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Country of Ash
by Elisabeth Bizouard-Reicher Magda Bogin Edward Reicher"[Dr. Reicher] lived through the Second World War in Poland, dodging bullets, uprisings and deportations-not to mention betrayal, starvation and airless hideouts-in a manner more reminiscent of a talented outlaw than a mild-mannered dermatologist . . . It is the impressive simplicity of the good doctor's writing that makes [t]his book resemble [Victor] Klemperer's, and the detailed observations of its report that makes it emotionally memorable. . . . William Carlos Williams once said that people who prize information are perishing daily for want of the information that can be found only in poetry. By the same token, there will never be a time when we will not need the information that an important, evocative book like Country of Ash provides." -VIVIAN GORNICK, Moment magazineCountry of Ash is the starkly compelling, original chronicle of a Jewish doctor who miraculously survived near-certain death, first inside the Lodz and Warsaw ghettoes, where he was forced to treat the Gestapo, then on the Aryan side of Warsaw, where he hid under numerous disguises. He clandestinely recorded the terrible events he witnessed, but his manuscript disappeared during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After the war, reunited with his wife and young daughter, he rewrote his story.Peopled with historical figures like the controversial Chaim Rumkowski, who fancied himself a king of the Jews, to infamous Nazi commanders and dozens of Jews and non-Jews who played cat and mouse with death throughout the war, Reicher's memoir is about a community faced with extinction and the chance decisions and strokes of luck that kept a few stunned souls alive.Edward Reicher (1900-1975) was born in Lodz, Poland. He graduated with a degree in medicine from the University of Warsaw, later studied dermatology in Paris and Vienna, and practiced in Lodz as a dermatologist and venereal disease specialist both before and after World War II. A Jewish survivor of Nazi-occupied Poland, Reicher appeared at a tribunal in Salzburg to identify Hermann Höfle and give an eyewitness account of Höfle's role in Operation Reinhard, which sent hundreds of thousands to their deaths in the Nazi concentration camps of Poland.Country of Ash, first published posthumously in France, was translated from the French by Magda Bogin and includes a foreword by Edward Reicher's daughter Elisabeth Bizouard-Reicher.
Palmerino
by Melissa PritchardO, The Oprah Magazine "Title to Pick Up Now"Welcome to Palmerino, the British enclave in rural Italy where Violet Paget, known to the world by her pen name and male persona, Vernon Lee, held court. In imagining the real life of this brilliant, lesbian polymath known for her chilling supernatural stories, Melissa Pritchard creates a multilayered tale in which the dead writer inhabits the heart and mind of her lonely, modern-day biographer.Positing the art of biography as an act of resurrection and possession, this novel brings to life a vividly detailed, subtly erotic tale about secret loves and the fascinating artists and intellectuals-Oscar Wilde, John Singer Sargent, Henry James, Robert Browning, Bernard Berenson-who challenged and inspired each other during an age of repression.Melissa Pritchard is the author of eight books of fiction, including The Odditorium, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. Among other honors, her books have received the Flannery O'Connor, Janet Heidinger Kafka, and Carl Sandburg awards, and two of her short fiction collections were New York Times Notable Book and Editor's Choice selections.
Awkward
by Mary CappelloLos Angeles Times Bestseller"Mary Cappello['s] inventive, associative taxonomy of discomfort . . . [is] revelatory indeed." -MARK DOTY, author of Dog Years: A Memoir and Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems"A wonderful, multi-layered piece of writing, with all the insight of great cultural criticism and all the emotional pull of memoir. A fascinating book." -SARAH WATERS, author of The Night Watch and The Little StrangerWithout awkwardness we would not know grace, stability, or balance. Yet no one before Mary Cappello has turned such a penetrating gaze on this misunderstood condition. Fearlessly exploring the ambiguous borders of identity, she mines her own life journeys-from Russia, to Italy, to the far corners of her heart and the depths of a literary or cinematic text-to decipher the powerful messages that awkwardness can transmit.Mary Cappello is the author of four books of literary nonfiction, including Awkward: A Detour, which was a Los Angeles Times bestseller, Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life, which won a ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award and an Independent Publishers Prize, and Swallow: Swallow: Foreign Bodies, Their Ingestion, Inspiration, and the Curious Doctor Who Extracted Them. Professor of English at the University of Rhode Island, she lives in Providence, Rhode Island and Lucerne-in-Maine, Maine.
The Winged Seed
by Li-Young Lee"It has true spiritual importance for contemporary American literature."-Edward HirschUpon its initial publication, acclaimed poet Li-Young Lee's memoir The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (1995), received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. In lyrical prose, Lee's extraordinary story begins in the 1950s when his parents fled China's political turmoil for Indonesia. Along with many other Chinese members of the population, his family was persecuted under President Sukarno. Falsely accused and charged for crimes against the state, his father spent a year and a half in jail as a political prisoner, half of that time in a leper colony. While his entire family was being transported to a prison colony, they escaped and fled to Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, and back to Hong Kong where his father rose to prominence as an evangelical preacher. Eventually, the family sought asylum in the United States in 1962. When the author was six, they emigrated to a small town in western Pennsylvania where his father became a Presbyterian minister. This reissued edition contains a new foreword by the author and never-before-seen photos of the family from different stages of their journey.Li-Young Lee is the author of four critically acclaimed books of poetry that have garnered such awards as the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University; the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; the Writer's Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation; and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Lannan Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Razor-Wire Dharma
by Calvin Malone Sunyana Graef Steven C RockefellerCalvin Malone has plenty to teach us all about ideas that we rarely associate with the penal system: Dignity. Compassion. Freedom behind bars. He speaks from experience: Malone is nearing the end of a 20-year prison sentence himself.Razor-Wire Dharma is his eloquent, enlightening, and utterly inspiring personal story how he found Buddhism--and real, transformative meaning for his life-despite being in one of the world's harshest environments.Some of his stories are hilarious, some are harrowing, but all express Buddhist wisdom as vividly as any practitioner could hope to do. Malone is living it, and in the unlikeliest of places. For him, the choice of staying true to his principles often requires that he quite literally jeopardize his life, safety, and the few small comforts available to him to try to do what's right.Razor-Wire Dharma makes it clear that if Calvin can do what's right in jail, he can do it anywhere. What's more, it proves that we can, too.
First Spring Grass Fire
by Rae SpoonTransgender indie electronica singer-songwriter Rae Spoon has six albums to their credit, including 2012's I Can't Keep All of Our Secrets. This first book by Rae (who uses "they" as a pronoun) is a candid, powerful story about a young person growing up queer in a strict Pentecostal family in rural Canada.The narrator attends church events and Billy Graham rallies faithfully with their family before discovering the music that becomes their salvation and means of escape. As their father's schizophrenia causes their parents' marriage to unravel, the narrator finds solace and safety in the company of their siblings, in their nascent feelings for a girl at school, and in their growing awareness that they are not the person their parents think they are. With a heart as big as the prairie sky, this is a quietly devastating, heart-wrenching coming-of-age book about escaping dogma, surviving abuse, finding love, and risking everything for acceptance.Rae Spoon lives in Montreal, Quebec.
Herbert Read
by George WoodcockDuring his lifetime, Herbert Read (1893-1968) acquired a considerable international reputation. Poet and anarchist; novelist and biographer; critic of art, literature, and life; aesthetic philosopher; and revolutionary theorist of education, Read was in a unique place as an interpreter of his time. Few writers have probed so deeply into the nature of the prevailing culture, and none brought together the insights of modern philosophers and critics, poets and artists, psychologists and social scientists, as Read did.Best known as an art critic and follower of the theories of Carl Jung, Read was a pioneer in the English-speaking world for his use of psychoanalysis as a tool for art and literary criticism. Although knighted by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1953 for "services to literature," Read regarded himself, politically, as an anarchist.This work, by fellow anarchist George Woodcock, is a critical study of the intellectual career of Herbert Read, as well as a thorough study of Read's criticism, creative writing, art theory, and anarchist philosophy. Woodcock does not divide Read's writings on politics from those on art and culture as Read saw art, culture, and politics as a single expression of human consciousness. Comprehensive and authoritative, it is an impressive volume that presents a unified portrait of one of England's most distinguished twentieth-century critics.George Woodcock (1912-1995)--award-winning poet, author, essayist, and widely known as a literary journalist and historian--published more than ninety titles on history, biography, philosophy, poetry, and literary criticism.
I, Shithead
by Joey Keithley Jack RabidJoey Keithley, aka Joey Shithead, founded legendary punk pioneers D.O.A. in 1978. Punk kings who spread counterculture around the world, they've been cited as influences by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Rancid and The Offspring; have toured with The Clash, The Ramones, The Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Nirvana, PiL, Minor Threat and others; and are the subject of two tribute albums. They are the band that introduced the term "hardcore" into punk lexicon and may have turned Nirvana's lead singer Kurt Cobain onto a career in music.But punk is more than a style of music: it's a political act, and D.O.A. have always had a social conscience, having performed in support of Greenpeace, women's rape/crisis centres, prisoner's rights, and antinuke and antiglobalization organizations. Twenty-five years later D.O.A. can claim sales of hundreds of thousands of copies of their 11 albums and tours in 30 different countries, and they are still going strong.I, Shithead is Joey's personal, no-bullshit recollections of a life in punk, starting with the burgeoning punk movement and traversing a generation disillusioned with the status quo, who believed they could change the world: stories of riots, drinking, travelling, playing and conquering all manner of obstacles through sheer determination.Praise for D.O.A.:"They rock out. They blow the roof off. Some of the best shows I've seen in my life were D.O.A. gigs. I've never seen D.O.A. not be amazing."--Henry Rollins (Black Flag, Rollins Band)"The proper medicine growing young minds needed."--Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys)"Joey Shithead casts a long shadow."--John Doe (X)"They've changed a lot of people's lives."--Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters)Joey "Shithead" Keithley has long been an activist, including as a candidate for the Green Party, and is the founder of Sudden Death Records (www.suddendeath.com). He lives in Vancouver with his wife and their three children.
Home Sweet Anywhere
by Lynne Martin"This terrific book gives hope to everyone who desires the fun and freedom of dropping everything and hitting the road to foreign ports."--Jeri Sedlar, co-author of Don't Retire, REWIRE! The Sell-Your-House, See-the-World Life! Reunited after thirty-five years and wrestling a serious case of wanderlust, Lynne and Tim Martin decided to sell their house and possessions and live abroad full-time. They've never looked back. With just two suitcases, two computers, and each other, the Martins embark on a global adventure, taking readers from sky-high pyramids in Mexico to Turkish bazaars to learning the contact sport of Italian grocery shopping. But even as they embrace their new home-free lifestyle, the Martins grapple with its challenges, including hilarious language barriers, finding financial stability, and missing the family they left behind. Together, they learn how to live a life--and love--without borders. From glittering Georgian mansions in Ireland to the windswept coasts of Portugal, this euphoric, inspiring memoir is more than a tale of second chances. Home Sweet Anywhere is a road map for anyone who dreams of turning the idea of life abroad into a reality.
The River
by Paul Vasey"Ask anyone what they love most about Winzer, and they seem always to tell you it's the people, the family and friends webbed around each of us. True. But for me the town is also, and perhaps mainly, the larger-than-life characters who ghost around in my imagination and my memory: rumrunners and prize fighters and elegant old ladies and one-eyed thugs and earnest well-meaning politicians and hucksters and hookers and crusty old editors. Many of them I remember meeting. Some of them I actually met." -from The RiverThe River is Paul Vasey's tribute to a place he discovered by accident and loved over a lifetime. Chatty, anecdotal, personal and passionate, by one of Windsor's most celebrated reporters and radio hosts, this meandering memoir winds its way around a river town whose sights and characters may never be fully charted: a Windsor that fired a reporter's imagination, stole his heart, and eventually became the place he calls home.
Secret Lives of the Civil War
by Cormac O'Brien Monika SuteskiLegendary Heroes of U.S. History--As You've Never Seen Them Before! Secret Lives of the Civil War features irreverent and uncensored profiles of men and women from the Union and the Confederacy--complete with hundreds of little-known and downright bizarre facts. You'll discover that: * Mary Todd Lincoln claimed to receive valuable military strategies from ghosts in the spirit world. * Jefferson Davis once imported camels for soldiers stationed in the American southwest. * Ulysses S. Grant spent much of the Vicksburg campaign on a horse named "Kangaroo." * James Longstreet fought the Battle of Antietam wearing carpet slippers. * William T. Sherman was the victim of two shipwrecks on the same day. * Harriet Tubman experienced frequent and bizarre hallucinations. * Stonewall Jackson was a notorious hypochondriac (he always sat up straight, fearing that slouching would compress his vital organs). With chapters on everyone from William Quantrill (a guerilla leader whose skull later ended up in the basement of a fraternity house) to Rose O'Neal Greenhow (perhaps the South's most glamorous spy), Secret Lives of the Civil War features a mix of famous faces and unsung heroes. American history was never this much fun in school!
Spiritual Misfit
by Michelle DerushaI decided to admit once and for all that I didn't know what I was doing, what I thought, what I believed, even sometimes if I truly believed. I would tell the truth: I wasn't like them; I didn't fit in. I wasn't a proper Christian. I didn't have it all together like they did. Why not, I figured? What in the world did I have to lose?_____ After twenty years of unbelief, estranged from her childhood faith and ultimately from God, Michelle DeRusha unexpectedly found herself wrestling hard with questions of spirituality-- and deeply frustrated by the lack of clear answers. Until she realized that the questions themselves paved a way for faith. "Declaring my unbelief," writes DeRusha, "was the first step; declaring my unbelief allowed me to begin to seek authentically." Spiritual Misfit chronicles one woman's journey toward an understanding that belief and doubt can coexist. This poignant and startlingly candid memoir reveals how being honest about our questions, our fears, and our discomfort with black-and-white definitions of faith can move us toward an authentic and a deepening relationship with God.
Performing Anti-Slavery
by Gay Gibson CimaIn Performing Anti-Slavery, Gay Gibson Cima reimagines the connection between the self and the other within activist performance, providing fascinating new insights into women's nineteenth-century reform efforts, revising the history of abolition, and illuminating an affective repertoire that haunts both present-day theatrical stages and anti-trafficking organizations. Cima argues that black and white American women in the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement transformed mainstream performance practices into successful activism. In family circles, literary associations, religious gatherings, and transatlantic anti-slavery societies, women debated activist performance strategies across racial and religious differences: they staged abolitionist dialogues, recited anti-slavery poems, gave speeches, shared narratives, and published essays. Drawing on liberal religious traditions as well as the Eastern notion of transmigration, Elizabeth Chandler, Sarah Forten, Maria W. Stewart, Sarah Douglass, Lucretia Mott, Ellen Craft and others forged activist pathways that reverberate to this day.
The Star Of Lancaster (Plantagenet Saga #11)
by Jean PlaidyTHE STAR OF LANCASTER (The eleventh volume in the Plantagenet Saga) Richard the Second was losing his hold on the crown and ambitious eyes were turning towards it. Henry of Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt, had married the heiress Mary de Bohun and by her had six children, the eldest of whom was Harry of Monmouth. Bolingbroke was exiled by the King but returned to England when Richard confiscated John of Gaunt's estates. Bolingbroke came to claim them--and at the same time the crown. Richard was deposed and died mysteriously murdered it was said on the order of Bolingbroke, now King Henry the Fourth. But Henry found the crown harder to hold than to win. He was beset by enemies--the Welsh, the Scots and the mighty Hotspur; the country was rumbling with revolt against the King whom many called the Impostor. In addition to these worries Henry suffered anxiety about the loathsome disease which was threatening to destroy him, and he also worried over the rebellious behaviour of his son. Dominating the Court was Harry of Monmouth, his fingers itching to take the crown, his reckless conduct causing scandal since he frequented disreputable company in the lowclass taverns of East Cheap with his crony Sir John Oldcastle. There came a time when the disease which had caused the King to hide himself away claimed him and Harry became King Henry the Fifth. The change was miraculous both for him and Oldcastle. The licentious youth became the great King, and Oldcastle, the rake, turned into the religious reformer. Oldcastle was a martyr to his cause and Harry became the conquering hero of Agincourt. The Star of Lancaster was in the ascendant. Harry had brought France to her knees and married her Princess. It seemed that the long war was at an end. But a greater enemy than the French awaited Harry and the rising star of Lancaster was to depend on a nine months old child.
Casi Una Mujer
by Esmeralda SantiagoEn su nueva memoria, la aclamada autora de Cuando era puertorriqueña continúa su cautivante crónica describiendo su salida de los barrios de Brooklyn a los teatros de Manhattan. "Negi," como cariñosamente la llama su familiar, deja Macún, un campo de Puerto Rico, en 1961 para vivir en un apartamento de tres habitaciones en un proyecto de viviendas, con siete hermanas y hermanos pequeños, una abuela preguntona, y una mama estricta que no le dejaba salir con muchachos. A los trece años, Negi añora su propia cama, privacidad, y una vida con su padre, quien permanence en Puerto Rico con su nueva esposa. Mientras traduce para Mami en la oficina del Welfare por la mañana, hace el papel de Cleopatra en el prestigioso Performing Arts High School de Nueva York por las trades, y baila salsa toda la noche, Negi ansía lograr un equilibrio entre ser norteamericana y ser puertorriqueña. Cuando desafía a su madre al salir en una serie de graciosísimas citas, Negi descubre que la independecia trae consigo sus propios retos. Una conmovedora historia universal sobre la llegada de la mayoría de edad, a la vez que una valiente y sincera historia de inmigrantes, Casi una mujer es el triunfal camino de Santiago a hacerse mujer.
Cuando Era Puertorriquena
by Esmeralda SantiagoMagia, tension sexual, comedia e intenso drama se mueven dentro de osta encantadora pero a la vez dura autobiografia; es la historia de una nina que deja a su pueblo en Puerto Rico por la atraccian de Nueva York, y una oportunidad para el Axito. "Clara, calladamente poderosa y muy larica: una historia de verdadera valentia." - Kirkus Reviews
Josephine Baker and the Rainbow Tribe
by Matthew Pratt GuterlCreating a sensation with her risqué nightclub act and strolls down the Champs Elysées, pet cheetah in tow, Josephine Baker lives on in popular memory as the banana-skirted siren of Jazz Age Paris. In Josephine Baker and the Rainbow Tribe, Matthew Pratt Guterl brings out a little known side of the celebrated personality, showing how her ambitions of later years were even more daring and subversive than the youthful exploits that made her the first African American superstar. Her performing days numbered, Baker settled down in a sixteenth-century chateau she named Les Milandes, in the south of France. Then, in 1953, she did something completely unexpected and, in the context of racially sensitive times, outrageous. Adopting twelve children from around the globe, she transformed her estate into a theme park, complete with rides, hotels, a collective farm, and singing and dancing. The main attraction was her Rainbow Tribe, the family of the future, which showcased children of all skin colors, nations, and religions living together in harmony. Les Milandes attracted an adoring public eager to spend money on a utopian vision, and to worship at the feet of Josephine, mother of the world. Alerting readers to some of the contradictions at the heart of the Rainbow Tribe project--its undertow of child exploitation and megalomania in particular--Guterl concludes that Baker was a serious and determined activist who believed she could make a positive difference by creating a family out of the troublesome material of race.
Wild Rose: Rose O'Neale Greenhow, Civil War Spy
by Ann BlackmanFor sheer bravado and style, no woman in the North or South rivaled the Civil War heroine Rose O'Neale Greenhow. Fearless spy for the Confederacy, glittering Washington hostess, legendary beauty and lover, Rose Greenhow risked everything for the cause she valued more than life itself. In this superb portrait, biographer Ann Blackman tells the surprising true story of a unique woman in history. "I am a Southern woman, born with revolutionary blood in my veins," Rose once declared-and that fiery spirit would plunge her into the center of power and the thick of adventure. Born into a slave-holding family, Rose moved to Washington, D. C. , as a young woman and soon established herself as one of the capital's most charming and influential socialites, an intimate of John C. Calhoun, James Buchanan, and Dolley Madison. She married well, bore eight children and buried five, and, at the height of the Gold Rush, accompanied her husband Robert Greenhow to San Francisco. Widowed after Robert died in a tragic accident, Rose became notorious in Washington for her daring-and numerous-love affairs. But with the outbreak of the Civil War, everything changed. Overnight, Rose Greenhow, fashionable hostess, become Rose Greenhow, intrepid spy. As Blackman reveals, deadly accurate intelligence that Rose supplied to General Pierre G. T. Beauregard written in a fascinating code (the code duplicated in the background on the jacket of this book). Her message to Beauregard turned the tide in the first Battle of Bull Run, and was a brilliant piece of spycraft that eventually led to her arrest by Allan Pinkerton and imprisonment with her young daughter. Indomitable, Rose regained her freedom and, as the war reached a crisis, journeyed to Europe to plead the Confederate cause at the royal courts of England and France. Drawing on newly discovered diaries and a rich trove of contemporary accounts, Blackman has fashioned a thrilling, intimate narrative that reads like a novel. Wild Rose is an unforgettable rendering of an astonishing woman, a book that will stand with the finest Civil War biographies.
Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath
by Stephanie HemphillOn a bleak February day in 1963 a young American poet died by her own hand, and passed into a myth that has since imprinted itself on the hearts and minds of millions. She was and is Sylvia Plath and Your Own, Sylvia is a portrait of her life, told in poems. With photos and an extensive list of facts and sources to round out the reading experience, Your Own, Sylvia is a great curriculum companion to Plath's The Bell Jar and Ariel, a welcoming introduction for newcomers, and an unflinching valentine for the devoted.
How Can I Keep from Singing?: The Ballad of Pete Seeger
by David King DunawayHow Can I Keep from Singing? is the compelling story of how the son of a respectable Puritan family became a consummate performer and American rebel. Updated with new research and interviews, unpublished photographs, and thoughtful comments from Pete Seeger himself, this is an inside history of the man Carl Sandburg called "America's Tuning Fork." In the only biography on Seeger, David Dunaway parts the curtains on his life. Who is this rail-thin, eighty-eight-year-old with the five-string banjo, whose performances have touched millions of people for more than seven decades? Bob Dylan called him a saint. Joan Baez said, "We all owe our careers to him." But Seeger's considerable musical achievements were overshadowed by political controversy when he became perhaps the most blacklisted performer in American history. He was investigated for sedition, harassed by the FBI and the CIA, picketed, and literally stoned by conservative groups. Still, he sang. Today, Seeger remains an icon of conscience and culture, and his classic antiwar songs, sung by Bruce Springsteen and millions of others, live again in the movement against foreign wars. His life holds lessons for surviving repressive times and for turning to music to change the world. "This biography is a beauty. It captures not only the life of the bard but the world of which he sings." --Studs Terkel "A fine and meticulous biography ... Dunaway has taken [Seeger's] materials and woven them into a detailed, interesting, and well-written narrative of a most fascinating life." -American Music. "An extraordinary tale of an extraordinary man [that] will intrigue not only his legions of followers but everyone interested in one man's battles and victories." -Chicago Sun-Times.
Toussaint Louverture: A Biography
by Madison Smartt BellIn 1791, Saint Domingue was both the richest and cruelest colony in the Western Hemisphere; more than a third of African slaves died within a few years of their arrival there. Thirteen years later, Haitian rebels declared independence from France after the first--and only--successful slave revolution in history. Much of the success of this uprising can be credited to one man, Toussaint Louverture--a figure about whom surprisingly little is known. In this fascinating biography, the first about Toussaint to appear in English in more than fifty years, Madison Smartt Bell combines a novelist's passion for his subject with a deep knowledge of the historical milieu that produced the man. Toussaint has been known either as a martyr of the revolution or as the instigator of one of history’s most savagely violent events. Bell shatters this binary perception, producing a clear-eyed picture of a complicated figure. Toussaint, born a slave, became a slaveholder himself, with associates among the white planter class. Bell demonstrates how his privileged position served as both an asset and a liability, enabling him to gain the love of blacks and mulattoes as "Papa Toussaint" but also sowing mistrust in their minds. Another of Bell's brilliant achievements is demonstrating how Toussaint’s often surprising actions, such as his support for the king of France even as the French Revolution promised an end to slavery and his betrayal of a planned slave revolt in Jamaica, can be explained by his desire to achieve liberation for the blacks of Saint Domingue. This masterly biography is a revelation of one of the most fascinating and important figures in New World history.
Please Don't Take My Baby
by Cathy Glass17-year-old Jade is pregnant and homeless when she is brought to live with foster carer Cathy. She stays out late, drinks heavily and smokes, but deep down she is desperate to hold on to her baby. As soon as Jade arrives Cathy is worried; she has never looked after a pregnant teenager before, but all the specialist mother and baby carers are full, and--seventeen years old, seven months pregnant and homeless--Jade is in a desperate situation. Her behavior immediately gives Cathy cause for concern, but she clearly doesn't want to listen and it isn't long after the baby is born before Jade is in trouble with the police. Social services plan to take baby Courtney away from Jade and place her up for adoption. Cathy knows that Jade loves her daughter with all her heart, but will she be able to get through to Jade in time to make her realize what she might lose?
The Woodchipper Murder
by Arthur HerzogEven though the Newtown, Connecticut, police listed Helle Crafts's disappearance as a routine missing-person case, Keith Mayo, a private investigator, knew the Danish-born mother of three hadn't skipped town nine days before Thanksgiving. He had been concerned for Helle's safety a month earlier when he had provided his client, an attractive thirty-nine-year-old Pan Am flight attendant, conclusive evidence of her husband's extramarital activities. An Eastern Airlines pilot and part-time policeman, Richard stood by his story that Helle had flown abroad on November 19 to visit her suddenly stricken mother. Richard was caught up in a succession of lies. A friend telephoned Denmark to learn that Helle's mother was healthy and unaware of Helle's whereabouts. More disturbing was the news, reported by the Craftses' baby-sitter, that a dark stain "the size of a grapefruit" had been noticed on the master bedroom rug soon after Helle's disappearance; now rug was gone. Mayo seized upon a single clue, and when it led to a remote landfill from which he unearthed a stained rug, he had the evidence necessary to bring the state police into the case. In the style of a brilliant detective novel, Arthur Herzog skillfully re-creates the hour-by-hour circumstantial details that inform this grisly true-crime narrative.
Climbing Back
by Mark Wellman John FinnThere is almost no limit to what we can accomplish--except perhaps in our own minds. Mark Wellman's relentless struggle to survive a disabling accident to become a park ranger and an accomplished wheelchair athlete, and ultimately to climb the sheer granite faces of Yosemite's El Capitan and Half Dome challenges all of us to continue to strive toward loftier goals. Foreword by Senator Robert Dole.
Gender and Elections
by Richard L. Fox Susan J. CarrollThe third edition of Gender and Elections offers a systematic, lively, and multifaceted account of the role of gender in the electoral process through the 2012 elections. This timely yet enduring volume strikes a balance between highlighting the most important developments for women as voters and candidates in the 2012 elections and providing a more long-term, in-depth analysis of the ways that gender has helped shape the contours and outcomes of electoral politics in the United States. Individual chapters demonstrate the importance of gender in understanding and interpreting presidential elections, presidential and vice-presidential candidacies, voter participation and turnout, voting choices, congressional elections, the political involvement of Latinas, the participation of African American women, the support of political parties and women's organizations, candidate communications with voters, and state elections. Without question, Gender and Elections is the most comprehensive, reliable, and trustworthy resource on the role of gender in US electoral politics.