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Sybil Ludington Rides to the Rescue: Courageous Kid of the American Revolution (Courageous Kids)
by Jessica GundersonIn 1777, the American Revolution is well underway. At 16, Sybil Ludington knows the war all too well. Her father is a colonel in the Continental Army, battling for America's independence from Great Britain. Colonel Ludington and his regiment are home for the season when word comes that the British Army is attacking nearby. With her father too ill to ride, it's up to young Sybil to alert the American militia that the British are coming.
Sybil Ludington's Midnight Ride
by Marsha AmstelThe story of Sybil Ludington's ride on horseback to rouse American soldiers to fight against the British who were attacking Danbury, Connecticut during the American Revolution.
Sybille Bedford: A Life
by Selina HastingsThe first biography of the universally acclaimed British writer, Sybille Bedford, by the celebrated author of books about Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh.Passionate, liberated, fiercely independent, Sybille Bedford was a writer and a journalist, the author of ten books, including a biography of Aldous Huxley, and four novels, all of which fictionalized her extraordinary life. Born in Berlin, she grew up in Baden, first with her distant, aristocratic father, and then in France with her intellectual, narcissistic, morphine-addicted mother and her lover. She was a child with a German Jewish background who survived two world wars and went on to spend her adult life in exile in France, Italy, New York, and Los Angeles, before finally settling in England.Bedford was ahead of her time in many ways, with great enthusiasm for life and all its sensual pleasures, including friendships with bold faced names in the worlds of literature and food as well as a literary network of high-powered lesbians. Aldous Huxley became a mentor, and Martha Gellhorn encouraged her to write her first novel, A Legacy; in 1989, her novel Jigsaw was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In the 1960s, she wrote for magazines and newspapers, covering nearly 100 trials, including those of Auschwitz officials accused of Nazi war crimes and Jack Ruby, on trial for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. Brenda Wineapple has called Bedford "one of the finest stylists of the 20th century, bar none." In this major biography, Selina Hastings has brilliantly captured the fierce intelligence, wit, curiosity, and compassion of the woman and the writer in all the richness of her character and achievements.
Sybille: Life, Love, & Art in the Face of Absolute Power
by Marion MeadeIn thirteenth-century France, a female poet endures the chaos of the Albigensian Crusade in this novel by the author of Eleanor of Aquitaine. A holy war is sweeping France, razing cities and destroying the peaceful lives of those considered heretics. Sybille d&’Astarac, born to pampered luxury, is a gifted female troubadour. But her poems grow dark as the Catholic crusade seeks to eradicate her sect. In the face of massacre, can Sybille survive the Inquisition? Will her love songs? A work of stunning historical fiction, Sybille displays Marion Meade's pitch‑perfect understanding of strong women facing the harsh realities of life in medieval times. As Robin Morgan, author of The Anatomy of Freedom, writes, this book is &“an inspiration for women and an illumination for all readers.&”
Sydney Camm: Hurricane and Harrier Designer, Saviour of Britain
by John Sweetman&“Looks at the pioneering designer, Sydney Camm and examines his legacy, which was the design of two of our most iconic fighter planes . . . Brilliant!&” —Books Monthly &“This Man Saved Britain&” ran a headline in the News Chronicle on 18 February 1941, in a reference to the role of Sydney Camm, designer of the Hawker Hurricane, during the Battle of Britain. Similarly, the Minister of Economic Warfare, Lord Selborne, advised Winston Churchill that to Camm &“England owed a great deal.&” Born in 1893, the eldest of twelve children, Camm was raised in a small, terraced house. Despite lacking the advantages of a financially secure upbringing and formal technical education after leaving school at 14, Camm would go on to become one of the most important people in the story of Britain&’s aviation history. Sydney Camm&’s work on the Hurricane was far from the only pinnacle in his remarkable career in aircraft design and engineering—a career that stretched from the biplanes of the 1920s to the jet fighters of the Cold War. Indeed, over fifty years after his death, the revolutionary Hawker Siddeley Harrier in which Camm played such a prominent figure, following &“a stellar performance in the Falkland Island crisis,&” still remains in service with the American armed forces. It is perhaps unsurprising therefore, as the author reveals in this detailed biography, that Camm would be knighted in his own country, receive formal honors in France and the United States, and be inducted into the International Hall of Fame in San Diego. &“John Sweetman&’s new biography ably recounts the life of one of the most remarkable figures in 20th-century aviation history.&” —Aviation History Magazine
Sydney Noir and New Age: A Memoir of My Spiritual Journey Before My Brother Shot at Prince Charles
by Hae-Lyun KangThis memoir is an exploration of past lives, rebirthing, astrology, numerology, of experiencing God, and of visiting South Korea and Japan before my brother shot at Prince Charles.
Sydney and Violet
by Stephen KlaidmanA long overdue biography of the power couple that nurtured and influenced the literary world of early twentieth-century England "I write primarily to pay homage to a beloved friend, but also in the hope that some future chronicler of the history of art and letters in our time may give to Sydney and Violet Schiff the place which is their due." --T. S. Eliot, in a letter appended to Violet Schiff's obituary, Times of London, July 9, 1962 Largely forgotten today, Sydney and Violet Schiff were ubiquitous, almost Zelig-like figures in the most important literary movement of the twentieth century. Their friendships among the elite of the Modernist writers were remarkable, and their extensive correspondence with T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, Proust, and many others strongly suggests both intimacy and intellectual equality. Leading critics of the day considered Sydney, writing as Stephen Hudson, to be in the same literary league as Joyce, Eliot, and D. H. Lawrence. As for Violet, she was a talented musician who nurtured Sydney's literary efforts and was among the first in England to recognize Proust's genius and spread the word. Sydney and Violet tells the story of how the Schiffs, despite their commercial and Jewish origins, won acceptance in the snobbish, anti-Semitic, literary world of early twentieth-century England, and brings to life a full panoply of extravagant personalities: Proust, Joyce, Picasso, Mansfield, Wyndham Lewis, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, and many more. A highly personal, anecdote-filled account of the social and intellectual history of the Modernist movement, Sydney and Violet also examines what divides the literary survivors from the victims of taste and time.
Sylvia Browne: Accepting The Psychic Torch
by Sylvia BrowneSYLVIA BROWNE: ACCEPTING THE PSYCHIC TORCH is a brand-new anthology that contains the full text of two of Sylvia's best-selling books: the landmark Adventures of a Psychic, which details how a little girl from Kansas City, Missouri, discovered her gifts and was then led on a decades-long journey to ultimately become "one of America's most successful clairvoyants"; and If You Could See What I See, a handbook on spirituality that is also full of anecdotes from Sylvia's life, both before and after she became a world-famous medium who spends her time writing, lecturing, and appearing on TV. Yet this volume also contains a special treat: an all-new work from Sylvia! Titled Accepting the Psychic Torch, it focuses on the incredibly special relationship Sylvia had with her beloved psychic grandmother, Ada Coil. Drawing on her cherished memories, along with Grandma Ada's numerous letters-many of which are reprinted in these pages-Sylvia gives us a rich portrait of a blessed soul who helped so many. She also delves into her own childhood and teenage years as never before, as she relates how her dear grandmother not only became her mentor, but was indeed the mother she never really had. This is the book Sylvia's fans have been begging her to write . . . and it doesn't disappoint!
Sylvia Earle: Ocean Explorer (Women in Conservation)
by Dennis FertigThis book takes an engaging look at the work of ground-breaking conservationist, Sylvia Earle, and her work to protect oceans and ocean life. It covers Earle's inspiration, her methods, findings, and the impact of her work.
Sylvia Pankhurst: Sexual Politics and Political Activism (Women's And Gender History Ser.)
by Barbara WinslowAn extraordinary political biography of English suffragist, feminist, and socialist Sylvia PankhurstAlong with her mother Emmeline, and her sister Christabel, Sylvia Pankhurst was one of the leading women's suffrage activists in early twentieth-century England, working with the militant Women's Social and Political Union. Unlike her family, however, who looked to parliament and spoke to elite and middle-class women's concerns, Sylvia consistently looked to working women and the labour movement as central to her feminist politics.In this illuminating political biography, feminist historian Barbara Winslow recovers Sylvia Pankhurst's life and work for a new generation of socialists and feminists. From Pankhurst's organizing with immigrant and working women in London's East End to her revolutionary communism and growing internationalism and anti-fascism, Winslow gives us the story of a brilliantly inspiring unorthodox feminist and unorthodox socialist.With a preface from internationally recognized socialist feminist historian and activist, Sheila Rowbotham.
Sylvia Plath (Comprehensive Research and Study Guide)
by Harold BloomThematic analyses of The Colossus, The Arrival of the Bee Box, Daddy, Ariel, and Lady Lazarus.
Sylvia Plath Day by Day, Volume 1: 1932-1955
by Carl RollysonSince Sylvia Plath’s death in 1963, she has become the subject of a constant stream of books, biographies, and articles. She has been hailed as a groundbreaking poet for her starkly beautiful poems in Ariel and as a brilliant forerunner of the feminist coming-of-age novel in her semiautobiographical The Bell Jar. Each new biography has offered insight and sources with which to measure Plath’s life and influence. Sylvia Plath Day by Day, a two-volume series, offers a distillation of this data without the inherent bias of a narrative.Volume 1 commences with Plath’s birth in Boston in 1932, records her response to her elementary and high school years, her entry into Smith College, and her breakdown and suicide attempt, and ends on February 14, 1955, the day she wrote to Ruth Cohen, principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, to accept admission as an “affiliated student at Newnham College to read for the English Tripos.” Sylvia Plath Day by Day is for readers of all kinds with a wide variety of interests in the woman and her work. The entries are suitable for dipping into and can be read in a minute or an hour. Ranging over several sources, including Plath’s diaries, journals, letters, stories, and other prose and poetry—including new material and archived material rarely seen by readers—a fresh kaleidoscopic view of the writer emerges.
Sylvia Plath Day by Day, Volume 2: 1955-1963
by Carl RollysonSince her death in 1963, Sylvia Plath has become an endless source of fascination for a wide audience, ranging from readers of The Bell Jar, her semiautobiographical novel, to her groundbreaking poetry as exemplified by Ariel. Beyond her writing, however, interest in Plath was also fueled in part by the nature of her death—a suicide while she was estranged from her husband, Ted Hughes, who was himself a noteworthy British poet. As a result, a steady stream of biographies of Plath, projecting an array of points of view about their subject, has appeared over the last fifty-five years. Now biographer Carl Rollyson, the author of two previous biographical studies of Plath, has surveyed the vast amount of material on Plath, including her biographies, her autobiographical writings, and previously unpublished material, and distilled that data into the two volumes of Sylvia Plath Day by Day. As the follow-up to volume 1, volume 2 commences on February 14, 1955, the day Plath wrote to her mother declaring her intention to study in England, a decision that marked a major turning point in her life. With brief signposts provided by the author, this volume follows Plath through the entirety of her marriage to Hughes, the challenges of simultaneously raising a family and nourishing her own creativity, and the major depressive episodes that ultimately led to her suicide in 1963. By providing new angles and perspectives on the life of one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated poets, Sylvia Plath Day by Day offers a comprehensive image of its enigmatic subject.
Sylvia Plath: Drawings
by Sylvia PlathIn 1956 Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother, Aurelia, 'I feel I'm developing a kind of primitive style of my own which I am very fond of. Wait 'til you see . . . 'Throughout her life Plath cited art as her deepest source of inspiration; yet while her writing is celebrated around the world, her drawings are little known. This publication brings together drawings from 1955 to 1957, the period she spent on a Fulbright fellowship at Newnham College, Cambridge. During this time she met and married in secret the poet Ted Hughes, travelling with him on honeymoon to Paris and Spain before their return to the US in June 1957. Plath's drawings in pen and ink are exquisitely observed moments from this period in her life, and include among their subjects Parisian rooftops, trees, churches and a portrait of Ted Hughes. The collection sheds light on these key years in Plath's life and includes letters and a diary entry about her art, as well as an illuminating introduction by her daughter, Frieda Hughes.
Sylvia Plath: New Views on the Poetry
by Gary LaneOriginally published in 1979. Sylvia Plath is one of the most controversial poets of our time. For some readers, she is the symbol of women oppressed. For others, she is the triumphant victim of her own intensity—the poet pursuing sensation to the ultimate uncertainty, death. For still others, she is a doomed innocent whose sensibilities were too acute for the coarseness of our world. The new essays of this edited collection (with a single exception, all were written for this book) broaden the perspective of Plath criticism by going beyond the images of Plath as a cult figure to discuss Plath the poet. The contributors—among them Calvin Bedient, Hugh Kenner, J. D. O'Hara, and Marjorie Perloff—draw on material that most previous commentators lacked: a substantial body of Plath's poetry and prose, a moderately detailed biographical record, and an important selection of the poet's correspondence. The result is an important and provocative volume, one in which major critics offer an abundance of insights into the poet's mind and creative process. It offers insightful and original readings of many poems—some, like "Berck-Plage," scarcely mentioned in previous criticism—and fosters new understandings of such matters as Plath's comedy, the development of her poetic voice, and her relation to poetic traditions. The serious reader, whatever his or her initial opinion of Sylvia Plath, is sure to find that opinion challenged, changed, or deepened. These essays offer insights into a violently interesting poet, one who despite, or perhaps because of, her suicide at age thirty continues to fascinate and trouble us.
Sylvia's Farm
by Sylvia Jorrin Joshua Kilmer-Purcell"For those unfamiliar with Sylvia, discovering her stories is like stumbling into a fully loaded wild blackberry patch--impossible to rush through, sweetly fulfilling, with an immediate longing to return to them again and again."--Joshua Kilmer-Purcell, The Fabulous Beekman BoysThis collection of stories chronicling Sylvia Jorrín's life on the farm provides comfort and inspiration to all those searching for meaning in life's many blessings.The world of Sylvia's Farm is a rich landscape of natural beauty and simple pleasures. Sylvia Jorrín never expected to become the first woman in the New York City Watershed to solely own and operate a large livestock farm. But first the farm, and then farm life, captured her heart as it has captured the hearts of all those who have read her book. Through unexpected surprises and unanticipated hardships, Sylvia Jorrín has grown into the epitome of the one thing she never expected to be: a farmer.With a devoted following of readers inspired by her underlying appreciation of the world around her, Sylvia's Farm is the sort of ageless story that any reader can pick up and enjoy. Sylvia's Farm is, to quote Kirkus Reviews, "The delight-filled education of an out-of-the-clue shepherdess...." consisting of "....fine-grained, honest rural sketches, on a par with Noel Perrin and Don Mitchell."Sylvia's Farm is a contemporary account of rural farm life and all of the sometimes beautiful, always meaningful lessons that it continues to teach. Told in short vignettes that span over more than a decade, it is a journal of growth, persistence, and the unexpected joys that a new day can bring.
Sylvia, Queen Of The Headhunters: An Outrageous Englishwoman And Her Lost Kingdom
by Philip EadeThe biography of the last Ranee of Sarawak, born into the aristocracy as Sylvia Brett in 1885 and destined to become 'Queen of the Headhunters'.'Jaw-dropping ... If you thought White Mischief the last word in English expatriate decadence, you haven't yet met Sylvia and the Brookes' The TimesSylvia Brooke was the consort of His Highness Sir Vyner Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, the last in a bizarre dynasty of English despots who ruled their jungle kingdom on Borneo until 1946. The White Rajahs were long held up as model rulers, but the spectacularly eccentric behaviour of Ranee Sylvia - self-styled Queen of the Headhunters - changed everything. This is the compelling story of her part in their downfall.
Sylvia, Queen Of The Headhunters: An Outrageous Englishwoman And Her Lost Kingdom
by Philip EadeThe biography of the last Ranee of Sarawak, born into the aristocracy as Sylvia Brett in 1885 and destined to become 'Queen of the Headhunters'.'Jaw-dropping ... If you thought White Mischief the last word in English expatriate decadence, you haven't yet met Sylvia and the Brookes' The TimesSylvia Brooke was the consort of His Highness Sir Vyner Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, the last in a bizarre dynasty of English despots who ruled their jungle kingdom on Borneo until 1946. The White Rajahs were long held up as model rulers, but the spectacularly eccentric behaviour of Ranee Sylvia - self-styled Queen of the Headhunters - changed everything. This is the compelling story of her part in their downfall.
Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters: An Eccentric Englishwoman and Her Lost Kingdom
by Philip EadeTHE EXTRAORDINARY TALE OF SYLVIA BROOKE, THE LAST WHITE RULER OF THE JUNGLE KINGDOM OF BORNEOSylvia Brooke was one of the more exotic and outrageous figures of the twentieth century. Otherwise known as the Ranee of Sarawak, she was the wife of Sir Vyner Brooke, the last White Rajah, whose family had ruled the jungle kingdom of Sarawak on Borneo for three generations. They had their own flag, revenue, postage stamps, and money, as well as the power of life and death over their subjects—Malays, Chinese, and headhunting Dyak tribesmen. The regime of the White Rajahs was long romanticized, but by the 1930s, their power and prestige were crumbling. At the center of Sarawak's decadence was Sylvia, author of eleven books, mother to three daughters, an extravagantly dressed socialite whose behavior often offended and usually defied social convention. Sylvia did her best to manipulate the line of succession in favor of her daughters, but by 1946, Japan had invaded Sarawak, sending Sylvia and her husband into exile, ending one of the more unusual chapters of British colonial rule.Philip Eade's Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters is a fascinating look at the wild and debauched world of a woman desperate to maintain the last remains of power in an exotic and dying kingdom.
Syme's Letter Writer: A Guide to Modern Correspondence About (Almost) Every Imaginable Subject of Daily Life, with Odes to Desktop Ephemera and Selected Letters of Famous Writers
by Rachel SymeA literary jaunt in praise of the lost art of letter writing that explores a cultural history and the undeniable thrill of old-school correspondence—from journalist and cultural critic Rachel Syme.Inspired by a famed correspondence handbook penned by a persnickety Victorian who had strong opinions on how to lick a stamp, cultural critic Rachel Syme has rewritten the staid letter-writing rules of yore for the letter writers of today. Syme insists you must stuff your envelopes with flat frivolities (and includes guides for how to press flowers and make a matchbook-mark), teaches you how to perfume a parcel, and encourages you to cultivate your own ritual around keeping up with your correspondence. Even if you have never sent a hand-written letter before, this book will make you want to begin – and will show you just how to get started.Immerse yourself in this epistolary bric-a-brac celebrating the intimate (whimsical! expressive!) art of written correspondence, covering every part of the process from courting and keeping a pen pal, down to buying the best nibs for your refurbished vintage fountain pen. As you read fragments of letters and journals from storied literary figures—Zelda Fitzgerald, Willa Cather, Pat Parker, Vita Sackville-West, Djuna Barnes, Octavia Butler, to name a few—you can take note of how to write about the weather without being a total snooze, how to write a letter like a poet, and how to infuse your correspondence with gossip and glamorous mystique. You&’ll learn about the magic of hotel stationery, the thrill of sending postcards, and the importance of choosing a signature paper that captures your essence.After all, the words you write on paper and send to another person, are precious, offering comfort, shared sorrow, cathartic rage, hard-earned insight, refreshing strangeness, absurd silliness, understanding, delight, commiseration, and beauty—and often all of those things all mixed up at the same time. Letter-writing is meant to be enjoyed—so pick up a fountain pen and get writing!
Sympathy for the Devil (Mulholland Classic)
by Kent AndersonKent Anderson's stunning debut novel is a modern classic, a harrowing, authentic picture of one American soldier's experience of the Vietnam War--"unlike anything else in war literature" (Los Angeles Review of Books).Hanson joins the Green Berets fresh out of college. Carrying a volume of Yeats's poems in his uniform pocket, he has no idea of what he's about to face in Vietnam--from the enemy, from his fellow soldiers, or within himself. In vivid, nightmarish, and finely etched prose, Kent Anderson takes us through Hanson's two tours of duty and a bitter, ill-fated return to civilian life in-between, capturing the day-to-day process of war like no writer before or since.
Sympathy for the Devil: Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal
by Michael MewshawA generous, entertaining, intimate look at Gore Vidal, a man who prided himself on being difficult to knowDetached and ironic; a master of the pointed put-down, of the cutting quip; enigmatic, impossible to truly know: This is the calcified, public image of Gore Vidal—one the man himself was fond of reinforcing. "I'm exactly as I appear," he once said of himself. "There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water." Michael Mewshaw's Sympathy for the Devil, a memoir of his friendship with the stubbornly iconoclastic public intellectual, is a welcome corrective to this tired received wisdom. A complex, nuanced portrait emerges in these pages—and while "Gore" can indeed be brusque, standoffish, even cruel, Mewshaw also catches him in more vulnerable moments. The Gore Vidal the reader comes to know here is generous and supportive to younger, less successful writers; he is also, especially toward the end of his life, disappointed, even lonely. Sparkling, often hilarious, and filled with spicy anecdotes about expat life in Italy, Sympathy for the Devil is an irresistible inside account of a man who was himself—faults and all—impossible to resist. As enlightening as it is entertaining, it offers a unique look at a figure many only think they know.
Symphony No. 3
by Chris EatonSymphony No. 3 follows the life of renowned French composer Camille Saint-Saëns as he ascends from child prodigy to worldwide fame. As his acclaim grows in Paris, the musical world around him clamours with competitors, dilettantes, turncoats and revenge seekers. At the height of his success, Camille leaves everything behind to embark on a Dantean quest for his dead lover, Henri. At the end of this adventure, still haunted by the holes in his past, he takes up an invitation to journey by ocean-liner to the New World.Finely crafted in its own unique rhythmic language, Symphony No. 3 is cast in four sections to mirror Saint-Saëns's famous work, popularly known as the Organ Symphony. Written and performed in London England in the infamous late 1880s, this was the composition he hoped would finally destroy Beethoven's stranglehold on the industry and reinvent the form. Though set in the decades surrounding the fin de siècle, Symphony No. 3 speaks directly to our present moment and the rise of political violence.
Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad
by M. T. AndersonNational Book Award winner M. T. Anderson delivers a brilliant and riveting account of the Siege of Leningrad and the role played by Russian composer Shostakovich and his Leningrad Symphony. In September 1941, Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht surrounded Leningrad in what was to become one of the longest and most destructive sieges in Western history--almost three years of bombardment and starvation that culminated in the harsh winter of 1943-1944. More than a million citizens perished. Survivors recall corpses littering the frozen streets, their relatives having neither the means nor the strength to bury them. Residents burned books, furniture, and floorboards to keep warm; they ate family pets and--eventually--one another to stay alive. Trapped between the Nazi invading force and the Soviet government itself was composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who would write a symphony that roused, rallied, eulogized, and commemorated his fellow citizens--the Leningrad Symphony, which came to occupy a surprising place of prominence in the eventual Allied victory. This is the true story of a city under siege: the triumph of bravery and defiance in the face of terrifying odds. It is also a look at the power--and layered meaning--of music in beleaguered lives. Symphony for the City of the Dead is a masterwork thrillingly told and impeccably researched by National Book Award-winning author M. T. Anderson.
Symptoms of Withdrawal: A Memoir of Snapshots and Redemption
by Christopher Kennedy LawfordThe firstborn child of famed Rat Pack actor Peter Lawford and Patricia Kennedy, sister to John F. Kennedy, Christopher Kennedy Lawford grew up with presidents, senators, and movie stars as close relatives and personal friends. When he was a toddler, Marilyn Monroe taught him how to dance the twist. He recalls being awakened late at night to hear his uncle Jack announce his candidacy for president. His early life was marked by the traumatic assassinations of two beloved uncles during his teen years, he succumbed to the tragic allure of the 1970s drug scene. "Symptoms of Withdrawal" is Lawford's unflinchingly honest portrayal of his life as a Kennedy--a journey overflowing with hilarious insider anecdotes, heartbreaking accounts of his addictions to narcotics as well as to celebrity, and, ultimately, the redemption he found by asserting his own independence.