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James Gandolfini: The Real Life of the Man Who Made Tony Soprano
by Dan BischoffJames Gandolfini: The Real Life of the Man Who Made Tony Soprano is the first biography of the actor who died, in June 2013 at age 51, widely recognized as one of the best—and most defining—actors of his generation. The book is informed by fresh interviews with Sopranos actors, the star's acting teachers and coaches, his childhood friends, buddies from his days as a nightclub bouncer, and Hollywood figures including the directors of his posthumously released films. Bischoff decodes Gandolfini's portrayal of mobsters and bad guys from his breakout role in True Romance with Patricia Arquette to the television series role that made his career, and his portrayals of real people like Leon Panetta in Zero Dark Thirty. Gandolfini's personal life--from his marriages and family interactions to his deep friendships with his fellow cast members—enriches and enlivens this book, and deepens our understanding of the star.James Gandolfini: The Real Life of the Man Who Made Tony Soprano is a fascinating look at Gandolfini's complicated relationship to his roots, to the role that made him wealthy beyond his imagination, and to American notions of masculinity, power and fame. Even as he scaled the heights of his profession, creating a TV character as vivid as Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker and as volcanic as Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski, Gandolfini remained a reluctant celebrity dedicated more to his craft than to his career. James Gandolfini: The Real Life of the Man Who Made Tony Soprano delivers a textured, multilayered portrait of the on- and off-screen life of a complex, talented man who rose from an Italian immigrant family in northern New Jersey to join the ranks of America's most iconic actors.
Bug Girl (Bug Girl Ser. #1)
by Benjamin Harper Sarah Hines StephensSarah Hines Stephens and Benjamin Harper's Bug Girl is a funny and action-packed middle-grade superhero adventure with a beautifully designed two color interior and sidebars featuring real bug facts!Amanda Price adores all things bug-related—from spiders to mantises—like, seriously loves them. Unfortunately most of her fellow sixth-graders do not share her invertebrate obsession. They’re grossed out by it. Especially Amanda’s ex-best friend, Emily, who thinks Amanda is creepy weird.But when mysterious invaders menace the town of Oyster Cove and take both Amanda and Emily’s mothers captive, Amanda unexpectedly develops amazing insectile powers! Newly equipped with antennae and a glistening exoskeleton she uncovers a secret that changes everything.Now Amanda has to act fast or her town and her mom are doomed! There’s just one complication…she needs Emily’s help.Suddenly Amanda’s worst enemy becomes her best ally, but working together may be even harder than saving their town from being squashed like a…well… BUG GIRL. She’s got the buzz.Sarah Hines Stephens and Benjamin Harper's Bug Girl is a funny and action-packed superhero adventure filled with green illustrations and sidebars featuring real bug facts!An Imprint Book“Bearing all the campy hallmarks and high drama of a classic superhero romp, this entertaining ... tale also features interesting entomological tidbits throughout.” — Kirkus Reviews“The villain is dastardly, the heroes are staunch, and the costumes are impressive, making this high-quality standard superhero fare with the added bonus of some poignant details of how even the closest friendships may fade amid the social pressures of middle school.” — Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books“Tucks both middle-school fashion advice and insect facts into a tale that scuttles along to a wildly destructive climactic battle.” — Booklist
One Degree Revolution: How Small Shifts Lead to Big Changes
by Coby KozlowskiInnovative, accessible, and easily implemented, One Degree Revolution is acclaimed yoga educator and leadership coach Coby Kozlowski's holistic program for self-inquiry and personal transformation. Her philosophy is deeply connected to living yoga—not just doing yoga. In fact, readers don’t need to have ever attended a yoga class to dive into this book: her thoughtful teachings are for anybody interested in learning to navigate the waves of life more skillfully and gracefully. Imagine sailing a boat with a course set for a lifetime. If that route changes by just one navigational degree, what would happen to the journey? How far from the original trajectory would we be in one year? Five years? Ten years? Twenty years? Well, we would end up in a totally different place. In much the same way, we can change the course of our life by making a one degree shift. In other words, we don’t have to change everything about ourselves or our world to make a difference.Coby inspires readers to dig deep, to ask powerful questions and to dive into the insights, experiments, and inquiries of living yoga: how can I best be with life? How can the teachings of yoga direct us to see the most aligned choices, let go of past hurts, and discover deep and meaningful connections? And what are the most skillful ways we can learn to savor all that life presents? These yoga philosophies are infused with practical strategies for creating the life you truly want and having a positive impact on the world. One Degree Revolution will guide readers to:-access infinite personal possibilities-celebrate their authentic selves and start listening to their calling-find meaning and purpose-learn to let go and trust the unfolding of life-value taking a pause and making a fresh start when needed-challenge long-held beliefs and foster transformational change-get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and-develop their communityOne degree at a time.
Sybil Ludington: Revolutionary War Rider (Based On A True Story Ser.)
by E. F. AbbottWhat would you do if your country was counting on you to deliver a message? That's sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington’s urgent mission.In 1777, Sybil and her family believe the American colonies should be free from British control. Sybil’s father leads a regiment of New York militiamen, and everyone in the family is dedicated to the Patriot cause. Using spy tactics and codes, the Ludingtons gather intelligence, hoping to stay one step ahead of their enemies. When British troops raid nearby Danbury, Connecticut, Sybil gallops through the night to call out her father's men. But the journey is dangerous for a girl who’s all alone. With obstacles at every turn, will she make it in time to stop the British?Based on a True Story books are exciting historical fiction about real children who lived through extraordinary times in American History. This title has Common Core connections.
Lost Voices from the Titanic: The Definitive Oral History
by Nick BarrattOn April 15, 1912, the HMS Titanic sank, killing 1,517 people and leaving the rest clinging to debris in the frozen waters of the North Atlantic awaiting rescue. Here, historian Nick Barratt tells the ship's full story, starting from its original conception and design by owners and naval architects at the White Star Line through its construction at the shipyards in Belfast. Lost Voices From the Titanic offers tales of incredible folly and unimaginable courage—the aspirations of the owners, the efforts of the crew, and of course, the eyewitness accounts from those lucky enough to survive.In narrating the definitive history of the famous ship, Barratt draws from never before seen archive material and eyewitness accounts by participants at every stage of the Titanic's life. These long-lost voices bring new life to those heartbreaking moments on the fateful Sunday night when families were torn apart and the legend of the Titanic was cemented in our collective imagination.
Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent's Natural Soul
by Scott WeidensaulIn 1953, birding guru Roger Tory Peterson and noted British naturalist James Fisher set out on what became a legendary journey-a one hundred day trek over 30,000 miles around North America. They traveled from Newfoundland to Florida, deep into the heart of Mexico, through the Southwest, the Pacific Northwest, and into Alaska's Pribilof Islands. Two years later, Wild America, their classic account of the trip, was published. On the eve of that book's fiftieth anniversary, naturalist Scott Weidensaul retraces Peterson and Fisher's steps to tell the story of wild America today. How has the continent's natural landscape changed over the past fifty years? How have the wildlife, the rivers, and the rugged, untouched terrain fared? The journey takes Weidensaul to the coastal communities of Newfoundland, where he examines the devastating impact of the Atlantic cod fishery's collapse on the ecosystem; to Florida, where he charts the virtual extinction of the great wading bird colonies that Peterson and Fisher once documented; to the Mexican tropics of Xilitla, which have become a growing center of ecotourism since Fisher and Peterson's exposition. And perhaps most surprising of all, Weidensaul finds that much of what Peterson and Fisher discovered remains untouched by the industrial developments of the last fifty years. Poised to become a classic in its own right, Return to Wild America is a sweeping survey of the natural soul of North America today.
Half-Blood Blues: A Novel
by Esi EdugyanWinner of the Scotiabank Giller PrizeMan Booker Prize Finalist 2011An Oprah Magazine Best Book of the YearShortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for FictionBerlin, 1939. The Hot Time Swingers, a popular jazz band, has been forbidden to play by the Nazis. Their young trumpet-player Hieronymus Falk, declared a musical genius by none other than Louis Armstrong, is arrested in a Paris café. He is never heard from again. He was twenty years old, a German citizen. And he was black. Berlin, 1952. Falk is a jazz legend. Hot Time Swingers band members Sid Griffiths and Chip Jones, both African Americans from Baltimore, have appeared in a documentary about Falk. When they are invited to attend the film's premier, Sid's role in Falk's fate will be questioned and the two old musicians set off on a surprising and strange journey. From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of Paris, Sid leads the reader through a fascinating, little-known world as he describes the friendships, love affairs and treacheries that led to Falk's incarceration in Sachsenhausen. Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues is a story about music and race, love and loyalty, and the sacrifices we ask of ourselves, and demand of others, in the name of art.
The Mall: A Novel
by Megan McCaffertyNew York Times bestselling author Megan McCafferty returns to her roots with this YA coming of age story set in a New Jersey mall.The year is 1991. Scrunchies, mixtapes and 90210 are, like, totally fresh. Cassie Worthy is psyched to spend the summer after graduation working at the Parkway Center Mall. In six weeks, she and her boyfriend head off to college in NYC to fulfill The Plan: higher education and happily ever after. But you know what they say about the best laid plans...Set entirely in a classic “monument to consumerism,” the novel follows Cassie as she finds friendship, love, and ultimately herself, in the most unexpected of places. Megan McCafferty, beloved New York Times bestselling author of the Jessica Darling series, takes readers on an epic trip back in time to The Mall.
The Humming Room: A Novel Inspired By The Secret Garden
by Ellen PotterHiding is Roo Fanshaw's special skill. Living in a frighteningly unstable family, she often needs to disappear at a moment's notice. When her parents are murdered, it's her special hiding place under the trailer that saves her life. As it turns out, Roo, much to her surprise, has a wealthy if eccentric uncle, who has agreed to take her into his home on Cough Rock Island. Once a tuberculosis sanitarium for children of the rich, the strange house is teeming with ghost stories and secrets. Roo doesn't believe in ghosts or fairy stories, but what are those eerie noises she keeps hearing? And who is that strange wild boy who lives on the river? People are lying to her, and Roo becomes determined to find the truth.Despite the best efforts of her uncle's assistants, Roo discovers the house's hidden room--a garden with a tragic secret. This tale full of unusual characters and mysterious secrets is a story that only Ellen Potter could write. The Humming Room was inspired by The Secret Garden, a classic that Ellen Potter has reread every year of her adult life. See how these two works complement each other with this special e-book bonus – the entire text of Frances Hodgson Burnett's original novel. Just keep reading.
Molly: The True Story of the Amazing Dog Who Rescues Cats
by Colin ButcherMolly: The True Story of the Amazing Dog Who Rescues Cats tells the heartwarming story of the man-and-dog team behind the United Kingdom Pet Detective Agency—how Colin, in need of a new lease on life, rescues Molly the dog, and how Molly in turn rescues many more beloved lost pets. As a veteran of the Royal Navy and longtime police officer, Colin Butcher was no stranger to dangerous situations. But a career in uniform can wear anyone down, so, in 2003, Colin left the force to start his own private detective agency, specializing in helping reunite people with their missing pets. And yet, despite his hundreds of successes, there were still heartbreaking cases where Colin couldn’t find the missing on his own. He knew he needed a partner. When Colin first met Molly, his friends doubted that she would be up for the job. Where Colin was battle-tested, Molly was young and inexperienced. She was willful, wayward, and stubborn. But Colin could tell that Molly was unusually charismatic and intelligent. He decided to take a risk and bring on Molly for training. Yes, Molly is no ordinary deputy, but a black Cocker Spaniel, and this is no ordinary detective agency. Trained by the top canine behavioral experts at Medical Detection Dogs, Molly can find missing cats—who are uniquely skilled at eluding humans—by detecting a unique scent signature, and she has been wildly successful. The work is not always easy. Molly has faced hardships ranging from a near-fatal snakebite to the challenge of winning over Colin’s girlfriend, Sarah. But through it all, Colin and Molly share an enduring love and affection. More than a working relationship, Molly is part of the family. Together, they are the Sherlock and Watson of missing pets.
Alice Payne Rides (Alice Payne #2)
by Kate HeartfieldAlice Payne Rides is the thrilling sequel to Kate Heartfield's Alice Payne Arrives.After abducting Arthur of Brittany from his own time in 1203, thereby creating the mystery that partly prompted the visit in the first place, Alice and her team discover that they have inadvertently brought the smallpox virus back to 1780 with them.Searching for a future vaccine, Prudence finds that the various factions in the future time war intend to use the crisis to their own advantage.Can the team prevent an international pandemic across time, and put history back on its tracks? At least until the next battle in the time war…Praise for Alice Payne Arrives"Twisty time wars, highway robbery, 18th century lady scientists, queer joy. How could I not love this? Alice Payne Arrives at a gallop, breathlessly blending historical fiction and SF tropes, then turning them on their heads." —Sarah Pinsker"Whip smart, and packed with irresistible characters and fast-paced adventure. A playful, pointed, and brilliantly inventive remix of history that unfolds like the most fascinating puzzle box—each new twist and reveal a delight. Counting the days to the sequel." —S.L. HuangAt the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Watch Me Die: A Novel
by Erica SpindlerIn Spindler's thrilling new psychological drama, one woman's journey to recovery becomes her worst nightmare… Before Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, stained-glass restoration artist Mira Gallier had it all: a thriving business doing work she loved and an idyllic marriage to the perfect man. But the devastating storm stole her beloved husband – his body swept away by floodwaters, never to be found.Now, after years of pain and turmoil, it looks as if Mira is finally on the verge of peace and emotional stability. But her life, like the magnificent windows blown to bits by Hurricane Katrina, is about to be shattered once again. And this time, it's not a killer storm she faces, but a psychopath who will stop at nothing until he possesses her, body and soul…First, church windows that she restored are vandalized, and the priest who looked over them brutally murdered. Spray-painted across the glass are the words: He Will Come to Judge the Living and the Dead. Then, New Orleans is rocked by a terrifying chain of murders that all seem to be linked to Mira. The police, led by homicide detective Spencer Malone, are following a string of clues left by the killer on each victim – and beginning to wonder if the murderer isn't Mira Gallier herself.As Mira begins to unravel under pressure from all sides – and fear for her life – it's unclear whom she can trust. And when a man from her past appears out of nowhere, sparking something long forgotten in her heart, he quickly becomes the police's new prime suspect. One by one, the people in Mira's life are targeted, until it's clear that the killer has been saving her for last . . . and that there's nowhere left to run.
Last Stand in Lychford (Witches of Lychford #5)
by Paul CornellCelestial beings and human witches clash for the future of the human and fairy worlds in Paul Cornell's Last Stand in Lychford.There are changes in the air, both in Lychford and in the land of fairy.The magical protections previously employed by the town are gone, and the forces of darkness are closing in – both figuratively and literally.Can Autumn and Lizzie save their community, and... well, the world...?Exploding fairies, the architect of the universe and a celestial bureaucratic blunder make this a satisfying conclusion to the ever-popular Witches of Lychford series.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security
by Christopher Cooper Robert BlockBased on exclusive interviews, the inside story of how America's emergency response system failed and how it remains dangerously brokenWhen Hurricane Katrina roared ashore on the morning of August 29, 2005, federal and state officials were not prepared for the devastation it would bring—despite all the drills, exercises, and warnings. In this troubling exposé of what went wrong, Christopher Cooper and Robert Block of The Wall Street Journal show that the flaws go much deeper than out-of-touch federal bureaucrats or overwhelmed local politicians.Drawing on exclusive interviews with federal, state, and local officials, Cooper and Block take readers inside the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to reveal the inexcusable mismanagement during Hurricane Katrina—the bad decisions that were made, the facts that were ignored, the individuals who saw that the system was broken but were unable to fix it. America's top emergency response officials had long known that a calamitous hurricane was likely to hit New Orleans, but that seems to have had little effect on planning or execution. Disaster demonstrates that the incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina is a wake-up call to all Americans, wherever they live, about how distressingly vulnerable we remain. Washington is ill equipped to handle large-scale emergencies, be they floods or fires, natural events or terrorist attacks, and Cooper and Block make a strong case for overhauling of the nation's emergency response system. This is a book that no American can afford to ignore.
Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard
by Richard BrodyFrom New Yorker film critic Richard Brody, Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard presents a "serious-minded and meticulously detailed . . . account of the lifelong artistic journey" of one of the most influential filmmakers of our age (The New York Times).When Jean-Luc Godard wed the ideals of filmmaking to the realities of autobiography and current events, he changed the nature of cinema. Unlike any earlier films, Godard's work shifts fluidly from fiction to documentary, from criticism to art. The man himself also projects shifting images—cultural hero, fierce loner, shrewd businessman. Hailed by filmmakers as a—if not the—key influence on cinema, Godard has entered the modern canon, a figure as mysterious as he is indispensable.In Everything Is Cinema, critic Richard Brody has amassed hundreds of interviews to demystify the elusive director and his work. Paying as much attention to Godard's technical inventions as to the political forces of the postwar world, Brody traces an arc from the director's early critical writing, through his popular success with Breathless, to the grand vision of his later years. He vividly depicts Godard's wealthy conservative family, his fluid politics, and his tumultuous dealings with women and fellow New Wave filmmakers.Everything Is Cinema confirms Godard's greatness and shows decisively that his films have left their mark on screens everywhere.
The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age
by Nathan Wolfe“One of the world’s foremost virus hunters” (Financial Times), Stanford University biologist Nathan Wolfe reveals the origins of the world’s most deadly diseases and how we can combat and stop contagions.A “mix of biology, history, medicine, and first-hand experience [that] is potent and irresistible,”* The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age shares information Wolfe uncovered on his groundbreaking and dangerous research missions in the jungles of Africa and the rain forests of Borneo to provide an in-depth exploration of how lethal viruses evolved alongside human beings; how illnesses like HIV, swine flu, and bird flu almost wiped us out in the past; and why modern life has made our species vulnerable to the threat of a global pandemic.In a world where each new outbreak seems worse than the one before, Wolfe points the way forward, as new technologies are brought to bear in the most remote areas of the world to neutralize these viruses and even harness their power for the good of humanity. His provocative vision of the future will change the way we think about viruses, and perhaps remove a potential threat to humanity’s survival.“An astonishingly lucid book on an important topic. Deeply researched, yet effortlessly recounted.”—*Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies
Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution
by Fred VogelsteinBehind the bitter rivalry between Apple and Google—and how it's reshaping the way we think about technologyThe rise of smartphones and tablets has altered the industry of making computers. At the center of this change are Apple and Google, two companies whose philosophies, leaders, and commercial acumen have steamrolled the competition. In the age of Android and the iPad, these corporations are locked in a feud that will play out not just in the mobile marketplace but in the courts and on screens around the world. Fred Vogelstein has reported on this rivalry for more than a decade and has rare access to its major players. In Dogfight, he takes us into the offices and board rooms where company dogma translates into ruthless business; behind outsize personalities like Steve Jobs, Apple's now-lionized CEO, and Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman; and inside the deals, lawsuits, and allegations that mold the way we communicate. Apple and Google are poaching each other's employees. They bid up the price of each other's acquisitions for spite, and they forge alliances with major players like Facebook and Microsoft in pursuit of market dominance.Dogfight reads like a novel: vivid nonfiction with never-before-heard details. This is more than a story about what devices will replace our cell phones and laptops. It's about who will control the content on those devices and where that content will come from—about the future of media and the Internet in Silicon Valley, New York, and Hollywood.
My Life as a Russian Novel: A Memoir
by Emmanuel Carrère Linda CoverdaleAn unsparingly truthful account of love, betrayal, and the traps we set for ourselves, by France's master of psychological suspenseIn work after work, the critically acclaimed author Emmanuel Carrère has trained his unblinking gaze on the lives of others as they fight a losing battle with that most fearsome of adversaries—the self. Now, determined to escape the bleak visions of his narratives, he takes on a film project in the heart of Russia while also embarking on a new love affair back home in Paris. But soon enough, the diversion he seeks eludes him, intimacy proves too arduous, and Carrv®re is left peering into the dark mirror of his own life.Set in Paris and Kotelnich, a small post-Soviet town, My Life as a Russian Novel traces Carrère's pursuit of two obsessions—the disappearance of his Russian grandfather and his erotic fascination with a woman he loves but cannot keep from destroying. In prose that is elegant and passionate, Carrère weaves the strands of his story into a travelogue of a journey inward. Road trip, confession, erotic tour de force—this fearless reckoning illuminates the schemes we devise to evade ourselves and the inevitable payment they exact.
American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center
by William LangewiescheSelected as one of the best books of 2002 by The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Sun-TimesWithin days after September 11, 2001, William Langewiesche had secured unique, unrestricted, round-the-clock access to the World Trade Center site. American Ground is a tour of this intense, ephemeral world and those who improvised the recovery effort day by day, and in the process reinvented themselves, discovering unknown strengths and weaknesses. In all of its aspects--emotionalism, impulsiveness, opportunism, territoriality, resourcefulness, and fundamental, cacophonous democracy--Langewiesche reveals the unbuilding to be uniquely American and oddly inspiring, a portrait of resilience and ingenuity in the face of disaster.
Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs
by John Lydon Keith Zimmerman Kent Zimmerman"I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die..." --John LydonPunk has been romanticized and embalmed in various media. An English class revolt that became a worldwide fashion statement, punk's idols were the Sex Pistols, and its sneering hero was Johnny Rotten.Seventeen years later, John Lydon looks back at himself, the Sex Pistols, and the "no future" disaffection of the time. Much more than just a music book, Rotten is an oral history of punk: angry, witty, honest, poignant, crackling with energy. Malcolm McLaren, Sid Vicious, Chrissie Hynde, Billy Idol, London and England in the late 1970s, the Pistols' creation and collapse...all are here, in perhaps the best book ever written about music and youth culture, by one of its most notorious figures.
The Only Harmless Great Thing
by Brooke BolanderWinner of the Nebula Award for Best NoveletteFinalist for the Hugo, Locus, Shirley Jackson, and Sturgeon AwardsThe Only Harmless Great Thing is a heart-wrenching alternative history by Brooke Bolander that imagines an intersection between the Radium Girls and noble, sentient elephants.In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island. These are the facts.Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History
by Katherine AshenburgA spirited chronicle of the West's ambivalent relationship with dirt The question of cleanliness is one every age and culture has answered with confidence. For the first-century Roman, being clean meant a two-hour soak in baths of various temperatures, scraping the body with a miniature rake, and a final application of oil. For the aristocratic Frenchman in the seventeenth century, it meant changing your shirt once a day and perhaps going so far as to dip your hands in some water. Did Napoleon know something we didn't when he wrote Josephine "I will return in five days. Stop washing"? And why is the German term Warmduscher—a man who washes in warm or hot water—invariably a slight against his masculinity? Katherine Ashenburg takes on such fascinating questions as these in Dirt on Clean, her charming tour of attitudes to hygiene through time.What could be more routine than taking up soap and water and washing yourself? And yet cleanliness, or the lack of it, is intimately connected to ideas as large as spirituality and sexuality, and historical events that include plagues, the Civil War, and the discovery of germs. An engrossing fusion of erudition and anecdote, Dirt on Clean considers the bizarre prescriptions of history's doctors, the hygienic peccadilloes of great authors, and the historic twists and turns that have brought us to a place Ashenburg considers hedonistic yet oversanitized.
Computers The Machines We Think With
by D. S. HalacyExcerpt: "While you are reading this sentence, an electronic computer is performing 3 million mathematical operations! Before you read this page, another computer could translate it and several others into a foreign language. Electronic “brains” are taking over chores that include the calculation of everything from automobile parking fees to zero hour for space missile launchings. Despite bitter winter weather, a recent conference on computers drew some 4,000 delegates to Washington, D.C.; indicating the importance and scope of the new industry. The 1962 domestic market for computers and associated equipment is estimated at just under $3 billion, with more than 150,000 people employed in manufacture, operation, and maintenance of the machines. In the short time since the first electronic computer made its appearance, these thinking machines have made such fantastic strides in so many different directions that most of us are unaware how much our lives are already being affected by them. Banking, for example, employs complex machines that process checks and handle accounts so much faster than human bookkeepers 2that they do more than an hour’s work in less than thirty seconds."
Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation
by Judith MackrellBy the 1920s, women were on the verge of something huge. Jazz, racy fashions, eyebrowraising new attitudes about art and sex—all of this pointed to a sleek, modern world, one that could shake off the grimness of the Great War and stride into the future in one deft, stylized gesture. The women who defined this the Jazz Age—Josephine Baker, Tallulah Bankhead, Diana Cooper, Nancy Cunard, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Tamara de Lempicka—would presage the sexual revolution by nearly half a century and would shape the role of women for generations to come.In Flappers, the acclaimed biographer Judith Mackrell renders these women with all the color that marked their lives and their era. Both sensuous and sympathetic, her admiring biography lays bare the private lives of her heroines, filling in the bold contours. These women came from vastly different backgrounds, but all ended up passing through Paris, the mecca of the avant-garde. Before she was the toast of Parisian society, Josephine Baker was a poor black girl from the slums of Saint Louis. Tamara de Lempicka fled the Russian Revolution only to struggle to scrape together a life for herself and her family. A committed painter, her portraits were indicative of the age's art deco sensibility and sexual daring. The Brits in the group—Nancy Cunard and Diana Cooper— came from pinkie-raising aristocratic families but soon descended into the salacious delights of the vanguard. Tallulah Bankhead and Zelda Fitzgerald were two Alabama girls driven across the Atlantic by a thirst for adventure and artistic validation.But beneath the flamboyance and excess of the Roaring Twenties lay age-old prejudices about gender, race, and sexuality. These flappers weren't just dancing and carousing; they were fighting for recognition and dignity in a male-dominated world. They were more than mere lovers or muses to the modernist masters—in their pursuit of fame and intense experience, we see a generation of women taking bold steps toward something burgeoning, undefined, maybe dangerous: a New Woman.
Atkins for Life: The Complete Controlled Carb Program for Permanent Weight Loss and Good Health
by Robert C. AtkinsTaking It To The Next LevelWhether you've lost weight doing Atkins and want to make your success permanent or you're new to Atkins and are concerned about your health and weight control, Atkins for Life is for you. Filled with advice and tips on navigating the everyday challenges that come with eating low carb in a high carb world, the book provides a simple and straightforward lifetime program that anyone can follow. With Atkins for Life, finding your ideal weight and staying there has never been so easy or so good!Dig in and discover:-200 menu plans-that adds up to over six months of menus! With controlled carbohydrate counts of 45, 60, 80, and 100 grams, anyone can succeed on the plan.-125 recipes, including tasty breakfasts, fabulous lunches, delicious dinners, and smart snacks.- How to create special holiday meals and fantastic ethnic cuisines ... the low carb way!- Before and after photos and success stories -with time-tested tips from those who've been there and won their battle with weight.- Self-tests and quizzes to help you meet and stay with your goals.