor libro que he leído sobre la filiación y el amor en la condición poscolonial contemporánea. ¡Gabriela Wiener inventa la psicogenealogía queer y descolonial!»Paul B. Preciado «Wiener utiliza como materia prima la prepotencia de la violencia eurocéntrica para crear narrativas radicalmente hermosas e imprescindibles para las luchas antirracistas.»Daniela Ortiz «Seguirle la pista a Gabriela Wiener, caminar detrás de ella, soñando con alcanzarla, es uno de los pocos lujos que nos quedan.»Alejandro Zambra «Wiener destruye a martillazos de poesía los lugares comunes del Stand Up.» Fabián Casas «Gabriela Wiener es pura rebeldía, humor y ternura a un mismo tiempo.»Sara Mesa
Historians in Trouble
by Jon WienerHistorians in Trouble is investigative journalist and historian Jon Wiener's "incisive and entertaining" (New Statesman, UK) account of several of the most notorious history scandals of the last few years.Focusing on a dozen key controversies ranging across the political spectrum and representing a wide array of charges, Wiener seeks to understand why some cases make the headlines and end careers, while others do not. He looks at the well publicized cases of Michael Bellesiles, the historian of gun culture accused of research fraud; accused plagiarists and "celebrity historians" Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin; Pulitzer Prize-winner Joseph J. Ellis, who lied in his classroom at Mount Holyoke about having fought in Vietnam; and the allegations of misconduct by Harvard's Stephan Thernstrom and Emory's Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, who nevertheless were appointed by George W. Bush to the National Council on the Humanities.As the Bancroft Prize-winning historian Linda Gordon wrote in Dissent, Wiener's "very readable book . . . reveal[s] not only scholarly misdeeds but also recent increases in threats to free debate and intellectual integrity."
Norbert Wiener#A Life in Cybernetics: Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth and I Am a Mathematician: The Later Life of a Prodigy (The\mit Press Ser.)
by Norbert WienerNorbert Wiener's celebrated autobiography, available for the first time in one volume.Norbert Wiener—A Life in Cybernetics combines for the first time the two volumes of Norbert Wiener's celebrated autobiography. Published at the height of public enthusiasm for cybernetics—when it was taken up by scientists, engineers, science fiction writers, artists, and musicians—Ex-Prodigy (1953) and I Am a Mathematician (1956) received attention from both scholarly and mainstream publications, garnering reviews and publicity in outlets that ranged from the New York Times and New York Post to the Virginia Quarterly Review. Norbert Wiener was a mathematician with extraordinarily broad interests. The son of a Harvard professor of Slavic languages, Wiener was reading Dante and Darwin at seven, graduated from Tufts at fourteen, and received a PhD from Harvard at eighteen. He joined MIT's Department of Mathematics in 1919, where he remained until his death in 1964 at sixty-nine. In Ex-Prodigy, Wiener offers an emotionally raw account of being raised as a child prodigy by an overbearing father. In I Am a Mathematician, Wiener describes his research at MIT and how he established the foundations for the multidisciplinary field of cybernetics and the theory of feedback systems. This volume makes available the essence of Wiener's life and thought to a new generation of readers.
Forever a Soldier: Unforgettable Stories of Wartime Service
by Tom WienerForever a Soldier captures the personal side of war in 37 extraordinary narratives that bear eloquent witness to both the life-changing experience of battle and to the unflagging spirit that sustained countless ordinary Americans plunged into the bloody conflicts of the deadliest, most destructive century in human history. Culled from letters, diaries, private memoirs, and oral histories collected by the Library of Congress Veterans History Project, their stories paint an unforgettable group portrait of our country's armed forces. <P><P>Some tell of frontline action: a doughboy's 1918 baptism of fire: a battleship gunner's grim duel with Japanese planes; a female fighter pilot's capture by Iraqis during the Gulf War. Others evoke moments of relief and reflection, or recall deeply moving episodes: two wounded soldiers—one German, one American—clasping hands in the wordless brotherhood of pain; a POW whose faith gave him the strength to endure torture in the notorious "Hanoi Hilton;" a GI's lifelong grief for a buddy killed on the last day of World War II in Europe. <P><P>Forever a Soldier presents famous incidents like the sinking of the USS Indianapolis and her survivors' terrifying ordeal in the shark-infested Pacific, and heroic figures like John McCain, but it's the long-untold stories of unheralded patriots that best reveal the universal truths of war: courage and fear, horror and exhilaration, sorrow and triumph—the shared legacy of every American veteran, and a debt of honor the rest of us must respect but can never repay.
Life Sentences: Discover the Key Themes of 63 Bible Characters
by Warren WiersbeAn accessible reference book of brief practical chapters on sixty-three Bible characters, in chronological order, with each life summarized in one sentence from Scripture providing informative and devotional content. When we read about biblical personalities, we often discover mirrors in which we see ourselves. This book presents the biographical descriptions of sixty-three key Bible characters, from Old and New Testaments, and summarizes each one in one statement from the Bible. The book includes the author's ?life sentence? and a challenge to the reader to determine what his or her life sentence is. The purpose is to help the reader ?meet himself/herself in the Bible? and take steps to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ.
Be Hopeful (1 Peter)
by Warren W. WiersbeIn Scripture, hope means the promise of salvation for those who have accepted God and His Son's death and resurrection.Christians who possess this hope and live as though then possess it will learn godly submission, holy living, and harmony with other believers. These qualities will prepare them for what Peter pains in his epistle as inevitable--suffering and persecution. Though Peter is writing to warn a people who would soon be under the tyranny of a heathen Roman emperor, some level of suffering will always be part of the believers' journey. A time is soon coming when living the "comfortable" Christian life will be far more costly than the life willing to give up all.
The Defining Verse: Find Your Life’s Sentence Through the Lives of 63 Bible Characters
by Warren W. Wiersbe&“Scripture frequently sums up a man&’s life in a single sentence.&” – Charles SpurgeonInspired by the great preacher Charles Spurgeon, Warren Wiersbe launched a personal study of the lives of prominent Bible characters. Interested in more than biographical facts, Wiersbe sought out the themes of each person&’s life as reflected in the pages of Scripture.How does the Bible summarize this person&’s life?What is the key to understanding his or her character?How do I see my own life reflected in the life of this person?The Defining Verse takes you into the lives of sixty-three Biblical men and women who encountered an extraordinary God. For each, Wiersbe identifies a Scripture verse that sums up that individual&’s life and then reflects on the lessons to be learned, both positive and negative. Now including a personal study for personal self-reflection, you will not only be challenged by these examples, you will be stimulated to consider what your &“life sentence&” will be.Previously released under the title Life Sentences.