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Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July
by James A. ColaiacoOn July 5th, 1852, Frederick Douglass, one of the greatest orators of all time, delivered what was arguably the century's most powerful abolition speech. At a time of year where American freedom is celebrated across the nation, Douglass eloquently summoned the country to resolve the contradiction between slavery and the founding principles of our country. In this book, James A. Colaiaco vividly recreates the turbulent historical context of Douglass' speech and delivers a colorful portrait of the country in the turbulent years leading to the civil war. This book provides a fascinating new perspective on a critical time in American history.
The Eight: A Season in the Tradition of Harvard Crew
by Susan Saint SingA fascinating look at the 2008 Harvard Varsity Crew Team and the university's legendary history of accomplished rowers.The Eight is a thrilling, behind-the-scenes look at a group of young men who have given up nearly everything to transform themselves into the best team possible at arguably the world's most venerable rowing institution, Harvard crew. Through a blend of journalistic writing and historical narrative, Saint Sing highlights their struggles and triumphs as she follows them through the spring season of 2008.This exclusive, competitive world is illuminated as never before as the athletes race for the collegiate national championship and one former member achieves a historic first for Harvard: a gold medal at the 2008 Olympic Games.What these men go through physically to earn a seat in the Harvard first eight is just the beginning. The real test of their mettle is the inner athlete called upon to make their dreams a reality in this very tense and dramatic world. Susan Saint Sing's The Eight chronicles the drama of a full season of elite college racing, including the bitter personal struggles and the team's pursuit of excellence.
World War Moo: An Apocalypse Cow Novel (The Apocalypse Cow Novels #2)
by Michael LoganIt began with a cow that just wouldn't die. Yep. That's right. They're still un-dead, and now the disease has spread to humans. The epidemic that transformed Britain's bovine population into a blood-thirsty, brain-grazing, zombie horde...err...zombie herd... is threatening to take over the globe in Michael Logan's World War Moo. And there's not much time left to stop it. All of Great Britain is infected and hungry. The rest of the world has a tough choice to make. Should they nuke the brits right off the map — men, women, children, cows and all — in the biggest genocide in history? Or should they risk global infection in a race against time to find a cure? With hungry zombies attempting to cross borders by plains, trains, boats, and any other form of transport available, it's only a matter of time before the virus gets out. And if it does, there's only one answer. This means war.
Break It Down: Stories (Fsg Classics Ser.)
by Lydia DavisThe thirty-four stories in this seminal collection powerfully display what have become Lydia Davis's trademarks—dexterity, brevity, understatement, and surprise. Although the certainty of her prose suggests a world of almost clinical reason and clarity, her characters show us that life, thought, and language are full of disorder. Break It Down is Davis at her best. In the words of Jonathan Franzen, she is "a magician of self-consciousness."
The Fall of the House of Forbes: The Inside Story of the Collapse of a Media Empire
by Stewart PinkertonForbes: the legendary name in finance journalism. Synonymous with wealth, grand excess, glamour, and fun as well as style, insight, gossip, and hard-nosed reporting, the media empire and the family behind it form a remarkable story that has never been told. Now, in The Fall of the House of Forbes, veteran journalist Stewart Pinkerton reveals the hidden machinations, disastrous decisions, and personal foibles of a century-old dynasty that rose to glittering heights and crashed just as spectacularly.Writing from an insider's perspective and first-hand sources developed over his twenty years as a writer and editor at Forbes, Pinkerton takes us to the ritualized formal lunches inside the mansion-like headquarters at 60 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan; the lavish advertiser parties on board the family yacht, The Highlander; the sybaritic private life of Malcolm Forbes and the family's increasing discomfort with its patriarch; and the glory days of the magazine, with its news-making stories, high-rolling expense accounts, and bar-setting standards for anyone who aspired to wealth and its trappings. But as the media business changed, Forbes was slow to react, and found itself burdened by Malcolm's immense personal expenses, Steve Forbes's bumbling, self-financed presidential campaigns, and the family's hubris and hesitation in the face of reality. A series of devastating business decisions and an internecine struggle for power forced the sale of the Faberge eggs, the vintage toy collection, the homes, the private island, the yacht, and finally the sale of 40% of the company itself to outside investors…a collapse of shocking speed after decades of unsurpassed success.A compelling narrative account of a powerful family's dysfunction, The Fall of the House of Forbes is a parable of capitalism at its best and worst, and a metaphor for the current state of digital turmoil in media.
American Smoke: Journeys to the End of the Light
by Iain SinclairThe visionary writer Iain Sinclair turns his sights to the Beat Generation in America in his most epic journey yet"How best to describe Iain Sinclair?" asks Robert Macfarlane in The Guardian. "A literary mud-larker and tip-picker? A Travelodge tramp (his phrase)? A middle-class dropout with a gift for bullshit (also his phrase)? A toxicologist of the twenty-first-century landscape? A historian of countercultures and occulted pasts? An intemperate WALL-E, compulsively collecting and compacting the city's textual waste? A psycho-geographer (from which term Sinclair has been rowing away ever since he helped launch it into the mainstream)? He's all of these, and more." Now, for the first time, the enigma that is Iain Sinclair lands on American shores for his long-awaited engagement with the memory-filled landscapes of the American Beats and their fellow travelers. A book filled with bad journeys and fated decisions, American Smoke is an epic walk in the footsteps of Malcolm Lowry, Charles Olson, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, and others, heated by obsession (the Old West, volcanoes, Mexico) and enlivened by false memories, broken reports, and strange adventures. With American Smoke, Sinclair confirms his place as the most innovative of our chroniclers of the contemporary.
Letters to a Young Novelist
by Mario Vargas LlosaMario Vargas Llosa condenses a lifetime of writing, reading, and thought into an essential manual for aspiring writers. Drawing on the stories and novels of writers from around the globe-Borges, Bierce, Céline, Cortázar, Faulkner, Kafka, Robbe-Grillet-he lays bare the inner workings of fiction, all the while urging young novelists not to lose touch with the elemental urge to create. Conversational, eloquent, and effortlessly erudite, this little book is destined to be read and re-read by young writers, old writers, would-be writers, and all those with a stake in the world of letters.
Flat Water Tuesday: A Novel
by Ron IrwinThe son of a working-class cabinet maker, Rob Carrey arrives on the prestigious Fenton School's campus with a scholarship to row...and a chip on his shoulder. Generations of austere Fenton men have led the four-man rowing team, commonly known as the God Four, to countless victories—but none more important or renowned than the annual Tuesday afternoon race in April against their rival boarding school, Warwick.Before boats can be launched, Rob must complete months of grueling preparation driven by their captain Connor Payne's vicious competitive nature. Payne is a young man so plagued by family pressure and uwillingness to lose that the lines between dedication and obsession are increasingly blurred. As the Warwick race nears, the stakes steadfastly rise, and tempers and lusts culminate until, finally, no one can prevent the horrible tragedy that ensues.Now, fifteen years later, Rob is an accomplished documentary filmmaker. Returning home from a recent shoot in Africa, he arrives in New York City to clear out his shared apartment and end his heartbreaking relationship with his film editor and girlfriend, Carolyn. But when a phone call from one of the God Four compels him to attend the fifteen-year reunion at Fenton, Rob sees the invitation as an opportunity to confront the past and perhaps even steer his own life in a new direction.Ron Irwin's Flat Water Tuesday shares in the grand tradition of sagas about athletic young men on the brink of greatness, who either embrace their talent or are devastatingly consumed by it. As much about the art of rowing as it is a novel of finding oneself, this is a memorable and deeply moving testament to what it means to train and fight for both love and victory, in sport and in life.
Laughing on the Outside: The Life of John Candy
by Martin KnelmanFunny and gentle, John Candy was loved by millions of movie fans for playing true-to-life characters. Whether as the irrepressible bon vivant in Splash, the misunderstood slob in Uncle Buck, or the generous lonely salesman in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, John Candy struck a perfect balance between self-deprecating humor and irresistible, emotional warmth. But behind the scenes, beneath the booming laughter, award-winning journalist Martin Knelman in Laughing on the Outside paints a compassionate portrait of John Candy--a man blessed by comic genius and goodness of heart who was ultimately and sadly undermined by self-doubt and misguided ambition.
The Love Bomb: And Other Musical Pieces
by James FentonThree Libretti—Ranging In Setting From Ancient Jerusalem To Pre-Apocalyptic London—From An Acclaimed PoetThis volume of libretti marks new work—and new terrain—for James Fenton. Commissioned by companies in New York and England, these musical pieces make the most of the poet's poignant, witty, and characteristically lyrical verse. Whether evoking modern-day London on the edge of apocalypse in The Love Bomb, a timeless land beyond the moon in this version of Salman Rushdie's children's novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories, or ancient Jerusalem in his stirring oratorio The Fall of Jerusalem, which was composed to mark the millennium, Fenton's lucid storytelling and stylish wordplay bring these pieces vividly to life—with equal power in performance or on the page.Haroun and the Sea of Stories was commissioned by the New York City Opera and had its premiere at Lincoln Center in September 2003."[James Fenton] writes as no one else dares to--with clarity, wit, and the simplest of rhymes."--Voice Literary Supplement
American Nightmare: The History of Jim Crow
by Jerrold M. PackardFor a hundred years after the end of the Civil War, a quarter of all Americans lived under a system of legalized segregation called Jim Crow. Together with its rigidly enforced canon of racial "etiquette," these rules governed nearly every aspect of life--and outlined draconian punishments for infractions.The purpose of Jim Crow was to keep African Americans subjugated at a level as close as possible to their former slave status. Exceeding even South Africa's notorious apartheid in the humiliation, degradation, and suffering it brought, Jim Crow left scars on the American psyche that are still felt today. American Nightmare examines and explains Jim Crow from its beginnings to its end: how it came into being, how it was lived, how it was justified, and how, at long last, it was overcome only a few short decades ago. Most importantly, this book reveals how a nation founded on principles of equality and freedom came to enact as law a pervasive system of inequality and virtual slavery.Although America has finally consigned Jim Crow to the historical graveyard, Jerrold Packard shows why it is important that this scourge--and an understanding of how it happened--remain alive in the nation's collective memory.
File Under Dead: A Tom And Scott Mystery (Tom & Scott Mysteries #10)
by Mark Richard ZubroAfter years of avoiding volunteer organizations, Chicago high school teacher Tom Mason is finally guilted into volunteering a few hours a week at a local gay services clinic. Since he finds the bitter in-fighting at the organization to be intolerable, and the head of the clinic to be downright poisonous, Tom does his hours on early Saturday morning before anyone else arrives and avoids most of the office politics. But his quiet Saturday goes quickly awry when two gay teens, in a particularly difficult situation, seek him out for counseling early to avoid being seen by anyone else. After they leave, Tom decides to tidy up the cramped, disordered office and file some of the tettering piles that are practically everywhere. Filing turns out to be a surprisingly gruesome task, however, when in one of the filing cabinet drawers Tom finds the severed head of the director of the clinic. The director, called Snarly Bitch behind his back because of his unpleasant demeanor, had a particularly long enemies' list and Tom himself is not particularly choked up about his untimely demise. But with a long suspect list, a fairly indifferent police force, and the welfare of some of the clinic's youthful charges on the line, Tom himself must sort out the murder before an innocent takes the fall for this very unusual crime.
Forecast: The Surprising—and Immediate—Consequences of Climate Change
by Stephan FarisA vivid and illuminating portrayal of the surprising ways that climate change will affect the world in the near future—politically, economically, and culturallyWhile reporting just outside of Darfur, Stephan Faris discovered that climate change was at the root of that conflict, and began to wonder what current and impending—and largely unanticipated—crises such changes have in store for the world. Forecast provides the answers.Global warming will spur the spread of many diseases. Italy has already experienced its first climate-change epidemic of a tropical disease, and malaria is gaining ground in Africa. The warming world will shift huge populations and potentially redraw political alliances around the globe, driving environmentalists into the hands of anti-immigrant groups. America's coasts are already more difficult places to live as increasing insurance rates make the Gulf Coast and other gorgeous spots prohibitively expensive. Crops will fail in previously lush places and thrive in some formerly barren zones, altering huge industries and remaking traditions. Water scarcity in India and Pakistan have the potential to inflame the conflict in Kashmir to unprecedented levels and draw the United States into the troubles there, and elsewhere.Told through the narratives of current, past, and future events, the result of astonishingly wide travel and reporting, Forecast is a powerful, gracefully written, eye-opening account of this most urgent issue and how it has altered and will alter our world.
Never Throw Rice at a Pisces: The Bride's Astrology Guide to Planning Your Wedding, Choosing Your Honeymoon, and Loving Every Second of It, No Matter What Your Sign
by Stacey WolfSimply because no two brides (or astrological signs) are ever the same. . . .Congratulations, bride-to-be! You're newly engaged, you've flashed your ring to all your neighbors, and you've called all your friends and family with the exciting news—so what do you do next? Read your horoscope, of course! You've been following the stars ever since you can remember, and now you can use astrology as a tool to plan the biggest day of your life! Never Throw Rice at a Pisces helps you use the powers of your astrological sign to make your wedding relaxed, romantic, and magically memorable. Astrologer Stacey Wolf gives smart, easy-to-use sign-specific advice on topics such as:• Vows to inspire a Scorpio bride and Cancer groom• How to talk a headstrong Aries groom into just about anything• The perfect cake for a whimsical Gemini bride• A heavenly honeymoon for an Aquarius/Libra couple• What a Sagittarius bride should avoid for a stress-free weddingPeppered with fun sidebars, stories from other astrobrides, and quick tips based on the twelve zodiac signs to solve last-minute dilemmas, Never Throw Rice at a Pisces will help you plan the perfect wedding and honeymoon you were born to have!
Marine One
by James W. HustonThe president rushes across the South Lawn through a pounding thunderstorm to Marine One to fly to Camp David late at night. His advisers plead with him not to fly, but he insists. He has arranged a meeting that only three people in his administration know about. After fighting its way through the brutal thunderstorm on the way to Camp David, Marine One crashes into a ravine in Maryland, killing all aboard. The government blames the European manufacturer of the helicopter and accuses them of killing the president. Senate Investigations and Justice Department accusations multiply as Mike Nolan, a Marine Corps reserve helicopter pilot and trial attorney in civilian life, is hired to defend the company from the criminal investigations, then from a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the most notorious lawyer in America on behalf of the First Lady. Nolan knows that to prevail in the firestorm against his client, he has to find out what really caused Marine One to crash, and why the president threw caution aside to go to a meeting no one seems to know about. To clear his client, Nolan must win the highest-profile trial of the last hundred years with very little working for him, and everything working against him. Marine One expertly mixes political intrigue with courtroom drama and fast-paced action in the most exciting thriller of the year.
The Beatles from A to Zed: An Alphabetical Mystery Tour
by Peter AsherA legendary record producer and performer takes readers on an alphabetical journey of insights into the music of the Beatles and individual reminiscences of John, Paul, George, and Ringo.Peter Asher met the Beatles in the spring of 1963, the start of a lifelong association with the band and its members. He had a front-row seat as they elevated pop music into an art form, and he was present at the creation of some of the most iconic music of our times.Asher is also a talented musician in his own right, with a great ear for what was new and fresh. Once, when Paul McCartney wrote a song that John Lennon didn’t think was right for the Beatles, Asher asked if he could record it. “A World Without Love” became a global No. 1 hit for his duo, Peter & Gordon. A few years later Asher was asked by Paul McCartney to help start Apple Records; the first artist Asher discovered and signed up was a young American singer-songwriter named James Taylor. Before long he would be not only managing and producing Taylor but also (having left Apple and moved to Los Angeles) working with Linda Ronstadt, Neil Diamond, Robin Williams, Joni Mitchell, and Cher, among others. The Beatles from A to Zed grows out of his popular radio program “From Me to You” on SiriusXM's The Beatles Channel, where he shares memories and insights about the Fab Four and their music. Here he weaves his reflections into a whimsical alphabetical journey that focuses not only on songs whose titles start with each letter, but also on recurrent themes in the Beatles’ music, the instruments they played, the innovations they pioneered, the artists who influenced them, the key people in their lives, and the cultural events of the time.Few can match Peter Asher for his fresh and personal perspective on the Beatles. And no one is a more congenial and entertaining guide to their music.
Dancing Backwards: A Novel
by Salley VickersViolet Hetherington has taken the rash step of joining a transatlantic cruise to New York to visit Edwin, an old friend. As she makes the six-day crossing, she relives the traumatic events that led to her losing Edwin's friendship and abandoning her career as a poet for the safety of marriage and domesticity. Despite her natural reserve, she meets a rich variety of passengers traveling with her, who affect her understanding of her own past. Most significant, she meets Dino, the dancing host, whose motives in befriending Vi are shady but who teaches her to ballroom dance and inadvertently helps her to recover from her past.Moving between the late sixties and the present day, Dancing Backwards is written with the lightness of touch and psychological insight that characterize Salley Vickers's acclaimed work. This bittersweet novel is subtle, poignant, and wonderfully entertaining.
The Depths of the Sea: A Novel
by Jamie MetzlIt's 1979 and Morgan O'Reilly, a dispirited CIA desk officer, is desperately trying to bury his memories. Sent to Cambodia as a Marine and then as a CIA operative during the Vietnam War, he had been given the unlikely task of pulling together a secret spy unit of orphaned street children. At the end of the war, he was only able to get one child out of the country, his surrogate son, Sophal. Years later, Sophal, now a CIA agent, disappears on a secret mission in the Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand. Tom Dillon, the dashing young superstar of the White House foreign policy staff, asks O'Reilly to find Sophal and bring him home. O'Reilly's search takes him deeper and deeper into the politics of the Thai-Cambodian border and finally into the deadly Khmer Rouge zone - a place where all foreigners are forbidden from entering and where cruelty and death are omnipresent. Filled with the fascinating workings of the refugee camps, the life or death politics of Washington, DC, and the inner workings of the personalities that are drawn to such extreme circumstances, Jamie Metzl's The Depths of the Sea is a thriller that both entertains and educates.
Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age
by Susan NeimanA wry and witty meditation on modernity's obsession with youth and its denigration of maturityIn Why Grow Up? the philosopher Susan Neiman asks not just why one should grow up but how. In making her case she draws chiefly from the thought of Kant and Rousseau, who articulated very different theories on the proper way to "come of age." But these thinkers complement each other in seeking a "path between mindlessly accepting everything you're told and mindlessly rejecting it," and in learning to live without despair in a world marked by painful realities and uncertainties. Neiman challenges both those who dogmatically privilege innocence and those who see youth as weakness. Her chief opponents are those who equate maturity with cynicism. "In our day it is more common to meet people who are stuck in the mire of adolescence. The world turns out not to reflect the idea and ideals they had for it? So much the worse for ideals." To move beyond these immature positions, Neiman writes, is not simply to lapse into quiet resignation but to learn to take joy and satisfaction in what can be done and known, and to face rather than feel defeated by our inevitable limits.
The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and His Masterpiece
by Eric NisensonFrom the moment it was recorded more than 40 years ago, Miles Davis's Kind of Blue was hailed as a jazz classic. To this day it remains the bestselling jazz album of all time, embraced by fans of all musical genres. The album represented a true watershed moment in jazz history, and helped to usher in the first great jazz revolution since bebop.The Making of Kind of Blue is an exhaustively researched examination of how this masterpiece was born. Recorded with pianist Bill Evans, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, composer/theorist George Russell and Miles himself, the album represented a fortuitous conflation of some of the real giants of the jazz world, at a time when they were at the top of their musical game. The end result was a recording that would forever change the face of American music.Through extensive interviews and access to rare recordings Nisenson pieced together the whole story of this miraculous session, laying bare the genius of Miles Davis, other musicians, and the heart of jazz itself.
Diana: The Goddess Who Hunts Alone
by Carlos FuentesOn New Year's Eve in 1969, a novelist in his forties meets the beautiful movie actress Diana Soren at a party and is fascinated by her oddly elusive charm. But in this novel from Carlos Fuentes, his infatuation turns into doomed pursuit as the fleeting object of his desire spurns him, and he is forced to reconsider the foundations of his life as a writer.
In My Life: The Brian Epstein Story
by Debbie GellerWithout the determination, magnetism, vision, good manners, respectable clothes and financial security of Brian Epstein, no one would ever have heard of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. In Liverpool, in December 1961, Brian Epstein met the Beatles in his small office and signed a management deal. The rest may be history, but it's a history that Epstein created, along with a blueprint for all pop groups since.Out of the public eye, Epstein was flamboyant and charismatic. He drank, gambled compulsively and took drugs to excess. But people remember his wit, charm and capacity to inspire affection and loyalty. That's when he wasn't depressed, even suicidal. Epstein was Jewish in a society filled with anti-Semitism. He was homosexual at a time when it was a crime to be gay, and from his teenage days to the end of his life he suffered arrests, beatings and blackmail--all of which had to be kept secret.In In My Life: The Brian Epstein Story, Debbie Geller tells the story of Epstein's complicated life through the reminiscences of his friends and family. Based on dozens of interviews--with Paul McCartney, George Martin and Marianne Faithfull, among others--plus many of Epstein's personal diaries, this book uncovers the truth behind the enigmatic young man who unintentionally caused a cultural revolution--and in the process destroyed himself.
Shadow of an Angel (Augusta Goodnight Mysteries #3)
by Mignon F. BallardAfter the sudden death of her husband, Minda Hobbs returns to Angel Heights, S.C., the home of her forebears, to seek peace and purpose in her life. Instead, she finds her n'er-do-well cousin Otto as cold and stiff as yesterday's grits in the ladies' room at the historic Minerva Academy.Shocked by her cousin's murder and still grieving over the loss of her husband, Minda has mixed emotions when she's greeted by her guardian angel, Augusta Goodnight. Shimmering with church window radiance, and smelling of strawberry jam, Augusta is a temp who's come on a double mission-to help Minda solve Otto's murder and to take care of unfinished business from an assignment in 1916.Even though Otto could be unbearable at times, an annoying laugh is hardly cause for murder. Minda's only lead is a tiny gold pin, found wedged in a Minerva Academy bathroom stall, and its connection to a club called the Mystic Six. Together, Minda and Augusta trace the descendents of this secret society, piecing together clues that lead to a special quilt and the mystery behind Cousin Otto's unfortunate demise.
Wicked Hot: A Paranormal Erotic Romance
by Charlene TegliaThe struggle between good and evil is about to get…Wicked HotEdana is a succubus—a breathtakingly beautiful demon who offers men their most decadent fantasy in exchange for their souls. No one can get close to her without being destroyed..until she meets Eli and Dal. Both men are Nephilim, immortal warriors who bind and banish demons. Edana's mission is to arouse their lust and steal their souls before they can destroy her—she never expects to fall in love. Shared by two virile lovers and lost in a world of sensation, Edana begins to fall for one of the warriors, jeopardizing her mission. Only he has power to save her, but first she must give him power over her heart—and her destiny…
Are Numbers Real?: The Uncanny Relationship of Mathematics and the Physical World
by Brian CleggHave you ever wondered what humans did before numbers existed? How they organized their lives, traded goods, or kept track of their treasures? What would your life be like without them?Numbers began as simple representations of everyday things, but mathematics rapidly took on a life of its own, occupying a parallel virtual world. In Are Numbers Real?, Brian Clegg explores the way that math has become more and more detached from reality, and yet despite this is driving the development of modern physics. From devising a new counting system based on goats, through the weird and wonderful mathematics of imaginary numbers and infinity, to the debate over whether mathematics has too much influence on the direction of science, this fascinating and accessible book opens the reader’s eyes to the hidden reality of the strange yet familiar entities that are numbers.