- Table View
- List View
Making Gay History: The Half-Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights
by Eric Marcus“Rich and often moving . . . at times shocking, but often enlightening and inspiring: oral history at its most potent and rewarding.” — Kirkus ReviewsA completely revised and updated edition of the classic volume of oral history interviews with high-profile leaders and little-known participants in the gay rights movement that cumulatively provides a powerful documentary look at the struggle for gay rights in America.From the Boy Scouts and the U.S. military to marriage and adoption, the gay civil rights movement has exploded on the national stage. Eric Marcus takes us back in time to the earliest days of that struggle in a newly revised and thoroughly updated edition of Making History, originally published in 1992. Using the heartfelt stories of more than sixty people, he carries us through a compelling five-decade battle that has changed the fabric of American society.The rich tapestry that emerges from Making Gay History includes the inspiring voices of teenagers and grandparents, journalists and housewives, from the little-known Dr. Evelyn Hooker and Morty Manford to former vice president Al Gore, Ellen DeGeneres, and Abigail Van Buren. Together, these many stories bear witness to a time of astonishing change, as queer people have struggled against prejudice and fought for equal rights under the law.
McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire
by Jeffrey RothfederIn this fascinating history, Jeffrey Rothfeder tells how, from a simple idea—the outgrowth of a handful of peppers planted on an isolated island on the Gulf of Mexico—a secretive family business emerged that would produce one of the best-known products in the world. A delectable and satisfying read for both Tabasco fans and business buffs, McIlhenny's Gold is the untold story of the continuing success of an eccentric, private company; a lively history of one of the most popular consumer products of all times; and an exploration of our desire to test the limits of human tolerance for fiery foods.
Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History
by Cait N. MurphyFrom the perspective of 2007, the unintentional irony of Chance's boast is manifest—these days, the question is when will the Cubs ever win a game they have to have. In October 1908, though, no one would have laughed: The Cubs were, without doubt, baseball's greatest team—the first dynasty of the 20th century.Crazy '08 recounts the 1908 season—the year when Peerless Leader Frank Chance's men went toe to toe to toe with John McGraw and Christy Mathewson's New York Giants and Honus Wagner's Pittsburgh Pirates in the greatest pennant race the National League has ever seen. The American League has its own three-cornered pennant fight, and players like Cy Young, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and the egregiously crooked Hal Chase ensured that the junior circuit had its moments. But it was the National League's—and the Cubs'—year. Crazy '08, however, is not just the exciting story of a great season. It is also about the forces that created modern baseball, and the America that produced it. In 1908, crooked pols run Chicago's First Ward, and gambling magnates control the Yankees. Fans regularly invade the field to do handstands or argue with the umps; others shoot guns from rickety grandstands prone to burning. There are anarchists on the loose and racial killings in the town that made Lincoln. On the flimsiest of pretexts, General Abner Doubleday becomes a symbol of Americanism, and baseball's own anthem, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," is a hit. Picaresque and dramatic, 1908 is a season in which so many weird and wonderful things happen that it is somehow unsurprising that a hairpiece, a swarm of gnats, a sudden bout of lumbago, and a disaster down in the mines all play a role in its outcome. And sometimes the events are not so wonderful at all. There are several deaths by baseball, and the shadow of corruption creeps closer to the heart of baseball—the honesty of the game itself. Simply put, 1908 is the year that baseball grew up.Oh, and it was the last time the Cubs won the World Series.Destined to be as memorable as the season it documents, Crazy '08 sets a new standard for what a book about baseball can be.
The Best of Friends: Two Women, Two Continents, and One Enduring Friendship
by Sara James Ginger MauneyFrom sharing secrets as children to chasing unconventional dreams as adults, network correspondent Sara James and wildlife filmmaker Ginger Mauney explore their learning curve on life through the lens of their thirty-year friendshipTransplanting southern roots to southern Africa, Ginger Mauney has earned the acceptance of a troop of baboons, unraveled mysteries of life and death in an elephant herd, and raised her young son in the wilds of Namibia—but has often felt the pull of the country she once called home. As a local television anchor, Sara James paid her own way to cover the war in Nicaragua, a gamble that later propelled her to NBC. At the network, James exposed slavery in Sudan and plunged to the gravesite of the Titanic, but struggled to balance her demanding career with marriage and motherhood.Though the two lead seemingly opposite lives, there is much they share: a hometown in Richmond, Virginia, an attraction to life on the razor's edge, a weakness for men with foreign passports and accents, and a past. Now, in their heartfelt memoir, Mauney and James alternately narrate the story of how, they, two women separated by thousands of miles, have found themselves bound together through temperament, circumstance, and serendipity. The Best of Friends uses the example of their lives to explore such universal questions as: When your heart is broken, how do you heal? How do you realize your dreams without compromising yourself? How do you tame ambition to make room for love and family? And what does it mean as an adult to be a "best" friend?The Best of Friends is James and Mauney's story, but it is also the story of so many women in their twenties, thirties, and forties who, with the help of friends, dared to reinvent their lives just when it seemed that everything was falling apart.
The Best American Crime Writing 2006
by Otto Penzler and Thomas H. CookFifteen riveting true crime stories from some of the best crime writers around.A sterling collection of the year’s most shocking, compelling, and gripping writing about real-life crime, the 2006 edition of The Best American Crime Writing offers fascinating vicarious journeys into a world of felons and their felonious acts. This thrilling compendium includes:Jeffrey Toobin’s eye-opening exposé in The New Yorker about a famous prosecutor who may have put the wrong man on death rowSkip Hollandsworth's amazing but true tale of an old cowboy bank robber who turned out to be a “classic good-hearted Texas woman”Jimmy Breslin’s stellar piece about the end of the Mob as we know it
Shakespeare's Wife
by Germaine GreerLittle is known about Ann Hathaway, the wife of England's greatest playwright; a great deal, none of it complimentary, has been assumed. The omission of her name from Shakespeare's will has been interpreted as evidence that she was nothing more than an unfortunate mistake from which Shakespeare did well to distance himself.While Shakespeare is above all the poet of marriage—repeatedly in his plays, constant wives redeem unjust and deluded husbands—scholars persist in positing the worst about the writer's own spouse. In Shakespeare's Wife, Germaine Greer boldly breaks new ground, combining literary-historical techniques with documentary evidence about life in Stratford, to reset the story of Shakespeare's marriage in its social context. With deep insight and intelligence, she offers daring and thoughtful new theories about the farmer's daughter who married England's greatest poet, painting a vivid portrait of a remarkable woman.A passionate and perceptive work of first-rate scholarship that reclaims this maligned figure from generations of scholarly neglect and misogyny, Shakespeare's Wife poses bold questions and opens new fields of investigation and research.
The Backwash Squeeze & Other Improbable Feats: A Newcomer's Journey into the World of Bridge
by Edward McPhersonThere is one card game that towers above all others as the most intelligent, intricate, and psychologically absorbing ever to be invented. It has a rich history. It's played and loved by some of the world's most famous and influential people. And it's not the one that's currently on television twenty-four hours a day.In 1925 Harold Stirling Vanderbilt invented modern bridge, and a national craze was born. In the 1930s, bridge was even bigger than baseball. Its devotees would eventually include the Marx Brothers, George Burns, Wilt Chamberlain, Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who played to unwind before the Normandy invasion. Today bridge players number about twenty-five million in the U.S. alone; current celebrity addicts include Warren Buffett (who goes by the online handle "T-Bone"), Bill Gates, Hugh Hefner, Sting, a sitting Supreme Court justice, and the guys from Radiohead.In this spirited homage, Edward McPherson recounts the history of the game while attempting to master its deep mysteries in time to compete at the North American Bridge Championships in Chicago. Barely able to shuffle cards let alone play bridge, he sets out to discover why the game became and remains such a popular pastime, stopping in Dallas, Kansas City, Gatlinburg, Gettysburg, Las Vegas, and London. He focuses on a handful of professionals and eager but fumbling amateurs, and the characters he meets convince him that in a game that pits mind against mind, close attention to the cards often reveals much about those sitting at the table. He attempts to learn from bridge's devoted fans—from white-haired grannies and international playboys to teenage pros and billionaires—how its legacy can be preserved for future generations. And along the way, he picks up a playing partner of his own: Tina, a New York octogenarian with sharp card skills and energy to burn.Insightful, funny, and steeped in respect for bridge, The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats is an affectionate view of a grand game by an outsider trying to make his way into the inner circle.
Escape on the Pearl: The Heroic Bid for Freedom on the Underground Railroad
by Mary Kay RicksOn the evening of April 15, 1848, nearly eighty enslaved Americans attempted one of history's most audacious escapes. Setting sail from Washington, D.C., on a schooner named the Pearl, the fugitives began a daring 225-mile journey to freedom in the North—and put in motion a furiously fought battle over slavery in America that would consume Congress, the streets of the capital, and the White House itself.Mary Kay Ricks's unforgettable chronicle brings to life the Underground Railroad's largest escape attempt, the seemingly immutable politics of slavery, and the individuals who struggled to end it. Escape on the Pearl reveals the incredible odyssey of those who were onboard, including the remarkable lives of fugitives Mary and Emily Edmonson, the two sisters at the heart of this true story of courage and determination.
The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries
by Marilyn JohnsonA light-hearted look at the history and practice of “the ultimate human-interest story,” the obituary.“What a wonderful surprise—a charming, lyrical book about the men and women who write obituaries. The Dead Beat is sly, droll, and completely winning.”— David HalberstamWhere can readers celebrate the life of the pharmacist who moonlighted as a spy, the genius behind Sea Monkeys, the school lunch lady who spent her evenings as a ballroom hostess? The obituary page, of course. Enthralled by these fascinating former lives, Marilyn Johnson tumbled into the little known world of the obituary page to find out what made it so compelling. She sought out the best obits in the English language, and chased the people who spent their lives writing about the dead. Surveying Internet chat rooms, surviving a mass gathering of obituarists, and making the pilgrimage to London to savor the most caustic and literate obits of all, she leads us into the cult and culture behind this fascinating segment of our daily news.
Member of the Club: Reflections on Life in a Racially Polarized World
by Lawrence Otis Graham"In Member of the Club. [Graham writes of] heartbreaking ironies and contradictions, indignities and betrayals in the life of an upper-class black man." --Philadelphia InquirerInformed and driven by his experience as an upper-middle-class African American man who lives and works in a predominately white environment, provocative author Lawrence Otis Graham offers a unique perspective on the subject of race. An uncompromising work that will challenge the mindset of every reader, Member of the Club is a searching book of essays ranging from examining life as a black Princetonian and corporate lawyer to exploring life as a black busboy at an all white country-club. From New York Magazine cover stories Invisible Man and Harlem on My Mind to such new essays as "I Never Dated a White Girl" and "My Dinner with Mister Charlie: A Black Man's Undercover Guide to Dining with Dignity at Ten Top New York Restaurants," Graham challenges racial prejudice among white Americans while demanding greater accountability and self-determination from his peers in black America."Lawrence Graham surely knows about the pressures of being beholden to two very different groups." --Los Angeles TimesLawrence Otis Graham is a popular commentator on race and ethnicity. The author of ten other books, his work has appeared in New York magazine, the New York Times and The Best American Essays.
Goddesses in Older Women: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty
by Jean Shinoda BolenAt some point after fifty, every woman crosses a threshold into the third phase of her life. As she enters this uncharted territory -- one that is generally uncelebrated in popular culture -- she can choose to mourn what has gone before, or she can embrace the juicy-crone years.In this celebration of Act Three, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Jungian analyst and bestselling author of Goddesses in Everywoman, names the powerful new energies and potentials -- or archetypes -- that come into the psyche at this momentous time, suggesting that women getting older have profound and exciting reasons for welcoming the other side of fifty.
Perfect Soldiers: The 9/11 Hijackers
by Terry McDermott“The definitive book on the nineteen men who brought such devastation and terror to this country . . . a well-told, meticulously researched cautionary tale.” —Washington Post Book WorldThe attacks of September 11, 2001, were a calamity on a scale few had imagined possible. In their aftermath, we exaggerated the men who perpetrated the attacks, shaping hasty and often mistaken reporting into caricatures we could comprehend—monsters and master criminals equal to the enormity of their crime. In reality, the 9/11 hijackers were unexceptional men, not much different from countless others. It is this ordinary enemy, not the caricature, that we must understand if we are to have a legitimate hope of defeating terrorism.Using research undertaken in twenty countries on four continents, Los Angeles Times correspondent Terry McDermott provides gripping, authoritative portraits of the main players in the 9/11 plot. With brilliant reporting and thoughtful analysis, McDermott brings us a clearer, more nuanced, and in some ways more frightening, understanding of the landmark event of our time.“The very best [book] available . . . on the subject.” —Los Angeles Times“Absorbing. . . . [A] richly textured narrative full of the sort of small, telling details that turn these men from faceless figures of evil into individuals.” —New York Times“Bound to become one of the most insightful books ever published about September 11.” —Houston Chronicle“Offers riveting accounts of the final weeks and days as the plotters prepared to carry out their horrific mission.” —Booklist“Chilling.” —KirkusReviews“This is journalism at its best.” —Seymour M. Hersh, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist“Engrossing and deeply disturbing.” —Publishers Weekly
Happy Hours: Alcohol in a Woman's Life
by Devon Jersild"[A] noteworthy examination of women and alcohol delivers compelling personal stories that illuminate previously neglected aspects of this devastating social problem." — Publishers WeeklyMixing cutting-edge research with affecting stories of women who struggle with alcohol problems, Happy Hours challenges our assumptions and expands our awareness of the role alcohol plays in women's lives.In this important book, Devon Jersild explores the common cultural forces that influence a woman's drinking—trauma, sexual abuse, and marital status. Jersild has spoken to treatment specialists, doctors, therapists, and counselors, and interviewed women who share their often dramatic stories. Her research findings are a wake-up call to many women who are in the dark about the effect of drinking on their mental and physical health. For example:Women metabolize alcohol differently from men, more quickly developing such physical complications as liver disease, high blood pressure, and hepatitis.Female alcoholics are twice as likely to die as male alcoholics in the same age groupA female alcoholic is more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, which may not go away even if she stops drinking.An astonishing four million women in the U.S. meet the diagnostic criteria for abuse or dependence.Happy Hours is not just about alcoholics. It is aimed at any woman who has ever wondered whether she drinks too heavily or too often, and at anyone who has a sister, mother, grandmother, child, or friend whose drinking has caused them concern.
The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the True Roles of Women in Prehistory
by Jake Page Olga Soffer J. M. Adovasio“This jauntily written, highly convincing analysis . . . argues that women of prehistory were pivotal in a wide range of culture-building endeavors.” —Publishers WeeklyShaped by cartoons and museum dioramas, our vision of Paleolithic times tends to feature fur-clad male hunters fearlessly attacking mammoths while timid women hover fearfully behind a boulder. In fact, recent research has shown that this vision bears little relation to reality.The field of archaeology has changed dramatically in the past two decades, as women have challenged their male colleagues' exclusive focus on hard artifacts such as spear points rather than tougher to find evidence of women's work. J. M. Adovasio and Olga Soffer are two of the world's leading experts on perishable artifacts such as basketry, cordage, and weaving. In The Invisible Sex, the authors present an exciting new look at prehistory, arguing that women invented all kinds of critical materials, including the clothing necessary for life in colder climates, the ropes used to make rafts that enabled long-distance travel by water, and nets used for communal hunting. Even more important, women played a central role in the development of language and social life—in short, in our becoming human. In this eye-opening book, a new story about women in prehistory emerges with provocative implications for our assumptions about gender today.“An engaging book that sets the record straight while describing current theories and trends in archaeology.” —Booklist“A much-needed antidote to the past hundred years of popular and scientific writing on prehistoric human life.” —Nature“Science writing at its best.” —Jean M. Auel, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Clan of the Cave Bear
Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science
by Bill Bass Jon JeffersonAn “excellent” collection of case studies and stories from the forensic anthropologist who founded Tennessee’s “Body Farm” (Charleston Post & Courier).A pioneer in forensic anthropology, Bill Bass created the world’s first laboratory dedicated to the study of human decomposition—three acres on a Tennessee hillside where human bodies are left to the elements. His research at the Body Farm has revolutionized the field, helping crack cold cases and pinpoint time of death. But during a forensics career that spans half a century, Bass’s work has ranged far beyond the gates of the Body Farm. In this riveting book, the bone sleuth explores the rise of modern forensic science, using fascinating cases he’s worked on to take readers into the real world of C.S.I.Some cases rely on the simplest of tools and techniques, such as reassembling—from battered torsos and a stack of severed limbs—eleven people hurled skyward by an explosion at an illegal fireworks factory. Other cases hinge on sophisticated techniques Bass couldn’t have imagined when he began his career: harnessing scanning electron microscopy to detect trace elements in knife wounds, or extracting DNA from a long-buried corpse, only to find that the murder victim may have been mistakenly identified a quarter-century before.Beyond the Body Farm follows Bass as he explores the depths of a lake with a twenty-first-century sonar system in search of an airplane that vanished thirty-five years ago; exhumes a fifties pop star to determine what injuries he suffered in the plane crash that killed three rock and roll legends; and works to decipher an ancient Persian death scene. Witty and engaging, Bass dissects the methods used by homicide investigators every day on an extraordinary journey into the high-tech science that it takes to crack a case.“Case studies and anecdotes from the field of corpse identification [with] careful attention to detail and the occasional darkly humorous aside.” —Publishers Weekly“The real crimes and mysteries here are just as or more intriguing than any fictional crime drama . . . offers a real-life understanding of forensic anthropology and the science behind it.” —Knoxville News-Sentinel
The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Speech that Inspired a Nation
by Drew 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.
The Epidemic: A Global History of Aids
by Jonathan EngelFrom the Castro bathhouses to AZT and the denial of AIDS in South Africa, this sweeping look at AIDS covers the epidemic from all angles and across the world. Engel seamlessly weaves together science, politics, and culture, writing with an even hand—noting the excesses of the more radical edges of the ACT UP movement as well as the conservative religious leaders who thought AIDS victims deserved what they got. The story of AIDS is one of the most compelling human dramas of our time, both in its profound tragedy and in the extraordinary scientific efforts impelled on its behalf. For gay Americans, it has been the story of the past generation, redefining the community and the community's sexuality. For the Third World, AIDS has created endless devastation, toppling economies, social structures, and whole villages and regions. And the worst may yet be to come: AIDS is expanding quickly into India, Russia, China, and elsewhere, while still raging insub-Saharan Africa.A distinguished medical historian, Engel lets his characters speak for themselves. Whether gay activists, government officials, public health professionals, scientists, or frightened parents of schoolchildren, they responded as best they could to tragic happenstance that emerged seemingly from nowhere. There is much drama here, and human weakness and heroism too. Writing with vivid immediacy, Engel allows us to relive the short but tumultuous history of a modern scourge.
All Aunt Hagar's Children: Stories
by Edward P. JonesIn fourteen sweeping and sublime stories, five of which have been published in The New Yorker, the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World shows that his grasp of the human condition is firmer than everReturning to the city that inspired his first prizewinning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens. All Aunt Hagar's Children turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them further north, people who in Jones's masterful hands, emerge as fully human and morally complex, whether they are country folk used to getting up with the chickens or people with centuries of education behind them. In the title story, in which Jones employs the first-person rhythms of a classic detective story, a Korean War veteran investigates the death of a family friend whose sorry destiny seems inextricable from his mother's own violent Southern childhood. In "In the Blink of God's Eye" and "Tapestry" newly married couples leave behind the familiarity of rural life to pursue lives of urban promise only to be challenged and disappointed.With the legacy of slavery just a stone's throw away and the future uncertain, Jones's cornucopia of characters will haunt readers for years to come.
No Bone Unturned: Inside the World of a Top Forensic Scientist and His Work on America's Most Notorious Crimes and Disasters
by Jeff Benedict“A fast and exciting read. . . . This survey of Owsley’s career will appeal to both science and legal buffs.” --Publishers WeeklyThe story of the Smithsonian’s brilliant forensic anthropologist and the 9,000-year-old skeleton that sparked his landmark lawsuit against the U.S. governmentWhen he is not studying ancient skeletons, Doug Owsley is enlisted by the State Department and the FBI to identify remains. He has worked on some of the most notorious tragedies in recent history—Bosnia, Waco, 9/11 and Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims among them. When an anthropologist in Kennewick, WA, calls Owsley to help study a 9,000 year-old caucasoid skeleton, he gets caught up in a battle against the Justice Department and Indian tribes who claim the skeleton is Native American and should be buried and not analyzed.Owsley, backed by scientists worldwide, files suit against the government and is now at the forefront of a landmark case—currently pending a ruling in the U.S. District Court—that may alter repatriation laws and have a significant impact on the classic views of Native Americans, migration patterns, and anthropology, as well as our understanding of prehistory.
Mulatto America
by Stephan TaltyBlack and white culture has been blending and colliding in America for hundreds of years. In the 1700s, black slaves discovered their masters' Bibles and found in them a seditious faith of their own. In the 1920s, young white men fell in love with New Orleans jazz and created an underground of cultural dissidents. In the 1970s, black style began its takeover of the sports world and made Dr. J and Michael Jordan the idols of millions. In Mulatto America, a dazzling work of cultural history, the stories of these daring and deeply influential encounters are described in vibrant detail. Beginning with new and shocking revelations about the white slaves kidnapped into "the House of Bondage," Mulatto America vividly chronicles the hidden connections that have shaped American style and character. Stephan Talty proposes that, along with the hatred that ruled the relationship between blacks and whites for so long, there has been a largely unexamined flip side: a powerful attraction that led both races to mimic what they saw and desired in each other. The pages of this groundbreaking work, which introduces a strong new voice, are populated by the renegades who crossed the color line out of deep conviction or wild curiosity: W. E. B. Du Bois, Dorothy Dandridge, Elvis, Jay-Z, and many others. Each chapter examines a different vanguard: The interracial lovers of the slavery era who ignored theories of racial inferiority and gave us models of devotion and daring. The black elite early in the last century who found in Shakespeare and Michelangelo not only deeply humanist masterpieces but hope that white bigotry could be overcome. And the members of today's hip-hop generation, who revel in the cultural freedom earned at so high a cost. Drawing on original research and daring new interpretations of crucial events in American history, Talty paints a portrait of a lost America: one in which musicians, writers, and ordinary people led the nation to a deeper understanding of the strangers on the other side of town. Without the mixing of black and white culture, America would look, sound, and feel completely different than it does today. On a cultural level, as well as racially, we are indeed a mulatto nation. This provocative and highly engaging new history shows us how this came to pass.
Jackpot Nation: Rambling and Gambling Across Our Landscape of Luck
by Richard HofferIs this a great country or what?You can bet on the turn of the card or a roll of the dice, but also on the NFL, the NCAA, and which Olsen twin marries first. We bet $80 billion a year, the amount growing wildly as more and more people gain access to this huge American wheel of fortune. No longer quarantined in Las Vegas, gambling has become as local and convenient as our neighborhood cineplex. If there's not a casino around the corner, there's one on your laptop computer.In Jackpot Nation, Richard Hoffer takes us on a headlong tour, alternately horrifying and hilarious, across our landscape of luck. Whether he's trying to win a side of bacon in a Minnesota bar, hustling a paper sack filled with $100,000 in cash across Las Vegas parking lots, poring over expansion plans with a tribal chief in California, or visiting the New York prison cell of a retired bus salesman with a poor understanding of three-game parlays, Hoffer explores with wit and heart our national inclination—a cultural predisposition, even—to take a chance.
Mind Set!: Eleven Ways to Change the Way You See—and Create—the Future
by John NaisbittIn his seminal works Megatrends and Megatrends 2000, John Naisbitt proved himself one of the most far-sighted and accurate observers of our fast-changing world. Mind Set! goes beyond that by disclosing the secret of forecasting. Naisbitt gives away the keys to the kingdom, opening the door to the insights that let him understand today's world and see the opportunities of tomorrow. He selects his most effective tools, 11 Mindsets, and applies them by guiding the reader through the five forces that will dominate the next decades of the twenty-first century. Illustrated by stories about Galileo and Einstein to today's icons and rebels in business, science, and sports, Mind Set! opens your eyes to see beyond media headlines, political slogans, and personal opinions to select and judge what will form the pictures of the future.
Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War
by Douglas BrinkleyOne of our most acclaimed historians explores the decorated military service of one of America’s most intriguing politicians—the leading Democratic presidential candidate for 2004—and its profound effects on his career and lifeIn Tour of Duty, Brinkley explores Senator John Kerry’s career and deftly deals with such explosive issues as U.S. atrocities in Vietnam and the bombing of Cambodia. Using new information acquired from the recently released Nixon tapes, Brinkley reveals how White House aides Charles Colson and H.R. Haldeman tried to discredit Kerry. Refusing to be intimidated, Kerry started running for public office, eventually becoming a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. Covering more than four decades, this is the first full-scale definitive account of Kerry’s journey from war to peace. In writing this riveting, action-packed narrative, Brinkley has drawn on extensive interviews with virtually everyone who knew Kerry well in Vietnam. Kerry also relegated to Brinkley his letters home from Vietnam and his voluminous “war notes” journals, notebooks, and personal reminiscences written during and shortly after the war. This material was provided without restriction, to be used at Brinkley’s discretion, and has never before been published.
Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt
by Nina BurleighThe story of Napoleon’s invasion of the Nile Valley, the scholars and scientists who tagged along, and the birth of Egyptology: “A fascinating read.” —San Francisco ChronicleTwo hundred years ago, only the most reckless or eccentric Europeans had dared to traverse the unmapped territory of the modern-day Middle East. But in 1798, more than 150 French engineers, artists, doctors, and scientists—even a poet and a musicologist—traveled to the Nile Valley under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte and his invading army. Hazarding hunger, hardship, uncertainty, and disease, Napoleon’s “savants” risked their lives in pursuit of discovery. The first large-scale interaction between Europeans and Muslims in the modern era, the audacious expedition was both a triumph and a disaster, resulting in finds of immense historical and scientific importance (including the ruins of the colossal pyramids and the Rosetta Stone) and in countless tragic deaths through plague, privation, madness, or violence.In this account, journalist and New York Times–bestselling author Nina Burleigh brings readers back to the landmark adventure at the dawn of the modern era that ultimately revealed the deepest secrets of ancient Egypt to a curious continent.“An absorbing glimpse of Napoleon’s thwarted bid for a grand French empire and its intellectual fruits.” —Publishers Weekly“Pepper[ed] with multitudes of facts, digressions and anecdotes.” —The New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice) “Illuminates an unfamiliar moment in the history of science . . . Burleigh’s storytelling ability is mesmerizing.” —Library Journal
Napoleon's Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped
by Tony PerrottetWhen Tony Perrottet heard that Napoleon's "baguette" had been stolen by his disgruntled doctor a few days after the Emperor's death, he rushed out to New Jersey. Why? Because that's where an eccentric American collector who had purchased Napoleon's member at a Parisian auction now kept the actual relic in an old suitcase under his bed.The story of Napoleon's privates triggered Perrottet's quest to research other such exotic sagas from history, to discover the actual evidence behind the most famous age-old mysteries: Did Churchill really send condoms of a surprising size to Stalin? Were champagne glasses really molded upon Marie Antoinette's breasts? What was JFK's real secret service? What were Casanova's best pickup lines? Napoleon's Privates is filled with offbeat, riotously entertaining anecdotes that are guaranteed to amaze, shock, and enliven any dinner party.