- Table View
- List View
Old Abe: A Novel
by John CribbOld Abe, the sweeping historical novel from New York Times bestselling author John Cribb, brings America&’s greatest president to life the way no other book has before.Old Abe is the story of the last five years of Abraham Lincoln&’s life, the most cataclysmic years in American history. We are at Lincoln&’s side on every page as he presses forward amid disaster and fights to save the country. Beginning in the spring of 1860, the story follows Lincoln through his election and the calamity of the Civil War. During the war, he walks bloody battlefields in the North and the South. He peers down the Potomac River with a spyglass amid terrifying reports of approaching Confederate gunboats. Death stalks him: one summer evening, a would-be assassin fires a shot at him, and the bullet passes through his hat. At the White House, he weeps over the body of Willie, his second son to die in childhood. As he tries desperately to hold the Union together, he searches for a general who will fight and finds him at last in Ulysses S. Grant. Amid national and personal tragedy, he struggles to find meaning in the Civil War and bring freedom to Southern slaves. Central to this biographical novel is a love story—the story of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln&’s sometimes stormy yet devoted marriage. Mary&’s strong will and ambition for her husband have helped drive him to the White House. But the presidency takes an awful toll on her, and she grows increasingly frightened and insecure. Lincoln watches helplessly as she becomes emotionally unstable, and he grasps for ways to support her. As Lincoln&’s journey unfolds, Old Abe chronicles the final five, tumultuous years of his life until his eventual assassination at the height of power. Full of epic scenes from American history, such as the Gettysburg Address and the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, it probes the character and spirit of America. Old Abe portrays Lincoln not only as a flesh-and-blood man, but a hero who embodies his country&’s finest ideals, the hero who sets the United States on track to become a great nation.
Old Age: A Beginner's Guide
by Michael Kinsley<P>Vanity Fair columnist Michael Kinsley escorts his fellow Boomers through the door marked "Exit." <P>The notorious baby boomers--the largest age cohort in history--are approaching the end and starting to plan their final moves in the game of life. Now they are asking: What was that all about? Was it about acquiring things or changing the world? Was it about keeping all your marbles? Or is the only thing that counts after you're gone the reputation you leave behind? <P>In this series of essays, Michael Kinsley uses his own battle with Parkinson's disease to unearth answers to questions we are all at some time forced to confront. "Sometimes," he writes, "I feel like a scout from my generation, sent out ahead to experience in my fifties what even the healthiest Boomers are going to experience in their sixties, seventies, or eighties." <P>This surprisingly cheerful book is at once a fresh assessment of a generation and a frequently funny account of one man's journey toward the finish line. "The least misfortune can do to make up for itself is to be interesting," he writes. "Parkinson's disease has fulfilled that obligation." <P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>
Old Angel Midnight: Scattered Poems, The Scripture Of The Golden Eternity, And Old Angel Midnight (City Lights/grey Fox Ser.)
by Jack KerouacA sensory narrative poem capturing the rhythms of the universe and secrets of the subconscious with stunning linguistic dexterity from the author of On the Road A spontaneous writing project in the form of an extended prose poem, this sonorous and spiritually playful book is one of Jack Kerouac&’s most boldly experimental works. Collected from five notebooks dating from 1956 to 1959—a time in which Kerouac was immersed in Buddhist theory—Old Angel Midnight is comprised of sixty-seven short sections unified by an unwavering dedication to sounds, the subconscious, and verbal ingenuity.Friday Afternoon in the Universe, in all directions in & out you got your men women dogs children horses pones tics perts parts pans pools palls pails parturiences and petty Thieveries that turn into heavenly Buddha. Thus begins Kerouac&’s Joycean language dance. From birdsong to dharmic verse, street jargon to French slang, the resonances of the universe come blaring in though the windows, unfurling their meaning as the mind lets go and listens.
Old Before My Time
by Hayley Okines Kerry Okines Alison StokesThe extraordinary life of Britain s 100-year-old teenager. Hayley Okines is like no other 13-year-old schoolgirl. Born with the rare genetic condition progeria, she ages eight times faster than the average person. In medical terms her body is like that of a 100-year-old woman. Yet she faces her condition with immense courage and a refreshing lack of self-pity. In Old Before My Time, Hayley reflects on her unusual life. Share Hayley s excitement as she travels the world meeting her pop heroes Kylie, Girls Aloud and Justin Bieber and her sadness as she loses her best friend to the disease at the age of 11. Now as she passes the age of 13 the average life expectancy for a child with progeria Hayley and her mum Kerry talk frankly about her hopes for the future and her pioneering drug trials in America which could unlock the secrets of ageing for everyone. . .
Old Before My Time
by Hayley OkinesHayley's an extraordinary girl -- Kylie Minogue Hayley just lights up a room. She's so full of happiness -- Lorraine Kelly Hayley Okines is like no other 13-year-old schoolgirl.In Old Before My Time, Hayley and her mum Kerry reflect on her unusual life. Share Hayley's excitement as she travels the world meeting her pop heroes Kylie, Girls Aloud and Justin Bieber and her sadness as she loses her best friend to the disease at the age of 11. Now as she passes the age of 13 - the average life expectancy for a child with progeria - Hayley talks frankly about her hopes for the future and her pioneering drug trials in America which could unlock the secrets of ageing for everyone...
Old Books, Rare Friends: Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion
by Leona Rostenberg Madeline B. SternLouisa May Alcott once wrote that she had taken her pen for a bridegroom. Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern, friends and business partners for fifty years, have in many ways taken up their pens and passion for literature much in the same way. The "Holmes & Watson" of the rare book business, Rostenberg and Stern are renowned for unlocking the hidden secret of Louisa May Alcott's life when they discovered her pseudonym, A.M. Barnard, along with her anonymously published "blood and thunder" stories on subjects like transvestitism, hashish smoking, and feminism.Old Books, Rare Friends describes their mutual passion for books and literary sleuthing as they take us on their earliest European book buying jaunts. Using what they call Finger-spitzengefühl, the art of evaluating antiquarian books by handling, experience, and instinct, we are treated to some of their greatest discoveries amid the mildewed basements of London's booksellers after the Blitz. We experience the thrill of finding one of the earliest known books printed in America between 1617-1619 by the Pilgrim Press and learn about the influential role of publisher-printers from the fifteenth century.Like a precious gem, Old Books, Rare Friends is a book to treasure about the companionship of two rare friends and their shared passion for old books.
Old Boy
by Georgia TreeHer whole life, Georgia' s father has told her she will be the one to write his story. It' s a story in which living is just a game of chance: why did Grant Tree survive when others didn' t? Why did he find love and happiness, and a grown daughter to spill his story to so that she can record the whole beautiful, unlikely mess of it? Told in parallel to Grant' s story is the life of his friend and dealer Brian Geoffrey Chambers, known in the book as Charlie, who was ultimately executed in Malaysia for drug smuggling.
Old Deadwood Days
by Estelline Bennett(from the backover) For roughnecks in search of trouble, Deadwood was the place to go. An outlaw town-its very beginnings as a mining camp violated government treaties with the Sioux-Deadwood soon acquired a reputation that dime novels could hardly exaggerate. It attracted both the great and the gritty. Calamity Jane lived there, Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back there, and Buffalo Bill was an irregular visitor, not to mention Seth Bullock, Mineral Jack, Slippery Sam, Cold Deck Johnny, and Belle Haskell, the best-known madam in town. To reform the town's notorious habits, Federal Judge Granville G. Bennett moved to Deadwood with his family in 1877, and his young daughter, Estelline, grew up with the town. She saw it change from a congeries of horse thieves, claim jumpers, road agents, painted ladies, and slick or shabby gamblers to a middle- class railroad town, a little dazed by its history and success. Her story of the settlement that grew up around Deadwood Gulch remains one of the finest and fullest accounts of the taming of the West.
Old Dog
by Barney BardsleyMuffin was a rescue dog, an ordinary mongrel who joined the Bardsley family in Leeds in 1999. She was three years old, a 'little shipwreck' of a dog who had been badly neglected, undernourished and contained in a high-rise flat for whole of her young life. The family she came into was also under pressure, as the writer's husband Tim was in the middle of a long struggle with cancer and had been told earlier that year that his illness was terminal. Never having previously shown interest in animals, Tim bonded almost instantly with chaotic little Muffin, who became a steadfast companion during his final months. And during the dark days after Tim's death, and when the author's daughter left for university, Muffin became a loyal friend with an uncanny ability to display empathy around times of illness and loss. With Muffin reaching the end of her days, author Barney Bardsley looks back over the eventful years they have shared, to remember the joy and laughter that this loving, soulful creature brought to her family. Her story will strike a chord with anyone who has ever loved, and been loved, by a pet.
Old Forts of the Northwest
by Herbert M. Hart Paul J. HartleBeyond the wide Missouri lay the prairie—“the biggest clearing on the Almighty’s footstool.” And every few hundred miles, holding to the rivers and wooded bottoms, were the outposts of the white civilization—the military forts of the U.S. Army. Father, mother and comforter to the settlers, trading points for the trappers and buffalo hunters, rallying points for the scouts.Awaiting the reader of this sentimental journey into the days of “Boots and Saddles,” are the graphic stories of battles against Indians and boredom. A military man, author Hart has the feel of these men who did the fighting and their places of conflict and refuge. He recounts the Bloody Bozeman outrage, Red Cloud’s War of 1866-68, and the pre-Civil War fights that seasoned lieutenants for the stars of Union and Confederate generals.It is a thrilling experience to read of the forts that opened the West for the stages, river boats and wagon trains...of those that protected the white man from the Indians and others that protected Indians from the whites...of those “hog and hominy” forts that gave solace to settlers who waited for the Indian attacks that never came...of the places called “Hog Ranches” that provided soldiers with entertainment lacking at Army posts...and of those forts George Armstrong Custer called home.With all this there are portraits, in both word and photograph, of the many famous generals who rode this frontier of history: Sherman, Sheridan, Crook, Custer, Harney, Sully, Connor, Mackenzie, Howard, Miles, Terry, Carrington, de Trobriand, Gibbon and Canby.
Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir
by Natalie Goldberg&“Memoir writers, buy this book, put it on your personal altar, or carry it with you as you traverse the deep ruts of your old road.&” —Tom Spanbauer, author of The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon Old Friend from Far Away teaches writers how to tap into their unique memories to tell their story. Twenty years ago Natalie Goldberg&’s classic, Writing Down the Bones, broke new ground in its approach to writing as a practice. Now, Old Friend from Far Away—her first book since Writing Down the Bones to focus solely on writing—reaffirms Goldberg&’s status as a foremost teacher of writing, and completely transforms the practice of writing memoir. To write memoir, we must first know how to remember. Through timed, associative, and meditative exercises, Old Friend from Far Away guides you to the attentive state of thought in which you discover and open forgotten doors of memory. At once a beautifully written celebration of the memoir form, an innovative course full of practical teachings, and a deeply affecting meditation on consciousness, love, life, and death, Old Friend from Far Away welcomes aspiring writers of all levels and encourages them to find their unique voice to tell their stories. Like Writing Down the Bones, it will become an old friend to which readers return again and again.
Old Friends
by Tracy KidderA Pulitzer Prize–winning author&’s &“touching, funny and inspiring&” true story of daily life in a New England nursing home (The New York Times). Ninety-year-old Lou quit school after the eighth grade, worked for the rest of his life, and stayed with the same woman for nearly seventy years. Seventy-two-year-old Joe was chief probation officer in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, holds a law degree, and has faced the death of a son and the raising of a mentally challenged daughter. Now, the two men are roommates in a nursing home. Despite coming from very different backgrounds, the two become close friends. Focusing on these two men as well as introducing us to the other aging residents of Linda Manor in Northampton, Massachusetts, literary journalist Tracy Kidder examines the sorrows and joys of growing older and the universal struggle to find meaning in the face of mortality. From the New York Times–bestselling author and National Book Award–winning author of The Soul of a New Machine, this is an extraordinary look inside an often-hidden world. &“As in his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Soul of a New Machine, House, and the best-selling Among Schoolchildren, Kidder reveals his extraordinary talent as a storyteller by taking the potentially unpalatable subject of life in a nursing home and making it into a highly readable, engrossing account.&” —Library Journal &“Rich detail and true-to-the-ear dialogue let the brave and determined elderly speak for themselves—and for the continually surprising potential of the human spirit.&” —Kirkus Reviews
Old Gods Almost Dead: The 40-year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones
by Stephen DavisThe acclaimed, bestselling rock-and-roll biographer delivers the first complete, unexpurgated history of the world's greatest band. The saga of the Rolling Stones is the central epic in rock mythology. From their debut as the intermission band at London's Marquee Club in 1962 through their latest record-setting Bridges to Babylon world tour, the Rolling Stones have defined a musical genre and experienced godlike adulation, quarrels, addiction, legal traumas, and descents into madness and death_while steadfastly refusing to fade away. Now Stephen Davis, the New York Times bestselling author of Hammer of the Gods and Walk This Way, who has followed the Stones for three decades, presents their whole story, replete with vivid details of the Stones' musical successes and personal excesses. Born into the wartime England of air-raid sirens, bombing raids, and strict rationing, the Rolling Stones came of age in the 1950s, as American blues and pop arrived in Europe. Among London's most ardent blues fans in the early 1960s was a short blond teenage guitar player named Brian Jones, who hooked up with a lorry driver's only son, Charlie Watts, a jazz drummer. At the same time, popular and studious Michael Philip Jagger--who, as a boy, bawled out a phonetic version of "La Bamba" with an eye-popping intensity that scared his parents--began sharing blues records with a primary school classmate, Keith "Ricky" Richards, a shy underachiever, whose idol was Chuck Berry. In 1962 the four young men, joined by Bill Perks (later Wyman) on bass, formed a band rhythm and blues band, which Brian Jones named the "the Rollin' Stones" in honor of the Muddy Waters blues classic. Using the biography of the Rolling Stones as a narrative spine, Old God Almost Dead builds a new, multi-layered version of the Stones' story, locating the band beyond the musical world they dominated and showing how they influenced, and were influenced by, the other artistic movements of their era: the blues revival, Swinging London, the Beats, Bob Dylan's Stones-inspired shift from protest to pop, Pop Art and Andy Warhol's New York, the "Underground" politics of the 1960s, Moroccan energy and European orientalism, Jamaican reggae, the Glam and Punk subcultures, and the technologic advances of the video and digital revolution. At the same time, Old Gods Almost Dead documents the intense backstage lives of the Stones: the feuds, the drugs, the marriages, and the affairs that inspired and informed their songs; and the business of making records and putting on shows. The first new biography of the Rolling Stones since the early 1980s, Old Gods Almost Dead is the most comprehensive book to date, and one of the few to cover all the band's members. It is a celebration of the Rolling Stones as an often courageous, often foolish gang of artists who not only showed us new worlds, but new ways of living in them. It is a saga as raunchily, vibrantly entertaining as the Stones themselves.
Old Hickory's Nephew: The Political and Private Struggles of Andrew Jackson Donelson (Southern Biography Series)
by Mark R. CheathemThough remembered largely by history as Andrew Jackson's nephew, Andrew Jackson Donelson was himself a significant figure in nineteenth-century America: a politician, planter, diplomat, newspaper editor, and vice-presidential candidate. His relationship with his uncle and mentor defined his life, as he struggled to find the political and personal success that he wanted and his uncle thought he deserved. In Old Hickory's Nephew, the first definitive biography of this enigmatic man, Mark R. Cheathem explores both Donelson's political contributions and his complex, tumultuous, and often-overlooked relationship with Andrew Jackson. Born in Sumner County, Tennessee, in 1799, Donelson lost his father only five years later. Andrew Jackson soon became a force in his nephew's life, seeing in his namesake his political protégé. Jackson went so far as to predict that Donelson would one day become president. After attending West Point, Donelson helped establish the Jacksonian wing of the Democratic party and edited a national Democratic newspaper. As a diplomat, he helped bring about the annexation of Texas and, following in his uncle's footsteps, he became the owner of several plantations. On the surface, Donelson was a political and personal success.But few lives are so straightforward. The strong relationship between the uncle and nephew -- defined by the concept of honor that suffused the southern society in which they lived -- quickly frayed when Donelson and his wife defied his uncle during the infamous Peggy Eaton sex scandal of Jackson's first presidential administration. This resulted, Cheathem shows, in a tense relationship, full of distrust and suspicion, between Donelson and Jackson that lasted until the "Hero of New Orleans" died in 1845. Donelson later left the Democratic party in a tiff and joined the American, or Know Nothing, party, which selected him as Millard Fillmore's running mate in 1856. Though Donelson tried to establish himself as his uncle's political successor and legator, his friends and foes alike accused him of trading on his uncle's name to gain political and financial success.The life of Andrew Jackson Donelson illuminates the expectations placed upon young southern men of prominent families as well as the complexities and contradictions in their lives. In this biography, Cheathem awakens interest in a nearly forgotten but nonetheless intriguing figure in American history.
Old Hickory: Andrew Jackson and the American People
by Albert MarrinFrom a childhood steeped in poverty, violence, and patriotic pride, Andrew Jackson rose to the heights of celebrity and power. The first popularly elected president, he won admiration by fighting corruption, championing the common man, shaping the power of the executive office, and preserving the fragile union of the young United States. Yet Jackson's ruthless pursuit of what he believed to be "progress" left indelible stains on the nation's conscience: broken treaties and the Trail of Tears are among Old Hickory's darker legacies. Vivid detail and unflinching analysis characterize Albert Marrin's fascinating rendering of the adventurous life, painful complexity, and continuing controversy that define the Age of Jackson.
Old Hickory:Andrew Jackson and the American People
by Albert MarrinFrom a childhood steeped in poverty, violence, and patriotic pride, Andrew Jackson rose to the heights of celebrity and power. The first popularly elected president, he won admiration by fighting corruption, championing the common man, shaping the power of the executive office, and preserving the fragile union of the young United States. Yet Jackson's ruthless pursuit of what he believed to be "progress" left indelible stains on the nation's conscience: broken treaties and the Trail of Tears are among Old Hickory's darker legacies. Vivid detail and unflinching analysis characterize Albert Marrin's fascinating rendering of the adventurous life, painful complexity, and continuing controversy that define the Age of Jackson.
Old Hickorys War: Andrew Jackson and the Quest for Empire
by David S. Heidler Jeanne T. HeidlerTheir exciting narrative shows how the general's unpredictable behavior and determination to achieve his goals, combined with a timid administration headed by James Monroe, brought the United States to the brink of an international crisis in 1818 and sparked the longest congressional debate of the period.
Old Hoss
by James W. Bennett Donald RaycraftCharles Radbourn won fifty-nine games in 1884, the stuff of legends. In eleven years he racked up over three hundred wins and forty-five hundred innings--mind-blowing numbers. And yet the facts of this Hall of Famer's play are more credible than the stories of his life of alcohol, womanizing, wild brawling, and, later, the ravages of syphilis. Radbourn's plaque at Cooperstown presents an image that is almost caricature: cap set forward, mouth open, mustache pricked up at the ends and thick as his nose is long, nearly. Not Charles, but Ol' Hoss. It is now May 1941, and the invented Chicago Tribune journalist John Trapp is on a train for Bloomington, Illinois, to cover ceremonies honoring the late Radbourn. Trapp meets (the real) baseballer Clark Griffith, who begins to tell him tales of the great pitcher. Our authors then have Trapp craft the first biography of the man, anchoring the details of his life in fact.
Old In Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over
by Nell Irvin PainterA finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, this memoir of one woman's later in life career change is “a smart, funny and compelling case for going after your heart's desires, no matter your age” (Essence).Following her retirement from Princeton University, celebrated historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter surprised everyone in her life by returning to school––in her sixties––to earn a BFA and MFA in painting. In Old in Art School, she travels from her beloved Newark to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; finds meaning in the artists she loves, even as she comes to understand how they may be undervalued; and struggles with the unstable balance between the pursuit of art and the inevitable, sometimes painful demands of a life fully lived.How are women and artists seen and judged by their age, looks, and race? What does it mean when someone says, “You will never be an artist”? Who defines what an artist is and all that goes with such an identity, and how are these ideas tied to our shared conceptions of beauty, value, and difference?Bringing to bear incisive insights from two careers, Painter weaves a frank, funny, and often surprising tale of her move from academia to art in this "glorious achievement––bighearted and critical, insightful and entertaining. This book is a cup of courage for everyone who wants to change their lives" (Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage).
Old In Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over
by Nell PainterFollowing her retirement from Princeton University, celebrated historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter surprised everyone in her life by returning to school--in her sixties--to earn a BFA and MFA in painting. In Old in Art School, she travels from her beloved Newark to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; finds meaning in the artists she loves, even as she comes to understand how they may be undervalued; and struggles with the unstable balance between the pursuit of art and the inevitable, sometimes painful demands of a life fully lived. How are women and artists seen and judged by their age, looks, and race? What does it mean when someone says, "You will never be an artist"? Who defines what "An Artist" is and all that goes with such an identity, and how are these ideas tied to our shared conceptions of beauty, value, and difference? Old in Art School is Nell Painter's ongoing exploration of those crucial questions. Bringing to bear incisive insights from two careers, Painter weaves a frank, funny, and often surprising tale of her move from academia to art.
Old Joliet Prison: When Convicts Wore Stripes (Landmarks)
by Amy Kinzer SteidingerIn 1857, convicts began breaking rock to build the walls of the Illinois State penitentiary at Joliet, the prison that would later confine them. For a century and a half, thousands of men and women were sentenced to do time in this historic, castle-like fortress on Collins Street. Its bakery fed victims of the Great Chicago Fire, and its locks frustrated pickpockets from the world's fair. Even newspaper-selling sensations like the Lambeth Poisoner, the Haymarket Anarchists, the Marcus Train Robbers and Fainting Bertha became numbers once they passed through the gates. Author Amy Steidinger recovers stories of lunatics and lawmen, counterfeiters and call girls, grave robbers and politicians.
Old Man Goya
by Julia BlackburnIn 1792, when he was forty-seven, the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya contracted a serious illness that left him stone deaf. In this extraordinary book, Julia Blackburn follows Goya through the remaining thirty-five years of his life. It was a time of political turmoil, of war, violence, and confusion, and Goya transformed what he saw around him into visionary paintings, drawings, and etchings. These were also years of tenderness for Goya, of intimate relationships with the Duchess of Alba and with Leocadia, his mistress, who accompanied him to the end. Blackburn's singular distinction as a biographer is her uncanny ability to create a kaleidoscope of biography, memoir, history, and meditation--to think herself into another world. In Goya she has found the perfect subject. Visiting the towns Goya frequented, reading the revelatory letters that he wrote for years to a boyhood friend, investigating the subjects he portrayed, Julia Blackburn writes about the elderly painter with the intimacy of an old friend, seeing through his eyes and sharing the silence in his head.With unprecedented immediacy and illumination, Old Man Goya gives us an unparalleled portrait of the artist.