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Alvin Ailey
by Andrea Davis Pinkney Brian PinkneyDescribes the life, dancing, and choreography of Alvin Ailey, who created his own modern dance company to explore the black experience. Alvin Ailey is a biography of a brilliant dancer/choreographer as well as the story of the creation of Revelations, his modern dance masterpiece which premiered in New York City in 1960
Alvear
by Felix LunaEn esta biografía del presidente Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear,el autor trasluce una cálida simpatía hacia el personaje que no inhibela crítica severa. En ella aparecen no solo las decisiones políticas másimportantes, sino escenas y episodios reveladores de la sociedad deentonces y de sus contradicciones. La infancia cómoda y respetable deAlvear, sus viajes a Europa, su matrimonio con Regina Pacini, susactuaciones políticas tempranas, su amistad con Yrigoyen, la vocaciónque lo obligó a asumir una labor que entrañaba peligros, molestias yconstantes renunciamientos, resultan testimonio de valor incalculabletanto en lo histórico como en lo social. La Argentina es un país sin aristocracia: «Basta trepar un poco el árbolgenealógico para topar con el abuelo contrabandista o bolichero», dicecon gracia Félix Luna en este libro, publicado por primera vez en 1958.En el caso del presidente Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear su apellido,ciertamente ilustre, no le impidió afiliarse en su juventud al partidoradical y sostener este compromiso, en el triunfo y en la derrota, hastaen fin de su vida.
Álvaro: Su vida y su siglo
by Juan ConstainPor el centenario del nacimiento de Álvaro Gómez Hurtado, una de las figuras políticas más importantes del país, Juan Esteban Constaín ha escrito una extraordinaria biografía suya que es mucho más que eso: es, sobre todo, una rigurosa, analítica y apasionante historia de la Colombia del siglo XX Con el objetivo de hacer el examen más justo y equilibrado posible de una de las figuras más emblemáticas del siglo XX en Colombia, el autor es consciente de que no se lo puede comprender sin asomarse al fondo de su siglo. Álvaro Gómez Hurtado fue determinado por el ambiente político en el que nació y creció, por la virulencia de los odios que enemistaron a sus correligionarios y a los políticos liberales y por la imponente figura de su padre, el máximo líder conservador de la primera mitad del siglo XX y uno de los hombres más satanizados y peor comprendidos de la historia patria. De modo que esta biografía es, primero, la radiografía de todo un siglo, una mirada atenta de los hechos y personajes más sobresalientes del siglo XX en Colombia, un examen agudo del declive de la clase política del país, y en contraste con todo esto es posible comprender, redescubrir, reivindicar, la figura del político excepcional que fue asesinado en noviembre de 1995. "Hay que explicar su figura, narrarla con sus luces y sus sombras, como las tiene todo el mundo. Porque además en ella, a través de ella, de manera privilegiada, se revela también una historia del siglo xx colombiano y mundial: un destino que convive con los hechos capitales que marcaron la historia contemporánea aquí y en todas partes. Pero un destino a contracorriente, eso es lo interesante, eso es lo mejor, un alma que se forjó en el combate y en la lucha por sus ideas y creencias, la mayoría de las cuales cuestionaban hasta lo más profundo muchos de los dogmas imperantes, muchas de las verdades no comprobadas que envolvían, como un halo, los proyectos triunfantes de la modernidad". El autor
Alva Vanderbilt Belmont: Unlikely Champion of Women's Rights
by Sylvia D. HoffertA New York socialite and feminist, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont was known to be domineering, temperamental, and opinionated. Her resolve to get her own way regardless of the consequences stood her in good stead when she joined the American woman suffrage movement in 1909. Thereafter, she used her wealth, her administrative expertise, and her social celebrity to help convince Congress to pass the 19th Amendment and then to persuade the exhausted leaders of the National Woman's Party to initiate a world wide equal rights campaign. Sylvia D. Hoffert argues that Belmont was a feminist visionary and that her financial support was crucial to the success of the suffrage and equal rights movements. She also shows how Belmont's activism, and the money she used to support it, enriches our understanding of the personal dynamics of the American woman's rights movement. Her analysis of Belmont's memoirs illustrates how Belmont went about the complex and collaborative process of creating her public self.
Alto y claro
by Jaime PeñafielRepaso de la vida personal y profesional de Jaime Peñafiel. Jaime Peñafiel, uno de los periodistas más reconocidos y veteranos de la profesión, siempre ha dicho que «valía más por lo que callaba que por lo que decía». Después de haber entrevistado a cientos de personalidades, de haber asistido a las fiestas, cócteles y recepciones más suntuosas en todo el mundo y ser testigo de excepción de las bodas más regias el avezado periodista rompe ahora su regla de oro para desvelar en Alto y claro algunos de los secretos que ha callado hasta hoy. Este libro forma parte de nuestra historia más reciente porque, a través de la pluma certera e incisiva de Jaime, conoceremos la trastienda de dictadores, reyes, reinas, princesas, duques, primeras damas, personajes del papel couché..., una trastienda donde, lejos de la mentira de los focos y las cámaras, descubrimos a hombres y mujeres de carne y hueso, cargados de deseos, esperanzas, pero también de frustraciones, miedos y, a veces, de mucha mucha soledad.
Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace
by David LipskySOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, STARRING JASON SEGAL AND JESSE EISENBERG, DIRECTED BY JAMES PONSOLDTAn indelible portrait of David Foster Wallace, by turns funny and inspiring, based on a five-day trip with award-winning writer David Lipsky during Wallace's Infinite Jest tour In David Lipsky's view, David Foster Wallace was the best young writer in America. Wallace's pieces for Harper's magazine in the '90s were, according to Lipsky, "like hearing for the first time the brain voice of everybody I knew: Here was how we all talked, experienced, thought. It was like smelling the damp in the air, seeing the first flash from a storm a mile away. You knew something gigantic was coming."Then Rolling Stone sent Lipsky to join Wallace on the last leg of his book tour for Infinite Jest, the novel that made him internationally famous. They lose to each other at chess. They get iced-in at an airport. They dash to Chicago to catch a make-up flight. They endure a terrible reader's escort in Minneapolis. Wallace does a reading, a signing, an NPR appearance. Wallace gives in and imbibes titanic amounts of hotel television (what he calls an "orgy of spectation"). They fly back to Illinois, drive home, walk Wallace's dogs. Amid these everyday events, Wallace tells Lipsky remarkable things--everything he can about his life, how he feels, what he thinks, what terrifies and fascinates and confounds him--in the writing voice Lipsky had come to love. Lipsky took notes, stopped envying him, and came to feel about him--that grateful, awake feeling--the same way he felt about Infinite Jest. Then Lipsky heads to the airport, and Wallace goes to a dance at a Baptist church.A biography in five days, Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself is David Foster Wallace as few experienced this great American writer. Told in his own words, here is Wallace's own story, and his astonishing, humane, alert way of looking at the world; here are stories of being a young writer--of being young generally--trying to knit together your ideas of who you should be and who other people expect you to be, and of being young in March of 1996. And of what it was like to be with and--as he tells it--what it was like to become David Foster Wallace."If you can think of times in your life that you've treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it's probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we're here for is to learn how to do it. I know that sounds a little pious."--David Foster Wallace From the Trade Paperback edition.Lambert Fellowship, a Media Award from GLAAD, and a National Magazine Award. He's the author of the novel The Art Fair, a collection of stories, Three Thousand Dollars, and the bestselling nonfiction book Absolutely American, which was a Time magazine Best Book of the Year. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Althea Gibson, the Tiger of Tennis (Fountas & Pinnell Classroom, Guided Reading)
by Alice Cary Jani OrbanNIMAC-sourced textbook. Changing the Face of Tennis. Althea Gibson spent her childhood getting into trouble on the streets of Harlem, New York. She grew up to change the world of championship tennis forever.
Althea Gibson: Young Tennis Player (Childhood of Famous Americans Series)
by Beatrice GormleyAlthea Gibson (1927-2003) was the first black tennis player ever to compete in the U.S. Open and at Wimbledon in England. This fictionalized biography focuses on Gibson's spirited childhood and highlights the traits that later made her a champion.
Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson
by Sally H. Jacobs“A captivating book that brilliantly reveals an American sports legend long overlooked. Sally Jacobs tells the riveting story of Althea Gibson, my personal shero, who overcame daunting odds – on the tennis court and off - to stand at the world pinnacle of her sport and became an inspiration to many.” — Billie Jean KingIn 1950, three years after Jackie Robinson first walked onto the diamond at Ebbets Field, the all-white, upper-crust US Lawn Tennis Association opened its door just a crack to receive a powerhouse player who would integrate "the game of royalty." The player was a street-savvy young Black woman from Harlem named Althea Gibson who was about as out-of-place in that rarefied and intolerant world as any aspiring tennis champion could be. Her tattered jeans and short-cropped hair drew stares from everyone who watched her play, but her astonishing performance on the court soon eclipsed the negative feelings being cast her way as she eventually became one of the greatest American tennis champions.Gibson had a stunning career. Raised in New York and trained by a pair of tennis-playing doctors in the South, Gibson’s immense talent on the court opened the door for her to compete around the world. She won top prizes at Wimbledon and Forest Hills time and time again. The young woman underestimated by so many wound up shaking hands with Queen Elizabeth II, being driven up Broadway in a snowstorm of ticker tape, and ultimately became the first Black woman to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated and the second to appear on the cover of Time. In a crowning achievement, Althea Gibson became the No. One ranked female tennis player in the world for both 1957 and 1958. Seven years later she broke the color barrier again where she became the first Black woman to join the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA). In Althea, prize-winning former Boston Globe reporter Sally H. Jacobs tells the heart-rending story of this pioneer, a remarkable woman who was a trailblazer, a champion, and one of the most remarkable Americans of the twentieth century.
Alternatives to Valium: How Punk Rock Saved a Shy Boy’s Life
by Alastair McKay“A few years ago, I asked Tom Petty how his songs had been influenced by his life. As a rule, songwriters aren’t keen on unpicking their work, and Petty was no exception. He didn’t want to get into specifics. ‘Life is so difficult,’ he said. ‘And easy. It’s just a chain of spontaneous events.’” Alastair McKay’s own life was inspired and informed by music, so his book takes the form of an album, with two distinct sides. The first side is about childhood, and the struggle to find a voice. The second side is about interviews, and learning how to listen. An exceptionally shy boy, Alastair gradually found his voice through the punk explosion: the ethos that ‘anyone could do it’ prompted him to start writing, largely because it was easier than talking. From these hesitant beginnings, and his own failed attempts at musicianship, he would go on to a successful career in journalism: sharing a limousine with Kate Moss, meeting Iggy Pop at the Chateau Marmont, being led astray by Tilda Swinton and many, many other encounters.
Alternadad: The True Story of One Family's Struggle to Raise a Cool Kid in America
by Neal PollackA few years ago, Neal Pollack was probably the least likely father you've ever met: a pop-culture-obsessed writer and self-styled party guy known mostly for outrageous literary antics. In typical fashion, he responded to the birth of his son by forming a mediocre rock band and taking it on tour. Now, in Alternadad, he tells the hilarious and poignant story of how he learned to be a father to his son, Elijah, after the failure of his short-lived rock 'n' roll dreams. Pollack and his wife, Regina, were determined to raise their son without growing up too much themselves. They welcomed the responsibility but were worried that they'd become uptight and out of touch. Through the ups and downs of the first years of their son's life their determination is put to the test, and they find themselves changing in ways they never expected, particularly after Elijah develops a biting problem in preschool. Alternadad is a refreshingly honest book about the wonders, terrors, and idiocies of parenting today. From enrolling his son in an absurd corporate gymnastics class to a disastrous visit to a rock festival to uncomfortable encounters with other parents whom he'd ordinarily avoid, Pollack candidly explores the everyday struggles and the long-term compromises that come with parenthood. Mixing ironic skepticism with an appreciation for the absurdities of everyday life, Alternadad is a portrait of a new version of the American family: responsible if unorthodox parents raising kids who know the difference between the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. Wildly funny, surprising, and often moving, it just might be the parenting bible for a new generation of mothers and fathers.
Alter Egos: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Twilight Struggle Over American Power
by Mark LandlerThe deeply reported story of two supremely ambitious figures, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton--archrivals who became partners for a time, trailblazers who share a common sense of their historic destiny but hold very different beliefs about how to project American power In Alter Egos, veteran New York Times White House correspondent Mark Landler takes us inside the fraught and fascinating relationship between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton--a relationship that has framed the nation's great debates over war and peace for the past eight years.In the annals of American statecraft, theirs was a most unlikely alliance. Clinton, daughter of an anticommunist father, was raised in the Republican suburbs of Chicago in the aftermath of World War II, nourishing an unshakable belief in the United States as a force for good in distant lands. Obama, an itinerant child of the 1970s, was raised by a single mother in Indonesia and Hawaii, suspended between worlds and a witness to the less savory side of Uncle Sam's influence abroad. Clinton and Obama would later come to embody competing visions of America's role in the world: his, restrained, inward-looking, painfully aware of limits; hers, hard-edged, pragmatic, unabashedly old-fashioned. Spanning the arc of Obama's two terms, Alter Egos goes beyond the speeches and press conferences to the Oval Office huddles and South Lawn strolls, where Obama and Clinton pressed their views. It follows their evolution from bitter rivals to wary partners, and then to something resembling rivals again, as Clinton defined herself anew and distanced herself from her old boss. In the process, it counters the narrative that, during her years as secretary of state, there was no daylight between them, that the wounds of the 2008 campaign had been entirely healed. The president and his chief diplomat parted company over some of the biggest issues of the day: how quickly to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; whether to arm the rebels in Syria; how to respond to the upheaval in Egypt; and whether to trust the Russians. In Landler's gripping account, we venture inside the Situation Room during the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, watch Obama and Clinton work in tandem to salvage a conference on climate change in Copenhagen, and uncover the secret history of their nuclear diplomacy with Iran--a story with a host of fresh disclosures. With the grand sweep of history and the pointillist detail of an account based on insider access--the book draws on exclusive interviews with more than one hundred senior administration officials, foreign diplomats, and friends of Obama and Clinton--Mark Landler offers the definitive account of a complex, profoundly important relationship. As Barack Obama prepares to relinquish the presidency, and Hillary Clinton makes perhaps her last bid for it, how both regard American power is a central question of our time. Advance praise for Alter Egos "A superb journalist has brought us a vivid, page-turning, and revelatory account of the relationship between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, as well as of their statecraft. Alter Egos will make a signal contribution to the national debate over who should be the next American president."--Michael Beschloss, bestselling author of Presidential Courage "Mark Landler, one of the best reporters working in Washington today, delivers an inside account of Hillary Clinton's relationship with Barack Obama that brims with insight and high-level intrigue. It's both fun to read and eye-opening."--Jane Mayer, bestselling author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical RightFrom the Hardcover edition.
Altars in the Street: A Courageous Memoir of Community and Spiritual Awakening
by Melody Ermachild ChavisA wonderfully written memoir, overflowing with miraculous stories, of a Buddhist private eye who vows to heal her community's suffering from violence and racism. Altars in the Street is for people who live in cities and those who have fled them. It will speak to anyone who cares about the future of our children, our neighborhoods, and our nation, as well as anyone who wants to look truthfully at the relationship between poverty and prisons and between community and education. Drawing on deep reserves of good humor, common sense, and practical experience of nonviolent action, Melody Ermachild Chavis has written a moving testament to the power of spirit in today's often cynical world.
The Altar of My Soul: The Living Traditions of Santería
by Marta Moreno VegaLong cloaked in protective secrecy, demonized by Western society, and distorted by Hollywood, Santería is at last emerging from the shadows with an estimated 75 million followers worldwide. In The Altar of My Soul, Marta Moreno Vega recounts the compelling true story of her journey from ignorance and skepticism to initiation as a Yoruba priestess in the Santería religion. This unforgettable spiritual memoir reveals the long-hidden roots and traditions of a centuries-old faith that originated on the shores of West Africa. As an Afro-Puerto Rican child in the New York barrio, Marta paid little heed to the storefront botanicas full of spiritual paraphernalia or to the Catholic saints with foreign names: Yemayá, Ellegua, Shangó. As an adult, in search of a religion that would reflect her racial and cultural heritage, Marta was led to the Way of the Saints. She came to know Santería intimately through its prayers and rituals, drumming and dancing, trances and divination that spark sacred healing energy for family, spiritual growth, and service to others. Written by one who is a professor and a Santería priestess, The Altar of My Soul lays before us an electrifying and inspiring faith--one passed down from generation to generation that vitalizes the sacred energy necessary to build a family, a community, and a strong, loving society.
Altar of Blood: Empire IX (Empire series #9)
by Anthony Riches'A master of the genre' The TimesThe ninth novel in the thrilling Empire sequence leads Centurion Marcus Aquila and the Tungrians to the battlefield that was one of Rome's most disastrous defeats.The Tungrians have no sooner returned to Rome than they find themselves tasked with a very different mission to their desperate exploits in Parthia. Ordered to cross the river Rhenus into barbarian Germany and capture a tribal priestess who may be the most dangerous person on the empire's northern border, they are soon subject to the machinations of an old enemy who will stop at nothing to sabotage their plans before they have even set foot on the river's eastern bank. But after their Roman enemy is neutralised they face a challenge greater still. With two of the Bructeri tribe's greatest treasures in their hands they must regain Roman territory by crossing the unforgiving wilderness that was the graveyard of Roman imperial strategy two hundred years before. And capture by the Bructeri's vengeful chieftain and his warband can only end in one way - a horrific sacrificial death on the tribe's altar of blood.(P)2016 Hodder & Stoughton
Alta negra: Fuerza, perseverancia y liderazgo
by Evelina CabreraLa historia de Evelina Cabrera, la entrenadora y ex jugadora de fútbol que pasó de vivir en la calle y cuidar coches a ser la presidenta de la Asociación Femenina de Fútbol Argentino y disertar en la ONU. Si cuento mi vida es porque tiene algunos hechos extraordinarios que la convirtieron en una existencia más visible que otras. Pero también porque tiene gran parte en común con la de muchas niñas y jóvenes que pueden sentirse identificadas y acompañadas y eso, creo, le da más valor a esta historia. La historia de Evelina Cabrera es una entre millones. Tiene, como ella dice, 70 años comprimidos en sus 33. Pasó de una infancia vulnerable a ser una referente del fútbol femenino, crear la Asociación Femenina de Fútbol Argentino y dar una conferencia en la ONU sobre su trabajo social con las mujeres, a quienes brinda herramientas para empoderarse y cambiar su vida. Hoy es un ejemplo de superación, de búsqueda y de una activa militancia contra toda forma de discriminación. Evelina forma parte de una época en que las mujeres marcan un rumbo diferente, alejado de roles estereotipados, liberadas de mandatos restrictivos, y en este mundo nuevo alza su voz. Una historia que es, y puede ser también, la historia de todas nosotras.
Also
by E. B. GoodaleAn ode to the way memories allow us to be in many places at once, Also is a powerful exploration of being present as well as looking back. Perfect for Mother&’s Day, birthdays, or graduation, this modern classic is by Ezra Jack Keats Honor–winner E. B. Goodale.A moving story that follows one family through generations of time spent together and shows readers that memories allow us to connect to the past, the present, and also each other. This gorgeously illustrated book explores the power of memory, teaches children subtle lessons about the passing of time, and celebrates the cherished bonds we share with those we love. Perfect for reading together every day, or for giving on occasions like graduation, Mother's Day, and birthdays.
Alrededor del mundo con $50: Cómo salí sin nada y regresé un hombre rico
by Christopher SchachtChristopher Schacht comparte sus increíbles experiencias, revelando lo que ha aprendido a lo largo del camino sobre la vida, el amor y Dios, y describe encuentros y percepciones conmovedoras y extrañas que no se encuentran en ninguna guía turística.Christopher Schacht tenía solo diecinueve años y acababa de terminar su formación educativa cuando puso un sueño en marcha. Con solo $50 que llevaba ahorrados, viajó por todo el mundo, confiando solo en su amabilidad, flexibilidad, encanto y disposición para trabajar por su alojamiento y comida.Viajó durante cuatro años, visitando cuarenta y cinco países y recorriendo 100.000 kilómetros a pie, haciendo autostop y en veleros. Se ha ganado la vida como joyero, cerrajero, niñero y modelo. Vivió entre aborígenes y traficantes de drogas y ha recorrido las áreas políticamente más inestables del Medio Oriente.«Mi plan era no tener un plan, solo vivir sin horarios y sin presión de tiempo, donde podría quedarme en lugares que disfrutaba hasta que estuviera listo para continuar».
Already Toast: Caregiving and Burnout in America
by Kate WashingtonThe story of one woman's struggle to care for her seriously ill husband--and a revealing look at the role unpaid family caregivers play in a society that fails to provide them with structural support.Already Toast shows how all-consuming caregiving can be, how difficult it is to find support, and how the social and literary narratives that have long locked women into providing emotional labor also keep them in unpaid caregiving roles. When Kate Washington and her husband, Brad, learned that he had cancer, they were a young couple: professionals with ascending careers, parents to two small children. Brad's diagnosis stripped those identities away: he became a patient and she his caregiver.Brad's cancer quickly turned aggressive, necessitating a stem-cell transplant that triggered a massive infection, robbing him of his eyesight and nearly of his life. Kate acted as his full-time aide to keep him alive, coordinating his treatments, making doctors' appointments, calling insurance companies, filling dozens of prescriptions, cleaning commodes, administering IV drugs. She became so burned out that, when she took an online quiz on caregiver self-care, her result cheerily declared: "You're already toast!" Through it all she felt profoundly alone, but, as she later learned, she was in fact one of millions: an invisible army of family caregivers working every day in America, their unpaid labor keeping our troubled healthcare system afloat. Because our culture both romanticizes and erases the realities of care work, few caregivers have shared their stories publicly. As the baby-boom generation ages, the number of family caregivers will continue to grow. Readable, relatable, timely, and often raw, Already Toast--with its clear call for paying and supporting family caregivers--is a crucial intervention in that conversation, bringing together personal experience with deep research to give voice to those tasked with the overlooked, vital work of caring for the seriously ill.
The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career
by Lucy Maud MontgomeryLucy Maud Montgomery was born at Clifton (now New London), Prince Edward Island, Canada, on November 30, 1874. She achieved international fame in her lifetime, putting Prince Edward Island and Canada on the world literary map. Best known for her Anne of Green Gables books, she was also a prolific writer of short stories and poetry. She published some 500 short stories and poems and twenty novels before her death in 1942.
Alpine Giggle Week
by Dorothy Parker Marion MeadeA little known, rediscovered letter: an SOS from a woman trapped on a Swiss mountaintop in a TB colony with no idea how to escape--that woman being Dorothy Parker. "Kids, I have started one thousand (1,000) letters to you, but they all through no will of mine got to sounding so gloomy and I was afraid of boring the combined tripe out of you, so I never sent them." Thus starts a little-known and until now unpublished letter by Dorothy Parker from a Swiss mountaintop. Parker wrote the letter in September 1930 to Viking publishers Harold Guinzburg and George Oppenheimer--she went to France to write a novel for them and wound up in a TB colony in Switzerland. Parker refers to the letter as a "novelette," yet there is nothing fictional about it. More accurately, the biting composition reads like a gossipy diary entry, typed out on Parker's beautiful new German typewriter. She namedrops notable figures like Ernest Hemingway and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald while covering topics running from her various accidents and health problems to her opinions on dogs, literary critics and God. The writing is vintage Parker: uncensored, unedited, deliciously malicious, and certainly one of the most entertaining of her letters--or for that matter any letter--that you'll ever read. This edition features an introduction, notes, and annotations on notable figures by Parker biographer Marion Meade.
Alphaville: 1988, Crime, Punishment, and the Battle for New York City's Lower East Side
by Michael Codella Bruce BennettA raw, gritty memoir—part true-life cop thriller, part unputdownable history of a storied time and place—that will grip you by the throat until the explosive endAlphabet City in 1988 burned with heroin, radicalism, and anti-police sentiment. Working as a plainclothes narcotics cop in the most high-voltage neighborhood in Manhattan, Detective Sergeant Mike Codella earned the nickname "Rambo" from the local dealers, as well as a $50,000 bounty on his head. The son of a cop who grew up in a mob neighborhood in Brooklyn, Codella understood the unwritten laws of the shadowy businesses that ruled the streets. He knew that the further east you got from the relative safety of 5th Avenue, Washington Square Park and NYU, the deeper you entered the sea of human misery, greed, addiction, violence and all the things that come with an illegal retail drug trade run wild. With his partner, Gio, Codella made it his personal mission to put away Davie Blue Eyes—a stone cold murderer and the head of Alphabet City's heroin supply chain. Despite the hell they endured—all the beatings and gunshots, the footchases and close calls—Codella and Gio always saw Alphabet City the same way: worth saving. Alphaville, Codella's riveting, no-holds-barred memoir, resurrects the vicious streets that Davie Blue Eyes owned, and tells the story of how Codella bagged the so-called Forty Thieves that surrounded Davie, slowly working his way to the head of the snake one scale at a time. With the blistering narrative spirit of The French Connection, the insights of a seasoned insider, and a relentless voice that reads like the city's own, Alphaville is at once the story of a dedicated New York cop, and of New York City itself.
Alphabetical Diaries
by Sheila HetiAn enthralling work from one of our greatest literary innovators, shortlisted for the Giller and winner of the GG for Fiction.A little over a decade ago, Sheila Heti—the award-winning author of a string of modern classics including How Should a Person Be?, Motherhood, and Pure Colour—began looking back at the diaries she'd kept over the previous ten years, searching for signs of deeper change inside herself. She loaded all 500,000 words of her journals into Microsoft Excel, to order the sentences alphabetically and seek out patterns and repetitions. How many times had she written, &“I hate him,&” for example? With the sentences untethered from the narrative of her diaries, she started to see herself—and the Self—in a new way: as something quite solid, anchored by shockingly few characteristic preoccupations. Returning to the project over the years, something more universal and novelistic emerged. Alphabetical Diaries is the sublime and probing result—one that rises to the heights of artistry and insight for which Heti is rightfully acclaimed.
Alphabetical Diaries
by Sheila HetiA thrilling confessional from the award-winning, beloved author of Pure Colour.Sheila Heti kept a record of her thoughts over a ten-year period, then arranged the sentences from A to Z. Passionate and reflective, joyful and despairing, these are her alphabetical diaries.
An Alphabet for Joanna: A Portrait of My Mother in 26 Fragments
by Damian RogersA gripping memoir from acclaimed poet Damian Rogers about being raised by a loving but erratic single mother who is today diagnosed with a rare form of frontal-lobe dementia. In the vein of Plum Johnson's They Left Us Everything, Leanne Shapton's Swimming Studies, Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle and Susannah Cahalan's Brain on Fire."Evocative, beautifully written, heartbreaking . . . of special interest to all whose loved ones suffer from dementia." --Margaret Atwood (on Twitter)"An Alphabet for Joanna is a braid of tiny stories that weaves us into a nest of belonging despite circumstance and injury . . . A memoir of stunning thoughtfulness, Rogers presents us with a loving treatise on what it means to be human." - Leanne Betasamosake SimpsonThroughout her childhood in Detroit, Damian Rogers was never given a satisfactory account of the circumstances that led to her own birth. The "truth" behind the stories she was told by her mother--the free-spirited, beautiful and troubled Joanna--constantly shifted, and Damian was left only with fragments: her mom's trip to California in 1969 after finishing high school, a mysterious trauma and psychotic break, then a return to Detroit, pregnant. Now, as 40-something Damian struggles to cope with Joanna's early-onset dementia, she realizes she may never know the full story.A riveting portrait of a time and place (the leafy suburbs of Detroit, Michigan and working class neighborhoods of Long Beach, California in the 1970s and 80s), An Alphabet for Joanna is also an unconventional mother-daughter saga, and a creative exploration of how memory shifts and shapes our most intimate relationships. Acclaimed poet Damian Rogers crafts a unique work that is both a moving memoir and a powerful philosophical reflection on how we build lives out of fragments of stories. And by tracing her mother's story into the present day she poignantly shows that even when memory fails, we can remain connected through a web of art, empathy, imagination and love.