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Dorothy the Brave
by Meghan P. BrowneThe empowering story of a real-life Rosie the Riveter who served as a Women Airforce Service Pilot.Dorothy Lucas yearned to discover all that she was capable of. After the devastating news of Pearl Harbor, her brothers joined the World War II war effort, but Dorothy wanted to do her part, too. So, she enlisted to serve as a Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP). After hours of flight school and roaring engines, Dorothy and her fellow WASPs risked their lives towing targets in the air for the male fighter pilots in training. Through many mechanical scares and smoke-filled cockpits, Dorothy remained brave and committed to her job--defying gravity and defying the odds. With lyrical text from Meghan P. Browne and striking illustrations by Brooke Smart, Dorothy the Brave tells an untold story of a real-life Rosie the Riveter, and how women worked to keep America safe during a harrowing time.
Dos Perros Y Una Maleta: Desorientados En Charentes
by Rosa Feijoo Andrade Sarah Jane ButfieldEl título lo dice todo: Qué tenemos y dónde estamos. Estas memorias de viajes, secuela a Un vaso a medio llenar: nuestra aventura australiana, sigue nuestra proeza francesa del esfuerzo que hacemos por reconstruir nuestras vidas en otro nuevo país, después de haber pasado cuatro años y medio en Australia. Nuestra meta, o lo que esperamos lograr en el futuro inmediato, es enfocarnos a la positividad del presente de forma que podamos comenzar de cero, con un futuro optimista de vuelta en Europa. Nuestro objetivo principal es estar cerca a los hijos, dejando atrás como un recuerdo distante, las negras nubes de los desafíos que tuvimos que encarar en Australia. Viaja con nosotros desde que llegamos al suroeste rural francés, disfruta de mis reflexiones, pensamientos y observaciones acerca de mi familia, nuestro nuevo entorno y estilo de vida. Sigue el trayecto de mi carrera como escritora y cómo comenzamos nuestros proyectos de renovación mientras nos las arreglábamos con nuestra complicada familia. Una vez más, reiremos, lloraremos y disfrutaremos de la vida al máximo con la ayuda del sesgo positivo que le añadimos para darle más sabor al relato.
Dos amigos (Two Friends): Susan B. Anthony y Frederick Douglass
by Dean RobbinsSusan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass chat over tea about their efforts to win rights for women and African Americans.Some people had rights, while others had none.Why shouldn't they have them, too?Dos amigos, Susan B. Anthony y Frederick Douglass, se reúnen a tomar el té y conversar sobresus similares historias en la lucha por los derechos de las mujeres y de los afroamericanos. La premisa de este intercambio particular entre ambos se basa en una estatua en su pueblo natal de Rochester, Nueva York, que muestra a los dos amigos tomando el té.Two friends, Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, get together for tea and conversation. They recount their similar stories fighting to win rights for women and African Americans. The premise of this particular exchange between the two is based on a statue in their hometown of Rochester, New York, which shows the two friends having tea.
Dos guerreros olmecas
by Antonio Velasco PiñaEn este libro, Antonio Velasco Piña nos muestra cómo sería el guerrero espiritual que viviría en la Nueva Era. De Antonio Velasco Piña, el escritor más reconocido de la mexicanidad sagrada y autor de Regina. La historia de los herederos de una espiritualidad milenaria en México. A través de estas páginas, Antonio Velasco Piña plantea que nos encontramos en una etapa particular de la historia. Entramos a una Nueva Era, en la cual será posible que la realidad espiritual tenga un lugar relevante, a diferencia de las épocas en que los valores materiales determinan todo. En este proceso, la nación mexicana tiene un lugar trascendental, por ser el sitio donde puede formarse una nueva cultura cósmica, capaz de recoger diversas tradiciones milenarias e integrar el pasado prehispánico. Por ello, es necesaria una búsqueda interior que eleve la conciencia y defina todo un modelo de persona: el del guerrero espiritual, taly como se describe y retrata aquí. Para el autor de Regina, no se trata de un modelo abstracto, sino de personas reales, como las que muestra en este libro; personas capaces de encarnar los ideales de los guerreros olmecas, recorrer la ruta hacia lo sagrado y participar de la nueva conciencia.
Dos vidas
by Janet MalcolmEn esta ocasión, la renombrada ensayista norteamericana Janet Malcom aborda la historia de la legendaria pareja de lesbianas expatriadas en Francia durante la II Guerra Mundial y de la tremenda imfluencia que Gertrude Stein y Alice B. Toklas ejercieron sobre la obra de grandes escritores como Hemingway, Ezra Pound y Faulkner. En el trabajo de Janet Malcolm, el biógrafo se convierte en un personaje más del libro y el proceso de escribir una biografía, de acumular hechos y documentación, se introduce en la narración como una historia más. El resultado: un relato brillante sobre una época, y una reflexión afilada sobre los mecanismos últimos del género biográfico.
Dos vidas. Gertrude y Alice
by Janet Malcolm¿Cómo lograron sobrevivir dos lesbianas judías en la Francia de Vichy durante la II Guerra Mundial? La historia de Gertrude Stein y Alice B. Toklas. En esta ocasión, la renombrada ensayista norteamericana Janet Malcom aborda la historia de la legendaria pareja de lesbianas expatriadas en Francia durante la II Guerra Mundial y de la tremenda imfluencia que Gertrude Stein y Alice B. Toklas ejercieron sobre la obra de grandes escritores como Hemingway, Ezra Pound y Faulkner. En el trabajo de Janet Malcolm, el biógrafo se convierte en un personaje más del libro y el proceso de escribir una biografía, de acumular hechos y documentación, se introduce en la narración como una historia más. El resultado: un relato brillante sobre una época, y una reflexión afilada sobre los mecanismos últimos del género biográfico.
Dossier K: A Memoir
by Tim Wilkinson Imre KerteszThe first and only memoir from the Nobel Prize-winning author, in the form of an illuminating, often funny, and often combative interview--conducted by the author of himself. Dossier K is Imre Kertész's response to the hasty biographies and profiles that followed his 2002 Nobel Prize, an attempt to set the record straight. But, as befits Kertész, it's a beautifully roundabout way of going straight: Kertész faces and interrogates himself about the issues and events that have long preoccupied him, while also dealing with the questions that really annoy him (such as, "Is your work autobiographical?"). The result is an extraordinary self-portrait, in which Kertész recounts memories of his childhood in Budapest; the years that lead up to the Second World War and his first encounters with anti-Semitism; the incredible forged record of his death in Buchenwald that may in fact have saved his life; his release from the camps and his return to his family; Hungary's Rákosi and Kádár regimes and the terror, hypocrisy, and absurdity they entailed; his thoughts about what other writers have written about the Holocaust; his two marriages; and his long development as a writer. This is a surprising and provocative autobiography that delves into questions about the legacy of the Holocaust, fiction and reality, and what Kertész calls "the wonderful burden of being responsible for yourself.
Dostoevsky's Democracy
by Nancy RuttenburgDostoevsky's Democracy offers a major reinterpretation of the life and work of the great Russian writer by closely reexamining the crucial transitional period between the early works of the 1840s and the important novels of the 1860s. Sentenced to death in 1849 for utopian socialist political activity, the 28-year-old Dostoevsky was subjected to a mock execution and then exiled to Siberia for a decade, including four years in a forced labor camp, where he experienced a crisis of belief. It has been influentially argued that the result of this crisis was a conversion to Russian Orthodoxy and reactionary politics. But Dostoevsky's Democracy challenges this view through a close investigation of Dostoevsky's Siberian decade and its most important work, the autobiographical novel Notes from the House of the Dead (1861). Nancy Ruttenburg argues that Dostoevsky's crisis was set off by his encounter with common Russians in the labor camp, an experience that led to an intense artistic meditation on what he would call Russian "democratism." By tracing the effects of this crisis, Dostoevsky's Democracy presents a new understanding of Dostoevsky's aesthetic and political development and his role in shaping Russian modernity itself, especially in relation to the preeminent political event of his time, peasant emancipation.
Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time
by Joseph FrankA magnificent one-volume abridgement of one of the greatest literary biographies of our timeJoseph Frank's award-winning, five-volume Dostoevsky is widely recognized as the best biography of the writer in any language—and one of the greatest literary biographies of the past half-century. Now Frank's monumental, 2,500-page work has been skillfully abridged and condensed in this single, highly readable volume with a new preface by the author. Carefully preserving the original work's acclaimed narrative style and combination of biography, intellectual history, and literary criticism, Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time illuminates the writer's works—from his first novel Poor Folk to Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov—by setting them in their personal, historical, and above all ideological context. More than a biography in the usual sense, this is a cultural history of nineteenth-century Russia, providing both a rich picture of the world in which Dostoevsky lived and a major reinterpretation of his life and work.
Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871-1881
by Joseph FrankThis fifth and final volume of Joseph Frank's justly celebrated literary and cultural biography of Dostoevsky renders with a rare intelligence and grace the last decade of the writer's life, the years in which he wrote A Raw Youth, Diary of a Writer, and his crowning triumph: The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky's final years at last won him the universal approval toward which he had always aspired. While describing his idiosyncratic relationship to the Russian state, Frank also details Doestoevsky's continuing rivalries with Turgenev and Tolstoy. Dostoevsky's appearance at the Pushkin Festival in June 1880, which preceded his death by one year, marked the apotheosis of his career--and of his life as a spokesman for the Russian spirit. There he delivered his famous speech on Pushkin before an audience stirred to a feverish emotional pitch: "Ours is universality attained not by the sword, but by the force of brotherhood and of our brotherly striving toward the reunification of mankind." This is the Dostoevsky who has entered the patrimony of world literature, though he was not always capable of living up to such exalted ideals. The writer's death in St. Petersburg in January of 1881 concludes this unparalleled literary biography--one truly worthy of Dostoevsky's genius and of the remarkable time and place in which he lived.
Dot.Con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold
by John CassidyThe Internet stock bubble wasn't just about goggle-eyed day traderstrying to get rich on the Nasdaq and goateed twenty-five-year-olds playing wannabe Bill Gates. It was also about an America that believed it had discovered the secret of eternal prosperity: it said something about all of us, and what we thought about ourselves, as the twenty-first century dawned. John Cassidy's Dot.con brings this tumultuous episode to life. Moving from the Cold War Pentagon to Silicon Valley to Wall Street and into the homes of millions of Americans, Cassidy tells the story of the great boom and bust in an authoritative and entertaining narrative. Featuring all the iconic figures of the Internet era -- Marc Andreessen, Jeff Bezos, Steve Case, Alan Greenspan, and many others -- and with a new Afterword on the aftermath of the bust, Dot.con is a panoramic and stirring account of human greed and gullibility.
Dotter of Her Father's Eyes
by Mary M. TalbotPart personal history, part biography, Dotter of Her Father's Eyes contrasts two comingofage narratives: that of Lucia, the daughter of James Joyce, and that of author Mary Talbot, daughter of the eminent Joycean scholar James S. Atherton. Social expectations and gender politics, thwarted ambitions and personal tragedy are played out against two contrasting historical backgrounds, poignantly evoked by the atmospheric visual storytelling of awardwinning graphicnovel pioneer Bryan Talbot. Produced through an intense collaboration seldom seen between writers and artists, Dotter of Her Father's Eyes is smart, funny, and sadan essential addition to the evolving genre of graphic memoir.* Bryan Talbot is recognized worldwide as one of the true original voices in graphic fiction.* Bryan Talbot's Grandville Mon Amour was nominated for a 2011 Hugo Award.
Dottir: My Journey to Becoming a Two-Time CrossFit Games Champion
by Katrin Davidsdottir Rory McKernan“Davidsdottir maps out how she was named the games’ ‘Fittest Woman on Earth’ two years in a row, in this breezy yet high-impact memoir . . . inspiring.” —Publishers WeeklyAs one of only two women in history to have won the title of “Fittest Woman on Earth” twice, Davidsdottir knows all about the importance of mental and physical strength. She won the title in 2015, backing it up with a second win in 2016, after starting CrossFit in just 2011.A gymnast as a youth, Davidsdottir wanted to try new challenges and found a love of CrossFit. But it hasn’t been a smooth rise to the top. In 2014, just one year before taking home the gold, she didn’t qualify for the Games. She used that loss as motivation and fuel for training harder and smarter for the 2015 Games. She pushed herself and refocused her mental game. Her hard work and perseverance paid off with her return to the Games and subsequent victories in 2015 and 2016.In Dottir, Davidsdottir shares her journey with readers. She details her focus on training, goal setting, nutrition, and mental toughness.“Katrin became a champion by choice, and her story highlights what I believe above all things. That there is no magic pill. There are no superior genetics. There are no shortcuts. There is only hard work. And hard work pays off.” —Mat Fraser, three-time-defending Fittest Man on Earth“From childhood gymnastics to the CrossFit Games podium, Katrin provides tangible and relatable stories about reframing failure, striving for greatness, evolving your mindset and chasing your dreams.” —Lewis Howes, New York Times–bestselling author of The Greatest Mindset
Double Ace: The Life of Robert Lee Scott Jr., Pilot, Hero, and Teller of Tall Tales
by Robert CoramIn Double Ace, veteran biographer Robert Coram, himself a Georgia man, provides readers with an unprecedented look at the defining characteristics that made Robert Lee Scott a uniquely American hero. Robert Lee Scott ("Scotty") was larger than life. A decorated Eagle Scout who barely graduated from high school, the young man from Macon, Georgia, with an oversize personality used dogged determination to achieve his childhood dream of becoming a famed fighter pilot. First capturing national attention during World War II, Scott, a West Point graduate, flew missions in China alongside the legendary "Flying Tigers," where his reckless courage and victories against the enemy made headlines. Upon returning home, Scott's memoir, brashly titled God is My Co-Pilot, became an instant bestseller, a successful film, and one of the most important books of its time. Later in life, as a retired military general, Scott continued to add to his list of accomplishments. He traveled the entire length of China's Great Wall and helped found Georgia's Museum of Aviation, which still welcomes 400,000 annual visitors.Yet Scott's life was not without difficulty. His single-minded pursuit of greatness was offset by debilitating bouts of depression, and his brashness placed him at odds with superior officers, wreaking havoc on his career. What wealth he gained he squandered, and his numerous public affairs destroyed his relationships with his wife and child.Backed by meticulous research, Double Ace brings Scott's uniquely American character to life and captures his fascinating exploits as a national hero alongside his frustrating foibles.
Double Agent Balloon: Dickie Metcalfe's Espionage Career for MI5 and the Nazis
by David TremainDickie Metcalfe was not your typical secret agent, but he was larger than life in more ways than one. Unlike many other agents who were part of the Double Cross System during the Second World War, he did not defect; nor was he blackmailed into becoming a spy. Instead, using his father’s connection with Sir Vernon Kell, the first Director of MI5, Metcalfe volunteered his services. Recently cashiered from his infantry regiment, he had an ulterior motive – by supplying MI5 with tidbits of information about weapons and arms deals in his newfound profession as an arms dealer, he hoped they would be able to help him get his commission reinstated. Metcalfe became BALLOON, a sub-agent of double agent TRICYCLE’s Yugoslav spy ring. Concurrent with his spying activities, he collaborated with the co-inventor of the Bren gun to develop a new submachine gun for British forces. After the war, he was also a celebrated motor racing driver and continued to compete until shortly before his death. His success as a double-cross agent in the eyes of both his masters – British and German – is examined in this book, using official documents as a primary source.
Double Agent Celery: MI5's Crooked Hero
by Carolinda WittThis personal biography reveals the incredible true story of the British secret agent who posed as a Nazi spy during WWII. With Britain braced for a German invasion, MI5 recruited Walter Dicketts, a former officer of the Royal Naval Air Force—and a known con artist—as a double agent. Codenamed Celery, Dicketts was sent to Lisbon with the mission of persuading the Germans he was a traitor and then extracting crucial secrets. Once there, the Nazis brought Dicketts to Germany, where he had to outwit his interrogators in Hamburg and Berlin before returning to Britain as, in the Nazis&’ eyes, a German spy. Even before he left for Germany, Celery knew that he had been betrayed by a fellow agent. Yet somehow he not only got back to Lisbon, but persuaded a German Intelligence Officer to defect before spending nine months undercover in Brazil. A mixture of hero and crook, Dicketts was smart, worldly and charismatic. Sometimes rich and sometimes poor, his private life was a complicated web of deception. Using both family and official documents, as well as police records, newspaper articles and personal memories, Carolinda Witt—Dicketts&’s granddaughter—unravels the incredible yet true story of Double Agent Celery.
Double Agent Snow
by James HaywardThe eve of the outbreak of World War II: double-agent Arthur Owens, codenamed SNOW, is summoned to Berlin and appointed Hitler's chief spy in England. Days later: he finds himself in Wandsworth prison, betrayed by his scorned wife, and forced to transmit false wireless messages for MI5 to earn his freedom and escape the hangman's noose. A vain and devious anti-hero with no moral compass, Owens' motives for treachery were money, status and women. At times he posed as a true patriot, at others Owens saw himself as a daring rogue agent, outwitting British Intelligence and loyal only to the Fatherland. Yet in 1944, as Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, Hitler was caught unawares by a strategic deception played out by the double-cross agents who followed Owens at MI5. For all his flaws, Agent Snow became the traitor who saved his country. Based on recently declassified MI5 files and previously unpublished sources, Double Agent Snow is the remarkable story of a secret Battle of Britain, fought by Snow and his opposing spymasters. James Hayward weaves together a thrilling and evocative account populated by a colourful rogue's gallery of double-cross agents. ames Hayward's previous books include The Bodies on the Beach, Shadowplayers and Myths and Legends of the Second World War. As a solicitor he worked on the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, and as a historian has collaborated with organisations including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Imperial War Museum and National Army Museum. He lives in Norfolk and is the proud owner (and very occasional rider) of a vintage 1938 autocycle.
Double Blessing: An Intimate Story Of Raising Two Severely Disabled Children
by Lois PalmerStill my thoughts drift back to the moment Leah was born. A few hours before that moment, Leah was a petite, innocent baby wiggling her toes, swimming around in my womb. But as she was being born God opened a gate that led into a mysterious, dark forest, and in faith my family and I were asked to enter in.
Double Click: Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines
by Carol KinoA Town & Country Must-Read Book of Spring 2024 &“Fashion, photography, and pop culture aficionados will be captivated&” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) by this riveting dual biography of the McLaughlins—identical twin sisters who became groundbreaking magazine photographers in New York during the glamorous golden age of the 1930s and &’40s. In Double Click, author Carol Kino &“has interwoven a biography of the McLaughlins with an authoritative, detailed history of fashion, the art world and photography in midcentury New York&” (The Wall Street Journal).The McLaughlin twins were trailblazing female photographers, celebrated in their time as stars in their respective fields, but have largely been forgotten since. Here, in Double Click, Carol Kino brings these two brilliant women and their remarkable accomplishments to vivid life. Frances was the only female photographer on staff in Condé Nast&’s photo studio, hired just after Irving Penn, and became known for streetwise, cinema verité-style work, which appeared in the pages of Glamour and Vogue. Her sister Kathryn&’s surrealistic portraits filled the era&’s new &“career girl&” magazines, including Charm and Mademoiselle. Both twins married Harper&’s Bazaar photographers and socialized with a glittering crowd that included the supermodel Lisa Fonssagrives and the photographer Richard Avedon. Kino uses their careers to illuminate the lives of young women during this time, an early 20th-century moment marked by proto-feminist thinking, excitement about photography&’s burgeoning creative potential, and the ferment of wartime New York. Toward the end of the 1940s, and moving into the early 1950s, conventionality took over, women were pushed back into the home, and the window of opportunity began to close. Kino renders this fleeting moment of possibility in gleaming multi-color, so that the reader cherishes its abundance, mourns its passing, and gains new appreciation for the talent that was fostered at its peak. Pulling back the curtain on an electric, creative time in New York&’s history, and rich with original research, Double Click is cultural reportage and biography at its finest.
Double Cup Love: On the Trail of Family, Food, and Broken Hearts in China
by Eddie HuangFrom the author of Fresh Off the Boat, now a hit ABC sitcom, comes a hilarious and fiercely original story of culture, family, love, and red-cooked pork Eddie Huang was finally happy. Sort of. He'd written a bestselling book and was the star of a TV show that took him to far-flung places around the globe. His New York City restaurant was humming, his OKCupid hand was strong, and he'd even hung fresh Ralph Lauren curtains to create the illusion of a bedroom in the tiny apartment he shared with his younger brother Evan, who ran their restaurant business. Then he fell in love--and everything fell apart. The business was creating tension within the family; his life as a media star took him away from his first passion--food; and the woman he loved--an All-American white girl--made him wonder: How Chinese am I? The only way to find out, he decided, was to reverse his parents' migration and head back to the motherland. On a quest to heal his family, reconnect with his culture, and figure out whether he should marry his American girl, Eddie flew to China with his two brothers and a mission: to set up shop to see if his food stood up to Chinese palates--and to immerse himself in the culture to see if his life made sense in China. Naturally, nothing went according to plan. Double Cup Love takes readers from Williamsburg dive bars to the skies over Mongolia, from Michelin-starred restaurants in Shanghai to street-side soup peddlers in Chengdu. The book rockets off as a sharply observed, globe-trotting comic adventure that turns into an existential suspense story with high stakes. Eddie takes readers to the crossroads where he has to choose between his past and his future, between who he once was and who he might become. Double Cup Love is about how we search for love and meaning--in family and culture, in romance and marriage--but also how that search, with all its aching and overpowering complexity, can deliver us to our truest selves.
Double Double
by Martha Grimes Ken Grimes"A thoughtful twist on the recovery memoir" (O, The Oprah Magazine) that explains the different ways bestselling author Martha Grimes and her son, Ken Grimes, recognized and overcame their addictions, now with two new chapters--one from each author.In this introspective and groundbreaking memoir of addiction, mystery writer Martha Grimes and her son, Ken Grimes, present two different, often intersecting points of view. Chapters alternate between Ken's and Martha's voices and experiences in 12-step program and outpatient clinics. Written with honesty, humor, a little self-deprecation, and a lot of self-evaluation, Double Double is "an honest, moving, and readable account of the drinking life and the struggle for recovery. This brave and engaging memoir is a gift" (Kirkus Reviews).one. For Ken, it was partying in bars and clubs. Each hit bottom. Martha spent time doing outpatient rehabilitation, once in 1990 and again two years later. Ken began twelve-step recovery. This candid memoir describes how different both the disease and the recovery can look in two different people--even two people who are mother and son. Double Double is an intensely personal and illuminating book, filled with insights, humor, a little self-deprecation, and a lot of self-evaluation. Anyone who has faced alcoholism will identify with parts of this book. All readers will find these pages revealing, moving, and compelling.
Double Double: A Dual Memoir of Alcoholism
by Martha Grimes Ken GrimesFrom the opening paragraphs of Double Double:"We were sitting in a coffee shop talking, looking at the view of downtown Charlottesville, Virginia. This was ten years ago, and we had both been off alcohol for more than a decade. We were disagreeing about the best way to stay sober, when my mother said, "I think we should write a book about alcoholism." I sat back. 'We?' 'Both of us. Two points of view.' "To the final page of this dual memoir, Martha and Ken Grimes keep the reader entertained and informed. Double Double is a unique and honest, dual memoir of alcoholism, a disease that affects nearly 45 million Americans each year. People who suffer from alcoholism as well as their families and friends know that while it is possible to get sober--there is no one "right" way to do this. Now, award-winning mystery writer Martha Grimes and her son, Ken Grimes, offer two points of view on their struggles with alcoholism. In alternating chapters, they share their stories--stories of drinking, recovery, relapse, friendship, travel, work, success and failure. Double Double is an intensely personal, candid and illuminating book, filled with insights, humor, a little self-deprecation, and a lot of self-evaluation.
Double Down: Game Change 2012
by Mark Halperin John HeilemannMichiko Kakutani, "The New York Times" "Those hungry for political news will read "Double Down" for the scooplets and insidery glimpses it serves up about the two campaigns, and the clues it offers about the positioning already going on among Republicans and Democrats for 2016 . . . The book testifies to its authors' energetic legwork and insider access. . . creating a novelistic narrative that provides a you-are-there immediacy. . . They succeed in taking readers interested in the backstabbing and backstage maneuvering of the 2012 campaign behind the curtains, providing a tactile. . . sense of what it looked like from the inside. " In their runaway bestseller "Game Change," Mark Halperin and John Heilemann captured the full drama of Barack Obama's improbable, dazzling victory over the Clintons, John McCain, and Sarah Palin. With the same masterly reporting, unparalleled access, and narrative skill, "Double Down" picks up the story in the Oval Office, where the president is beset by crises both inherited and unforeseen--facing defiance from his political foes, disenchantment from the voters, disdain from the nation's powerful money machers, and dysfunction within the West Wing. As 2012 looms, leaders of the Republican Party, salivating over Obama's political fragility, see a chance to wrest back control of the White House--and the country. So how did the Republicans screw it up? How did Obama survive the onslaught of super PACs and defy the predictions of a one-term presidency? "Double Down" follows the gaudy carnival of GOP contenders--ambitious and flawed, famous and infamous, charismatic and cartoonish--as Mitt Romney, the straitlaced, can-do, gaffe-prone multimillionaire from Massachusetts, scraped and scratched his way to the nomination. "Double Down" exposes blunders, scuffles, and machinations far beyond the klieg lights of the campaign trail: Obama storming out of a White House meeting with his high command after accusing them of betrayal. Romney's mind-set as he made his controversial "47 percent" comments. The real reasons New Jersey governor Chris Christie was never going to be Mitt's running mate. The intervention held by the president's staff to rescue their boss from political self-destruction. The way the tense detente between Obama and Bill Clinton morphed into political gold. And the answer to one of the campaign's great mysteries--how did Clint Eastwood end up performing Dada dinner theater at the Republican convention? In" Double Down," Mark Halperin and John Heilemann take the reader into back rooms and closed-door meetings, laying bare the secret history of the 2012 campaign for a panoramic account of an election that was as hard fought as it was lastingly consequential.
Double Down: Reflections on Gambling and Loss
by Frederick Barthelme Steven Barthelme"So each night begins. One of us picks up the other and we drive into the Mississippi darkness, headed for a place where everything is different." This first nonfiction book by Frederick Barthelme, author of BOB THE GAMBLER, and his brother and colleague Steven is both a story of family feeling and a testimony to the risky allure of casinos. Within a year and a half, the authors had lost both of their parents, less than a decade after their brother Donald died. Their exacting father had been a prominent modernist architect in Houston; their mother, the architect of this family of seven, which she "invented, shaped, guided, and protected." "We were on our own in a remarkable new way," the Barthelmes write, "and we were not ready." What followed was a several-year escapade during which the two brothers lost close to a quarter million dollars in the gambling boats off the Mississippi coast. They played to enter that addictive land of possibility. Then, in a bizarre twist, they were charged with violating state gambling laws, fingerprinted, and thrown into the surreal world of felony prosecution. For two years these widely publicized charges hung over their heads, shadowing their every step, until, in August of 1999, the charges were finally dismissed. DOUBLE DOWN is the sometimes wryly told, often heartbreaking story of how Frederick and Steven Barthelme got into this predicament. It is also a reflection on the pull and power of illusions, the way they work on us when we are not careful.
Double Exposure: A Twin Autobiography
by Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt Lady Thelma FurnessIn 1921 there burst upon the New York social scene the famous Morgan twins, Thelma and Gloria, whose names in the decade that followed came to spell glamour and excitement in that magic world of the “international set.” Two continents thrilled to Thelma Furness’s romances with Richard Bennett, Lord Furness, the Prince of Wales, Aly Khan, and Edmund Lowe. The whole world followed with bated breath the searing custody trial over young Gloria that pitted mother against daughter and shook the Vanderbilts and society. While much has been written from the outside about all of this, the two principals have never before disclosed the real truth behind the rumors and the headlines. And exciting as are their personal adventures and escapades, their story is also a portrait of an era.In every age there have been certain women who through a combination of beauty and personality have attracted the love and admiration of rich or famous men, and who seem to be the embodiments of the feminine charm of the period. The Edwardian era had its Lily Langtry, the Napoleonic its Josephine, the eighteenth century its Du Barry and its Lady Hamilton—and so on back to antiquity. In our time, among those women who have come close to fitting this role are Lady Furness and Gloria Vanderbilt.From childhood each had the elusive qualities that characterize the femme fatale. Both knew the love of many men, both suffered deeply, and now both have happily risen above the vicissitudes of their checkered careers and face the future with gallantry, humor, and without rancor or bitterness over the past. In this spirit, and with all sincerity, they have set down the story of their lives.In Double Exposure, we are given a matchless picture of life among the great—and the near-great—in the now-vanished world between the two wars. Above all, we come to know the minds and hearts and philosophy of life and love of two fascinating women, and something of the nature of fascination itself.