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The Lonely End of the Rink
by Grant LawrenceDeeply personal yet incredibly witty, this memoir about Grant Lawrence's relationship with hockey passes back and forth between tales of his life and a fascinating history of hockey, complete with lively anecdotes about the many colorful characters of the NHL. <P><P>Through Lawrence's early life, he struggled with the idea of hockey. An undersized child who wore thick glasses and knee-braces, he understood what it was like to be in the attack zone of the hockey-obsessed jocks at his school. For Lawrence, bullying and the violent game of hockey seemed to go hand-in-hand. Yet he was also enamored with the sport and eventually learned that playing goalie on a hockey team isn't all that different from playing in a band, and that artistically-minded wimps can find just as much joy in the game as their meathead counterparts.
Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos: The Story of the Scientific Quest for the Secret of the Universe
by Dennis OverbyeFinalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award: the "intensely exciting" story of a group of brilliant scientists who set out to answer the deepest questions about the origin of the universe and changed the course of physics and astronomy forever (Newsday). In southern California, nearly a half century ago, a small band of researchers — equipped with a new 200-inch telescope and a faith born of scientific optimism — embarked on the greatest intellectual adventure in the history of humankind: the search for the origin and fate of the universe. Their quest would eventually engulf all of physics and astronomy, leading not only to the discovery of quasars, black holes, and shadow matter but also to fame, controversy, and Nobel Prizes. Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos tells the story of the men and women who have taken eternity on their shoulders and stormed nature in search of answers to the deepest questions we know to ask."Written with such wit and verve that it is hard not to zip through in one sitting." —Washington Post
The Lonely Hunter: How Our Search for Love Is Broken: A Memoir
by Aimée LutkinWhen can we say we&’ll be single forever—and that&’s okay? One woman questions our society&’s pathologizing of loneliness in this crackling, incisive blend of memoir and cultural reporting. &“The Lonely Hunter challenged everything I assumed about the nature of loneliness and what it means to lead an authentic life.&”—Doree Shafrir, author of Thanks for Waiting and Startup: A NovelONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022—Cosmopolitan, She ReadsOne evening, thirtysomething writer Aimée Lutkin found herself at a dinner party surrounded by couples. When the conversation turned to her love life, Lutkin stated simply, &“I don&’t really know if I&’m going to date anyone ever again. Some people are just alone forever.&” Her friends rushed to assure her that love comes when you least expect it and to make recommendations for new dating apps. But Lutkin wondered, Why, when there are more unmarried adults than ever before, is there so much pressure to couple up? Why does everyone treat me as though my real life won&’t start until I find a partner? Isn&’t this my real life, the one I&’m living right now? Is there something wrong with me, or is there something wrong with our culture? Over the course of the next year, Lutkin set out to answer these questions and to see if there really was some trick to escaping loneliness. She went on hundreds of dates; read the sociologists, authors, and relationship experts exploring singlehood and loneliness; dove into the wellness industrial complex; tossed it all aside to binge-watch Netflix and eat nachos; and probed the capitalist structures that make alternative family arrangements nearly impossible.Chock-full of razor-sharp observations and poignant moments of vulnerability, The Lonely Hunter is a stirring account of one woman&’s experience of being alone and a revealing exposé of our culture&’s deep biases against the uncoupled. Blazingly smart, insightful, and full of heart, this is a book for anyone determined to make, follow, and break their own rules.
The Lonely Life: An Autobiography
by Bette DavisOriginally published in 1962, The Lonely Life is legendary silver screen actress Bette Davis's lively and riveting account of her life, loves, and marriages--now in ebook for the first time, and updated with an afterword she wrote just before her death. As Davis says in the opening lines of her classic memoir: "I have always been driven by some distant music--a battle hymn, no doubt--for I have been at war from the beginning. I rode into the field with sword gleaming and standard flying. I was going to conquer the world." A bold, unapologetic book by a unique and formidable woman, The Lonely Life details the first fifty-plus years of Davis's life--her Yankee childhood, her rise to stardom in Hollywood, the birth of her beloved children, and the uncompromising choices she made along the way to succeed. The book was updated with new material in the 1980s, bringing the story up to the end of Davis's life--all the heartbreak, all the drama, and all the love she experienced at every stage of her extraordinary life. The Lonely Life proves conclusively that the legendary image of Bette Davis is not a fable but a marvelous reality.
The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq
by Helen BenedictMore American women have fought and died in Iraq than in any war since World War Two, yet as soldiers they are still painfully alone. In Iraq, only one in ten troops is a woman, and she often serves in a unit with few other women or none at all. This isolation, along with the military's deep-seated hostility toward women, causes problems that many female soldiers find as hard to cope with as war itself: degradation, sexual persecution by their comrades, and loneliness, instead of the camaraderie that every soldier depends on for comfort and survival. As one female soldier said, "I ended up waging my own war against an enemy dressed in the same uniform as mine. " InThe Lonely Soldier, Benedict tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. She follows them from their childhoods to their enlistments, then takes them through their training, to war and home again, all the while setting the war's events in context. We meet Jen, white and from a working-class town in the heartland, who still shakes from her wartime traumas; Abbie, who rebelled against a household of liberal Democrats by enlisting in the National Guard; Mickiela, a Mexican American who grew up with a family entangled in L. A. gangs; Terris, an African American mother from D. C. whose childhood was torn by violence; and Eli PaintedCrow, who joined the military to follow Native American tradition and to escape a life of Faulknerian hardship. Between these stories, Benedict weaves those of the forty other Iraq War veterans she interviewed, illuminating the complex issues of war and misogyny, class, race, homophobia, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Each of these stories is unique, yet collectively they add up to a heartbreaking picture of the sacrifices women soldiers are making for this country. Benedict ends by showing how these women came to face the truth of war and by offering suggestions for how the military can improve conditions for female soldiers--including distributing women more evenly throughout units and rejecting male recruits with records of violence against women. Humanizing, urgent, and powerful,The Lonely Soldieris a clarion call for change.
The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone
by Natalie Eve GarrettA collection of essays about the joys and struggles of being alone by 22 literary writers including: Lev Grossman, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lena Dunham, Jesmyn Ward, Yiyun Li, and Anthony DoerrIf you&’re feeling lonely or if you&’ve ever felt unseen, if you&’re emboldened by solitude or secretly longing for it: Welcome to The Lonely Stories. This cathartic collection of essays illuminates an experience that so few of us openly discuss. Some stories are heartbreaking, such as Jesmyn Ward&’s reckoning with the loss of her husband and Dina Nayeri&’s reflection on immigrating to a foreign country. Others are witty, such as Lev Grossman&’s rueful tale of heading to the woods or Anthony Doerr&’s struggles with internet addiction. Still others celebrate the clarity of solitude, like Claire Dederer&’s journey toward sobriety and Lidia Yuknavitch&’s sensual look at desire. Thoughtful and affirming, The Lonely Stories reveals the complexities of an emotion we&’ve all felt—reminding us that we're not alone. Contributors include: • Megan Giddings • Claire Dederer • Imani Perry • Jeffery Renard Allen • Maggie Shipstead • Emily Raboteau • Lev Grossman • Lena Dunham • Yiyun Li • Anthony Doerr • Helena Fitzgerald • Maile Meloy • Aja Gabel • Jean Kwok • Amy Shearn • Peter Ho Davies • Maya Shanbhag Lang • Jhumpa Lahiri • Jesmyn Ward • Lidia Yuknavitch • Dina Nayeri • Melissa Febos
The Lonely War: One Woman's Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran
by Nazila FathiAs a nine-year-old Tehrani schoolgirl during the Iranian Revolution, Nazila Fathi watched her country change before her eyes. The revolutionaries--most of them poor, uneducated, and radicalized--seized jobs, housing, and positions of power, transforming Iranian society practically overnight. But this socioeconomic revolution had an unintended effect. As Fathi shows, the forces unleashed in 1979 inadvertently created a robust Iranian middle class, one that today hungers for more personal freedoms and a renewed relationship with the outside world. And unless an international confrontation allows Iranian leaders to justify an internal crackdown, this internal pressure for reform will soon set the country on a more stable track. In The Lonely War, Fathi describes Iran’s awakening alongside her own, revealing how moderates are retaking the country--and how foreign powers can aid their progress.
Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney
by Marion MeadeNATHANAEL WEST-novelist, screenwriter, playwright, devoted outdoorsman-was one of the most gifted and original writers of his generation, a comic artist whose insight into the brutalities of modern life proved prophetic. He is famous for two masterpieces, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) and The Day of the Locust (1939). Seventy years later, The Day of the Locust remains the most penetrating novel ever written about Hollywood. EILEEN MCKENNEY-accidental muse, literary heroine-was the inspiration for her sister Ruth's humorous stories, My Sister Eileen, which led to stage, film, and television adaptations, including Leonard Bernstein's 1953 musical Wonderful Town. She grew up in Cleveland and moved to Manhattan at 21 in search of romance and adventure. She and her sister lived in a basement apartment in the Village with a street-level window into which men frequently peered. Husband and wife were intimate with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Katharine White, S.J. Perelman, Bennett Cerf, and many of the literary, theatrical, and movie notables of their era. With Lonelyhearts, biographer Marion Meade, whose Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin earned accolades from the Washington Post Book World ("Wonderful") to the San Francisco Chronicle ("Like looking at a photo album while listening to a witty insider reminisce about the images"), restores West and McKenney to their rightful places in the rich cultural tapestry of interwar America.
Lonesome Dreamer: The Life of John G. Neihardt
by Timothy G. AndersonAmerican poet and writer John G. Neihardt (1881–1973) possessed an inquiring and spiritual mind. Those qualities came to the fore in Black Elk Speaks, the story of the Lakota holy man Black Elk, for which he is best remembered. Over the course of thirty years he also wrote a five-volume epic poem, A Cycle of the West, which told the story of the settling of the American West. Despite Neihardt’s widespread name recognition, the success of Black Elk Speaks, and a list of critically acclaimed books and poems, Lonesome Dreamer is the first biography of Neihardt in nearly forty years. Timothy G. Anderson describes Neihardt’s life from his humble beginnings in Illinois, to being named poet laureate of Nebraska in 1921, to his appearance on the Dick Cavett Show at the age of ninety. Anderson also delves into Neihardt’s success as a poet far from the East Coast literary establishment, his resistance to modernist movements in poetry, and his wish to understand and describe the experience of the Plains Indians. Offering insight into both his personal and his literary life, this biography reaffirms Neihardt’s place in American literary history, his successes and failures, and his unbreakable spirit.
Lonesome Melodies: The Lives and Music of the Stanley Brothers (American Made Music Series)
by David W. JohnsonCarter and Ralph Stanley—the Stanley Brothers—are comparable to Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs as important members of the earliest generation of bluegrass musicians. In this first biography of the brothers, author David W. Johnson documents that Carter (1925–1966) and Ralph (b. 1927) were equally important contributors to the tradition of old-time country music. Together from 1946 to 1966, the Stanley Brothers began their careers performing in the schoolhouses of southwestern Virginia and expanded their popularity to the concert halls of Europe. In order to re-create this post–World War II journey through the changing landscape of American music, the author interviewed Ralph Stanley, the family of Carter Stanley, former members of the Clinch Mountain Boys, and dozens of musicians and friends who knew the Stanley Brothers as musicians and men. The late Mike Seeger allowed Johnson to use his invaluable 1966 interviews with the brothers. Notable old-time country and bluegrass musicians such as George Shuffler, Lester Woodie, Larry Sparks, and the late Wade Mainer shared their recollections of Carter and Ralph. Lonesome Melodies begins and ends in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. Carter and Ralph were born there and had an early publicity photograph taken at the Cumberland Gap. In December 1966, pallbearers walked up Smith Ridge to bring Carter to his final resting place. In the intervening years, the brothers performed thousands of in-person and radio shows, recorded hundreds of songs and tunes for half a dozen record labels and tried to keep pace with changing times while remaining true to the spirit of old-time country music. As a result of their accomplishments, they have become a standard of musical authenticity.
Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and '40s
by Berish Andrew S.Any listener knows the power of music to define a place, but few can describe the how or why of this phenomenon. In Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and '40s, Andrew Berish attempts to right this wrong, showcasing how American jazz defined a culture particularly preoccupied with place. By analyzing both the performances and cultural context of leading jazz figures, including the many famous venues where they played, Berish bridges two dominant scholarly approaches to the genre, offering not only a new reading of swing era jazz but an entirely new framework for musical analysis in general, one that examines how the geographical realities of daily life can be transformed into musical sound. Focusing on white bandleader Jan Garber, black bandleader Duke Ellington, white saxophonist Charlie Barnet, and black guitarist Charlie Christian, as well as traveling from Catalina Island to Manhattan to Oklahoma City, Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams depicts not only a geography of race but how this geography was disrupted, how these musicians crossed physical and racial boundaries--from black to white, South to North, and rural to urban--and how they found expression for these movements in the insistent music they were creating.
Lonesome Traveler
by Jack KerouacIn his first frankly autobiographical work, Jack Kerouac tells the exhilarating story of the years when he was writing the books that captivated and infuriated the public, restless years of wandering during which he worked as a railway brakeman in California, a steward on a tramp steamer, and a fire lookout on the crest of Desolation Peak in the Cascade Mountains. Resembling his novels in its exuberant style and "jazzy impressionistic prose" (The New Yorker), Lonesome Traveler gives us "Kerouac's nerve ends vs. the universe, with flashes of poetry, truth, and daffiness."
The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Hope and Struggle in Matrimony
by Rick Moody“[A] moving, funny, hauntingly brilliant memoir about marriage.” —Caroline Leavitt, The San Francisco Chronicle Rick Moody, the award-winning author of The Ice Storm, shares the harrowing true story of the first year of his second marriage in this eventful, month-by-month accountAt this story’s start, Moody, a recovering alcoholic and sexual compulsive with a history of depression, is also the divorced father of a beloved little girl and a man in love; his answer to the question “Would you like to be in a committed relationship?” is, fully and for the first time in his life, “Yes.” And so his second marriage begins as he emerges, humbly and with tender hopes, from the wreckage of his past, only to be battered by a stormy sea of external troubles—miscarriages, the deaths of friends, and robberies, just for starters. As Moody has put it, "this is a story in which a lot of bad luck is the daily fare of the protagonists, but in which they are also in love.” To Moody’s astonishment, matrimony turns out to be the site of strength in hard times, a vessel infinitely tougher and more durable than any boat these two participants would have traveled by alone. Love buoys the couple, lifting them above their hardships, and the reader is buoyed along with them.
Long Ago in France: The Years In Dijon
by M. F. K. FisherFrom one of the most gifted writers of our time, a nostalgic account of France, replete with fascinating characters and memorable meals. In this very personal reminiscence, readers glimpse beautiful Dijon against the backdrop of between-the-wars Europe through the eyes, heart and stomach of a most wise and articulate woman.
The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama
by Gabriel DebenedettiNew York Magazine national correspondent Gabriel Debenedetti reveals an inside look at the historically close, complicated, occasionally co-dependent, and at-times uncertain relationship between Joe Biden and Barack Obama.Delving far deeper than the simplistic “bromance” narrative that’s long held the public eye, The Long Alliance reveals the past, present, and future of the unusual partnership, detailing its development, its twists and turns, its ruptures and reunions, and its path to this pivotal moment for each man’s legacy.The true story of this relationship, from 2003 into 2022, is significantly more layered and consequential than is widely understood. The original mismatch between the veteran Washington traditionalist and the once-in-a-generation outsider has transformed repeatedly in ways that have molded not just four different presidential campaigns and two different political parties, but also wars, a devastating near-depression, movements for social equality, and the fight for the future of American democracy. The bond between them has been, at various times over the past two decades, tense, affectionate, nonexistent, and ironclad — but it has always been surprising. Now it is shaping a second presidential administration, and the future of the world as we know it.
Long-Armed Ludy and the First Women's Olympics
by Jean L. PatrickLucile &“Ludy&” Godbold was six feet tall and skinnier than a Carolina pine and an exceptional athlete. In her final year on the track team at Winthrop College in South Carolina, Ludy tried the shot put and she made that iron ball sail with her long, skinny arms. But when Ludy qualified for the first Women's Olympics in 1922, Ludy had no money to go.Thanks to the help of her college and classmates, Ludy traveled to Paris and won the gold medal with more than a foot to spare. Hooray for Ludy! Based on a true story about a little-known athlete and a unique event in women's sports history.
The Long, Bitter Trail (Andrew Jackson and the Indians)
by Anthony F. C. WallaceThis account of Congress's Indian Removal Act of 1830 focuses on the plight of the Indians of the Southeast--Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles--who were forced to leave their ancestral lands and relocate to what is now the state of Oklahoma. Revealing Andrew Jackson's central role in the government's policies, Wallace examines the racist attitudes toward Native Americans that led to their removal and, ultimately, their tragic fate.
Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously
by Bill MckibbenIn his late thirties, celebrated essayist, journalist, and author Bill McKibben -- never much of an athlete -- decided the time had come for him to really test his body. Cross-country skiing his challenge of choice, he lived the fantasy of many amateur athletes and trained -- with the help of a coach/guru -- nearly full-time, putting in hours and miles typical of an Olympic hopeful. For one vigorous year, which would culminate in a series of grueling, long-distance races, McKibben experienced his body's rhythms and possibilities as never before. But the year also brought tragedy to McKibben and his family as his father developed a life-threatening illness. Forcing a deeper exploration of both body and spirit, the arrival of this illness transforms McKibben's action-packed memoir into a moving account of two men coming to terms with the limits of the flesh.
Long Drawn Out Trip: A Memoir
by Gerald ScarfeIn Long Drawn Out Trip: My Life, Gerald Scarfe tells his life story for the first time. With captivating, often thrilling stories, he takes us from his childhood and early days at Punch and Private Eye, through his long and occasionally tumultuous career as the Sunday Times cartoonist, to his film-making at the BBC and much-loved designs for Pink Floyd's The Wall and Disney's Hercules. Along the way he has drawn Churchill from life, gone on tour with The Beatles and thoroughly upset Mrs Mary Whitehouse. It is a very personal, wickedly funny and caustically insightful account of an artist's life at the forefront of contemporary culture and society.
Long Drawn Out Trip: A Memoir
by Gerald ScarfeIn Long Drawn Out Trip: My Life, Gerald Scarfe tells his life story for the first time. With captivating, often thrilling stories, he takes us from his childhood and early days at Punch and Private Eye, through his long and occasionally tumultuous career as the Sunday Times cartoonist, to his film-making at the BBC and much-loved designs for Pink Floyd's The Wall and Disney's Hercules. Along the way he has drawn Churchill from life, gone on tour with The Beatles and thoroughly upset Mrs Mary Whitehouse. It is a very personal, wickedly funny and caustically insightful account of an artist's life at the forefront of contemporary culture and society.
Long Drawn Out Trip: A Memoir
by Gerald ScarfeIn 1964 a young artist sat in the public gallery of the House of Commons, sketching former Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The Sunday Times refused to print the resulting drawing of this frail, aged figure - so far from the public image of the man - it was too truthful.In the sixty years since, Gerald Scarfe's work has continued to expose the truth, and has appeared many times in the pages of the Sunday Times, in the Evening Standard, New Yorker, Private Eye and Time, as well as on the walls of the V&A and the Tate, the stages of the English National Opera and the English National Ballet, and cinema screens around the world in the form of Pink Floyd The Wall and Disney's Hercules.In Long Drawn Out Trip, Gerald tells his life story for the first time. With captivating, often thrilling stories, he takes us back to his wartime childhood and the terrible curse of asthma, through his days as an advertising draughtsman, to his field reporting in Vietnam and the giddy highs of rock 'n' roll. He also reveals the process of cartooning - and the ways that certain subjects have reacted to his visions of them. Along the way he has been car-jacked in Derry, dined with royals, and thoroughly upset Mrs Mary Whitehouse. It is a very personal, wickedly funny and caustically insightful account of an artist's life at the forefront of contemporary culture and society.
The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved
by Judith FreemanRaymond Chandler was among the most original and enduring crime novelists of the twentieth century. Yet much of his pre-writing life, including his unconventional marriage, has remained shrouded in mystery. In this compelling, wholly original book, Judith Freeman sets out to solve the puzzle of who Chandler was and how he became the writer who would create in Philip Marlowe an icon of American culture. Visiting Chandler's many homes and apartments, Freeman uncovers vestiges of the Los Angeles that was Chandler's terrain and inspiration for his imagination. She also uncovers the life of Cissy Pascal, the older, twice-divorced woman Chandler married in 1924. A revelation of a marriage that was a wellspring of need, illusion, and creativity, The Long Embrace provides us with a more complete picture of Raymond Chandler's life and art than any we have had before.
The Long Field: Wales and the Presence of Absence, a Memoir
by Pamela PetroFor readers of H Is for Hawk, an intimate memoir of belonging and loss and a mesmerizing travelogue through the landscapes and language of WalesHiraeth is a Welsh word that's famously hard to translate. Literally, it can mean "long field" but generally translates into English, inadequately, as "homesickness." At heart, hiraeth suggests something like a bone-deep longing for an irretrievable place, person, or time—an acute awareness of the presence of absence. In The Long Field, Pamela Petro braids essential hiraeth stories of Wales with tales from her own life—as an American who found an ancient home in Wales, as a gay woman, as the survivor of a terrible AMTRAK train crash, and as the daughter of a parent with dementia. Through the pull and tangle of these stories and her travels throughout Wales, hiraeth takes on radical new meanings. There is traditional hiraeth of place and home, but also queer hiraeth; and hiraeth triggered by technology, immigration, ecological crises, and our new divisive politics. On this journey, the notion begins to morph from a uniquely Welsh experience to a universal human condition, from deep longing to the creative responses to loss that Petro sees as the genius of Welsh culture. It becomes a tool to understand ourselves in our time. A finalist for the Wales Book of the Year Award and named to the Telegraph's and Financial Times's Top 10 lists for travel writing, The Long Field is an unforgettable exploration of &“the hidden contours of the human heart.&”
The Long Game: A Memoir
by Mitch McconnellIn October 1984, a hard-charging Kentucky politician waited excitedly for President Ronald Reagan to arrive at a presidential rally in Louisville. In the midst of a tough Senate campaign against an incumbent Democrat, the young Republican hoped Reagan's endorsement would give a much-needed boost to his insurgent campaign. He even had a camera crew ready to capture the president's words for a TV commercial he planned to air during the campaign's final stretch. Alas, when Reagan finally stepped to the microphone, he smiled for the crowd and declared: "I'm happy to be here with my good friend, Mitch O'Donnell." That was hardly Mitch McConnell's first setback, and far from his last. But as he learned when running his very first campaign for student body president in high school, you don't have to be the most popular, the most athletic, or even the luckiest kid to win. You just need to run the best campaign. So he swallowed hard, put his head down, and kept going. Four weeks later, in the biggest upset of the year, his dream of being a US senator came true--by a margin of about one vote per precinct. By persevering, he'd be the only Republican in the country to beat an incumbent Democratic US senator. McConnell learned patience and fortitude during his post-World War II youth in Alabama. His mother helped him beat polio by leading him through long, aching exercises every day for two years. His father taught him the importance of standing up to bullies, even if it meant taking the occasional punch. It turned out to be the perfect childhood for a future Senate majority leader. "In the line of work I would choose, compromise is key, but I'd come to find that certain times required me to invoke the fighting spirit both of my parents instilled in me." The Long Game is the candid, behind-the-scenes memoir of a man famous for his discretion. For more than three decades, McConnell has worked steadily to advance conservative values, including limited government, individual liberty, fiscal prudence, and a strong national defense. But he has always cared much more about moving the ball forward than about who gets the credit.Even in recent years, when some of his colleagues seem obsessed with maintaining and cultivating their images in a twenty-four-hour news cycle, McConnell focuses on how today's controversies will affect the country in a year, or two, or ten. Now McConnell reveals what he really thinks about the rivalry between the Senate and the House; the players and the stakes involved when a group of political opportunists tried to hijack the Tea Party movement; and key figures such as Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Harry Reid. He tells the inside story of the battle against Obamacare and other fights to protect the US Constitution against further encroachment by an out-of-control White House that's stuck in a permanent campaign. He explains the real causes of the chronic gridlock that has so many voters enraged, his ongoing efforts to restore the US Senate's indispensable dual role as a brake on excess and a tool for national consensus, and what ordinary citizens have a right to expect from Washington. In today's atmosphere of impatience and instant gratification, McConnell still believes the Founders knew best when they instituted a government with checks and balances. As he writes, "In the end, the goal isn't a perfectly running congressional machine or a party without blemish or inner turmoil. The goal is to allow the country to work out its differences freely and energetically, confident that the institutions the Founders left us are capable of accommodating the disputes and disagreements that arise in a nation as big and diverse and open as ours."From the Hardcover edition.
The Long Goodbye: Memories Of My Father
by Patti DavisRonald Reagan's daughter writes with a moving openness about losing her father to Alzheimer's disease. The simplicity with which she reveals the intensity, the rush, the flow of her feelings encompasses all the surprises and complexities that ambush us when death gradually, unstoppably invades life.In The Long Goodbye, Patti Davis describes losing her father to Alzheimer's disease, saying goodbye in stages, helpless against the onslaught of a disease that steals what is most precious-a person's memory. "Alzheimer's," she writes, "snips away at the threads, a slow unraveling, a steady retreat; as a witness all you can do is watch, cry, and whisper a soft stream of goodbyes."She writes of needing to be reunited at forty-two with her mother ("she had wept as much as I over our long, embittered war"), of regaining what they had spent decades demolishing; a truce was necessary to bring together a splintered family, a few weeks before her father released his letter telling the country and the world of his illness . . .The author delves into her memories to touch her father again, to hear his voice, to keep alive the years she had with him.She writes as if past and present were coming together, of her memories as a child, holding her father's hand, and as a young woman whose hand is being given away in marriage by her father . . . of her father teaching her to ride a bicycle, of the moment when he let her go and she went off on her own . . . of his teaching her the difference between a hawk and a buzzard . . . of the family summer vacations at a rented beach house-each of them tan, her father looking like the athlete he was, with a swimmer's broad shoulders and lean torso. . . . She writes of how her father never resisted solitude, in fact was born for it, of that strange reserve that made people reach for him. . . . She recalls him sitting at his desk, writing, staring out the window . . . and she writes about the toll of the disease itself, the look in her father's eyes, and her efforts to reel him back to her. Moving . . . honest . . . an illuminating portrait of grief, of a man, a disease, and a woman and her father.From the Hardcover edition.