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The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food
by Jennifer B. LeeIf you think McDonald's is the most ubiquitous restaurant experience in America, consider that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Wendys combined. New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese). In her search, Jennifer 8 Lee traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese food. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole, and the way it has shaped our country.
The Fortune Men: A novel
by Nadifa MohamedBOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • Based on a true event, this novel is &“a blues song cut straight from the heart ... about the unjust death of an innocent Black man caught up in a corrupt system. The full life of Mahmood Mattan, the last man executed in Cardiff for a crime he was exonerated for forty years later [is] brought alive with subtle artistry and heartbreaking humanity&” (Walter Mosley, best-selling author of Devil in a Blue Dress).In Cardiff, Wales in 1952, Mahmood Mattan, a young Somali sailor, is accused of a crime he did not commit: the brutal killing of Violet Volacki, a shopkeeper from Tiger Bay. At first, Mahmood believes he can ignore the fingers pointing his way; he may be a gambler and a petty thief, but he is no murderer. He is a father of three, secure in his innocence and his belief in British justice. But as the trial draws closer, his prospect for freedom dwindles. Now, Mahmood must stage a terrifying fight for his life, with all the chips stacked against him: a shoddy investigation, an inhumane legal system, and, most evidently, pervasive and deep-rooted racism at every step. Under the shadow of the hangman's noose, Mahmood begins to realize that even the truth may not be enough to save him. A haunting tale of miscarried justice, this book offers a chilling look at the dark corners of our humanity.
The Fortune Teller's Prophecy: A Memoir of an Unlikely Doctor
by Lally PiaWhen a military coup in Ghana leads to the abrupt closure of Lally Pia’s medical school, she is left stranded there, thousands of miles away from her family in California, with no educational prospects or money. Adding to her turmoil is her discovery that her American Green Card has been botched, which means she has no country to call home. But a Sri Lankan priest told Lally that she would one day become a “Doctor of Doctors” —and she is intent on proving him right. This sizzling multicultural roller coaster illustrates the power of self-determination as Lally, a young immigrant with a drive to succeed, takes on obstacle after obstacle—an abusive relationship, the welfare state, and a gruesome job where she has to dismember human bodies—in order to fulfill her dreams. A story that will resonate with anyone who has faced cultural and immigration hardships, The Fortune Teller’s Prophecy is a nail-biting journey across continents, through hardships, and into ultimate triumph.
The Fortunes of Francis Barber
by Michael BundockThis compelling book chronicles a young boy's journey from the horrors of Jamaican slavery to the heart of London's literary world, and reveals the unlikely friendship that changed his life. Francis Barber, born in Jamaica, was brought to London by his owner in 1750 and became a servant in the household of the renowned Dr. Samuel Johnson. Although Barber left London for a time and served in the British navy during the Seven Years' War, he later returned to Johnson's employ. A fascinating reversal took place in the relationship between the two men as Johnson's health declined and the older man came to rely more and more upon his now educated and devoted companion. When Johnson died he left the bulk of his estate to Barber, a generous (and at the time scandalous) legacy, and a testament to the depth of their friendship. There were thousands of black Britons in the eighteenth century, but few accounts of their lives exist. In uncovering Francis Barber's story, this book not only provides insights into his life and Samuel Johnson's but also opens a window onto London when slaves had yet to win their freedom.
The Foundation Builders
by Gina DeAngelisLearn about America's founding conservationists: Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, Stephen T. Mather, Hugh Hammond Bennett.
The Founders Unmasked (True History)
by Jennifer Sabin"Its power to spark important conversations should not be underestimated." —Booklist "A powerful series that fills in the cracks and illuminates the shadows of the past." —Sherri L. Smith, award-winning author of Flygirl "[Jennifer Sabin] does a concise, coherent job of breaking down complicated material … an important title for students and an immensely useful resource for educators." —School Library Connection "With material presented chronologically and in straightforward language (with text-embedded glossaries), brief profiles of key players, numerous quotes and sidebars, and fresh details that help readers grasp nuances and understand consequences...the conversation tone is inviting and...encourages thoughtful reflection." —Booklist Introducing a new nonfiction series for the next generation of activists, uncovering the hidden history of The United States through an anti-racist lens. The true story of the men—and women—surrounding the founding of America. In the summer of 1776, when Thomas Jefferson arrived in Philadelphia to sign the Declaration of Independence, declaring that &“all men are created equal,&” he wasn&’t alone. With him was Robert Hemings, just one of the many Black people Jefferson enslaved. But who was Robert Hemings? Discover his story and the true history of those who really helped build America. Featuring riveting interviews with historians, including Margaret Kimberley, author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents, The Founders Unmasked is a quest for the whole truth: the good and the bad.
The Founders and Finance: How Hamilton, Gallatin, and Other Immigrants Forged a New Economy
by Thomas K. MccrawIn 1776 the United States government started out on a shoestring and quickly went bankrupt fighting its War of Independence against Britain. At the warâs end, the national government owed tremendous sums to foreign creditors and its own citizens. But lacking the power to tax, it had no means to repay them. The Founders and Finance is the first book to tell the story of how foreign-born financial specialistsâimmigrantsâsolved the fiscal crisis and set the United States on a path to long-term economic success. Pulitzer Prizeâwinning author Thomas K. McCraw analyzes the skills and worldliness of Alexander Hamilton (from the Danish Virgin Islands), Albert Gallatin (from the Republic of Geneva), and other immigrant founders who guided the nation to prosperity. Their expertise with liquid capital far exceeded that of native-born plantation owners Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, who well understood the management of land and slaves but had only a vague knowledge of financial instrumentsâcurrencies, stocks, and bonds. The very rootlessness of Americaâs immigrant leaders gave them a better understanding of money, credit, and banks, and the way each could be made to serve the public good. The remarkable financial innovations designed by Hamilton, Gallatin, and other immigrants enabled the United States to control its debts, to pay for the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, andâbarelyâto fight the War of 1812, which preserved the nationâs hard-won independence from Britain.
The Founders' Fortunes: How Money Shaped the Birth of America
by Willard Sterne RandallAn illuminating financial history of the Founding Fathers, revealing how their personal finances shaped the Constitution and the new nationIn 1776, upon the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers concluded America&’s most consequential document with a curious note, pledging &“our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.&” Lives and honor did indeed hang in the balance, yet just what were their fortunes? How much did the Founders stand to gain or lose through independence? And what lingering consequences did their respective financial stakes have on liberty, justice, and the fate of the fledgling United States of America?In this landmark account, historian Willard Sterne Randall investigates the private financial affairs of the Founders, illuminating like never before how and why the Revolution came about. The Founders&’ Fortunes uncovers how these leaders waged war, crafted a constitution, and forged a new nation influenced in part by their own financial interests. In an era where these very issues have become daily national questions, the result is a remarkable and insightful new understanding of our nation&’s bedrock values.
The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley
by Jimmy SoniNAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2022 BY THE NEW YORKER National Bestseller * New York Times Editors&’ Choice * Financial Times &“Books to Read in 2022&” A SABEW BEST IN BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS FINALIST &“A gripping account of PayPal&’s origins and a vivid portrait of the geeks and contrarians who made its meteoric rise possible&” (The Wall Street Journal)—including Elon Musk, Amy Rowe Klement, Peter Thiel, Julie Anderson, Max Levchin, Reid Hoffman, and many others whose stories have never been shared.Today, PayPal&’s founders and earliest employees are considered the technology industry&’s most powerful network. Since leaving PayPal, they have formed, funded, and advised the leading companies of our era, including Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir, and LinkedIn, among many others. As a group, they have driven twenty-first-century innovation and entrepreneurship. Their names stir passions; they&’re as controversial as they are admired. Yet for all their influence, the story of where they first started has gone largely untold. Before igniting the commercial space race or jumpstarting social media&’s rise, they were the unknown creators of a scrappy online payments start-up called PayPal. In building what became one of the world&’s foremost companies, they faced bruising competition, internal strife, the emergence of widespread online fraud, and the devastating dot-com bust of the 2000s. Their success was anything but certain. In The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley, award-winning author and biographer Jimmy Soni explores PayPal&’s turbulent early days. With hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to thousands of pages of internal material, he shows how the seeds of so much of what shapes our world today—fast-scaling digital start-ups, cashless currency concepts, mobile money transfer—were planted two decades ago. He also reveals the stories of countless individuals who were left out of the front-page features and banner headlines but who were central to PayPal&’s success. Described as &“an intensely magnetic chronicle&” (The New York Times) and &“engrossing&” (Business Insider), The Founders is a story of iteration and inventiveness—the products of which have cast a long and powerful shadow over modern life. This narrative illustrates how this rare assemblage of talent came to work together and how their collaboration changed our world forever.
The Founding Mothers of the United States (A True Book (Relaunch))
by Selene CastrovillaMany women helped shape a free and independent United States of America. They are known as the Founding Mothers.These smart, brave women were ambassadors, fostering peace between Native Americans and Europeans. They risked their lives by writing, printing, and distributing information about the fight for independence. They supported their husbands during battle and even donned disguises to join the army. They were all key in shaping the America of today. This book tells their story.Women are sometimes called the silent protagonists of history. But since before the founding of our nation until now, women have organized, marched, and inspired. They forced change and created opportunity.With engaging text, fun facts, photography, infographics, and art, this new set of books examines how individual women of differing races and socioeconomic status took a stand, and how groups of women lived and fought throughout the history of this country. It looks at how they celebrated victories that included the right to vote, the right to serve their country, and the right to equal employment. The aim of this much-needed set of five books is to bring herstory to young readers!
The Foundling: The True Story of a Kidnapping, a Family Secret, and My Search for the Real Me
by Paul Joseph FronczakThis is the inspiring and &“page-turning&” (Booklist) true story of a man who discovered that he had been kidnapped as a baby—and how his quest to find out who he really is upturned the genealogy industry, his own family, and set in motion the second longest cold case in US history.In 1964, a woman pretending to be a nurse kidnapped an infant boy named Paul Fronczak from a Chicago hospital. Two years later, police found a boy abandoned outside a variety store in New Jersey. The FBI tracked down Dora Fronczak, the kidnapped infant&’s mother, and she identified the abandoned boy as her son. The family spent the next fifty years believing they were whole again—but Paul was always unsure about his true identity. Then, four years ago—spurred on by the birth of his first child, Emma Faith—Paul took a DNA test. The test revealed that he was definitely not Paul Fronczak. From that moment on, Paul has been on a tireless mission to find the man whose life he&’s been living—and to discover who abandoned him, and why. Poignant and inspiring, The Foundling is a story about a child lost and a faith found, about the permanence of families and the bloodlines that define you, and about the emotional toll of both losing your identity and rediscovering who you truly are.
The Four Deaths of Acorn Whistler: Telling Stories in Colonial America
by Joshua PikerWho was Acorn Whistler, and why did he have to die? A deeply researched analysis of a bloody eighteenth-century conflict and its tangled aftermath, The Four Deaths of Acorn Whistler unearths competing accounts of the events surrounding the death of this Creek Indian. Told from the perspectives of a colonial governor, a Creek Nation military leader, local Native Americans, and British colonists, each story speaks to issues that transcend the condemned man’s fate: the collision of European and Native American cultures, the struggle of Indians to preserve traditional ways of life, and tensions within the British Empire as the American Revolution approached. At the hand of his own nephew, Acorn Whistler was executed in the summer of 1752 for the crime of murdering five Cherokee men. War had just broken out between the Creeks and the Cherokees to the north. To the east, colonists in South Carolina and Georgia watched the growing conflict with alarm, while British imperial officials kept an eye on both the Indians’ war and the volatile politics of the colonists themselves. They all interpreted the single calamitous event of Acorn Whistler’s death through their own uncertainty about the future. Joshua Piker uses their diverging accounts to uncover the larger truth of an early America rife with violence and insecurity but also transformative possibility.
The Four Deuces: A Korean War Story
by C. S. CrawfordThese memoirs are not an attempt to answer, solve, or resolve the problems arising from or about the three-year-long Korean War or the much longer stalemate that followed. This story was written to let you know how one very young, very scared marine saw his very first war and how he reacted to the killing and the mayhem of it. The stories are my view of that war, a war gone to ground in the trench lines. Dig into the stories and you may find something you were not expecting.I am well aware that my view of the Korean War has no historical importance. Still, it is my view, and I want to share it with you. I do not have a cause to plead or an ax to grind, and that alone ought to count for something. My memoirs are selective and most certainly tainted with time. My recollections are a lot like boot mines, and ought to be approached with caution. I was a grunt, a Four Deuce forward observer, assigned to duty with a marine infantry company every time the 1st Marine Regiment went back up on line. During the time I was in Korea my boondockers were firmly planted in trench-line mud. When I came home in September 1952, I was proud that I had helped in the attempt to stop Communism in Korea. I was proud of all the men I served, and served with, and I was a little bit proud of myself, too.From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Four Gifts
by Joseph BradleyBy all rights, Father Joseph Bradley should be dead. If past usage of beer, marijuana, and cocaine didn't do the trick, then certainly heart failure should have. Instead, by the grace of God, he is alive, clean, sober, and a functioning Catholic priest with another man's heart beating in his chest. But it came at a huge cost. While Joe was in his late teens, his father died suddenly. The loss was devastating and Joe's emotional desolation found escapist bliss in a beer bottle and cocaine vial, and he pledged irrevocable devotion to both. The slide into the abyss was ugly, and Joe finally sought help because there was nowhere else to go--which led him to serve others as a Catholic priest. The day of Joe's ordination, an old friend came to the mass and announced for all to hear, "Well, now I can say I've seen a miracle." Joe functioned for fifteen years as a sober priest before his heart gave out from the same heart disease that killed his father. But another miracle came his way, and he was blessed with a new heart--a gracious gift from a family during the most painful moment of their lives. Joe has been granted the blessing of four gifts: faith, sobriety, a new heart, and a fulfilling ministry. As Father Joe says, "Gratitude inspired this book. I owe it to people who helped rescue me from alcohol and drugs, and I owe it to my heart donor for giving me yet another chance at life."
The Four Lives of Steve Jobs: Steve Jobs biography
by Daniel IchbiahThe Four Lives of Steve Jobs Daniel Ichbiah No. 1 on the best-sellers list in August 2011 (French version). New edition updated in 2016 "So at thirty I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating… …I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me." This was Steve Jobs' confession on that morning in June 2005 to students at Stanford University. It summed up the growth that was slowly taking place in him. Chased out of Apple like scum in 1985, Jobs had made a resounding comeback ten years later and gave us devices that left a mark on their time, such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad. The world's most admired CEO, Steve Jobs mostly went against the tide, driven by a vision of genius and an extraordinary strength of conviction. However, he could also get it wrong: he was the one who nearly ruined Apple in 1984 after launching the Macintosh by insisting on poor technical choices! The 4 lives of Steve Jobs depicts Jobs' troubled youth, his rise to glory following the founding of Apple, his disgrace and his vain attempt at revenge followed by a return to the top. It also reveals a thousand unexpected facets of the extraordinary artist who ran Apple. * His quest for enlightenment in India * His initial refusal to recogniae the paternity of his daughter Lisa * His relationship with folk singer Joan Baez * The search for his mother, who abandoned him at birth * The attempt to treat his cancer with a vegetarian diet In his own way, Steve Jobs never stopped wanting to change the world, to change life... A best-seller Published by Leduc Editions in April 2011, the French version of The Four Lives of Steve Jobs was a number one best-seller at the end of August, 2011.
The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus
by Christopher Columbus J. M. CohenNo gamble in history has been more momentous than the landfall of Columbus's ship the Santa Maria in the Americas in 1492 - an event that paved the way for the conquest of a 'New World'. The accounts collected here provide a vivid narrative of his voyages throughout the Caribbean and finally to the mainland of Central America, although he still believed he had reached Asia. Columbus himself is revealed as a fascinating and contradictory figure, fluctuating from awed enthusiasm to paranoia and eccentric geographical speculation. Prey to petty quarrels with his officers, his pious desire to bring Christian civilization to 'savages' matched by his rapacity for gold, Columbus was nonetheless an explorer and seaman of staggering vision and achievement.
The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus
by Christopher ColumbusNo gamble in history has been more momentous than the landfall of Columbus's ship the Santa Maria in the Americas in 1492 - an event that paved the way for the conquest of a 'New World'. The accounts collected here provide a vivid narrative of his voyages throughout the Caribbean and finally to the mainland of Central America, although he still believed he had reached Asia. Columbus himself is revealed as a fascinating and contradictory figure, fluctuating from awed enthusiasm to paranoia and eccentric geographical speculation. Prey to petty quarrels with his officers, his pious desire to bring Christian civilization to 'savages' matched by his rapacity for gold, Columbus was nonetheless an explorer and seaman of staggering vision and achievement.
The Fourth Fisherman: How Three Mexican Fishermen Who Came Back from the Dead Changed My Life and Saved My Marriage
by Joe KissackWe each came to a moment of brokenness;what we found there was God.And he was enough. It was the subject of headlines around the world: Three Mexican fishermen in a small open boat without any supplies, drifting for more than nine months and 5,500 miles across the Pacific Ocean. Through blistering sun and threatening storms, they battle starvation, dehydration, hopelessness, and death. Their lifelines? An unwavering faith and a tattered Bible. Thousands of miles away, Joe Kissack, a successful Hollywood executive, personified the American dream. He enjoyed the trappings of the good life: a mini mansion, sports cars, and more. He had it made. Yet the intense pressure of his driven and high-powered career sends him into a downward spiral, driving him deep into suicidal depression, insidious addictions, and alienation from his family. His lifelines? A friend and a Bible on the table between them. Thoughtfully told with candor and humor, Kissack weaves together the incredible true voyage of fishermen adrift in the sea and his own life's journey as a man lost in the world. It is a story that will buoy your spirit and renew your hope and faith.
The Fourth Horseman: One Man's Secret Mission to Wage the Great War in America
by Robert L. KoenigThe story of Anton Dilger brings to life a missing chapter in U. S. history and shows, dramatically, that the Great European War was in fact being fought on the home front years before we formally joined it. The doctor who grew anthrax and other bacteria in that rented house was an American-the son of a Medal of Honor winner who fought at Gettysburg-on a secret mission, for the German Army in 1915. The Fourth Horseman tells the startling story of that mission led by a brilliant but conflicted surgeon who became one of Germany's most daring spies and saboteurs during World War I and who not only pioneered biowarfare in his native land but also lead a last-ditch German effort to goad Mexico into invading the United States. It is a story of mysterious missions, divided loyalties, and a new and terrible kind of warfare that emerged as America-in spite of fierce dissention at home-was making the decision to send its Doughboys to the Great War in Europe. This story has never been told before in full. And Dilger is a fascinating analog for our own troubled times. Having thrown off the tethers of obligation to family and country, he became a very dangerous man indeed: A spy, a saboteur, and a zealot to a degree that may have so embarrassed the German High Command that, after the war, they ordered his death rather than admit that he worked for them.
The Fourth Man: The Hunt for the KGB’s CIA Mole and Why the US Overlooked Putin
by Robert Baer'Reads like Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy' -James Risen, The Intercept'A compelling account of the ongoing search for the Fourth Man... a gripping and mind-bending read' - Dr. Mark Stout, The Daily Beast For the first time ever, New York Times bestselling author and former CIA operative Robert Baer tells the explosive story of how insiders believe a KGB mole rose to the highest ranks of the CIA.In the aftermath of the Cold War, US intelligence caught three high-profile Russian spies. However, these arrests left major questions unanswered, and rumours have long swirled of another mole, often referred to as the Fourth Man. Three pioneering female veterans of counterintelligence were tasked with unearthing him. With steadfast determination and expertise, they came to a shocking conclusion, one which had, and continues to harbour, dramatic consequences for American security.In this gripping insider account, Baer tells a thrilling story of Russian espionage and American intelligence. With profound implications for the rise of Vladimir Putin and international relations with Russia, The Fourth Man is a real-life spy thriller with echoes of John Le Carré.
The Fourth Man: The Hunt for the KGB’s CIA Mole and Why the US Overlooked Putin
by Robert BaerFor the first time ever, New York Times bestselling author and former CIA operative Robert Baer tells the explosive story of how insiders believe a KGB mole rose to the highest ranks of the CIA.In the aftermath of the Cold War, US intelligence caught three high-profile Russian spies. However, these arrests left major questions unanswered, and rumours have long swirled of another mole, often referred to as the Fourth Man. Three pioneering female veterans of counterintelligence were tasked with unearthing him. With steadfast determination and expertise, they came to a shocking conclusion, one which had, and continues to harbour, dramatic consequences for American security.In this gripping insider account, Baer tells a thrilling story of Russian espionage and American intelligence. With profound implications for the rise of Vladimir Putin and international relations with Russia, The Fourth Man is a real-life spy thriller with echoes of John Le Carré. (P) Octopus Publishing Group 2022
The Fourth Quarter: A Memoir--An Ordinary Man with an Extraordinary Drive to Change the World
by J. Lloyd Tomer Caryn TomerSearching for his purpose; Searching for an answer; Searching for a way. In the pages of Coach's captivating memoir, you'll find a story filled with heart-wrenching courage, superb tenacity and extreme perseverance. Discover the principles that have guided his life through overwhelming odds and personal tragedy including the death of his mother before his 16th birthday, being the town outcast and the death of his infant daughter. But most importantly, this is a story of hope. Find the inspiration to win in life no matter what the circumstances.
The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army
by David Cloud Greg JaffeThey were four exceptional soldiers, a new generation asked to save an army that had been hollowed out after Vietnam. They survived the military's brutal winnowing to reach its top echelon. They became the Army's most influential generals in the crucible of Iraq. Collectively, their lives tell the story of the Army over the last four decades and illuminate the path it must travel to protect the nation over the next century. Theirs is a story of successes and failures, of ambitions achieved and thwarted, of the responsibilities and perils of command. The careers of this elite quartet show how the most powerful military force in the world entered a major war unprepared, and how the Army, drawing on a reservoir of talent that few thought it possessed, saved itself from crushing defeat against a ruthless, low-tech foe. In The Fourth Star, you'll follow:*Gen. John Abizaid, one of the Army's most brilliant minds. Fluent in Arabic, he forged an unconventional path in the military to make himself an expert on the Middle East, but this unique background made him skeptical of the war he found himself leading. *Gen. George Casey Jr., the son of the highest-ranking general to be killed in the Vietnam War. Casey had grown up in the Army and won praise for his common touch and skill as a soldier. He was determined not to repeat the mistakes of Vietnam but would take much of the blame as Iraq collapsed around him. *Gen. Peter Chiarelli, an emotional, take-charge leader who, more than any other senior officer, felt the sting of the Army's failures in Iraq. He drove his soldiers, the chain of command, and the U.S. government to rethink the occupation plans-yet rarely achieved the results he sought.*Gen. David Petraeus, a driven soldier-scholar. Determined to reach the Army's summit almost since the day he entered West Point, he sometimes alienated peers with his ambition and competitiveness. When he finally got his chance in Iraq, he-more than anyone-changed the Army's conception of what was possible. Masterfully written and richly reported, The Fourth Star ranges far beyond today's battlefields, evoking the Army's tumultuous history since Vietnam through these four captivating lives and ultimately revealing a fascinating irony: In an institution that prizes obedience, the most effective warriors are often those who dare to question the prevailing orthodoxy and in doing so redefine the American way of war.From the Hardcover edition.
The Fox Hunt: A Refugee's Memoir of Coming to America
by Mohammed Al SamawiA refugee of Yemen's brutal civil war recounts his journey to freedom with the help of an online interfaith community: "a gripping account of terror and escape” (New York Times Book Review).Mohammed Al Samawi was raised to think of Christians and Jews as his enemy. But after secretly receiving a Bible at age twenty-three, he began connecting with interfaith activists on social media. He made it his mission to promote dialogue and cooperation in Yemen—a mission that drew death threats against him and his family. Mohammed fled to the port city of Aden, not knowing that it would soon become the battleground of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. As gunfire and grenades exploded throughout the city, Mohammed hid in the bathroom of his apartment and desperately appealed to his contacts on Facebook. Miraculously, a handful of people he barely knew responded. Over thirteen days, four ordinary young people with no experience in diplomacy or military exfiltration worked across six technology platforms and ten time zones to save this innocent young man trapped between deadly forces— rebel fighters from the north and Al Qaeda operatives from the south. The Fox Hunt tells the story of a thrilling, improbable escape, and reminds us that goodness and decency can triumph in the darkest circumstances.A NAUTILUS BOOK AWARD WINNER A NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST
The Fractalist
by Benoit MandelbrotA fascinating memoir from the man who revitalized visual geometry, and whose ideas about fractals have changed how we look at both the natural world and the financial world.Benoit Mandelbrot, the creator of fractal geometry, has significantly improved our understanding of, among other things, financial variability and erratic physical phenomena. In The Fractalist, Mandelbrot recounts the high points of his life with exuberance and an eloquent fluency, deepening our understanding of the evolution of his extraordinary mind. We begin with his early years: born in Warsaw in 1924 to a Lithuanian Jewish family, Mandelbrot moved with his family to Paris in the 1930s, where he was mentored by an eminent mathematician uncle. During World War II, as he stayed barely one step ahead of the Nazis until France was liberated, he studied geometry on his own and dreamed of using it to solve fresh, real-world problems. We observe his unusually broad education in Europe, and later at Caltech, Princeton, and MIT. We learn about his thirty-five-year affiliation with IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center and his association with Harvard and Yale. An outsider to mainstream scientific research, he managed to do what others had thought impossible: develop a new geometry that combines revelatory beauty with a radical way of unfolding formerly hidden laws governing utter roughness, turbulence, and chaos. Here is a remarkable story of both the man's life and his unparalleled contributions to science, mathematics, and the arts.