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Home Is Everywhere: The Unbelievably True Story of One Man's Journey to Map America
by Charles L. NovakAs a young man living in rural Kansas in the 1940s, Charles Novak took a job with the federal government—not because he liked the work but because he heard it paid well. That job shaped his life in ways he could never have imagined. As a surveyor for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, Charles was tasked with measuring the unmapped American landscape. Over the years this would take him from being eaten up by mosquitoes in Alaska, to eating steak and lobster on oil rigs in Louisiana. His career became even more adventurous when his family later hit the road with him, making their home in a caravan of trailers as the survey team traversed the nation. The measurements taken by Charles and the survey team eventually would go on to help build today's GPS technology. However, such a contribution was the furthest thing from the minds of Charles and his family as they experienced life on the road during a time of astounding change in American life. From segregated trains, to Cold War military bases, and back to Kansas, Charles's family found that home is more than a place on a map.
Home is the Halifax: An Extraordinary Account of Re-Building a Classic WWII Bomber and Creating the Yorkshire Air Museum to House It
by Ian RobinsonA World War II veteran details wartime life in Yorkshire and his postwar efforts to build a museum and restore a Halifax bomber. Between 1935 and 1945, Yorkshire became home to 41 military airfields, the majority located in the Vale of York. The area was often referred to as a land-based aircraft carrier. At 16, Ian Robinson began working for the Handley Page aircraft manufacturer at their repair depot at Clifton, York. There, Halifax bombers used by 4 Group RAF and 6 Group Royal Canadian Air Force were repaired and test flown. During the Second World War, about 30 squadrons operated from these Yorkshire airfields, and the Book of Remembrance in York Minster records more than 18,000 names of those killed flying from these Yorkshire bases. Postwar, Ian felt aggrieved that little was left commemorating these sacrifices and that little was left of the Halifax bomber. Then in 1983, a small group of aviation enthusiasts got together to create a commemorative museum at Elvington, and Ian joined them. He became a pivotal player in forming the Yorkshire Air Museum and Allied Air Forces Memorial. Yet Ian felt the museum was incomplete without a Halifax. So, starting with a derelict fuselage which was being used as a hen-coop on the Isle of Lewis, he set about gathering all the hundreds of bits needed to reassemble the aircraft. This is Ian&’s account of those 13 extraordinary years before the Friday the 13th was rolled out on Friday, September 13, 1996.
Home is Where You Hang Yourself; or, How To Be a Woman: And Who Needs It?
by Cynthia Hobart LindsayFirst published in 1962, this is a wonderful collection of humorous articles on feminine topics written by actress and stuntwoman-turned-writer Cynthia Hobart Lindsay.“The art of being a woman successfully can be learned neither from life nor from a charm school. It is a quality mysteriously endowed at birth—a magic quality. If it is inherent in you, you are blessed indeed. If it isn’t, you just have to keep trying—harder, and harder—and harder.“Plan your life, organize your time, and if you can’t learn from your own experiences, try to learn from those of others—mine, for instance. There may be a little something useful you can pick up in this “How to” in Womanship; if so, I’m grateful that I’ve contributed to easing your situation while complicating my own.“But as you go on your womanly way, remember, and keep always in mind, the one imperative fact: You Can’t Win.” (Cynthia Hobart Lindsay)
Home/Land: A Memoir of Departure and Return
by Rebecca MeadA moving reflection on the complicated nature of home and homeland, and the heartache and adventure of leaving an adopted country in order to return to your native land—this is a &“winsome memoir of departure and reversal . . . about the way a series of unknowns accrue into a life&” (Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror).When the New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead relocated to her birth city, London, with her family in the summer of 2018, she was both fleeing the political situation in America and seeking to expose her son to a wider world. With a keen sense of what she&’d given up as she left New York, her home of thirty years, she tried to knit herself into the fabric of a changed London. The move raised poignant questions about place: What does it mean to leave the place you have adopted as home and country? And what is the value and cost of uprooting yourself? In a deft mix of memoir and reportage, drawing on literature and art, recent and ancient history, and the experience of encounters with individuals, environments, and landscapes in New York City and in England, Mead artfully explores themes of identity, nationality, and inheritance. She recounts her time in the coastal town of Weymouth, where she grew up; her dizzying first years in New York where she broke into journalism; the rich process of establishing a new home for her dual-national son in London. Along the way, she gradually reckons with the complex legacy of her parents. Home/Land is a stirring inquiry into how to be present where we are, while never forgetting where we have been.
Home Made: A Story of Grief, Groceries, Showing Up--and What We Make When We Make Dinner
by Liz HauckA tender and vivid memoir about the radical grace we discover when we consider ourselves bound together in community, and a moving account of one woman&’s attempt to answer the essential question Who are we to one another?&“Liz Hauck reveals fascinating, sobering, and urgent truths about boyhood, inequality, and the power and promise of community.&”—Piper Kerman, New York Times bestselling author of Orange Is the New Black Liz Hauck and her dad had a plan to start a weekly cooking program in a residential home for teenage boys in state care, which was run by the human services agency he co-directed. When her father died before they had a chance to get the project started, Liz decided she would try it without him. She didn&’t know what to expect from volunteering with court-involved youth, but as a high school teacher she knew that teenagers are drawn to food-related activities, and as a daughter, she believed that if she and the kids made even a single dinner together she could check one box off of her father&’s long, unfinished to-do list. This is the story of what happened around the table, and how one dinner became one hundred dinners.&“The kids picked the menus, I bought the groceries,&” Liz writes, &“and we cooked and ate dinner together for two hours a week for nearly three years. Sometimes improvisation in kitchens is disastrous. But sometimes, a combination of elements produces something spectacularly unexpected. I think that&’s why, when we don&’t know what else to do, we feed our neighbors.&” Capturing the clumsy choreography of cooking with other people, this is a sharply observed story about the ways we behave when we are hungry and the conversations that happen at the intersections of flavor and memory, vulnerability and strength, grief and connection.
Home of the Brave: 15 Immigrants Who Shaped U.S. History (Biographies for Kids)
by Brooke KhanDiscover the stories of extraordinary immigrants who changed America—a history book for kids ages 9 to 12 The United States has always been a nation of immigrants—and now you can learn all about the amazing people who've helped shape it, with this history book for kids age 9-12. Home of the Brave: An American History Book for Kids gives you an exciting and engaging look into the lives and contributions of these incredible individuals. From Levi Strauss to Isabel Allende, discover how these dedicated and creative people made their mark—and how you can follow in their footsteps—with this fun history book for kids age 9-12. An American history book for kids age 9-12 should include: 15 inspiring stories—Learn from the experiences of famous American immigrants, including labor activist Mary Harris Jones, architect I. M. Pei, and guitarist Carlos Santana. Multi-page biographies—This history book for kids age 9-12 goes beyond the obvious so you can find all kinds of remarkable facts about the lives of these exceptional Americans. Beyond the book—Want to learn more? Each biography includes suggestions for places to read more, plus super fun (and educational!) activities. Find a role model—or 15 of them!—in this beautifully illustrated history book for kids age 9-12.
A Home on the Rolling Main: A Naval Memoir 1940-1946
by A G DitchamThis WWII memoir of a Royal Navy Lieutenant offers a vivid account of maritime combat throughout the European Theater. From first joining the Royal Navy in 1940 until the end of the campaign against Japan, Tony Ditcham was in the front line of the naval war. He served aboard the battlecruiser HMS Renown in the North Sea and Gibraltar. Serving on destroyers in most of the European theatres, he saw action against S-boats and aircraft off Britain's East Coast, on Arctic convoys to Russia, and eventually in a flotilla screening the Home Fleet. During the Battle of the North Cape, Ditcham was one of the first men to actually see the German battleship Scharnhorst, and he vividly describes watching it sink from his position in the gun director of HMS Scorpion. Later his ship operated off the American beaches during D-Day, where two of her sister ships were sunk. En route to the Pacific Theater, his combat service ended with the surrender of Japan. Written with humor and colorful descriptive power, Ditcham&’s account of his incident-packed career is a classic of naval memoir literature.
The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature
by J. Drew Lanham&“A groundbreaking work about race and the American landscape, and a deep meditation on nature…wise and beautiful.&”—Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk A Foreword Reviews Best Book of the Year and Nautilus Silver Award Winner In me, there is the red of miry clay, the brown of spring floods, the gold of ripening tobacco. All of these hues are me; I am, in the deepest sense, colored. Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina—a place &“easy to pass by on the way somewhere else&”—has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, readers meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be &“the rare bird, the oddity.&” By turns angry, funny, elegiac, and heartbreaking, The Home Place is a meditation on nature and belonging by an ornithologist and professor of ecology, at once a deeply moving memoir and riveting exploration of the contradictions of black identity in the rural South—and in America today. &“When you&’re done with The Home Place, it won&’t be done with you. Its wonders will linger like everything luminous.&”—Star Tribune &“A lyrical story about the power of the wild…synthesizes his own family history, geography, nature, and race into a compelling argument for conservation and resilience.&”—National Geographic
Home Run: Allied Escape and Evasion in World War II
by Howard R. Simkin"This book belongs on every World War II bookshelf, filling in the gaps on what is known about this oft-mentioned but little understood topic of wartime escape and evasion." —The NYMAS ReviewImagine that you are deep behind enemy lines. Your plane was shot down or perhaps you have just escaped from a prisoner of war camp. The enemy is hunting you, seeking to throw you behind barbed wire for the duration of the war. What will you do? Do you have a plan, and the skills, to make it to friendly territory? During World War II, the Germans and Japanese held over 306,000 British and 105,000 U.S. service members as prisoners. The number of successful evaders and escapers, both U.S. and British, exceeded 35,000. Many of these were aircrew, who received intense training because of the high risk that they would have to evade or escape. This book will relate how they fared in enemy hands or managed to remain free. This book provides a complete overview of U.S. and British escape and evasion during World War II. It tells the story of the escape and evasion organizations, the Resistance-operated lines, and the dangers faced by the escapers and the evaders in a logical and compelling narrative. Heroism, betrayal, sacrifice, and cowardice are all elements of this fascinating part of the rich tapestry of World War II.
Home Safe: A Memoir of End-of-Life Care During Covid-19
by Mitchell ConskyDuring a pandemic lockdown full of pyjama dance parties, life talks, and final goodbyes, a family helps a father die with dignity.In April 2020, journalist Mitchell Consky received bad news: his father was diagnosed with a rare and terminal cancer, with less than two months to live. Suddenly, he and his extended family — many of them healthcare workers — were tasked with reconciling the social distancing required by the Covid-19 pandemic with a family-based approach to end-of-life care. The result was a home hospice during the first lockdown. Suspended within the chaos of medication and treatments were dance parties, episodes of Tiger King, and his father’s many deadpan jokes. Leaning into his journalistic intuitions, Mitchell interviewed his father daily, making audio recordings of final talks, emotional goodbyes, and the unexpected laughter that filled his father’s final days. Serving as a catalyst for fatherly affection, these interviews became an opportunity for emotional confession during the slowed-down time of a shuttered world, and reflect how far a family went in making a dying loved one feel safe at home.
Home Sweet Anywhere
by Lynne Martin"This terrific book gives hope to everyone who desires the fun and freedom of dropping everything and hitting the road to foreign ports."--Jeri Sedlar, co-author of Don't Retire, REWIRE! The Sell-Your-House, See-the-World Life! Reunited after thirty-five years and wrestling a serious case of wanderlust, Lynne and Tim Martin decided to sell their house and possessions and live abroad full-time. They've never looked back. With just two suitcases, two computers, and each other, the Martins embark on a global adventure, taking readers from sky-high pyramids in Mexico to Turkish bazaars to learning the contact sport of Italian grocery shopping. But even as they embrace their new home-free lifestyle, the Martins grapple with its challenges, including hilarious language barriers, finding financial stability, and missing the family they left behind. Together, they learn how to live a life--and love--without borders. From glittering Georgian mansions in Ireland to the windswept coasts of Portugal, this euphoric, inspiring memoir is more than a tale of second chances. Home Sweet Anywhere is a road map for anyone who dreams of turning the idea of life abroad into a reality.
Home Sweet Murder: True-crime Thrillers (ID True Crime #2)
by James PattersonAs seen on the Discovery ID TV series Murder is Forever, these two true-crime thrillers follow a lawyer struggling to stop a killer and a detective angling to solve a double homicide.Home Sweet Murder (with Andrew Bourelle): Lawyer Leo Fisher and his wife Sue are a sixty-one-year-old couple enjoying a quiet Sunday dinner at home. Until a man in a suit rings their front door claiming to be an SEC agent. By the end of the evening, two people will be shot, stabbed, and tortured. And two others will fare worse . . . Murder on the Run (with Scott Slaven): The middle-aged housekeeper found dead with a knife in her throat was bad. But the little boy was worse. After a bloody double homicide that puts Omaha, Nebraska, on the map, Detective Derek Mois promises the boy's parents he will catch the killer, no matter how long or far he runs . . .
Home Sweet Road: Finding Love, Making Music & Building a Life One City at a Time
by JohnnyswimThe hugely popular singer/songwriter duo Johnnyswim share their story like never before, showing readers how to find home wherever they are in this visually stunning debut.Foreword by Chip and Joanna Gaines Work and life partners Amanda Sudano Ramirez and Abner Ramirez are known for translating the memories and milestones of their journey, as well as the honest realities of marriage, into their spirited and soulful songs. With this beautifully designed, visually stunning book, the duo shares never-before-told stories, beautiful photos, recipes, poetry, and more from their life in a deeply engaging experience as they travel on tour around the country with their three young kids, capturing the family&’s raw, intimate, and behind-the-scenes life on the road and embracing home no matter where they are.
Home Team: Coaching the Saints and New Orleans Back to Life
by Sean Payton Ellis HenicanA story of a city recovering from disaster of Hurricane Katrina and a team with a history of heartbreak. The inspirational true story tells how one man led a football team-- and a city-- to triumph in Super Bowl XLIV.
The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir Of Syria
by Alia MalekAt the Arab Spring's hopeful start, Alia Malek returned to Damascus to reclaim her grandmother's apartment, which had been lost to her family since Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970. Its loss was central to her parent's decision to make their lives in America. In chronicling the people who lived in the Tahaan building, past and present, Alia portrays the Syrians-the Muslims, Christians, Jews, Armenians, and Kurds-who worked, loved, and suffered in close quarters, mirroring the political shifts in their country. Restoring her family's home as the country comes apart, she learns how to speak the coded language of oppression that exists in a dictatorship, while privately confronting her own fears about Syria's future.The Home That Was Our Country is a deeply researched, personal journey that shines a delicate but piercing light on Syrian history, society, and politics. Teeming with insights, the narrative weaves acute political analysis with a century of intimate family history, ultimately delivering an unforgettable portrait of the Syria that is being erased.
Home Thoughts from the Heart
by Mary KennedyA sense of home, and of love, is what makes life meaningful for me. I invite you to share in a journey through family, friendship and adventure in the pages of this book, and hope that you will find something here that resonates with you. After all, we're all walking this road through life together -- and that's what makes it worthwhile.Love, MaryIcon of Irish broadcasting Mary Kennedy invites us into her world in this beautiful book of words and pictures, sharing stories from her life at home and abroad, along with favourite recipes that have been handed down the generations. From family weddings and gatherings, and her love of gardening, to the ups and downs of life, and finding meaning in the spiritual, Mary describes her inner world with an intimacy and honesty her readers have come to love.Including musings on the challenges -- and benefits -- of getting older, and how life can make you stumble when you least expect it (just so you can experience what it is to rise again!), Home Thoughts from the Heart is a book to be cherished.*Please note that this is an illustrated book and therefore is best viewed on optimal devices*
Home to Roost: And Other Peckings
by Deborah Devonshire'My father would not have wasted time reading -- a trait I have inherited from him.' The unmistakeable voice of Deborah Devonshire, the youngest of the Mitford sisters, rings out of this second volume of her occasional writings. As broad and eclectic as her long and eventful life, the pieces range from a ringside view of John F. Kennedy's inauguration and funeral, a valedictory for her local post office, the 1938 London season, Christmas at Chatsworth and the hazards of shopping for clothes when your eyesight is failing. Affectionate, shrewd and uproariously funny, her no-nonsense, bang-on-the-nail observations are as good as any antidepressant.
Home To Stay: One American Family's Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel
by Daniel GordisIn the summer of 1998, Daniel Gordis and his family moved to Israel from Los Angeles. They planned to be there for a year, but a few months into their stay, Gordis and his wife decided to remain in Jerusalem permanently, confident that their children would be among the first generation of Israelis to grow up in peace. Immediately after arriving in Israel, Daniel had started sending out e-mails about his life to friends and family abroad. These missives—passionate, thoughtful, beautifully written, and informative—began reaching a much broader readership than he’d ever envisioned, eventually being excerpted inThe New York Times Magazineto much acclaim. An edited and finely crafted collection of his original e-mails,Home to Stayis a first-person, immediate account of Israel’s post-Oslo meltdown that cuts through the rhetoric and stridency of most dispatches from that country or from the international media. This is must reading for anyone who wants to get a firsthand, personal view of what it’s like for a family on the front lines of war.
Home Today Gone Tomorrow: Snapshots from 40 Years on the Road
by Mark Proct Nettie ReynoldsForty years of Austin Music and Rock & Roll history. An amazing journey through all that is and was rock and roll rendered in classic and unique in-person photos and narrative from Mark Proct. A glimpse at some of Austin's finest musicians including Willie Nelson, Asleep at the Wheel, Jerry Jeff Walker and Delbert McClinton. Travel through a decade with The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Jimmie Vaughan and 2015 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble. Backstage and on the road with both The arc angels and Storyville.An inside view of life on the road. From Austin's Auditorium Shores to the studios of London. From the Royal Albert Hall to New York's Madison Square Garden. Moments in time captured on film backstage, in the studio and on the tour bus.Never before seen photos capture the journey
Home, Uprooted: Oral Histories of India's Partition
by Devika ChawlaThe Indian Independence Act of 1947 granted India freedom from British rule, signaling the formal end of the British Raj in the subcontinent. This freedom, though, came at a price: partition, the division of the country into India and Pakistan, and the communal riots that followed. These riots resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1 million Hindus and Muslims and the displacement of about 20 million persons on both sides of the border. This watershed socioeconomic–geopolitical moment cast an enduring shadow on India’s relationship with neighboring Pakistan. Presenting a perspective of the middle-class refugees who were forced from their homes, jobs, and lives with the withdrawal of British rule in India, Home, Uprooted delves into the lives of forty-five Partition refugees and their descendants to show how this epochal event continues to shape their lives. Exploring the oral histories of three generations of refugees from India’s Partition—ten Hindu and Sikh families in Delhi, Home, Uprooted melds oral histories with a fresh perspective on current literature to unravel the emergent conceptual nexus of home, travel, and identity in the stories of the participants. Author Devika Chawla argues that the ways in which her participants imagine, recollect, memorialize, or “abandon” home in their everyday narratives give us unique insights into how refugee identities are constituted. These stories reveal how migrations are enacted and what home—in its sense, absence, and presence—can mean for displaced populations. Written in an accessible and experimental style that blends biography, autobiography, essay, and performative writing, Home, Uprooted folds in field narratives with Chawla’s own family history, which was also shaped by the Partition event and her self-propelled migration to North America. In contemplating and living their stories of home, she attempts to show how her own ancestral legacies of Partition displacement bear relief. Home—how we experience it and what it says about the “selves” we come to occupy—is a crucial question of our contemporary moment. Home, Uprooted delivers a unique and poignant perspective on this timely question. This compilation of stories offers an iteration of how diasporic migrations might be enacted and what “home” means to displaced populations.
Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years
by Julie AndrewsIn this follow-up to her critically acclaimed memoir, Home, Julie Andrews shares reflections on her astonishing career, including such classics as Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, and Victor/Victoria. <P><P> In Home, the number one New York Times international bestseller, Julie Andrews recounted her difficult childhood and her emergence as an acclaimed singer and performer on the stage. With this second memoir, Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, Andrews picks up the story with her arrival in Hollywood and her phenomenal rise to fame in her earliest films--Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Andrews describes her years in the film industry -- from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. <P><P>Not only does she discuss her work in now-classic films and her collaborations with giants of cinema and television, she also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world, dealing with the demands of unimaginable success, being a new mother, the end of her first marriage, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards. <P><P>The pair worked together in numerous films, including Victor/Victoria, the gender-bending comedy that garnered multiple Oscar nominations. Cowritten with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, and told with Andrews's trademark charm and candor, Home Work takes us on a rare and intimate journey into an extraordinary life that is funny, heartrending, and inspiring. <P><P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>
Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years
by Julie Andrews'The book is filled with that most distinctive of all her qualities: her voice' The TimesHome Work, the second instalment of Julie Andrews' internationally bestselling memoirs, begins with her arrival in Hollywood to make her screen debut in Walt Disney's Mary Poppins. It was closely followed by The Sound of Music, and the beginning of a movie career that would make her an icon to millions all over the world.With her trademark charm and candour, Julie reveals behind-the-scenes details and reflections on her impressive body of work - from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. She shares her professional experiences and collaborations with giants of cinema and television, and also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world. This included dealing with unimaginable public scrutiny, being a new mother, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards. The pair worked together in numerous films, including 10, S.O.B and Victor/Victoria.Home Work takes us on a rare and intimate journey into a remarkable life that is funny, heart-breaking and inspiring.
Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years
by Julie Andrews'Home Work is written with a warm heart and a generous spirit ... an honest attempt to make sense of an often chaotic life' SUNDAY EPXRESS'The book is filled with that most distinctive of all her qualities: her voice ... Mary Poppins may appear only briefly here, but her spirit is alive and well' THE TIMESIn this follow-up to her critically acclaimed and bestselling memoir Home, the enchanting Julie Andrews picks up her story with her arrival in Hollywood, sharing the career highlights, personal experiences and reflections behind her astonishing career, including such classics as Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, Victor/Victoria and many others.In Home, Julie Andrews recounted her difficult childhood and her emergence as an acclaimed singer and performer on the stage. In her new memoir, Julie picks up the story with her arrival in Hollywood and her astonishing rise to fame as two of her early films -Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music- brought her instant and enormous success, including an Oscar. It was the beginning of a career that would make Julie Andrews an icon to millions the world over. In Home Work, Julie describes her years in Hollywood - from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. Not only does she detail her work in now-classic films and her collaborations with giants of cinema and television; she also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world, dealing with the demands of unimaginable success, being a new mother, moving on from her first marriage, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards. The pair worked together in numerous films, culminating in Victor/Victoria, the gender-bending comedy that garnered multiple Oscar nominations. Told with her trademark charm and candour, Julie Andrews takes us on a rare and intimate journey into an astonishing life that is funny, heartbreaking and inspiring.
Homeboy Came to Orange: A Story of People's Power
by Mindy Thompson Fullilove Coleman A. Young Dominic T. Moulden Molly Rose Kaufman Ernest ThompsonThe story of a union organizer who found a second career in community organizing and helped a Jim Crow city become a better place. Ernest Thompson dedicated his life to organizing the powerless. This lively, illustrated personal narrative of his work shows the great contribution that people’s coalitions can make to the struggle for equality and freedom. Thompson cut his teeth organizing one of the great industrial unions, the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America, and brought his organizing skills and commitment to coalition building to Orange, New Jersey. He built a strong organization and skillfully led fights for school desegregation, black political representation, and strong government in a city he initially thought of as a “dirty Jim Crow town going nowhere.” Thompson came to love the City of Orange and its caring citizens, seeing in its struggles a microcosm of America. This story of people’s power is meant for all who struggle for human rights, economic opportunity, decent housing, effective education, and a chance for children to have a better life. Ernest Thompson (1906-1971) grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, on a farm that had been given to his family at the end of the Civil War. The family was very poor and oppressed by racist practices. Thompson was determined to get away and to obtain power. He migrated to Jersey City, where he became part of the union organizing movement that built the Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO). He became the first African American to hold a fulltime organizing position with his union, the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). He eventually headed UE’s innovative Fair Employment Practices program and fought for equal rights and pay for women and minority workers. Thompson also helped build the National Negro Labor Council, 1951-1956, and served as its director of organizing. In 1956, under the onslaught of the McCarthy era, UE was split in two, and Thompson lost his job. His wife, Margaret Thompson, brought the local school segregation to his attention. Ernie “Home” Thompson organized to desegregate the regional schools, building strong coalitions and political power for the black community that ultimately served all the people of Orange.
Homebush Boy: A Memoir
by Thomas KeneallyIn this vivacious memoir, Thomas Keneally conjures up his youthful self at a pivotal period in his life - as a red-haired teenager who idolised Gerald Manley Hopkins, had visions of being a sporting hero, and dreamed of winning the heart of the alluring Bernadette Curran. The one role he did not see himself playing was priest, despite the encouragement of the Brothers at his Catholic school - until Bernadette announced her intention of becoming a nun. Drawing an affectionate portrait of the people who inspired and influenced him, Keneally beautifully captures the agonies and the ecstacies of adolescence.