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The White Blackbird: A Life of the Painter Margarett Sargent by Her Granddaughter
by Honor Moore"A striking portrait of a woman artist's struggle for life." --Arthur Miller Margarett Sargent was an icon of avant-garde art in the 1920s. In an evocative weave of biography and memoir, her granddaughter unearths for the first time the life of a spirited and gifted woman committed at all costs to self-expression.
The White Darkness
by David GrannBy the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a powerful true story of adventure and obsession in the Antarctic, lavishly illustrated with color photographsHenry Worsley was a devoted husband and father and a decorated British special forces officer who believed in honor and sacrifice. He was also a man obsessed. He spent his life idolizing Ernest Shackleton, the nineteenth-century polar explorer, who tried to become the first person to reach the South Pole, and later sought to cross Antarctica on foot. Shackleton never completed his journeys, but he repeatedly rescued his men from certain death, and emerged as one of the greatest leaders in history.Worsley felt an overpowering connection to those expeditions. He was related to one of Shackleton's men, Frank Worsley, and spent a fortune collecting artifacts from their epic treks across the continent. He modeled his military command on Shackleton's legendary skills and was determined to measure his own powers of endurance against them. He would succeed where Shackleton had failed, in the most brutal landscape in the world. In 2008, Worsley set out across Antarctica with two other descendants of Shackleton's crew, battling the freezing, desolate landscape, life-threatening physical exhaustion, and hidden crevasses. Yet when he returned home he felt compelled to go back. On November 13, 2015, at age 55, Worsley bid farewell to his family and embarked on his most perilous quest: to walk across Antarctica alone.David Grann tells Worsley's remarkable story with the intensity and power that have led him to be called "simply the best narrative nonfiction writer working today." Illustrated with more than fifty stunning photographs from Worsley's and Shackleton's journeys, The White Darkness is both a gorgeous keepsake volume and a spellbinding story of courage, love, and a man pushing himself to the extremes of human capacity.
The White Darkness
by David Grann&‘A riveting, exciting and thoroughly compelling tale of adventure&’ JOHN GRISHAM on David Grann's The Lost City of Z&‘A wonderful story of a lost age of heroic exploration&’ Sunday Times on The Lost City of Z&‘Marvellous ... An engrossing book whose protagonist could out-think Indiana Jones&’ Daily Telegraph on The Lost City of ZDAILY MAIL BOOK OF THE WEEK One man's perilous quest to cross Antarctica in the footsteps of Shackleton. Henry Worsley was a devoted husband and father and a decorated British special forces officer who believed in honour and sacrifice. He was also a man obsessed. He spent his life idolizing Ernest Shackleton, the 20th-century polar explorer, who tried to become the first person to reach the South Pole and later sought to cross Antarctica on foot. Shackleton never completed his journeys, but he repeatedly rescued his men from certain death and emerged as one of the greatest leaders in history. Worsley felt an overpowering connection to those expeditions. He was related to one of Shackleton's men, Frank Worsley, and spent a fortune collecting artefacts from their epic treks across the continent. He modelled his military command on Shackleton's legendary skills and was determined to measure his own powers of endurance against them. He would succeed where Shackleton had failed, in the most brutal landscape in the world. In 2008, Worsley set out across Antarctica with two other descendants of Shackleton's crew, battling the freezing, desolate landscape, life-threatening physical exhaustion and hidden crevasses. Yet when he returned home he felt compelled to go back. On November 2015, at age 55, Worsley bid farewell to his family and embarked on his most perilous quest: to walk across Antarctica alone. David Grann tells Worsley's remarkable story with the intensity and power that have led him to be called &‘simply the best narrative nonfiction writer working today&’. Illustrated with more than 50 stunning photographs from Worsley's and Shackleton's journeys, The White Darkness is both a gorgeous keepsake volume and a spellbinding story of courage, love and a man pushing himself to the extremes of human capacity. Praise for David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon: &‘A riveting true story of greed, serial murder and racial injustice&’ JON KRAKAUER &‘A fiercely entertaining mystery story and a wrenching exploration of evil&’ KATE ATKINSON&‘A fascinating account of a tragic and forgotten chapter in the history of the American West&’ JOHN GRISHAM &‘Disturbing and riveting...Grann has proved himself a master of spinning delicious, many-layered mysteries that also happen to be true...It will sear your soul&’ DAVE EGGERS, New York Times Book Review&‘An extraordinary story with extraordinary pace and atmosphere&’ Sunday Times &‘A marvel of detective-like research and narrative verve&’ Financial Times
The White Headhunter
by Nigel RandellShanghaied in San Francisco in 1868, teenage Scots sailor Jack Renton then found himself on a voyage into the heart of darkness. Escaping from his floating prison in an open whaleboat, Renton drifted for 2000 miles, only to be washed up on the shores of a Pacific island shunned by 19th-century mariners, Malaita in the Solomon Islands. There he was stripped of his clothes by headhunters and forced to 'go native' to survive. Initially a slave to their chief, Kabou, he eventually became the man's most trusted warrior and adviser. Renton's own account of his eight-year exile, published after he was rescued, remains the only authenticated account of a mental and physical ordeal that still haunts the imagination to this day. It caused a sensation at the time, though it is now clear that it airbrushed out most of the key events. Researching the Renton legend, Nigel Randell spent several years talking to the Malaitans and piecing together a very different account from Renton's sanitised version. The ultimate irony is that a man so keen to conceal his 'crimes' should have bequeathed their evidence - a necklace of 60 human teeth - to a collector who donated it to a national museum.
The White House Boys: An American Tragedy
by Roger Dean KiserHidden far from sight, deep in the thick underbrush of the North Florida woods are the ghostly graves of more than thirty unidentified bodies, some of which are thought to be children who were beaten to death at the old Florida Industrial School for Boys at Marianna. It is suspected that many more bodies will be found in the fields and swamplands surrounding the institution. Investigations into the unmarked graves have compelled many grown men to come forward and share their stories of the abuses they endured and the atrocities they witnessed in the 1950s and 1960s at the institution. The White House Boys: An American Tragedy is the true story of the horrors recalled by Roger Dean Kiser, one of the boys incarcerated at the facility in the late fifties for the crime of being a confused, unwanted, and wayward child. In a style reminiscent of the works of Mark Twain, Kiser recollects the horrifying verbal, sexual, and physical abuse he and other innocent young boys endured at the hands of their "caretakers. " Questions remain unanswered and theories abound, but Roger and the other 'White House Boys' are determined to learn the truth and see justice served.
The White House Boys: An American Tragedy
by Roger Dean KiserHidden far from sight, deep in the thick underbrush of the North Florida woods are the ghostly graves of more than thirty unidentified bodies, some of which are thought to be children who were beaten to death at the old Florida Industrial School for Boys at Marianna. It is suspected that many more bodies will be found in the fields and swamplands surrounding the institution. Investigations into the unmarked graves have compelled many grown men to come forward and share their stories of the abuses they endured and the atrocities they witnessed in the 1950s and 1960s at the institution. The White House Boys: An American Tragedy is the true story of the horrors recalled by Roger Dean Kiser, one of the boys incarcerated at the facility in the late fifties for the crime of being a confused, unwanted, and wayward child. In a style reminiscent of the works of Mark Twain, Kiser recollects the horrifying verbal, sexual, and physical abuse he and other innocent young boys endured at the hands of their "caretakers." Questions remain unanswered and theories abound, but Roger and the other 'White House Boys' are determined to learn the truth and see justice served.
The White House Doctor: My Patients Were Presidents—A Memoir
by Connie MarianoA riveting look into the personal lives of our presidents through the eyes of their White House doctor "An interesting, behind-the-scenes glimpse of life at the White House." - Kirkus ReviewsDr. Connie Mariano served 9 years at the White House under Presidents George H.W. Bush, William J. Clinton, and George W. Bush. She participated in world headline-making news events and traveled all over the world. She cared for visiting dignitaries and was charged with caring for all the members of the First Family. From flirting with King Juan Carlos of Spain to spending the night on the Queen of England's yacht, Dr. Mariano glimpsed a glittering and powerful celebrity that few ever see.White House Doctor is a fascinating look into what goes on behind closed doors at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The White House Plumbers: The Seven Weeks That Led to Watergate and Doomed Nixon's Presidency
by Matthew Krogh Egil "Bud" KroghSOON TO BE A FIVE-PART HBO SERIES, STARRING WOODY HARRELSON AND JUSTIN THEROUXThe true story of The White House Plumbers, a secret unit inside Nixon's White House, and their ill-conceived plans stop the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, and how they led to Watergate and the President's demise.On July 17, 1971, Egil “Bud” Krogh was summoned to a closed-door meeting by his mentor—and a key confidant of the president—John Ehrlichman. Expecting to discuss the most recent drug control program launched in Vietnam, Krogh was shocked when Ehrlichman handed him a file and the responsibility for the Special Investigations Unit, or SIU, later to be notoriously known as “The Plumbers.”The Plumbers’ work, according to Nixon, was critical to national security: they were to investigate the leaks of top secret government documents, including the Pentagon Papers, to the press. Driven by blind loyalty, diligence, and dedication, Krogh, along with his co-director, David Young, set out to handle the job, eventually hiring G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, who would lead the break-in to the office of Dr. Fielding, a psychiatrist treating Daniel Ellsberg, the man they suspected was doing the leaking. Krogh had no idea that his decisions would soon lead to one of the most famous conspiracies in presidential history and the demise of the Nixon administration.The White House Plumbers is Krogh’s account of what really happened behind the closed doors of the Nixon White House, and how a good man can make bad decisions, and the redemptive power of integrity. Including the story of how Krogh served time and later rebuilt his life, The White House Plumbers is gripping, thoughtful, and a cautionary tale of placing loyalty over principle.
The White House Tapes: Eavesdropping on the President
by John PradosTranscripts of tape recordings beginning with Roosevelt.
The White King: Charles I, Traitor, Murderer, Martyr
by Leanda De LisleFrom the New York Times bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the tragic story of Charles I, his warrior queen, Britain's civil wars and the trial for his life.Less than forty years after England's golden age under Elizabeth I, the country was at war with itself. Split between loyalty to the Crown or to Parliament, war raged on English soil. The English Civil War would set family against family, friend against friend, and its casualties were immense--a greater proportion of the population died than in World War I.At the head of the disintegrating kingdom was King Charles I. In this vivid portrait--informed by previously unseen manuscripts, including royal correspondence between the king and his queen--Leanda de Lisle depicts a man who was principled and brave, but fatally blinkered.Charles never understood his own subjects or court intrigue. At the heart of the drama were the Janus-faced cousins who befriended and betrayed him--Henry Holland, his peacocking servant whose brother, the New England colonialist Robert Warwick, engineered the king's fall; and Lucy Carlisle, the magnetic 'last Boleyn girl' and faithless favorite of Charles's maligned and fearless queen.The tragedy of Charles I was that he fell not as a consequence of vice or wickedness, but of his human flaws and misjudgments. The White King is a story for our times, of populist politicians and religious war, of manipulative media and the reshaping of nations. For Charles it ended on the scaffold, condemned as a traitor and murderer, yet lauded also as a martyr, his reign destined to sow the seeds of democracy in Britain and the New World.
The White Ladder: Triumph and Tragedy at the Dawn of Mountaineering
by Daniel LightThe true story of the thrill-seekers, map-makers, soldiers, occultists, artists and porters who paved the way for modern mountaineering. &‘A beautifully written and sure-footed history of mountaineering &“before Everest&”, full of wonderful stories and spanning continents and centuries. A splendid debut.&’ Sir Ranulph Fiennes, author of Shackleton Beautiful, remote and dangerous – for generations we have looked to the mountains in awe. Yet, for most, that is where the fascination ends. For a rare few, however, the allure of the peaks proved irresistible. There are the devout Incan priests who, scaling the Andes&’ icy slopes to pay tribute to each mountain&’s &‘Great Lord&’, travelled higher than any European would for centuries. The Gurkha riflemen who joined their commanders in canvassing the Karakoram, admiring the distant summits of Broad Peak and K2 with gleeful anticipation. The tweed-clad mountaineers who made the first serious assaults on Everest, hauling yards upon yards of battered rope through the cold. Tracing the world altitude record from the ashy slopes of the sacred volcano Llullaillaco to the icy crags and crevasses of the Karakoram, Daniel Light takes a panoramic journey through the storied history of mountaineering before Everest. Joining a cast of colourful characters, The White Ladder offers an ode to mountains&’ capacity to enthral, and the fundamental human drive to climb higher and higher. *** 'Thrilling... Daniel Light delivers stories that are poetic, spiritual and astonishing in their courage and drive.' Sonia Purnell, author of A Woman of No Importance &‘Daniel Light guides the reader through a mountain-scape that stretches from the Alps to the Himalaya... with the sure footing of a serious student of climbing history, and the élan of a skilled storyteller. This is a book to curl up with on a cold dark night in a comfortable armchair before a bright fire.&’ Maurice Isserman, co-author of Fallen Giants &‘Wonderful… a massive story with an enormous cast of characters, among them some of the most compelling figures of mountaineering history.&’ Wade Davis, author of Into the Silence
The White Ladder: Triumph and Tragedy at the Dawn of Mountaineering
by Daniel LightA sweeping history of mountaineering before Everest, and the epic human quest to reach the highest places on Earth. Whether in the name of conquest, science, or the divine, humans across the centuries have had myriad reasons to climb mountains. From the smoking volcanoes of South America to the great snowy ranges of the Himalaya, The White Ladder follows a cast of extraordinary characters—conquistadors and captains, scientists and surveyors, alpinists and adventurers—up the slopes of the world’s highest peaks. A masterpiece of edge-of-your-seat narrative history, The White Ladder describes the epic rise of mountaineering’s world altitude record, a story of ever higher climbs by figures great and small of mountaineering during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Daniel Light describes how climbers used revolutionary techniques to launch themselves into the most forbidding conditions. The expeditions illustrate evolutionary changes in climbing style, the advancement of high-altitude science, and the development of mountain climbing as an industry. Throughout, Light pays special attention to Incan climbers, Gurkha guides, Sherpa mountaineers, and many others who are often overlooked. He offers nuanced new perspectives on familiar characters, for example, calling out the famed female pioneer Fanny Bullock Workman for racism and for abusing her porters. He presents a complex new portrait of notorious occultist Aleister Crowley, who was at once a ruthless expedition leader, but also an innovative strategist who could read mountains and would risk everything trying to climb them. Light also makes bold new arguments about classic debates, for example, arguing that the much-maligned Jewish climber Oscar Eckenstein shaped mountaineering as we know it today. A story of innovation, invention, and determination, The White Ladder immerses readers in a fascinating historical period. With their breathtaking exploits, these climbers laid the groundwork for the historic ascents of K2 and Everest that came after—and heightened the spectacle of their dangerous sport.
The White Light of Grace: Reflections On The Life Of A Spiritual Intuitive
by Lillie LeonardiEver since she was a little girl, Lillie Leonardi could hear the whispers of angels. No one else could hear or see them, but deep down she knew they were real, and that they would help guide and protect her. She spent years pushing these visions aside, but on September 11, 2001, her life, like so many others, was forever changed. After witnessing a legion of angels at the Flight 93 crash site, she experienced an incredible transformation that opened her up to the magic, mystery, and miracles of life. And she gained the courage to share her story with others . . .In this decades-spanning memoir, Lillie reveals how she first uncovered her intuitive gifts. She explains how her ancestry, her strict Catholic upbringing, and other significant events impacted her spiritual evolution and faith in God. From understanding love and marriage, becoming a mother, and finding her true purpose and vocation in law enforcement to confronting separation, death, and loss, Lillie describes times in her life when she called on the angels for blessings, and others when she learned how to rely on herself. Throughout her journey of self-discovery, her realizations about forgiveness, self-acceptance, and healing unfold and offer divine inspiration for readers.
The White Lion of Norfolk
by Lynda M. AndrewsFrom &“an outstanding storyteller,&” a historical novel about the duke of Norfolk, who courted the favor of King Henry VIII in his quest for power (Woman&’s Weekly).The White Lion of Norfolk is the story of Thomas Howard, Third Duke of Norfolk: a ruthless, unscrupulous man willing even to use his two nieces, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, as pawns to curry political favour.Amidst the pomp and pageantry of the Royal Court, Howard climbs the greasy pole of ambition, remaining totally subservient to his master, King Henry VIII. His devotion places him at odds with his wife, the daughter of the Duke of Buckingham, who was put to death by the King. It pits him as rival and ally to such men as Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, and leads him perilously close to the unsavoury death many feel his savage cruelty deserves.But will he live to see his great niece, Elizabeth Tudor, become Queen?
The White Masai
by Corinne HofmannCorinne Hofmann falls in love with a Masai warrior while on holiday with her boyfriend in Kenya. After overcoming all sorts of obstacles, she moves into a tiny shack with him and his mother in his village, and spends four years in Kenya. Slowly but surely the dream starts to crumble until she flees back home with her baby daughter born out of the seemingly indestructible love between a white European woman and a Masai. This is a major feature film to be released in the UK 2006.
The White Mosque: A Memoir
by Sofia SamatarWinner of the Bernard J. Brommel Award for Biography & Memoir (Midland Authors Book Award)Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book AwardA historical tapestry of border-crossing travelers, of students, wanderers, martyrs and invaders, The White Mosque is a memoiristic, prismatic record of a journey through Uzbekistan and of the strange shifts, encounters, and accidents that combine to create an identityIn the late nineteenth century, a group of German-speaking Mennonites traveled from Russia into Central Asia, where their charismatic leader predicted Christ would return.Over a century later, Sofia Samatar joins a tour following their path, fascinated not by the hardships of their journey, but by its aftermath: the establishment of a small Christian village in the Muslim Khanate of Khiva. Named Ak Metchet, &“The White Mosque,&” after the Mennonites&’ whitewashed church, the village lasted for fifty years.In pursuit of this curious history, Samatar discovers a variety of characters whose lives intersect around the ancient Silk Road, from a fifteenth-century astronomer-king, to an intrepid Swiss woman traveler of the 1930s, to the first Uzbek photographer, and explores such topics as Central Asian cinema, Mennonite martyrs, and Samatar&’s own complex upbringing as the daughter of a Swiss-Mennonite and a Somali-Muslim, raised as a Mennonite of color in America.A secular pilgrimage to a lost village and a near-forgotten history, The White Mosque traces the porous and ever-expanding borders of identity, asking: How do we enter the stories of others? And how, out of the tissue of life, with its weird incidents, buried archives, and startling connections, does a person construct a self?
The White Notebook
by André GideThis work lays bare the early brilliance and philosophical conflicts of André Gide, a towering figure in French literature Nobel Prize–winning writer André Gide lays bare his adolescent psyche in this early work, first conceived and published as part of his novel The Notebooks of André Walter, completed when he was just twenty years old. This profoundly personal work draws heavily on his religious upbringing and private journals to tell the story of a young man who, like the author, pines for his forbidden love, cousin Emmanuelle. This unique portrait of Gide as a young man presents the passions and conflicts, temptations and anguish he would explore in maturity.
The White Notebook
by André GideThis work lays bare the early brilliance and philosophical conflicts of André Gide, a towering figure in French literature Nobel Prize–winning writer André Gide lays bare his adolescent psyche in this early work, first conceived and published as part of his novel The Notebooks of André Walter, completed when he was just twenty years old. This profoundly personal work draws heavily on his religious upbringing and private journals to tell the story of a young man who, like the author, pines for his forbidden love, cousin Emmanuelle. This unique portrait of Gide as a young man presents the passions and conflicts, temptations and anguish he would explore in maturity.
The White Peril: A Family Memoir
by Omo MosesFrom the son of legendary civil rights organizer Robert P. Moses: a brilliant, unflinching memoir about becoming Black in America that interweaves voices from 3 generations of the Moses family"Omo Moses has written an epic reaffirmation of Black diasporic life and a clarion call for justice. The White Peril is destined to be read and cherished.&” —Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction recipient and author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar WaoIn The White Peril, Omo Moses deftly interweaves his own life story with excerpts from both his great-grandfather's sermons and the writings of his father, the civil rights activist Bob Moses. The result is a powerful chorus of voices that spans 3 generations of an African American family, all shining a light on the Black experience, all calling fiercely for racial justice.Omo was born in 1972 in Tanzania, where his parents had fled to escape targeted harassment by the US government. He did not encounter white supremacy until the family moved back to America when he was 4. Here, he learned what it meant to be Black. He came of age in a Black enclave of Cambridge, Massachusetts, became a passionate basketball player, lived in the shadow of his father&’s Civil Rights work but did not feel like a part of it until his college basketball career came to an unceremonious end. Unsure what to do next, he took up his father&’s offer to go with him to Mississippi and teach math to Algebra Project students. Omo didn&’t know it yet, but it was among those young people that he would find his purpose.This book is at once a coming-of-age story, a multigenerational family memoir, an epic father-son road trip, a searing account of the Black male experience, and a work that powerfully revives Rev. Moses&’s demand for liberation.
The White Road
by Edmund De WaalExtraordinary new non-fiction, a gripping blend of history and memoir, by the author of the award-winning and bestselling international sensation, The Hare with Amber Eyes. In The White Road, bestselling author and artist Edmund de Waal gives us an intimate narrative history of his lifelong obsession with porcelain, or "white gold." A potter who has been working with porcelain for more than forty years, de Waal describes how he set out on five journeys to places where porcelain was dreamed about, refined, collected and coveted--and that would help him understand the clay's mysterious allure. From his studio in London, he starts by travelling to three "white hills"--sites in China, Germany and England that are key to porcelain's creation. But his search eventually takes him around the globe and reveals more than a history of cups and figurines; rather, he is forced to confront some of the darkest moments of twentieth-century history. Part memoir, part history, part detective story, The White Road chronicles a global obsession with alchemy, art, wealth, craft and purity. In a sweeping yet intimate style that recalls The Hare with Amber Eyes, de Waal gives us a singular understanding of "the spectrum of porcelain" and the mapping of desire.
The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland
by Hugh ThomsonAn explorer searches the Peruvian Andes for a lost ruin in “a gem of a book [that] transcends the travel writing genre” with fascinating Inca history (Los Angeles Times).A New York Times Notable BookWith the backdrop of the ever-intriguing Andes mountains, Hugh Thomson explores the intoxicating history of the Inca people and their heartland. The author, an acclaimed documentary filmmaker and explorer, expertly weaves accounts of his own discoveries and brushes with danger with the history of those who preceded him—including the explorer Hiram Bingham, who discovered Machu Picchu; the twentieth century South American photographer, Martín Chambi; the poet Pablo Neruda; and the Spanish conquistadores who destroyed the Inca civilization—and the eccentric characters he meets on his travels.Following in the footsteps of the explorers Gene Savoy and Hiram Bingham, Thomson set off into the jungle to find the lost city of Llactapat. This is the story of his journey to discover it via the interconnecting paths the Incas laid across the Andes.
The White Rose: Munich 1942-1943
by Inge SchollA powerful account of the resistance group made up of German students who opposed Nazism, written by the sister of two members who were killed.The White Rose tells the story of Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl, who in 1942 led a small underground organization of German students and professors to oppose the atrocities committed by Hitler and the Nazi Party. They named their group the White Rose, and they distributed leaflets denouncing the Nazi regime. Sophie, Hans, and a third student were caught and executed. Written by Inge Scholl (Han&’s and Sophie&’s sister), The White Rose features letters, diary excerpts, photographs of Hans and Sophie, transcriptions of the leaflets, and accounts of the trial and execution. This is a gripping account of courage and morality.&“A sad and beautiful book; timely and timeless.&” —The Wall Street Journal&“The existence of an organized resistance in Germany during the Third Reich has often been glossed over or ignored . . . Now for the first time this fascinating story, told by the surviving sister of two of the students, is available in accurate and readable English.&” —Library Journal
The White Sharks of Wall Street: Thomas Mellon Evans and the Original Corporate Raiders
by Diana B. HenriquesIt almost seems that Thomas Mellon Evans was a man so far ahead of his contemporaries that he had moved into the shadows before the full force of his business style had dawned on the rest of corporate America. At every step in his career, he was barging in where few would follow -- at first. But follow they did, at last." -- from the Prologue The first in-depth portrait of the life and times of the trailblazing financier Thomas Mellon Evans -- the man who pursued wealth and power in the 1950s with a brash ruthlessness that forever changed the face of corporate America. Long before Michael Milken was using junk bonds to finance corporate takeovers, Thomas Mellon Evans used debt, cash, and the tax code to obtain control of more than eighty American companies. Long before investors began to lobby for "shareholder's rights," Evans was demanding that public companies be run only for their shareholders -- not for their employees, their executives, or their surrounding communities. To some, Evans's merciless style presaged much that is wrong with corporate life today. To others, he intuitively knew what was needed to keep America competitive in the wake of a global war. In The White Sharks of Wall Street, New York Times investigative reporter Diana Henriques provides the first biography of this pivotal figure in American business history. She also portrays the other pioneering corporate raiders of the postwar period, such as Robert Young and Louis Wolfson, and shows how these men learned from one another and advanced one another's takeover tactics. She relates in dramatic detail a number of important early takeover fights -- Wolfson's challenge to Montgomery Ward, Young's move on the New York Central Railroad, the fight for Follansbee Steel -- and shows how they foreshadowed the desperate battle waged by Tom Evans's son, Ned Evans, to keep the British raider Robert Maxwell away from his Macmillan publishing empire during the 1980s. Henriques also reaches beyond the business arena to tally the tragic personal cost of Evans's pursuit of success and to show how the family dynasty shattered when his sons were driven by his own stubbornness and pride to become his rivals. In the end, the battling patriarch faced his youngest son in a poignant battle for control at the Crane Company, the once-famous Chicago plumbing and valve company that Tom Evans had himself seized in a brilliant takeover coup twenty-five years earlier. The White Sharks of Wall Street is a fascinating portrait of an extraordinary man, whose career blazed across the sky and then sank into obscurity -- but not before he had provided the template for how American business would operate for the next four decades.
The White Sniper: Simo Häyhä
by Tapio SaarelainenThe army guide that taught WWII soldiers how to survive in the jungles and swamps of the tropics.During the Second World War, Allied soldiers fought to survive not only encounters with the enemy but the landscape they found themselves in. Being posted to Southeast Asia and the Pacific to fight the Japanese meant soldiers had to learn to survive in the tropics, fighting and living in endless steamy jungle and perilous swamps. In this alien environment, men had to be able to take care of themselves rather than relying on their unit to supply their needs, something that did not come naturally to the many soldiers born and raised in cities.To help them, the British and US armies produced a number of official training manuals and guides explaining how to identify and fight the Japanese and avoid their deadly punji traps, as well as “jungle lore”: How to find and cook plants that were safe to eat Which animals and insects could kill them How to identify and treat tropical illnesses and diseases How to avoid the dangers of polluted water and cannibalsThe Jungle Survival Manual brings together the official manuals and information that enabled the Allies to fight in Burma, Malaya, Thailand, Indochina, Singapore, and the Pacific Islands—and win the war.Includes diagrams and drawings reproduced from the original guides.
The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made
by Flora Miller BiddleUntil Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney opened her studio on Eighth Street in Manhattan in 1914-which evolved into the Whitney Museum almost two decades later-there were few art museums in the United States, let alone galleries, for contemporary artists to exhibit their work. When the mansions of the wealthy cried out for decorative art, they sought it from Europe, then the art capital of the world. It was in her tiny sculptor's studio in Greenwich Village that Whitney began holding exhibitions of contemporary American artists. This remarkable effort by a scion of America's wealthiest family helped to change the way art was cultivated in America. The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made is the story of the high ideals, extraordinary altruism, and great dedication that stood steadfast against inflated egos, big business, and greed. Flora Biddle's sensitive and insightful memoir is a success story of three generations of forceful, indomitable women.