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In the Camp of Angels of Freedom: What Does It Mean to Be Educated?
by Arlene GoldbardAn autodidact explores issues of education itself through essays and personal portraits of the key minds who influenced herWhat does it mean to be educated? Through her evocative paintings and narrative, author Arlene Goldbard has portrayed eleven people whose work most influenced her—what she calls a camp of angels. She sees each as a brave messenger of love and freedom for a society that badly needs “uncolonized minds.” Goldbard describes how the learning from each changed the course of her life in essays that offer generative moments of a life in art and social change. She also reveals ways a dominant society tried to put a first-generation American from a socially marginal family in her place—and failed. Readers will learn about the author’s own self education, issues of formal higher education and its discontents, and the damage done by a society that prizes profits over people. Goldbard asks readers to consider the impact of credentialism on U.S. society and what we can do to set it right.
In the Catskills and My Boyhood (Excelsior Editions)
by John BurroughsHenry James called John Burroughs (1837–1921) "a more humorous, more available, and more sociable Thoreau." Walt Whitman in turn extolled Burroughs as "a child of the woods, fields, hills—native to them in a rare sense (in a sense almost a miracle)." Throughout his many books and essays, Burroughs was never more eloquent on nature themes than when writing about his native countryside: the woods, streams, and mountains of the Catskills in New York. In the Catskills collects the very best of Burroughs's writings about his birthplace in a book that is sure to be treasured by all lovers of the region as well as lovers of the literature of nature. This new edition includes an introduction by Burroughs biographer Edward Renehan and an additional work not included in previous editions, entitled My Boyhood.
In the Children's Aid: J.J. Kelso and Child Welfare in Ontario
by Leonard Rutman Andrew JonesThe present system of child welfare in Canada dates from 1893, the year in which the Ontario Legislature passed 'An Act for the Prevention of Cruelty to, and better Protection of, Children.' The Act provided for the establishment of Children's Aid Societies with extensive legal powers to intervene in cases of child neglect and cruelty, and gave officials sanction to the foster care system. These radical departures from earlier policy resulted from the actions of John Joseph Kelso, the man who was named as the first Superintendent of Neglected and Dependent Children – a position created by the same Act. At 29, Kelso was already one of Ontario's leading proponents of child welfare reform. He had earlier stimulated the formation of the Toronto Humane Society and subsequently guides its early growth. In 1888 he had formed the Children's Fresh Air Fund and the Santa Claus Fund, out of which, in 1891, he founded the Toronto Children's Aid Society. From 1893 to his retirement in 1934, Kelso directed and promoted the establishment and development of Children's Aid Societies in Ontario and played an important role in their spread to other provinces. In 1921 he was appointed administrator of Ontario's first Adoption Act and the Children of Unmarried Parents Act. His reform activities extended into the children's court movement, the closing of reformatories, organization of playgrounds, and advocacy of mothers' allowances. This biography provides an account of Kelso's life and career as a social reformer, and reveals him as the undisputed chief architect and builder of Ontario's welfare system. It will interest the academic and professionals as it traces the roots of social welfare services and the profession of social work, and the general reader interested in Canadian history and social reform.
In the City of Bikes
by Pete JordanWhen Pete Jordan arrives in Amsterdam to study how to make America's cities more bicycle-friendly, he immediately falls in love with the city that already lives life on two wheels. His new bride, Amy Joy, joins Pete, and despite their financial hardships and instability, she eventually finds her own new calling as a bicycle mechanic as Pete discovers the untold history of cycling in Amsterdam. From its beginnings as an elitis t pastime in the 1890s to the street-consuming craze of the 1920s, from the bicycle's role in a citywide resistance to the Nazi occupation to the White Bikes of the 1960s and the bike fishermen of today, Jordan chronicles the evolution of Amsterdam's cycling. Part personal memoir, part history of cycling, part fascinating street-level tour of Amsterdam, In the City of Bikes is the story of a man who loves bikes—in a city that loves bikes.
In the City: Random Acts of Awareness
by Colette BrooksAn award-winning kaleidoscope of a book that "shocks and stirs the urban heart," capturing city life on the edge of the twenty-first century. What kind of person is a city person? This is a question of increasing importance, Colette Brooks suggests, as the city begins to spread, inexorably, into the furthest reaches of the modern mind. One possibility: a city person is someone "who doesn't feel the need to finish a jigsaw puzzle, who relishes jagged edges and orphaned curves, stray bits of data, stories parsed from sentences half overheard on the streets." Someone who is willing, sometimes eager, to immerse herself in mystery. Winner of the PEN/Jerard Fund Award, In the City is an idiosyncratic, lyrical, edgy exploration of the urban experience. This daring, unpredictable work breathes new life into the nonfiction form. Chronicling the often haphazard lives of city dwellers and cities themselves, In the City is a window into the urban psyche. An unnamed narrator roams the streets of an unnamed city, practicing "random acts of awareness" as she gathers disjointed pieces of the puzzle. She is sometimes in a city that seems to be New York, and sometimes in cities halfway around the world. In her wanderings she collects bits of stories, some taken from the headlines, some from the streets, some from the distant past. She studies criminals, innocent bystanders, commuters; a renowned painter who fled to the country; a bomber who sends unsuspecting city dwellers lethal packages marked "personal"; a blind, deaf woman who loves to ride the subway; a young cabdriver who keeps an open dictionary at his side as he drives, struggling to learn a strange language; a perplexed explorer who finds himself, against all expectation, stranded at the very edge of the earth. All of these people, she discovers, are city people, whether they know it yet or not. Some will flourish, others will be lost, victims of chance and mischance: the woman who drinks by herself in a brownstone apartment; the ancient city dwellers who couldn't outrun fire or flood; the children whose faces end up on posters on a wall. Those who survive learn, sooner or later, that everyone keeps company with ghosts who walk alongside. In the City shows us that the city is a place where past and present are commingled, where questions rarely have answers, where danger, difficulty, and exhilaration are interwoven in ways we can hardly begin to explain. Welcome to the city, the place where all contrary indications hold true.
In the Company of Dolphins: A Memoir
by Irwin ShawBestselling author Irwin Shaw&’s lighthearted travelogue follows his family&’s vacation sailing from St. Tropez to Venice in the 1960s. As a boy, Irwin Shaw stared out across Brooklyn&’s Sheepshead Bay and dreamed of owning a boat and sailing the oceans wide. Decades later, he determined that chartering a yacht was better than having no boat at all. With his wife and son, Shaw then set out to mosey about the Mediterranean, guided by a Scottish captain, his wife and daughter, and a Greek cabin boy. From St. Tropez to Naples, and across the Adriatic to Dubrovnik and up to Venice, it was the trip of a lifetime, its only fault being that, eventually, it would have to end. Written in 1964, this travel memoir is a portrait of a bygone age, when the sun-soaked Mediterranean was still emerging from the shadow of World War II and &“vacation&” truly meant detaching oneself from the world. Featuring cameos by legendary authors such as Françoise Sagan and James Jones, this endearing memoir is the next best thing to a Mediterranean cruise.
In the Company of Grace: A Veterinarian's Memoir of Trauma and Healing
by Jody LulichThe son of a Black mother and white father overcomes family trauma to find the courage of compassion in veterinary practice Rising to accept a prestigious award, Jody Lulich wondered what to say. Explain how he&’d been attracted to veterinary medicine? Describe how caring for helpless, voiceless animals in his own shame and pain provided a lifeline, a chance to heal himself as well? Lulich tells his story in In the Company of Grace, a memoir about finding courage in compassion and strength in healing—and power in finally confronting the darkness of his youth.Lulich&’s white father and Black mother met at a civil rights rally, but love was no defense against their personal demons. His mother&’s suicide, in his presence when he was nine years old, and his sometimes brutal father&’s subsequent withdrawal set Lulich on a course from the South Side of Chicago to the Tuskegee School of Veterinary Medicine in Alabama to an endowed chair at the University of Minnesota, forever searching for the approval and affection that success could not deliver. Though shadowed by troubling secrets, his memoir also features scenes of surprising light and promise—of the neighbors who take him in, a brother&’s unlikely effort to save Christmas, his mother&’s memories of the family&’s charmed early days, bright moments (and many curious details) of veterinary practice. Most consequentially, at Tuskegee Lulich rents a room in the home of a seventy-five-year-old Black woman named Grace, whose wholehearted adoption of him—and her own stories of the Jim Crow era—finally gives him a sense of belonging and possibility.Completing his book amid the furor over George Floyd&’s murder, Lulich reflects on all the ways that race has shaped his life. In the Company of Grace is a moving testament to the power of compassion in the face of seemingly overwhelming circumstances.
In the Company of Heroes
by Michael J. Durant Steven HartovFrom School Library Journal Adult/High School-A decade ago, Durant and his crew were shot down while flying a U.S. Army Special Operations Black Hawk helicopter in the heart of Mogadishu. The only survivor after a firefight with hostile forces of warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid, the author recounts the conditions of his 11 days in captivity, with experiences that ranged from heroic to gruesome, harrowing, bizarre, and compassionate. Suffering severe injuries to his back, leg, and face, moved under guard through a sequence of rudimentary facilities in a volatile combat environment, and facing the deadly risk of discovery by rival clans, Durant became a political pawn receiving global media attention.
In the Company of Heroes: The Inspiring Stories of Medal of Honor Recipients from America's Longest Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
by James KitfieldAn award-winning military journalist tells the amazing stories of twenty-five soldiers who've won the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award. In the Company of Heroes will feature in-depth narrative profiles of the twenty-five post-9/11 Medal of Honor awardees who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. This book will focus on the stories of these extraordinary people, expressed in their own voices through one-on-one interviews, and in the case of posthumous awards, through interviews with their brothers in arms and their families. The public affairs offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the individual armed services, as well as the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, have expressed their support for this project.Stories include Marine Corps Corporal William "Kyle" Carpenter, who purposely lunged toward a Taliban hand grenade in order to shield his buddy from the blast; Navy SEAL team leader Britt Slabinski, who, after being ambushed and retreating in the Hindu Kush, returned against monumental odds in order to try to save one of his team who was inadvertently lost in the fight; and Ranger Staff Sergeant Leroy Petry, who lunged for a live grenade, threw it back at the enemy, and saved his two Ranger brothers.
In the Company of Writers: A Life in Publishing
by Charles ScribnerScribner's lively and informal memoir of a life spent among writers. He provides an intimate view of a family -- and a family business -- devoted to books and to the characters who produced them: Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Edmund Wilson, P. D. James, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, James Jones, and Ernest Hemingway. In that era, business was based on close, sometimes stormy, ties between publisher and author.
In the Country We Love: My Family Divided
by Diane GuerreroThe star of Orange is the New Black and Jane the Virgin presents her personal story of the real plight of undocumented immigrants in this country. Diane Guerrero was just fourteen years old on the day her parents were detained and deported while she was at school. Born in the U.S., Guerrero was able to remain in the country and continue her education, depending on the kindness of family friends who took her in and helped her build a life and a successful acting career for herself, without the support system of her family. In the Country We Love is a moving, heartbreaking story of one woman's extraordinary resilience in the face of the nightmarish struggles of undocumented residents in this country. There are over 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US, many of whom have citizen children, whose lives here are just as precarious, and whose stories haven't been told. Written with bestselling author Michelle Burford, this memoir is a tale of personal triumph that also casts a much-needed light on the fears that haunt the daily existence of families likes the author's and on a system that fails them over and over. <br> <b>Winner of the 2017 Alex Award (10 best adult books that appeal to teen audiences)</b>
In the Country of Brooklyn: Inspiration to the World
by Peter GolenbockOne of every seven people in the United States can trace their family back to Brooklyn, New York—all seventy-one square miles of it; home to millions of people from every corner of the globe over the last 150 years. Now Peter Golenbock, the author of the acclaimed book Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers, returns to Kings County to collect the firsthand stories of the life and times of the people of Brooklyn—and how they changed the world.The nostalgic myth that is Brooklyn is all about egg creams and stickball, and, of course, the Dodgers. The Dodgers left fifty years ago, but Brooklyn is still here—transformed by waves of suburban flight, new immigrants, urban homesteaders, and gentrification. Deep down, Brooklyn has always been about new ideas—freedom and tolerance paramount among them—that have changed the world, all the way back to Lady Deborah Moody, who escaped religious persecution in both Old and New England, and founded Coney Island and the town of Gravesend in the 1600s.So why was Jackie Robinson embraced by Brooklynites of all colors, and so despised everywhere else? Why was Brooklyn one of the first urban areas to decay into slums—and one of the first to be reborn? And what was it that made Brooklynites fight for their rights, for their country, for their ideas—sometimes to the detriment of their own well-being? In the Country of Brooklyn, filled with rare photos, is history at its very best—engaging, personal, fascinating—a social history and a history of social justice; an oral history of a land and its people spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; a microcosm of how Americans there faced and defeated discrimination, oppression, and unjust laws, and fought for what was right. And the voices and stories are as amazing as they are varied.Meet: Daily Worker sportswriter Lester Rodney • rock and roll DJ "Cousin Brucie" Morrow • labor leader Henry Foner • Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa • journalist and author Pete Hamill • Black Panther–turned-politician Charles Barron • Hall of Fame baseball player Monte Irvin • Spanish Civil War veteran Abe Smorodin • borough president Marty Markowitz • real estate developer Joseph Sitt • jujitsu world champion Robert Crosson • songwriter Neil Sedaka • NYPD officer John Mackie • ACLU president Ira Glasser • and many others!It's Brooklyn as we've never seen it before, a place of social activism, political energy, and creative thinking—a place whose vitality has spread around the world for more than 350 years. And a place where you can still get a decent egg cream.
In the Country of Empty Crosses
by Miguel Gandert Arturo MadridArturo's Madrid's homeland is in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains in northern New Mexico, where each town seems a world apart from the next, and where family histories that extend back four centuries bind the people to the land and to one another.This New Mexico is a land of struggle and dispute, a place in which Madrid's ancestors predate those who landed at Plymouth Rock.In the Country of Empty Crosses is Madrid's complex yet affirming memoir about lands before the advent of passable roads--places such as Tierra Amarilla, San Augustín [insert "u" and note accent on I], and Los Fuertes that were once among the most remote in the nation. Madrid grew up in a family that was doubly removed from the community: as Hispanic Protestants, they were a minority among the region's politically dominant Anglo Protestants and a minority within the overwhelmingly Catholic Hispanic populace.Madrid writes affectingly of the tensions, rifts, and disputes that punctuated the lives of his family as they negotiated prejudice and racism, casual and institutional, to advance and even thrive as farmers, ranchers, and teachers. His story is affectionate as well, embracing generations of ancestors who found their querencias-their beloved home places-in that beautiful if sometimes unforgiving landscape. The result is an account of New Mexico unlike any other, one in which humor and heartache comfortably coexist. Complemented by stunning images by acclaimed photographer Miguel Gandert -- ranging from intimate pictures of unkempt rural cemeteries to New Mexico's small villages and stunning vistas -- In the Country of Empty Crosses is a memoir of loss and survival, of hope and redemption, and a lyrical celebration of an often misunderstood native land and its people.
In the Country of Empty Crosses
by Miguel Gandert Arturo MadridArturo's Madrid's homeland is in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains in northern New Mexico, where each town seems a world apart from the next, and where family histories that extend back four centuries bind the people to the land and to one another.This New Mexico is a land of struggle and dispute, a place in which Madrid's ancestors predate those who landed at Plymouth Rock.In the Country of Empty Crosses is Madrid's complex yet affirming memoir about lands before the advent of passable roads--places such as Tierra Amarilla, San Augustín [insert "u" and note accent on I], and Los Fuertes that were once among the most remote in the nation. Madrid grew up in a family that was doubly removed from the community: as Hispanic Protestants, they were a minority among the region's politically dominant Anglo Protestants and a minority within the overwhelmingly Catholic Hispanic populace.Madrid writes affectingly of the tensions, rifts, and disputes that punctuated the lives of his family as they negotiated prejudice and racism, casual and institutional, to advance and even thrive as farmers, ranchers, and teachers. His story is affectionate as well, embracing generations of ancestors who found their querencias-their beloved home places-in that beautiful if sometimes unforgiving landscape. The result is an account of New Mexico unlike any other, one in which humor and heartache comfortably coexist. Complemented by stunning images by acclaimed photographer Miguel Gandert -- ranging from intimate pictures of unkempt rural cemeteries to New Mexico's small villages and stunning vistas -- In the Country of Empty Crosses is a memoir of loss and survival, of hope and redemption, and a lyrical celebration of an often misunderstood native land and its people.
In the Crossfire
by Ngo Van Helene Fleury Ken KnabbIn 1936, Ngo Van was captured, imprisoned, and tortured in the dreaded Maison Centrale prison in Saigon for his part in the struggle to free Vietnam from French colonial rule. Five years later, Vietnamese independence was won, and Van found himself imprisoned and abused once more-this time by the Stalinist freedom fighter Ho Chi Minh. Five years after that, Van was in Paris, working with the surrealists.In the Crossfire documents Ngo Van's incredible life in Vietnam during the two world wars, and his subsequent years spent in the midst of the Parisian intelligentsia. This is the first English translation!
In the Crossfire
by John P. SpencerAs media reports declare crisis after crisis in public education, Americans find themselves hotly debating educational inequalities that seem to violate their nation's ideals. Why does success in school track so closely with race and socioeconomic status? How to end these apparent achievement gaps? In the Crossfire brings historical perspective to these debates by tracing the life and work of Marcus Foster, an African American educator who struggled to reform urban schools in the 1960s and early 1970s.As a teacher, principal, and superintendent--first in his native Philadelphia and eventually in Oakland, California--Foster made success stories of urban schools and children whom others had dismissed as hopeless, only to be assassinated in 1973 by the previously unknown Symbionese Liberation Army in a bizarre protest against an allegedly racist school system. Foster's story encapsulates larger social changes in the decades after World War II: the great black migration from South to North, the civil rights movement, the decline of American cities, and the ever-increasing emphasis on education as a ticket to success. Well before the accountability agenda of the No Child Left Behind Act or the rise of charter schools, Americans came into sharp conflict over urban educational failure, with some blaming the schools and others pointing to conditions in homes and neighborhoods. By focusing on an educator who worked in the trenches and had a reputation for bridging divisions, In the Crossfire sheds new light on the continuing ideological debates over race, poverty, and achievement.Foster charted a course between the extremes of demanding too little and expecting too much of schools as agents of opportunity in America. He called for accountability not only from educators but also from families, taxpayers, and political and economic institutions. His effort to mobilize multiple constituencies was a key to his success--and a lesson for educators and policymakers who would take aim at achievement gaps without addressing the full range of school and nonschool factors that create them.
In the Crosshairs: Famous Assassinations and Attempts from Julius Caesar to John Lennon
by Stephen SpignesiAssassinations often change the course of history. Here is an intriguing look at dozens of notable assassinations and attempts throughout history, including complete details about the assassin, the victim, the circumstances of the attack, and the outcome. In the Crosshairs also features photos of many of the victims or would-be victims, and rare archival material, including excerpts from original police reports.High-profile celebrities, political figures, religious leaders, and many others have fallen prey to assassins, and many have survived. In the Crosshairs is arranged in alphabetical order, by last name, and includes such details as:On November 8, 1939, Adolf Hitler narrowly escaped an assassination attempt - 12 minutes after he left a room where he was making a speech, a bomb went off.Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat would probably have survived the assassin’s bullet on October 6, 1981, if he hadn’t taken off his bulletproof vest - but he didn’t like the way it made his suit bulge.Robert John Bardo, the murderer of young actress Rebecca Schaeffer, carried with him to the crime scene a copy of J. D, Sallinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, just like Mark David Chapman did when he murdered John Lennon nearly nine years earlier.From notable murders (Abraham Lincoln, Gianni Versace, and Indira Gandhi) to little-known attempts (George W. Bush, Wild Bill Hickock, and Andy Warhol) here is a surprising, informative, and intriguing book that deserves to be on every history buff’s bookshelf.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
In the Darkroom
by Susan FaludiFrom the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of Backlash, comes In the Darkroom, an astonishing confrontation with the enigma of her father and the larger riddle of identity consuming our age. "In the summer of 2004 I set out to investigate someone I scarcely knew, my father. The project began with a grievance, the grievance of a daughter whose parent had absconded from her life. I was in pursuit of a scofflaw, an artful dodger who had skipped out on so many things--obligation, affection, culpability, contrition. I was preparing an indictment, amassing discovery for a trial. But somewhere along the line, the prosecutor became a witness. " So begins Susan Faludi's extraordinary inquiry into the meaning of identity in the modern world and in her own haunted family saga. When the feminist writer learned that her 76-year-old father--long estranged and living in Hungary--had undergone sex reassignment surgery, that investigation would turn personal and urgent. How was this new parent who identified as "a complete woman now" connected to the silent, explosive, and ultimately violent father she had known, the photographer who'd built his career on the alteration of images? Faludi chases that mystery into the recesses of her suburban childhood and her father's many previous incarnations: American dad, Alpine mountaineer, swashbuckling adventurer in the Amazon outback, Jewish fugitive in Holocaust Budapest. When the author travels to Hungary to reunite with her father, she drops into a labyrinth of dark histories and dangerous politics in a country hell-bent on repressing its past and constructing a fanciful--and virulent--nationhood. The search for identity that has transfixed our century was proving as treacherous for nations as for individuals. Faludi's struggle to come to grips with her father's metamorphosis takes her across borders--historical, political, religious, sexual--to bring her face to face with the question of the age: Is identity something you "choose," or is it the very thing you can't escape?
In the Darkroom
by Susan FaludiA Pulitzer Prize winner’s memoir of her search for her enigmatic father is “an absolute stunner . . . probing, steel-nerved, moving in ways you’d never expect” (New York Times).“In the summer of 2004 I set out to investigate someone I scarcely knew, my father. The project began with a grievance, the grievance of a daughter whose parent had absconded from her life. I was in pursuit of a scofflaw, an artful dodger who had skipped out on so many things—obligation, affection, culpability, contrition. I was preparing an indictment, amassing discovery for a trial. But somewhere along the line, the prosecutor became a witness.”So begins Susan Faludi’s extraordinary inquiry. When the feminist writer learned that her 76-year-old father—long estranged and living in Hungary—had undergone sex reassignment surgery, her investigation turned personal and urgent. How was this new parent who identified as “a complete woman now” connected to the silent, explosive, and ultimately violent father she had known?Faludi chases that mystery into the recesses of her suburban childhood and her father’s many previous incarnations: American dad, Alpine mountaineer, swashbuckling adventurer in the Amazon outback, Jewish fugitive in Holocaust Budapest. Her struggle to come to grips with her father’s metamorphosis takes her across borders—historical, political, religious, sexual—to bring her face to face with the question of the age: Is identity something you “choose,” or is it the very thing you can’t escape?“Riveting . . . Ms. Faludi unfolds her father’s story like the plot of a detective novel.” —Wall Street Journal“Penetrating and lucid . . . rich [and] arresting.” —New York Times Book Review“A gripping exploration of sexual, national, and ethnic identity.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
In the Days of Queen Victoria
by Eva March TappanThis early work by Eva March Tappan was originally published in 1903 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'In the Days of Queen Victoria' is a biography of Queen Victoria and details aspects of her school days, her coronation, and her family life. Eva March Tappan was born on 26th December 1854, in Blackstone, Massachusetts, United States. Tappan began her literary career writing about famous characters from history in works such as 'In the Days of William the Conqueror' (1901), and 'In the Days of Queen Elizabeth' (1902). She then developed an interest in children's books, writing her own and publishing collections of classic tales.
In the Days of Queen Victoria
by Eva March TappanTo her own people Queen Victoria was England itself, the emblem of the realm and of the empire. To millions who were not her people the words the Queen do not bring even yet the thought of the well-beloved woman who now shares the English throne, but rather of her who for nearly sixty-four years wore the crown of Great Britain and gave freely to her country of the gift that was in her. Other women have been controled by devotion to duty, other women have been moved to action by readiness of sympathy, but few have united so harmoniously a strong detefttfauiticm to do the right with a never-failing gentleness, a childlike sympathy with unyielding strength purpose.
In the Days of Rain: A Daughter, a Father, a Cult
by Rebecca StottA father-daughter story that tells of the author’s experience growing up in a fundamentalist, separatist Christian cult, from the author of the national bestseller Ghostwalk Rebecca Stott both adored and feared her father, Roger Stott, a high-ranking minister in the Brighton, England, branch of the Exclusive Brethren, a separatist fundamentalist Christian sect. A man of contradictions, he preached that the Brethren should shun the outside world, which was ruled by Satan, yet he kept a radio in the trunk of his car and read Shakespeare and Yeats. Years later, when the Stotts broke with the Brethren after a scandal involving the cult’s leader, Roger became an actor and compulsive gambler who left the family penniless and ended up in jail. A curious child, Rebecca spent her insular childhood asking questions about the world and trying to glean the answers from forbidden library books. Only when she was an adult and her father was dying of cancer did she begin to understand all that had happened during those harrowing years. It was then that Roger Stott handed her the memoir he had begun writing about the period leading up to what he called the traumatic “Nazi decade,” the years in the 1960s in which he and other Brethren leaders enforced coercive codes of behavior that led to the breaking apart of families, the shunning of members, even suicides. Now he was trying to examine that time, and his complicity in it, and he asked Rebecca to write about it, to expose all that was kept hidden. In the Days of Rain is Rebecca Stott’s attempt to make sense of her childhood in the Exclusive Brethren, to understand her father’s role in the cult and in the breaking apart of her family, and to come to be at peace with her relationship with a larger-than-life figure whose faults were matched by a passion for life, a thirst for knowledge, and a love of literature and beauty. A father-daughter story as well as a memoir of growing up in a closed-off community and then finding a way out of it, this is an inspiring and beautiful account of the bonds of family and the power of self-invention.Advance praise for In the Days of Rain “In this compelling memoir, Stott peers deeply into her family history in order to uncover the reasons her family, particularly her father, were immersed in the Exclusive Brethren, a branch of the Christian evangelical movement Plymouth Brethren that shuns books and mainstream culture.”—Publishers Weekly“Stott’s look into her father’s misguidedness offers readers a simultaneous warning and empathic embrace.”—Booklist“A compelling story of childhood deprivation, liberation, and, ultimately, hope.”—Kirkus Reviews “A marvelous, strange, terrifying book, somehow finding words both for the intensity of a childhood locked in a tyrannical secret world, and for the lifelong aftershocks of being liberated from it.”—Francis Spufford, author of Golden Hill “Writers are forged in strange fires, but none stranger than Rebecca Stott’s. By rights, her memoir of her father and her early childhood inside a closed fundamentalist sect obsessed by the Rapture ought to be a horror story. But while the historian in her is merciless in exposing the cruelties and corruption involved, Rebecca the child also lights up the book, existing in a world of vivid play, dreams, even nightmares, so passionate and imaginative that it helps explain how she survived, and—even more miraculous—found the compassion and understanding to do justice to the story of her father and the painful family life he created.”—Sarah Dunant, author of The Birth of Venus
In the Dream House: A Memoir
by Carmen MachadoA revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties. <P><P>In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. <P><P>And it's that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope--haunted houses, erotica, bildungsroman--in which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations about the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships. <P><P>Machado's dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, Star Trek and Disney villains, fairy tales, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.
In the Dream House: A Memoir
by Carmen MachadoDomestic abuse isn't confined to man-woman relationships. It also occurs in LGBTQ relationships, man-man and woman-woman. In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's account of a relationship gone bad and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Machado traces the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, and struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. <P><P>Each chapter in this inventive memoir is driven by its own narrative trope--the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman--through which Machado holds her story up to the light and examines it from different angles. She considers her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships. Machado's dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.
In the Dream House: A Memoir
by Carmen Maria MachadoA revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other PartiesIn the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope—the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman—through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.Machado’s dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.