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The Bottom of the Harbor
By Joseph Mitchell. 1959
On the centennial of Joseph Mitchell's birth, here is a new edition of the classic collection containing his most celebrated…
pieces about New York City. Fifty years after its original publication,The Bottom of the Harboris still considered a fundamental New York book. Every story Mitchell tells, every person he introduces, every scene he describes is illuminated by his passion for the eccentrics and eccentricities of his beloved adopted city. All of the pieces here are connected in one way or another--some directly, some with a kind of mysterious circuitousness--to New York's fabled waterfront, the terrain that Mitchell brilliantly made his own. They tell of a life that has passed--of vacant hotel rooms, deserted communities, once-thriving fishing areas that are now polluted and studded with wrecks. Included are "Up in the Old Hotel," a portrait of Louis Morino, the proprietor of a restaurant called (to his disgust) Sloppy Louie's; "The Rats on the Waterfront," which has inspired countless writers to attempt portraits of these most demonized New Yorkers; and "Mr. Hunter's Grave," widely considered to be the finest single piece of nonfiction to have ever appeared in the pages ofThe New Yorker. Here is the essential work of a legendary writer. From the Hardcover edition.Compiling more than 100 family recipes, founder of the Akron Recipe Project Judy Orr James serves up a history of…
home cooking in the Rubber City. From the city's founding in 1825 through the years following World War II, numerous ethnic and cultural groups made Akron home. With each new arrival, the city's food changed and deepened to delicious effect. Polish immigrants brought pierogi to the area, and Jews introduced Old World favorites like kugel and hamantaschen. African Americans seeking a better life in the North enriched the Akron palate with the unique and southern-inspired dishes of their ancestors. Last but not least, there is the sauerkraut ball, Akron's official food and favorite snack served at local restaurants, cocktail parties, holiday celebrations, and game day gatherings.The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory
By Robert P. Crease. 2022
How the discovery of a harmless leak of radiation sparked a media firestorm, political grandstanding, and fearmongering that closed a…
vital scientific facility.In 1997, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory found a small leak of radioactive water near their research reactor. Brookhaven was—and is—a world-class, Nobel Prize–winning lab, and its reactor was the cornerstone of US materials science and one of the world&’s finest research facilities. The leak, harmless to health, came from a storage pool rather than the reactor. But its discovery triggered a media and political firestorm that resulted in the reactor&’s shutdown, and even attempts to close the entire laboratory. A quarter century later, the episode reveals the dynamics of today&’s controversies in which fears and the dismissal of science disrupt serious discussion and research of vital issues such as vaccines, climate change, and toxic chemicals. This story has all the elements of a thriller, with vivid characters and dramatic twists and turns. Key players include congressmen and scientists; journalists and university presidents; actors, supermodels, and anti-nuclear activists, all interacting and teaming up in surprising ways. The authors, each with insider knowledge of and access to confidential documents and the key players, reveal how a fact of no health significance could be portrayed as a Chernobyl-like disaster. This compelling exposé reveals the gaps between scientists, politicians, media, and the public that have only gotten more dangerous since 1997. Peter Bond is a retired physicist who worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory for 43 years in a wide variety of roles, including interim laboratory director during much of the period covered by this book.Martian: The Saint of Loneliness
By James Cagney. 2022
Winner of the 2021 Academy of American Poets James Laughlin AwardA blistering exploration of America&’s legacy of anti-Black violence from…
an indispensable poet of our timeAmerican history got you down? Are you feeling alienated? Join poet James Cagney in his blistering second collection, Martian: The Saint of Loneliness, as he journeys through time, space, and memory with caustic, satirical beauty. Recall American history through its spent shell casings! Turn familial ghosts into art valuable for generations! In these fully charged poems, James Cagney storms through American fields blooming with artillery and anger on his thirsty quest for love, peace, and acceptance in the smallest, most precious gestures.Seduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of Narrative
By Peter Brooks. 2022
In this spiritual sequel to his influential Reading for the Plot, Peter Brooks examines the dangerously alluring power of storytelling.&“There&’s…
nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. Nothing can defeat it.&” So begins the scholar and literary critic Peter Brooks&’s reckoning with today&’s flourishing cult of story. Forty years after publishing his seminal work Reading for the Plot, his important contribution to what came to be known as the &“narrative turn&” in contemporary criticism and philosophy, Brooks returns to question the unquestioning fashion in which story is now embraced as an excuse or explanation and the fact that every brand or politician comes equipped with one. In a discussion that ranges from The Girl on the Train to legal argument, Brooks reminds us that among the powers of narrative is the power to deceive.The United States of Cryptids: A Tour of American Myths and Monsters
By J. W. Ocker. 2022
Meet the monsters in our midst, from bigfoot to Mothman and beyond!Welcome to the United States of Cryptids, where mysterious…
monsters lurk in the dark forests, deep lakes, and sticky swamps of all fifty states. From the infamous Jersey Devil to the obscure Snallygaster, travel writer and chronicler of the strange J. W. Ocker uncovers the bizarre stories of these creatures and investigates the ways in which communities embrace and celebrate their local cryptids. Readers will learn about: • Batsquatch of Washington, a winged bigfoot that is said to have emerged from the eruption of Mount Saint Helens• Nain Rouge of Michigan, a fierce red goblin that has been spotted before every major city disaster in Detroit• Flatwoods Monster of West Virginia, a robotic extraterrestrial that crash-landed in rural Appalachia• Lizard Man of South Carolina, a reptilian mutant that attacked a teenager in the summer of 1988• Glocester Ghoul of Rhode Island, a fire-breathing dragon that guards a hoard of pirate treasure• And many more! Whether you believe in bigfoot or not, this fully illustrated compendium is a fun, frightening, fascinating tour through American folklore and history, exploring the stories we tell about monsters and what those stories say about us.The Scots Irish of Early Pennsylvania: A Varied People
By Judith A. Ridner. 2018
The Scots Irish were one of early Pennsylvania’s largest non-English immigrant groups. They were stereotyped as frontier ruffians and Indian…
haters. In The Scots Irish of Early Pennsylvania, historian Judith Ridner insists that this immigrant group was socio-economically diverse. Servants and free people, individuals and families, and political exiles and refugees from Ulster, they not only pioneered new frontier settlements, but also populated the state’s cities—Philadelphia and Pittsburgh—and its towns, such as Lancaster, Easton, and Carlisle. Ridner provides a much-overdue synthesis and reassessment of this immigrant group, tracing a century of Scotch-Irish migration from 1720 to 1820. These men and women brought their version of Ulster to the colonies in their fierce commitments to family, community, entrepreneurship, Presbyterianism, republican politics, and higher education. The settlements they founded across the state, including many farms, businesses, meetinghouses, and colleges, ensured that Pennsylvania would be their cradle in America, and these settlements stand as powerful testaments to their legacy to the state’s history and development.The Denmark Vesey Affair: A Documentary History (Southern Dissent)
By Douglas R. Egerton and Robert L. Paquette. 2017
A vast collection of documents that illuminate one of the most sophisticated acts of collective slave resistance in the history…
of the U.S. In 1822, thirty-four slaves and their leader, a free black man named Denmark Vesey, were tried and executed for "attempting to raise an insurrection" in Charleston, South Carolina. In The Denmark Vesey Affair, Douglas Egerton and Robert Paquette annotate and interpret a vast collection of contemporary documents that illuminate and contextualize this complicated saga, providing the definitive account of a landmark event that played a role in the nation’s path to Civil War. The editors ultimately argue that the Vesey plot was one of the most sophisticated acts of collective slave resistance in the history of the United States. A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.Mustang and the Pony Car Revolution (Images of America)
By Michael W. Davis. 2014
Introduced at the opening of the New York World's Fair in April 1964, the Ford Mustang was based on mechanicals…
from the earlier Ford Falcon compact car. It quickly established a new motorcar category--the "pony car"--which was widely copied by domestic and overseas competitors. From the outset, the Mustang represented inspired product planning and design, followed by brilliantly executed marketing. Ford's Mustang team effort used every tool in the vehicle-marketing toolbox: clever teases long before the new product went on sale, unprecedented publicity, simple but effective advertising, the stage at the World's Fair, movie placement, distribution of toy plastic models, and even a replica pedal car for the young drivers of the future. With a measure of luck, it became a classic case of releasing the right product at the right time, and Ford sold one million units in less than two years.America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2006 (Tenth Edition)
By Walter Lafeber. 2008
Using extensive materials from both published and private sources, this concise text focuses on United States-Soviet diplomacy to explain the…
causes and consequences of the Cold War. It explores how the Cold War was shaped by domestic events in both the U. S. and the Soviet Union and presents a variety of other points of view on the conflict--Chinese, Latin American, European, and Vietnamese. The text includes both engaging anecdotes and quotes from primary sources to support key points and exemplify policies, and recent scholarship and materials from openings of the U. S. , Soviet, and Chinese archives.A Political Education: A Washington Memoir
By Harry McPherson. 1995
This classic political memoir offers an insider’s view of Washington in the ‘50s and ‘60s—with a preface by the author…
reflecting on the Clinton era.A Texas native, Harry McPherson went to Washington in 1956 as an assistant to Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. He served in key posts under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, including as Johnson’s special counsel and speechwriter.In Political Education, McPherson offers a vividly evocative portrait of Johnson’s tumultuous presidency and of the conflicts and factions of the president's staff. Long regarded as a political classic, it is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand national politics of the period.In 1995, McPherson added a preface discussing how Washington had changed since the Johnson era. In it he suggests what lessons Bill Clinton could have learn from Johnson’s time in the Oval Office.American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People
By Jared Yates Sexton. 2020
From writer and political analyst Jared Yates Sexton comes a journey through the history of the United States, from the…
nation&’s founding to the twenty-first century, which examines and debunks the American myths we've always told ourselves. In recent years, Americans have faced a deluge of horrifying developments in politics and culture: stolen elections, fascist rallies, families torn apart and locked away. A common refrain erupts at each new atrocity: This isn't who we are. In American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton upends those convenient fictions by laying bare the foundational myths at the heart of our collective American imagination. From the very origins of this nation, Americans in power have abused and subjugated others; enabling that corruption are the many myths of American exceptionalism and steadfast values, which are fed to the public and repeated across generations. Working through each era of American growth and change, Sexton weaves together the origins and perpetuation of these narratives still in the public memory, and the acts we have chosen to forget. Stirring, deeply researched, and disturbingly familiar, American Rule is a call to examine our own misconceptions of what it means, and has always meant, to be an American.A Frequency Dictionary of French: Core Vocabulary for Learners (Routledge Frequency Dictionaries)
By Deryle Lonsdale, Yvon Le Bras. 2009
A Frequency Dictionary of French is an invaluable tool for all learners of French, providing a list of the 5000…
most frequently used words in the language. Based on a 23-million-word corpus of French which includes written and spoken material both from France and overseas, this dictionary provides the user with detailed information for each of the 5000 entries, including English equivalents, a sample sentence, its English translation, usage statistics, and an indication of register variation. Users can access the top 5000 words either through the main frequency listing or through an alphabetical index. Throughout the frequency listing there are thematically-organized lists of the top words from a variety of key topics such as sports, weather, clothing, and family terms. An engaging and highly useful resource, the Frequency Dictionary of French will enable students of all levels to get the most out of their study of French vocabulary. Deryle Lonsdale is Associate Professor in the Linguistics and English Language Department at Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah). Yvon Le Bras is Associate Professor of French and Department Chair of the French and Italian Department at Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah).The Medicine of Memory: A Mexica Clan in California
By Alejandro Murguía. 2002
People who live in California deny the past, asserts Alejandro Murguía. In a state where "what matters is keeping up…
with the current trends, fads, or latest computer gizmo," no one has "the time, energy, or desire to reflect on what happened last week, much less what happened ten years ago, or a hundred." From this oblivion of memory, he continues, comes a false sense of history, a deluded belief that the way things are now is the way they have always been. In this work of creative nonfiction, Murguía draws on memories—his own and his family’s reaching back to the eighteenth century—to (re)construct the forgotten Chicano-indigenous history of California. He tells the story through significant moments in California history, including the birth of the mestizo in Mexico, destruction of Indian lifeways under the mission system, violence toward Mexicanos during the Gold Rush, Chicano farm life in the early twentieth century, the Chicano Movement of the 1960s, Chicano-Latino activism in San Francisco in the 1970s, and the current rebirth of Chicano-Indio culture. Rejecting the notion that history is always written by the victors, and refusing to be one of the vanquished, he declares, "This is my California history, my memories, richly subjective and atavistic.""I Hear America Singing": Folk Music and National Identity
By Rachel Clare Donaldson. 2014
Folk music is more than an idealized reminder of a simper past. It reveals a great deal about present-day understandings…
of community and belonging. It celebrates the shared traditions that define a group or nation. In America, folk music--from African American spirituals to English ballads and protest songs--renders the imagined community more tangible and comprises a critical component of our diverse national heritage. In "I Hear America Singing," Rachel Donaldson traces the vibrant history of the twentieth-century folk music revival from its origins in the 1930s through its end in the late 1960s. She investigates the relationship between the revival and concepts of nationalism, showing how key figures in the revival--including Pete Seeger , Alan Lomax, Moses Asch, and Ralph Rinzler--used songs to influence the ways in which Americans understood the values, the culture, and the people of their own nation. As Donaldson chronicles how cultural norms were shaped over the course of the mid-twentieth century, she underscores how various groups within the revival and their views shifted over time. "I Hear America Singing" provides a stirring account of how and why the revivalists sustained their culturally pluralist and politically democratic Americanism over this tumultuous period in American history.The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief
By Ben Macintyre. 1997
A New York Times Notable BookFrom the bestselling, acclaimed author of A Spy Among Friends, The Spy and the Traitor,…
and Rogue Heroes, the vastly entertaining saga of Adam Worth, the most notorious bank thief of Victorian society and the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Moriarty.The Victorian era's most infamous and iconic thief, Adam Worth, was known as the Napoleon of Crime. Suave, cunning, and fearless, Worth learned early that the best way to succeed was to steal--and steal he did. Following a strict code of honor, Worth won the respect of Victorian society. He also aroused its fear by becoming a chilling phantom, mingling undetected with the upper classes, whose valuables he brazenly stole. His most celebrated heist: Gainsborough's grand portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire--ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales--a painting Worth adored and often slept beside for twenty years. With a brilliant and colorful gang, Worth secretly ran operations from New York to London, Paris, and South Africa--until betrayal and a Pinkerton man finally brought him down.Here is a grand, dazzling tour into the gaslit underworld of the nineteenth century, and into the doomed genius of a criminal mastermind.102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers
By Jim Dwyer, Kevin Flynn. 2005
At 8:46 am on September 11, 2001, 14,000 people were inside the twin towers-reading e-mails, making trades, eating croissants at…
Windows on the World. Over the next 102 minutes, each would become part of a drama for the ages, one witnessed only by the people who lived it-until now. Of the millions of words written about this wrenching day, most were told from the outside looking in. New York Times reporters Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn have taken the opposite-and far more revealing-approach. Reported from the perspectives of those inside the towers, 102 Minutes captures the little-known stories of ordinary people who took extraordinary steps to save themselves and others. Beyond this stirring panorama stands investigative reporting of the first rank. An astounding number of people actually survived the plane impacts but were unable to escape, and the authors raise hard questions about building safety and tragic flaws in New York's emergency preparedness. Dwyer and Flynn rely on hundreds of interviews with rescuers, thousands of pages of oral histories, and countless phone, e-mail, and emergency radio transcripts. They cross a bridge of voices to go inside the infernos, seeing cataclysm and heroism, one person at a time, to tell the affecting, authoritative saga of the men and women-the nearly 12,000 who escaped and the 2,749 who perished-as they made 102 minutes count as never before. 102 Minutes is a 2005 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction
By Eric Foner. 2006
This book seeks to bring the fruits of recent scholarship on Reconstruction to a broad popular audience and in doing…
so, reinforce the point that knowledge of that turbulent era is indispensable to thinking about American society today. The six visual essays that appear in this book chart the ways American visual culture embraced, ignored, and distorted issues of race and equality from the 1840s to the 1920sThe Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song
By Henry Louis Gates. 2021
From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and one of our most important voices on the…
African American experience comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. The companion book to the upcoming PBS series. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community's most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear. A New York Times BestsellerThe Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer: A gripping new thriller with a killer twist
By Joël Dicker. 2018
A twisting new thriller from the author of The Truth about the Harry Quebert AffairIn the summer of 1994, the…
quiet seaside town of Orphea reels from the discovery of four murders. Two young police officers, Jesse Rosenberg and Derek Scott crack the case and identify the killer.Then, twenty years later and just as he is on the point of taking early retirement, Rosenberg is approached by Stephanie Mailer, a journalist who believes he made a mistake back in 1994 and that the real murderer is still out there, perhaps ready to strike again. But before she can give any more details, Stephanie Mailer mysteriously disappears, and Rosenberg and Scott are forced to confront the possibility that her suspicions might have been proved true.What happened to Stephanie Mailer?What did she know?And what really happened in Orphea all those years ago?TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY HOWARD CURTIS