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Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds
by Olivia GentileAfter her four kids were nearly grown and she was about to turn 50, Phoebe Snetsinger was told she had less than a year to live. Snetsinger, a St. Louis housewife and avid backyard birder, decided to spend that year traveling the world in search of birds. As it turned out, her doctors were wrong, but Phoebe's passion had been ignited and she spent the next eighteen years crisscrossing the globe recklessly staking out her quarry. En route she contracted malaria in Zambia, nearly fell to her death in Zaire, and was kidnapped and gang raped on the outskirts of Port Moresby. Yet none of this curbed her enthusiasm. By the time she died in a bus accident while birding in Madagascar in 1999, Phoebe was world renowned and had seen more species-8,500 of the roughly 10,000-than anyone in history. A fascinating portrait of a hobbiest whose obsession contributed to both her success and her demise, Life List brings Phoebe Snetsinger and the wild world of amatuer ornithology to vivid life.
Take Your Shirt Off and Cry: A Memoir of Near-Fame Experiences
by Nancy BalbirerWithout sparing the embarrassing details, Balbirer chronicles the two decades she spent as a struggling actress in the trenches of show business. From the searing purist tutelage of David Mamet at NYU Drama School ("In show business, women who are lucky enough to find employment are asked to do only two things in every role they ever play: take your shirt off and cry") to her bizarre 1 AM Saturday Night Live audition for Lorne Michael, Balbirer recounts her sometimes disappointing, sometimes painful, and always bizarre adventures. Among the stories in Take Your Shirt Off and Cry is "Friendly Fire," which is about Nancy's friendship and eventual falling out with a good friend who went on to become a huge star with a top-rated sitcom. Fame may not have knocked on her door, but it certainly slept on her couch. Take your Shirt Off and Cry is an utterly engaging, deeply personal, and absurdly comic memoir from a one-of-a-kind talent.
City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s
by Edmund WhiteIn the New Y ork of the 1970s, in the wake of Stonewall and in the midst of economic collapse, you might find the likes of Jasper Johns and William Burroughs at the next cocktail party, and you were as likely to be caught arguing Marx at the New York City Ballet as cruising for sex in the warehouses and parked trucks along the Hudson. This is the New York that Edmund White portrays in City Boy: a place of enormous intrigue and artistic tumult. Combining the no-holds-barred confession and yearning of A Boy's Own Story with the easy erudition and sense of place of The Flaneur, this is the story of White's years in 1970s New York, bouncing from intellectual encounters with Susan Sontag and Harold Brodkey to erotic entanglements downtown to the burgeoning gay scene of artists and writers. I t's a moving, candid, brilliant portrait of a time and place, full of encounters with famous names and cultural icons.
Keynes: The Rise, Fall, and Return of the 20th Century's Most Influential Economist
by Peter ClarkeThe ideas of John Maynard Keynes inspired the New Deal and helped rebuild world economies after World War II -and were later dismissed as "depression economics." Then came the great meltdown of 2008. Market forces that the world relied on suddenly failed to self-correct-and Keynes's doctrine of corrective action in an imperfect world became more relevant than ever. Keynes was not a traditional economist: He was a polemicist, iconoclastic public intellectual, peer of the realm, and political operative, as well as an openly homosexual Bohemian who befriended Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster. In Keynes, noted historian Peter Clarke provides a timely and masterful accounting of Keynes's life and work, bringing his genius and skepticism alive for an era fraught with economic difficulties that he surely would have relished solving.
Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock
by Henry AdamsThe drip paintings of Jackson Pollock, trailblazing Abstract Expressionist, appear to be the polar opposite of Thomas Hart Benton's highly figurative Americana. Yet the two men had a close and highly charged relationship dating from Pollock's days as a student under Benton. Pollock's first and only formal training came from Benton, and the older man soon became a surrogate father to Pollock. In true Oedipal fashion, Pollock even fell in love with Benton's wife. Pollock later broke away from his mentor artistically, rocketing to superstardom with his stunning drip compositions. But he never lost touch with Benton or his ideas-in fact, his breakthrough abstractions reveal a strong debt to Benton's teachings. I n an epic story that ranges from the cafés and salons of Gertrude Stein's Paris to the highways of the American West, Henry Adams, acclaimed author of Eakins Revealed, unfolds a poignant personal drama that provides new insights into two of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.
The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon
by John FerlingPerhaps the most revered American of all, George Washington has long been considered a stoic leader who held himself above the fray of political infighting. What has gone unnoticed about the much-researched life of Washington is that he was in fact a consummate politician, as historian John Ferling shows in this revealing and provocative new book. As leader of the Continental Army, Washington's keen political savvy enabled him not only to outwit superior British forces, but--even more challenging--to manage the fractious and intrusive Continental Congress. Despite dire setbacks early in the war, Washington deftly outmaneuvered rival generals and defused dissent from officers below him, ending the war with the status of a national icon. His carefully burnished reputation allowed Washington, as president, to lead the country under the guise of non-partisanship for almost all of his eight years in office. Washington, Ferling argues, was not only one of America's most adroit politicians, he was easily the most successful of all time--so successful, in fact, that he is no longer thought of as having been political.
Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years
by Russ Baker"Shocking in its disclosures, elegantly crafted, and faultlessly measured in its judgments."-Roger Morris, author of Richard Milhous Nixon and Partners in PowerHow did the deeply flawed George W. Bush ascend to the highest office in the nation, what forces abetted his rise, and-perhaps most important-were those forces really vanquished by Obama's election? Award-winning investigative journalist Russ Baker gives us the answers in Family of Secrets, a compelling and startling new take on the Bush dynasty and the shadowy elite that has quietly steered the American republic for the past half century and more. Baker shows how this network of figures in intelligence, the military, oil, and finance enabled-and in turn benefited handsomely from-the Bushes' perch at the highest levels of government. As Baker reveals, this deeply entrenched elite remains in power regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. Family of Secrets offers countless disclosures that challenge the conventional accounts of such central events as the JFK assassination and Watergate. It includes an inside account of George W.'s cynical religious conversion and the untold real background to the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. Baker's narrative is gripping, sobering, and deeply sourced. It will change the way we understand not just the Bush years, but a half century of postwar history-and the present.
Land of the Lost Souls: My Life on the Streets
by Cadillac ManFor the past 16 years, Cadillac Man (so named because he was once hit by an El Dorado and thereafter bore an imprint of its hood ornament) has lived on the streets of New York City. Over those years, he has recorded the facts of his daily life - the harsh realities of surviving on the street, the often tragic encounters with the non-homeless world, the deep bonds with his fellow homeless, and the surprisingly varied realities of life on the outside - writing hundreds of thousands of words in a series of spiral bound notebooks. "My Life in the Streets" distills those journals into a memoir of homeless life that is peopled with indelible characters and packed with gripping stories. In a gritty, poignant, and funny voice, Cadillac narrates his descent into homelessness, the travails and unexpected freedoms of his life, and the story of his love affair with a young runaway, whom he eventually (and tragically) reunites with her family. The United States has 700,000 homeless people; ultimately, Cadillac's story is their story.
Bad Cop: New York's Least Likely Police Officer Tells All
by Paul BaconIn 2001, Paul Bacon was a typical young guy in New York: overeducated, liberal, hip, a little aimless. But when 9/11 came, he was galvanized into action. Feeling that he had to do something to help his fellow man, he raced to Ground Zero, where he stood around for several days before finally realizing that he had no skills that were of any use in a crisis. So he applied to the fire department-and was summarily rejected; he was too old, they said, and he couldn't do any pull-ups. So he decided to take what was available to him: He joined the NYPD.Bad Cop is Bacon's hilarious and thoughtful memoir of his three years among New York's Finest. Beginning with his tenure in the police academy (where he's mostly interested in pursuing the lovely cadet Clarabel - until he finds a surprising new love in the form of his service .357), it follows him through a reluctant apprenticeship and out onto the streets, where the sensitive former graphic designer is transformed into a rough-and-tumble Harlem beat cop. Brimming with great set pieces and amazing characters, this is both a love letter and a send-up of the squad that keeps New York safe - sometimes.
Dirty Dishes: A Restaurateur's Story of Passion, Pain, and Pasta
by Andrew Friedman Pino LuongoEveryone has an opinion about Pino Luongo. To Tony Bourdain, he was the notorious Pino Noir, the shadowy kingpin of a restaurant empire. To Manhattanites, he was either the savior or the scourge of the city's dining scene. To the many fans of his cookbooks, he was the herald of Tuscan cuisine.In Dirty Dishes, Luongo emerges to tell his side of the story. And it's quite a story: After an idyllic (and well-fed) childhood in Tuscany, Luongo came to New York as an actor, and, after quickly washing out, fell into the restaurant business. Within ten years, he had risen from a position as a dishwasher to build a string of the hottest restaurants in the city, including Le Madri, Coco Pazzo, Tuscan Square, and Centolire. For a decade, he was one of the undisputed kings of New York nightlife, building a reputation for brilliance, volatility, and charm - as well as a long list of hilarious and jaw-dropping "Pino stories." But after a flirtation with a corporate chain went sour, he cashiered his restaurants and returned to his first love, the kitchen.Pino has had an incredible life, full of amazing twists and famous names- and he's a born storyteller. Along with his expert coauthor, Andrew Friedman (who helped craft Don't Try This at Home), he's created an immensely readable inside look at the New York restaurant world, in all its Byzantine glory.
30 Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account (The\writer And The City Ser. #Vol. 2)
by Peter CareyAfter living abroad for years, novelist Peter Carey returns home to Sydney and attempts to capture its character with the help of his old friends, drawing the reader into a wild and wonderful journey of discovery and rediscovery as bracing as the southerly buster that sometimes batters Sydney's shores. Famous sights such as Bondi Beach, the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge and the Blue Mountains all take on a strange new intensity when exposed to the penetrating gaze of the author and his friends.
The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the Next Revolution
by Daniel EriksonThere are few international relationships as intimate, as passionate-and as dysfunctional-as that of the United States and Cuba. In The Cuba Wars, Cuba expert Daniel Erikson draws on extensive visits and conversations with both Cuban government officials and opposition leaders-plus key players in Washington and Florida-to offer an unmatched portrait of a small country with outsized importance to Americans and American policy.
Mrs. Woolf and the Servants: An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury
by Alison LightWhen Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One's Own in 1929, she established her reputation as a feminist, and an advocate for unheard voices. But like thousands of other upper-class British women, Woolf relied on live-in domestic servants for the most intimate of daily tasks. That room of Woolf's own was kept clean by a series of cooks and maids throughout her life. In the much-praised Mrs. Woolf and the Servants, Alison Light probes the unspoken inequality of Bloomsbury homes with insight and grace, and provides an entirely new perspective on an essential modern artist.
Résistance: A Woman's Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France
by Barbara Mellor Agnes HumbertAgnès Humbert was an art historian in Paris during the German occupation in 1940. Stirred to action by the atrocities she witnessed, she joined forces with several colleagues to form an organized resistance-very likely the first such group to fight back against the occupation. (In fact, their newsletter, Résistance, gave the French Resistance its name.) In the throes of their struggle for freedom, the members of Humbert's group were betrayed to the Gestapo; Humbert herself was imprisoned. I n immediate, electrifying detail, Humbert describes her resistance against the Nazis, her time in prison, and the horrors she endured in a string of German labor camps, always retaining-in spite of everything-hope for herself, for her friends, and for humanity. Originally published in France in 1946, the book is now translated into English for the first time.
Wreck of the Carl D.: A True Story of Loss, Survival, and Rescue at Sea
by Michael SchumacherOn the night of November 18, 1958, the Bradley, a 623-foot limestone carrier, was torn apart during one of the most violent storms in Lake Michigan history, sinking in less than five minutes. Only four members of the crew survived the wreck, two of whom died battling thirty-foot-high waves that night, while the other two barely survived the freezing cold water. News of the Bradley shocked the residents of Rogers City, Michigan, a hard-scrabble town of 3,800 and home to most of the ship's crew. Rogers City was dependent on the Bradley, and the ship's loss nearly crippled the town. In Wreck of the Carl D., Michael Schumacher reconstructs, in dramatic detail, the tragic accident, the perilous search and rescue mission, and the chilling aftermath for the small Michigan town that many of the victim's families called home. Publishing on the 50th anniversary of the wreck, Schumacher's dramatic follow up to Mighty Fitz is a wonderful addition to the literature of the Great Lakes and maritime history.
Love Junkie: A Memoir
by Rachel ResnickRachel Resnick hits her forties single, broke, depressed, and childless. Looking back over years of failed relationships, she identifies a lifelong addiction to love-an addiction to the unfulfilled fantasy of romantic bliss, marriage, and family, and to a string of sexual relationships that only carry her farther from that dream. As she peels back one raw layer after another, she must eventually confront the painful experiences of her childhood-and the difficult work of recovery that lies ahead. A groundbreaking, compulsively readable memoir, Love Junkie charts Resnick's path from destructive love to intimacy, from despair to hope, and cracks open one of our more elusive and pervasive modern-day addictions.
The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon
by William M. AdlerIn 1914, Joe Hill was convicted of murder in Utah and sentenced to death by firing squad, igniting international controversy. Many believed Hill was innocent, condemned for his association with the Industrial Workers of the World-the radical Wobblies. Now, following four years of intensive investigation, William M. Adler gives us the first full-scale biography of Joe Hill, and presents never before published documentary evidence that comes as close as one can to definitively exonerating him.Joe Hill's gripping tale is set against a brief but electrifying moment in American history, between the century's turn and World War I, when the call for industrial unionism struck a deep chord among disenfranchised workers; when class warfare raged and capitalism was on the run. Hill was the union's preeminent songwriter, and in death, he became organized labor's most venerated martyr, celebrated by Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, and immortalized in the ballad "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night."The Man Who Never Died does justice to Joe Hill's extraordinary life and its controversial end. Drawing on extensive new evidence, Adler deconstructs the case against his subject and argues convincingly for the guilt of another man. Reading like a murder mystery, and set against the background of the raw, turn-of-the-century West, this essential American story will make news and expose the roots of critical contemporary issues.
Unfinished Business: One Man's Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things (Playaway Adult Nonfiction Ser.)
by Lee KravitzAfter losing his job, Lee Kravitz, a workaholic in his midfifties, took stock of his life and realized just how disconnected he had become from the people who mattered most to him. He committed an entire year to reconnecting with them and making amends. Kravitz takes readers on ten transformational journeys, among them repaying a thirty-year-old debt, making a long-overdue condolence call, finding an abandoned relative, and fulfilling a forgotten promise. Along the way, we meet a cast of wonderful characters and travel the globe-to a refugee camp in Kenya, a monastery in California, the desert of southern Iran, a Little League game in upstate New York, and a bar in Kravitz's native Cleveland. In each instance, the act of reaching out opens new paths for both personal and spiritual growth. All of us have unfinished business-the things we should have done but just let slip. Kravitz's story reveals that the things we've avoided are exactly those that have the power to transform, enrich, enlarge, and even complete us. The lesson of the book is one applicable to us all: Be mindful of what is most important, and act on it. The rewards will be immediate and lasting.
Walking Home: A Traveler in the Alaskan Wilderness, a Journey into the Human Heart
by Lynn SchoolerIn the spring of 2007, hard on the heels of the worst winter in the history of Juneau, Alaska, Lynn Schooler finds himself facing the far side of middle age and exhausted by laboring to handcraft a home as his marriage slips away. Seeking solace and escape in nature, he sets out on a solo journey into the Alaskan wilderness, traveling first by small boat across the formidable Gulf of Alaska, then on foot along one of the wildest coastlines in North America. Walking Home is filled with stunning observations of the natural world, and rife with nail-biting adventure as Schooler fords swollen rivers and eludes aggressive grizzlies. But more important, it is a story about finding wholeness-and a sense of humanity-in the wild. His is a solitary journey, but Schooler is never alone; human stories people the landscape-tales of trappers, explorers, marooned sailors, and hermits, as well as the mythology of the region's Tlingit Indians. Alone in the middle of several thousand square miles of wilderness, Schooler conjures the souls of travelers past to learn how the trials of life may be better borne with the help and community of others. Walking Home recalls Jonathan Raban's Passage to Juneau or Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, but with a more successful outcome. With elegance and soul, Schooler creates a conversation between the human and the natural, the past and present, to investigate what it means to be a part of the flow of human history.
Crash Into Me: A Survivor's Search for Justice
by Liz SeccuroIn September 2005, Liz Seccuro's world turned upside down when she received an apology letter from the man who had raped her twenty-two years earlier. The rape, which occurred when she was a seventeen-year-old freshman at the University of Virginia, was reported to the campus police, but their inquiry led nowhere. The man accused of raping her left the university soon after, and Seccuro tried to put the incident behind her, starting a business and a family, but like all survivors of trauma, the memory was never far from the surface.The letter brought it all back. Seccuro bravely began an e-mail correspondence with her rapist to try to understand what happened, and why. As the correspondence continued, Seccuro found the courage to do what should have been done all those years earlier-prosecute him. She began appearing on national television and radio to talk about the case. Several crime dramas and a John Grisham novel, The Associate, were based on her experience. She had found a way to end a terrible story, but once judicial proceedings began, she found that what she thought occurred at that UV A frat party was only the tip of the iceberg. The investigation revealed at least two other assailants, numerous onlookers, and a wall of silence among the fraternity members that persisted two decades later.Liz Seccuro's inspiring, unflinching memoir is about experiencing terrible trauma-and the power of justice to heal.
The Last Fighting Tommy: The Life of Harry Patch, Last Veteran of the Trenches, 1898-2009
by Richard Van Emden Harry PatchHarry Patch, born June 17, 1898, was the last British soldier alive to have fought in the trenches of the First World War. From his vivid memories of an Edwardian childhood, the horror of the Great War and fighting in the mud during the Battle of Passchendaele, working on the home front in the Second World War, and fame in later life as a veteran, The Last Fighting Tommy is the story of an ordinary man's extraordinary life.
Breath: A Lifetime in the Rhythm of an Iron Lung: A Memoir
by Martha MasonAfter contracting polio as a young girl Martha Mason of tiny Lattimore, North Carolina, lived a record sixty-one of her seventy-one years in an iron lung until her death in 2009, but she never let the 800-pound cylinder define her. The subject of a documentary film, an NPR feature, an ABC News piece, and a widely syndicated New York Times obituary, Martha enjoyed life, and people. From within her iron lung, she graduated first in her class in high school and at Wake Forest University, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She was determined to be a writer and, with her devoted mother taking dictation, she became a journalist-but had to give up her career when her father became ill. Still, Martha created for herself a vast and radiant world-holding dinner parties with the table pushed right up to her iron lung, voraciously reading, running her own household, and caring for her mother when she became ill with Alzheimer's and increasingly abusive to Martha. When voice-activated computers became available, Martha wrote Breath, in part as a tribute to her mother. "This book is her story," writes Anne Rivers Siddons in her preface, "told in the rich words of a born writer. That she told it is a gift to everyone who will read it. That she told it is also as near to a miracle as most are likely to encounter."
The Hustle: One Team and Ten Lives in Black and White
by Doug MerlinoThe experiment was dreamed up by two fathers, one white, one black. What would happen, they wondered, if they mixed white players from an elite Seattle private school - famous for alums such as Microsoft's Bill Gates - and black kids from the inner city on a basketball team? Wouldn't exposure to privilege give the black kids a chance at better opportunities? Wouldn't it open the eyes of the white kids to a different side of life?The 1986 season would be the laboratory. Out in the real world, hip-hop was going mainstream, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson ruled the NBA, and Ronald Reagan was president. In Seattle, the team's season unfolded like a perfectly scripted sports movie: the ragtag group of boys became friends and gelled together to win the league championship. The experiment was deemed a success.But was it? How did crossing lines of class, race, and wealth affect the lives of these ten boys? Two decades later, Doug Merlino, who played on the team, returned to find his teammates. His search ranges from a prison cell to a hedge fund office, street corners to a shack in rural Oregon, a Pentecostal church to the records of a brutal murder. The result is a complex, gripping, and, at times, unsettling story. An instant classic in the vein of Michael Apted's Up series, The Hustle tells the stories of ten teammates set before a background of sweeping social and economic change, capturing the ways race, money, and opportunity shape our lives. A tale both personal and public, The Hustle is the story a disparate group of men finding - or not finding - a place in America
Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War
by Douglas R. Egerton"Egerton tells the story of the dissolution of the Union as it should be told, not from the perspective of those looking back on the crisis, but from the clouded vision of those who lived through it.†? -Carol Berkin, author of A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution and Civil War Wives In early 1860, pundits across America confidently predicted the election of Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas in the coming presidential race. Douglas, after all, was a national figure, a renowned orator, and led the only party that bridged North and South. But his Democrats fractured over the issue of slavery, creating a splintered four-way race that opened the door for the upstart Republicans, exclusively Northern, to steal the Oval Office. Dark horse Abraham Lincoln-not the first choice even of his own party-won the presidency with a record-low share of the popular vote. His victory instantly triggered the secession crisis. With a historian's keen insight and a veteran political reporter's eye for detail, Douglas R. Egerton re-creates the cascade of unforeseen events that confounded political bosses, set North and South on the road to disunion, and put not Stephen Douglas but his greatest rival in the White House. Year of Meteors delivers a vibrant cast of characters-from the gifted, flawed Douglas to the Southern "fire-eaters,†? who gleefully sabotaged their own party, to the untested Abraham Lincoln-and a breakneck narrative of this most momentous year in American history.
Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism
by Carl T. Bogus“This is an insightful book that will please anyone interested in midcentury American history and politics. Anyone serious about political philosophy will learn from it. Highly recommended.” -Library Journal (starred review) William F. Buckley Jr. was the foremost architect of the conservative movement that transformed American politics between the 1960s and the end of the century. When Buckley launched National Review in 1955, conservatism was a beleaguered, fringe segment of the Republican Party. Three decades later Ronald Reagan-who credited National Review with shaping his beliefs-was in the White House. Buckley and his allies devised a new-model conservatism that replaced traditional ideals of Edmund Burke with a passionate belief in the free market; religious faith; and an aggressive stance on foreign policy. Buckley's TV show, Firing Line, and his campaign for mayor of New York City made him a celebrity; his wit and zest for combat made conservatism fun. But Buckley was far more than a controversialist. Deploying his uncommon charm, shrewdly recruiting allies, quashing ideological competitors, and refusing to compromise on core principles, he almost single-handedly transformed conservatism from a set of retrograde attitudes into a revolutionary force.