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Stalin and His Times
by Arthur E. AdamsThis biography details Stalin's rise to power and his influence on the development of the Soviet Union.
Foul!: The Connie Hawkins Story
by David WolfThis book is about a professional basketball player, Connie Hawkins, but it is also about American athletics. The hope and despair of the ghetto schoolyard, the cutthroat college recruiting, the camaraderie and dissension in the locker room, the gambling scandals, the blacklists, the legal battles - Hawkins has been through them all. For eight years, the graceful, 6'8" Hawkins was an outcast, playing in tainted obscurity, blacklisted by the NBA. As a frightened teenager, he had made false confessions - under police pressure - and was wrongfully implicated in a fixing scandal. David Wolf's magazine acticle dramatically cleared Hawkins in 1969. Foul! in Connie Hawkin's story, a meticulously documented, remarkably candid biography of one of our greatest athletes. A compelling portrait of a unique and perceptive black man, it is also a behind-the-scenes look at basketball.
The Crown of Mexico: Maximilian and His Empress Carlota
by Joan HaslipEngland had been among the first to recognize Mexico's independence, hoping to find in the former colonies of Spain new markets for her ever-expanding economy. Two loans were floated on the London Stock Exchange, but the bankers demanded such a heavy rate of interest that not more than half the money ever reached the Mexican government. Others followed in England's wake, with France obtaining a substantial share of Mexican commerce. The most feared and hated of the foreign powers, however, was Mexico's North American neighbor, who, between 1837 and 1849, partly through war and partly through acquisition, absorbed over a million and a half square miles of Mexican territory, including the whole of Texas, New Mexico and Southern California.
Laura: The life of Laura ingalls Wilder
by Donald ZochertFrom a little house set deep in the big wood of Wisc., across Indian Territory and into the Dakotas, Laura's family moved westward right along the Frontier. Their true life saga, beloved by countless millions of TV viewers and readers of the best selling LITTLE HOUSE books, is one of spirit and wilderness trails, and bitter-cold winters, personal tragedy. Here, for the first time, and drawing on her own unpublished memories is the fascinating full account of Laura's life-- from her earliest years through her marriage to Almanzo Wilder, the "farmer boy" of her stories.
Women of Ideas: And What Men Have Done to Them
by Dale SpenderThis is a classic reference work and, from beginning to end, a provocative and stimulating read. With characteristic energy, humour and learning, Dale Spender has dug into the hidden past and uncovered shining examples of women's creativity and intellectual prowess which had been suppressed or stolen by men. Men have removed women from literary and historical records and deprived women of the knowledge of their intellectual heritage. Now this lost history of women's thought is set out for all to see.
General Patton: A Soldier's Life
by Stanley P. Hirshson"War is my work and I know I sound sometimes as though I liked it; perhaps I do -- how can I tell? -- but this war hurts everybody. " -- Patton to Henry J. Taylor, 1945. General George S. Patton, Jr. , an inspirational leader and outstanding tactician, has intrigued and confounded his biographers. Now, utilizing untapped archival materials in both the United States and England, government documents, family papers, and oral histories, Stanley P. Hirshson creates the most balanced portrait of Patton ever written. It reveals Patton as a complex soldier capable of brilliant military maneuvers but also of inspiring his troops with fiery speeches that resulted in horrendous acts, such as the massacres of Italian civilians, It explains Patton's belief in a soldiers Valhalla, connects the family's wealth to one of Americas bitterest labor strikes, and disputes the usual interpretation of Patton's relief from command of the Third Army. In investigating this complex man, Hirshson has uncovered surprising material about a series of civilian massacres in Sicily, about the two slapping incidents, about attempts to exploit Patton's diary after his death, and about Patton's relations with top Allied generals. Patton emerges as a soldier of great imagination and courage, and his military campaigns make for edge-of-the-seat reading. All the drama of Patton's life comes alive in this meticulously documented volume.
Blindsided: a Reluctant Memoir
by Richard M. CohenBook Description: Illness came calling when Richard M. Cohen was twenty-five years old. A young television news producer with expectations of a limitless future, his foreboding that his health was not quite right turned into the harsh reality that something was very wrong when diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. For thirty years Cohen has done battle with MS only to be ambushed by two bouts of colon cancer at the end of the millennium. And yet, he has written a hopeful book about celebrating life and coping with chronic illness.
The Dream: Martin Luther King and the Speech That Inspired a Nation
by Drew D. HansenOn August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., electrified the nation when he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In The Dream, Drew D. Hansen explores the fascinating and little-known history of King's legendary address. The Dream insightfully considers how King's speech "has slowly remade the American imagination," and led us closer to King's visionary goal of a redeemed America.
Understanding Thomas Jefferson
by E. M. HallidayRecent biographies of Thomas Jefferson have stressed the sphinx-like puzzles of his character-famous champion of freedom yet lifelong slaveholder, foe of miscegenation yet secret lover of a beautiful slave for 30 years, aristocrat yet fervent advocate of government by the people. E. M. Halliday's absorbing and lucid portrait recognizes these and other puzzles about this great founder, but shows us how understandable they can be in light of his personal and social circumstances. Halliday takes readers deep into Jefferson's private life-exploring his childhood, his literary taste, and his unconventional religious thinking and moral philosophy. Here, too, are his adamant opinions on women, the evolution of his ideas on democracy and freedom of expression, and fresh insights into his relationship with Sally Hemings. A longtime senior editor of American Heritage, E. M. Halliday is the author of a memoir of the poet John Berryman and an account of the Allied invasion of Soviet Russia in 1918-19, as well as a number of articles for The New Yorker.
The Soul's Religion: Cultivating a Profoundly Spiritual Way of Life
by Thomas MooreIn this companion volume to his worldwide bestseller, Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore offers a way of living in this new and confusing century. Drawing on faiths front all over the world, as well as from his own vast well of knowledge and personal experience, Moore shows us how religion can be used to embrace others, rather than exclude them. He helps us become comfortable with our doubts, and reveals a liberating truth. It is in the dark corners of the soul that faith is born.
Thirteen Senses: a Memoir
by Victor Edmundo VillaseñorThirteen Senses continues the exhilarating family saga that began in the widely acclaimed bestseller "Rain of Gold. Thirteen Senses begins with the fiftieth wedding anniversary of the aging former bootlegger Salvador and his elegant wife, Lupe. When asked by a young priest to repeat the sacred ceremonial phrase "to honor and obey," Lupe surprises herself and says. "No, I will not say 'obey.' How dare you! You don't talk to me like this after fifty years of marriage and I now knowing what I know!" After the hilarious shock of Lupe's rejection of the ceremony, the Villasenor family is forced to examine the love that Lupe and Salvador have shared for so many years -- a universal, gut-honest love that will eventually energize and inspire the couple into old age. In "Thirteen Senses, Victor Villasenor brings readers into the Bonnie-and-Clyde-like world of his colorful, immigrant family: a world set in Depression-era Southern California: a harsh world, where only the wily and strong survive, and where love, passion, and commitment to "familia are the sole dependable forces in Lupe's and Salvador's lives. In the unfolding of their story, we see Lupe move beyond her young and naive conventions of femininity to become a vessel of power, strength, courage, and brains.
Cracked: A Doctor's Story
by Drew Pinsky Todd GoldA doctor's story about treating addicts and alcoholics in an inpatient addiction treatment hospital, and how he changes along with his patients.
When Everybody Wore a Hat
by William SteigFrom the book: This is the story of when I was a boy, almost 100 years ago, when fire engines were pulled by horses, boys did not play with girls, kids went to libraries for books, there was no TV, you could see a movie for a nickel, and everybody wore a hat.
Only the Strong Survive: The Odyssey of Allen Iverson
by Larry PlattFilled with exclusive interview material granted through unprecedented access to Allen Iverson, the iconic basketball superstar himself, "Only the Strong Survive" provides an in-depth look at the truth behind this newly minted legend.
Zoya's Story: An Afghan Woman's Struggle for Freedom
by Zoya John Follain Rita CristofariZoya's Story is a young woman's searing account of her clandestine war of resistance against the Taliban and religious fanaticism at the risk of her own life. An epic tale of fear and suffering, courage and hope, Zoya's Story is a powerful testament to the ongoing battle to claim human rights for the women of Afghanistan. Though she is only twenty-three, Zoya has witnessed and endured more tragedy and terror than most people do in a lifetime. Zoya grew up during the wars that ravaged Afghanistan and was robbed of her mother and father when they were murdered by Muslim fundamentalists. Devastated by so much death and destruction, she fled Kabul with her grandmother and started a new life in exile in Pakistan. She joined the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, which challenged the crushing edicts of the Taliban government, and she made dangerous journeys back to her homeland to help the women oppressed by a system that forced them to wear the stifling burqa, condoned public stoning or whipping if they ventured out without a male chaperon, and forbade them from working. Zoya is our guide, our witness to the horrors perpetrated by the Taliban and the Mujahideen "holy warriors" who had defeated the Russian occupiers. She helped to secretly film a public cutting of hands in a Kabul stadium and to organize covert literacy classes, as schooling-branded a "gateway to Hell" -- was forbidden to girls. At an Afghan refugee camp she heard tales of heartrending suffering and worked to provide a future for families who had lost everything. The spotlight focused on Afghanistan after the New York and Washington terrorist attacks highlights the conditions of repression and fear in which Afghan women live and makes Zoya's Story utterly compelling. This is a memoir that speaks louder than the images of devastation and outrage; it is a moving message of optimism as Zoya struggles to bring the plight of Afghan women to the world's attention.
The Mutual Friend
by Frederick BuschThis is an extremely intimate portrait of the last years of Charles Dickens' life, with flashbacks to his earlier years, told through the perspective of several people who were close to him including his personal tour assistant, his wife, his mistress, and a housemaid. Though Dickens cared for these people, their wellbeing was subordinate to the demands of his art and career. He met his responsibilities as a husband, father, friend, and employer, but though he was always perceptive, he was kind one moment and cruel the next, devoted to them one month and repulsed by them the next. In turn, they admired and loved him even through their outrage. The author describes the body and mind, their sexual needs, their addictions, and the horrific manifestations of their decline and death in chilling detail. The novel covers Dickens public readings of his works, the rigors of travel while he was on tour, his life with his family and friends at his country house, his creative process, and his grappling with the knowledge he is dying. The description of his former servant's suffering as a homeless alcoholic, and his death in a pauper's hospital is nightmarish, profound and moving. This is a challenging novel, rich in historic and biographical detail, with multiple personal and universal themes to ponder. This rare book is a literary work of art. There are graphic descriptions of sex, sex organs, violence, physical illness, and death.
Families: A Memoir and a Celebration
by Wyatt CooperPersonal experiences are recounted in a celebration of the family which illuminates the significance of blood relationships.
Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman
by Robert H. FerrellThis book contains the private papers of Harry Truman including letters, memos and diary entries. The editor offers explannatory information when doing so would make the content of the President's writing more clear.
More Havoc
by June Havoc"More Havoc" is the story of June Havoc's long struggle, from vaudeville performer aged 2-1/2, to stardom on the Broadway stage.
The Last Cowboy
by Jane KramerPortrays the life of a man who strives to be "a proper cowboy" despite radical changes which have propelled the Old West into a New Southwest characterized by industrialized agribusiness.<P><P> 'The West that Henry mourned belonged to the Western movie, where the land and the cattle went to their proper guardians and brought a fortune in respect and power. It was a West where the best cowboy got to shoot the meanest outlaw, woo the prettiest schoolteacher, bed her briefly to produce sons, and then ignore her for the finer company of other cowboys - a West as sentimental and as brutal as the people who made a virtue of that curious combination of qualities and called it the American experience.' From the Introduction: Henry Blanton is the 'last cowboy' of Jane Kramer's classic portrait, the failed hero of his own mythology, the man who ends an era for himself. His story - his flawed, funny, and in the end tragic efforts to be a proper cowboy, 'expressin' right' in a world where the range is a feed yard and college boys run ranches from air-conditioned Buicks -is the story of a country coming of age in great promise and greater disappointment. A hundred and fifty miles up the highway from agri-business Amarillo, Henry claimed the extravagant prerogatives of a free man on a horse. He rode his own frontier, decked out in his vigilance and his honour, until the shocking moment when in the person of Henry Blanton the West and the Western had a showdown.<P> Winner of the National Book Award
The Garfield Orbit
by Margaret Leech Harry J. BrownThis biography of President James Garfield was begun by Margaret Leech, who died before the book's completion. Harry Brown, who edited Garfield's extensive diaries, finished the book. Leech's portion is especially rich in personal detail about Garfield's family of origin and his romantic relationships prior to his marriage. Garfield was a highly literate, intensely reflective man who left voluminous letters and diaries, and excerpts from this material bring him to life in this book.
Lads Before the Wind: Adventures in Porpoise Training
by Karen Pryor Konrad LorenzIn this book the reader learns almost as much about human behavior as about porpoise behavior. Starting from scratch, with a report on operant conditioning in one hand and a bucket of fish in the other, Karen Pryor learned to train porpoises, learned to train trainers, and gradually came to be recognized as an international authority on whale and porpoise behavior and training. Lads Before the Wind takes its title from Herman Melville ("They are the lads that always live before the wind. They are accounted a lucky omen"). Karen Pryor draws on her eight years as head trainer at Hawaii's Sea Life Park and Oceanic Institute. Working with entirely new species of whales and porpoises (at least new for training purposes), she and her team pioneered in logical and behavioral research.
The Palace Guard
by Dan Rather Gary Paul GatesAnalysis of the people and events around Nixon's White House and the Watergate scandal
A Book of Dreams
by Peter ReichMemoir of Peter Reich, son of eccentric and controversial psycho-analyst and orgonomist Wilhelm Reich. Peter Reich describes his childhood through a series of dream-like flashbacks. The book focuses on his relationship with his father, the impact of his father's theories and practices on his own development as a person, and the effects of his father's persecution, imprisonment, and death.
Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767-1821
by Robert V. ReminiAndrew Jackson, born in Ireland, went to America and earned the people of America's respect and admiration for his valiant efforts to make America a great country. Even fifteen years after his death, people were willing to vote him as the President.